OS X :: Sources Detail Changes To Snow Leopard Installation Process
Aug 12, 2009
People familiar with Apple's upcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system are corroborating reports this week that the software has achieved Golden Master status, adding some additional insight on various enhancements and changes that users will notice during the installation process when compared to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Build 10A432 reportedly went GM a bit earlier this week and is currently on its way to manufacturing, where it will pressed onto optical media ahead of a formal availability date next month. The GM build also began making its way into the hands of some Apple Care support representatives and Apple Technicians on Wednesday.
Some of the changes and enhancements to the Snow Leopard installation process are as follows:
Although Rosetta and Quicktime 7 are both included on the Mac OS X 10.6 installation DVD, both are designated as optional installs by default. However, if Mac OS X 10.6 is being installed on a Mac that contains a registration key for Quicktime 7 Pro, the installer will install Quicktime 7 automatically. Options to "Erase and Install" and "Archive and Install" are no longer present in the Mac OS X 10.6 installer. According to those familiar with the software, this was done for convenience, so that users do not accidentally erase and install their Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard partitions. However, "Erase and Install" remains available through Disk Utility, which is also included on the installation DVD.
If you need to reinstall 10.6, it automatically archives and installs for you. A reinstallation will not affect your Mac OS X version number. In other words, reinstallation of Mac OS X 10.6 on a Mac that contains Mac OS X 10.6.1 (when it becomes available) will not overwrite any new components delivered by 10.6.1. So when the re-install is complete, you will still be running Mac OS X 10.6.1. This will save users considerable time. There is no "Previous System" folder at the root level after reinstalling. If a power outage occurs, installation will pick up from where it left off. To prevent the Blue Screen error that plagued some users when upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5, a software compatibility check is included that has a list of known "bad" apps, and disables them. Those programs are moved to an "Incompatible Software" folder.
Unlike Mac OS X 10.5, you cannot install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on computers where the hard drive reports a S.M.A.R.T. failure. Installation initially triggers a large chunk of data to be copied from the installation DVD to the user's primary hard drive. The bulk of the installation is then managed from the hard drive, speeding up the installation process considerably. After a successful installation, that large chunk of data is automatically removed. Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard is priced at $29 for the single user license and $49 for the five-license family pack. The upgrade prices are available for users of the current version of Mac OS X, 10.5 Leopard. Snow Leopard will only be available for Mac users on Intel-based computers.
Also available is Mac OS X Server 10.6 Snow Leopard. Priced at $499, Leopard Server is said to be the most significant improvement to the server operating system since Mac OS X Server was launched. Amazon is also selling box sets with Snow Leopard, featuring the OS, iWork and iLife for $169 and the five-license family pack, iWork and iLife for $229. For more on Apple's upcoming operating system, read AppleInsider's extensive Road to Snow Leopard series. For the sake of completeness, AppleInsider notes that it has heard some rumors that Snow Leopard could be released as early as August 24. However, these anecdotal tips cannot be confirmed with any degree of certainty at this time.
Question: I already have snow leopard installed on my iMac. But can I still do a CLEAN snow leopard installation onto my imac even though snow leopard is already installed?
I tried it just now like twice but I got the spinning wheel of death. It wouldn't go pass the apple sign and spinning wheel.
Some program or process is opening Safari. It's not going to any pages in a window, it just opens and is on. I shut it down, and it comes back sometime later - I don't know the pattern though. how I can track this down? I'm on a 1 year old iMac 10.6.8?
Info: iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8), i5 with Thunderbolt
I just noticed that there is a process named "sh" which takes between 90 and 95% of the proc all the time. I just installed all available updates, but I can't be sure this is related.
The process I'm talking about cannot be seen in the activity monitor, but I can see it with istat. In command line, I'm unable to find it.
Info: MacBook Pro (15-inch 2.4/2.2 GHz), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
This is not a question about the highlight color that you set in system preferences.When you search for text, the found text jumps out at you in blaring yellow, all too literally in your face. This was useful when they first introduced it in Safari-- but now it's all over the OS. In a text editor, where the search result might be a whole paragraph, it's agonizing. It's getting to where I have to look away from the screen when I hit Search, and wait a moment for the color to die down. Isn't there any way to disable it? It hurts my eyes.I found a thread from pretty exactly two years ago asking the same question:[url]
Well not so much a leak but since upgrading to Snow Leopard I've noticed that over time, a big chunk of my RAM is being siphoned off into a process called OSMServer. Does anyone know what it does and why? And more importantly how to stop it doing it? It's currently using over 1GB of my 4GB RAM and making the machine run like treacle.
