snowleopard

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about the new Apple operating system, Snow Leopard. Especially from our new freshmen (welcome, class of 2013!), who got their new laptops just days before Snow Leopard arrived. Want the straight word on this new OS and how it applies to Macaulay laptops? You’ve come to the right place.

First, the official policy. We did not load Snow Leopard on any of the new laptops (and of course not on the older ones!). We can not support you if you decide to install Snow Leopard on your own. That means that if you purchase Snow Leopard and install it, and something goes wrong (it has happened to a few students already), we will only be able to restore the laptop to the state it was in when we gave it to you–when it was fresh out of the box. We won’t reinstall Snow Leopard for you, and we won’t fix whatever went wrong with the Snow Leopard install. Even beyond that, if you install Snow Leopard on your own, and then you have problems with using it or making software work with it, we can’t help you with those problems. The most we can do is wipe your computer clean and restore it back to the original Leopard operating system.

So those are the rules, that’s the official policy. But Snow Leopard is getting a lot of attention recently, and it’s not expensive at all (no, we are not eligible for the $10 price for computers purchased this summer, we won’t buy it for you, and no, you can’t use your Opportunities Fund to pay for it). At a price of $29 for the upgrade, or $49 for a family pack for five upgrades, it’s a hard deal to resist. I know that, and I know some of you are going to go ahead and try this out. I have now installed Snow Leopard myself on all my own Macs, and all my family’s Macs, and you should know what I’ve found–in case you’re thinking of giving this a try.

The basic advice–if you don’t care about details–is that this is not a required upgrade, and probably will not make a very noticeable difference in how you use or experience your Mac.  At this point, unless you’re a curious, bleeding edge, ahead of the curve, innovation-hungry, power user (like your Director of Technology and Learning 🙂 ), you should skip this and stick with Leopard.  You’ll be fine.

But if you’re planning to go for it, here’s what you should know.

  1. Snow Leopard will save you some hard drive space.  Not a huge amount, but a noticeable amount.
  2. Snow Leopard will let you have the date, not just the day of the week, in the menu bar at the top of your screen.
  3. Stacks (the way that folders full of files or apps on the dock appear) work better in Snow Leopard.
  4. Exposé works better in Snow Leopard.
  5. You can set the clock to automatically update (like a cellphone does) when you travel to a new time zone (how often do you do that?).
  6. If you need to sync calendars (iCal), contacts (Address Book), and email (Mail) to an Exchange server, Snow Leopard does that better. (At this point, this doesn’t apply to any Macaulay students–you’re not syncing to any Exchange servers, unless–maybe–you have a job outside of school where they use Exchange)
  7. Some programs are a little quicker and zippier to open and run. A little.  Probably not even noticeable.
  8. When you want to eject a removable disk in Leopard, you may have noticed that annoying message telling you that you can’t do that because the disk is in use.  In Snow Leopard, that message actually tells you which program is using the disk, so you can quit that and then carry out the eject.
  9. The wifi indicator now tells you the strength of the various available networks, and has a nifty animation while a connection is being established.
  10. You can tell other people that you are a curious, bleeding edge, ahead of the curve, innovation-hungry, power user like your Director of Technology and Learning 🙂

That’s about it.  That might look like a lot of new and exciting features (a list of 10!!), but if you really look at them, none of them are big or important.

There is also one fairly large negative.  I have seen reported, and experienced myself, serious crashes of Microsoft Word under Snow Leopard, when the program was working perfectly on the same machine under Leopard.  These are real hard crashes, with lost data (completely unrecoverable).  That will probably be fixed with a Microsoft patch or upgrade soon, but at this point I would say that if you do upgrade to Snow Leopard, do not use Word. Stick to Pages or Google Docs.  I have seen reports of other apps crashing or just not working well under Snow Leopard, but have not experienced that myself.  And Symantec antivirus (which is really only necessary if you’re excessively cautious) is not yet compatible with Snow Leopard.

So those are the differences.  All together, are they worth $29? And worth taking a risk that something may go wrong that we will not support?  That’s an individual decision.  Honestly I should say that the risk is pretty small–this is not a difficult upgrade and Apple handles these things very well.  But as I said, some students have had issues.  So choose wisely!

And of course if you have questions or comments, email me! (or comment on this post).

(And feel free to read some of the many other reviews out there on the web–I particularly liked MacWorld’s, Ars Technica’s (23 pages!), and David Pogue’s.)