Maybe it’s a pre-Christmas marketing thing. Both Mac and PC have come out with new operating systems. Each claims that it has finally fixed any little bugs that have been holding things up. Both of the systems are being heralded in national computer magazines as the best thing to happen to the computer.
In the case of Snow Leopard (Operating System 10.6) Apple has consolidated some programs and speeded up everything from start-up to shut down. New graphics and controls have made the whole thing better.
I suppose I should have suspected something when Apple said they couldn’t send me a copy to review for you. Movie theaters don’t have advance screenings for films that they fear are turkeys. So I got my own copy and proceeded to load it into my computer. That was my first mistake.
I figured that since Snow Leopard was billed as a small fix to the overall OS X package, that it wouldn’t take much time to load it. That was my second mistake.
Loading Snow Leopard took at least 45 minutes. That was supposed to be the simple advantage of the disk. What they didn’t say was that another program, called Rosetta, had to be downloaded in order for a number of other programs to adjust to the new 10.6 System. Rosetta took about two hours to download and install.
Did that solve my problems? Hardly. I quickly found that my printer would not work any more. Checking the Epson Web site I found that they were aware of the problem and had a new program to download and then install. That took another two hours.
Several other things went awry. The information on the new “Top Sites” screen in Safari went blank. The font changed in my desktop calendar and contact program.
As I called upon other programs that I didn’t use regularly, I began to discover that they had changed as well. The iMovie program, for example, had to be updated, and that took about an hour. Adobe Reader, which runs PDF programs, locked up and eventually acted as if I was opening it for the first time.
The problems did not stop there. Recently I was playing around with my screensavers. If you have followed this column for the past decade or so, you know that I have a weakness for the folly that can run when you leave the computer alone for a while. Back in 2005 I told you the story of the couple in San Diego who had created a large collection of season-themed screensavers for the Mac. They did cheery Christmas themes and spooky Halloween themes and pretty themes for spring and summer. Their fish-in-the-tank screensaver looked real. Well, it will come as no surprise to you that all of their screensavers stopped working. They were blocked by the addition of the Snow Leopard. What made things worse was the fact that I couldn’t find the San Diego screensaver company. Our tale has a happy ending though. Ruth Miller called me the other day to tell me that she and her husband have moved up to Oregon, but they are still in the screensaver business. She is aware of the Snow Leopard problem and has put a fix for each saver on their new Web site. You can find them at unique3ddigital.com.
This last incident leads me to wonder what else got messed up by installing Snow Leopard. There may be programs that I have in there but seldom use. What if I don’t call them up till a year from now and then the update is outdated?
To be fair, many people and publications sing the praises of Snow Leopard as a faster start-up and a faster shut down, as well as a better consolidation of many of the features that the original OS X System brought with it.
Ironically my PC friends are suffering the same fate with the advance of the new Windows 7. Yes, it has a lot to say for itself but as an improvement over the Windows Vista, it just isn’t.
By the way, this has nothing to do with the rest of their problems, but Apple, back in the 1990s, used musical references for their new systems—things like Rhapsody and Symphony. They have been using endangered species for the Ten Series. I hope it’s not some sort of omen.