The only way to clear it seems to be a full shut down and restart. Which is fine for a while until it fires back up and starts gobbling RAM again.
Noticed that Safari is running slow and sticking during the loading process. Also iTunes is freezing mid-song. Is there a bug or have I finally gotten a virus?
I wanted to do a clean install of Lion and change the name of my disc so I booted in Recovery Mode and erased my disc. When I install lion, it goes through everything and I wait the full 2 hours or so for it to download and install but right at the very end it says an error occurred while installing the mac os x and then I get the rainbow pinwheel and am required to shut down my mac by holding the power button. I am currently booted from an external hard drive as this is my only connection to the internet. I really want to get Lion to work on my internal drive. I just partitioned out my internal into 2 partitions (I read something about that?) and I'm going to give the install another go.
I had a huge struggle installing Windows 7 through BootCamp. After the first time it rebooted during the installation process, it would not power up the screen (the computer and the setup were running, but the screen was off, not black, but off). I figured out that doing the rest of the installation through emulation software (I used VMWare Fusion) would work, and it did. Windows 7 should be fully installed, and works just fine if I boot it up through VMWare. But when I try to directly boot up from the Windows partition (not through VMWare), it shows me a flickering underscore ( _ ) for a while, then when it finally (if it does, sometimes it doesn't) goes to the window that says "Starting Windows", and you can see the logo coming up, it gives me a BSOD shortly after you can only see a fraction of the boot animation.
So I've only had my macbook pro aluminum body for about 4 months and after downloading the new system update, my laptopl just started acting weird and then it would just keep freezing with the pinwheel for extended periods of time. I've decided to verify and repair the disc, but to no avail, it didn't help. So, I backed up files in an external hard drive and erased my disc. However, after repeating to reinstall Snow Leopard at least 10 times, it keeps on telling me that it has failed to copy supported files. If I eject my installation DVD, it will just show up with a gray screen that has a folder and a question mark on it. I'm not sure what to do. I feel like I should take it over to an Apple store to consult with a Genius...but it is far from where I live. Any easy step to step advice on what I should do?
I've installed Snow Leopard but now my mac won't start up. (It's a early 2008 mac pro so it should be able to handle it). All that happens is it loads past the apple logo, the rainbow wheel pops up, the background loads and the search icon (magnifying glass) appears but nothing else at all beyond that. It just waits for ages (a few times that note has appeared that say's I need to restart the computer).
I've tried. 1) Re installing it 2) Reinstalling it on a different partition (that had windows on before) but nothing seems to work. I really need to keep all my data so I want to be careful.
So I had an aluminum 2008 unibody macbook. I replaced the hard drive with a 320gb and it has leopard on it. I damaged it and had to get a new mac. I now have a white unibody mac. To copy every thing would be a pain. I'd rather use snow leopard. What I want to know is if I can use the reinstallation disc 10.6 that came with the white macbook to upgrade my 320gb leopard hdd to snow leopard?
I bought a used MaxBook (2,0 GHz Intel Core Duo , 2 GB RAM, 80GB HDD) and try to install 10.6 Snow Leopard (Family License).The MacBook HD doesn't have any data on it, as the pre-owner completely cleaned the HDD. I put the SnowLeopard CD in the CD-Drive and press the C-Button during booting and start the install process according to the dialog that shows up.The installation starts and shows me in the beginning it will take 34 minutes to install. The process continues till the countdown shows 28 minutes’ and then the installation process freezes. I only here some repeating noise from the CD-Drive but nothing happens. I tried this process now several times, I was waiting for hours that the install may continue, but no success so far.... Does somebody have any idea what I could do install 10.6 successfully? I don't think it's a license issue, but I want to add that I also own a MacMini and with the same install CD was successfully installing 10.6 on the MacMini.
I assume an upgrade to SL will not remove any applications i currently run, unless I do a so called "clean install", but I just wanted to be sure: What will get removed when I upgrade?
My applications that are not 64-bit compliant? Will they still work? Will my adobe software still work, or does it need an update? Does any of my applications need an update? I have some custom icons (through Candybary), will they be removed? Will all my personal preferences reset?
Basically, what will an upgrade to Snow Leopard touch and change on my system?
How do I get iLife 08 (which came preinstalled) onto my Mac after I do a fresh installation of Snow Leopard (if possible)? Is it possible to do a fresh install of Snow Leopard? I've heard all sorts of things, but I don't know what to believe. Will I just have to reinstall Leopard and then install Snow Leopard? (Will I have to get all the updates [10.5.x updates] once Leopard is installed before I install Snow Leopard?)
I'm upgrading my mac to snow leopard but I don't really have a external hard drive to back up my data or the software to do the backup. Is it safe to do an upgrade without backing up?
With Snow Leopard being so much smaller and lighter than previous versions of OS X are there still things to cleanup after a new install? Do programs like XSlimmer still do much? If there are still things to do, are there programs updates for Snow Leopard to automate this?
My leopard installation was giving me a lot of headache so I thought of doing a clean install. Now that Snow Leopard had been out for quite sometime and many issues solved; I thought of installing it instead of Leopard. All I did was follow the instructions to install Snow Leopard [the only option with Snow Leopard was that it did an "Archive and Install" kind of thing by default]. It did take a lot of time [1 hour?] and I was finally taken to my desktop. I looked to check if everything was okay. Though there was nothing spectacular about Snow Leopard. I shut the computer down. Today morning I get this and I can't boot.
I recently decided to make the jump to Snow Leopard and aside from a few side effects I was quickly able to fix I have come a across a rather annoying problem. I used to be able to press command(apple) F5 on my keyboard to raise my volume (and apple f4 to lower it). Now when I hit command F5 I get this voice over thing popping up and it's a quite frustrating. I am on a Macbook Pro and that was the key used to adjust volume prior to the upgrade. Now I learned that ctrl F5 works but I was wondering if and how I can return the function to command F5
I'm running into an issue (a new issue) with my mbp. Every time I run the software update, it seems to download all the files just fine. Once it tries to install, it tells me an error has occurred, although it doesn't go into too much detail. I tried repairing the disk permissions, then I tried clearing /Library/Updates/.
The updates I have available are: iMovie Update 8.0.6, iPhoto Update 8.1.2, Mac OS X Update 10.6.3, Brother Printer Software Update 2.3, Airport Base Station Update 5.5.1, iTunes 9.1.1, and Digital Camera Raw Compatibility Update 3.2.
I have the latest version of snow leopard and haven't used my laptop in awhile because I needed to get repairs done on it. Finally repaired it at the apple store, took it home, ran the updates, but disk utility is saying my drive is corrupted and to repair it with the installation disk. I have been looking everywhere and only found the TechTool deluxe CD but can't find my actual installation disks. how I would go about repairing my disk ?
I want to format my Macbook Pro (Intel i7 2.7 GHz) and give it a fresh installation of Snow Leopard. I currently have two partitions on my 500 GB hard drive: the first one with the operative system, and the second one with all the backup data I want to save. Anyone can assure me that, if I install Snow Leopard again through the installation DVD, the second partition will NOT be erased? I have partial backup of the data, but not enough space for everything on my external drives. I just want to make sure that the second partition remains untouched during the installation.
Info: MacBook Pro (13-inch Early 2011), Mac OS X (10.6.8)
I'm going to update my MacPro Quad Core 3.2 installing Snow Leopard.The machine has a RAID 5 already installed and working perfectly.I'm wondering how the correct procedure is to rebuilt the RAID and install Snow Leopard on it.I don't want to install the update, I want to inizialise all the disks and get a fresh and clean installation.Do I have to use Disk Utility or RADI Utility?
I Have a Macbook2, 1, running on 10.4. Recently upgraded to 2 sets of 2 GB memory, which is runing just fine. Going for the upgrade to Snow Leopard. The problem is: Optical Drive is not running Snow Leopard installation CD, Macbook is not reading installation CD.
I have an Intel Mac Mini running OS X Snow Leopard, the problem is since last November, I've had to use Disk Utility and my Snow Leopard Installation disk to repair my volume because of Permission problems, at least 3-4 times. And I know I shouldn't have to do this!
I'm having trouble installing a brand-new copy of Snow Leopard onto my Macbook. It loads just fine, and I'm able to start the installation. Halfway through the process, the computer restarts itself and cancels the installation. Occassionally I get a warning sign from the installation program that says it can't read the disk and that it needs to be cleaned. The disc is brand new and isn't scratched so i'm not sure why it's giving me that warning. Anything I can do to fix this or do I need to get the disc replaced?
I put the install disc in and went threw the windows, it started installing so I left it for a while, when I come back it has the gray apple and the spiny boot up screen, I thought no problem its just restarting after the install. Now its been like this for almost an hour. Anyone have any ideas, I'm afraid to push the power button fearing it might screw up the install.
