Share your Snow Leopard Experience/Concerns

bobtomay · Sep 6, 2009

erotav09 said:
thanks for your concern crimsonrequiem ...you must be one of the enlightened ones . this morning every second or third mail out has now crashed ???
hows this for a snow leopard crash list ..on both my IMAC and MACBOOK pro -
1/ CS4 photoshop
2/CS4 bridge
3/Epson 4800 printer
4/Safari takes eons to load
5/and now emails crashing .
the annoying thing is its spasmodic ?? crash/re-open/redo/crash/reopen etc.
can only repeat !! users beware . lets wait on the updates .

My thought is that you have some 3rd party app common to both machines that is playing havoc with SL. I'd suggest start looking at the crash logs to see if you can get a hint of what it might be.

With that many problems, I'd be running from my Leopard bootable backup I made prior to installing SL until I figured it out. If you don't have that and don't want to take the time to troubleshoot the machine, think I'd suggest doing a backup now and clean install SL before living with that for a week much less the month or two until the first update and find out that still does nothing to solve your issues.

Ace33 · Sep 7, 2009

Touchpad

bobtomay said:
Not seen anyone else report that. I don't have one of those fancy new computers, but the first place I'd look would be System Preferences / Trackpad.

Yep System preferences was the first area I checked. I even disabled and enabled but no difference. The touchpad worked fine up until after the upgrade to SL. The regular 1 and 2 finger motions work fine, just not the three or 4 finger motions do not.

I did quite some searching thus far and cannot seem to find any other reports of this.

Ace33 · Sep 7, 2009

Touchpad

Ace33 said:
Yep System preferences was the first area I checked. I even disabled and enabled but no difference. The touchpad worked fine up until after the upgrade to SL. The regular 1 and 2 finger motions work fine, just not the three or 4 finger motions do not.

I did quite some searching thus far and cannot seem to find any other reports of this.

Well oddly enough, the issue is now fixed. I went ahead and turned off all options under the Trackpad preferences and then rebooted. After the reboot, i re-enabled all Trackpad preferences and then tested. All 1, 2, 3, and 4 swiping motions work fine now.......Sweetness. :Cool:

Thanks for any guidance that was offered and hopefully this helps anyone else who may run into this issue.

bobross · Sep 7, 2009

Nikolauss said:
My prime concern is that installing Snow leopard will delete my Windows partition (via boot camp).

Does anyone of you have any experience with this? Is it deleted or keept it as it is?

No, it will be fine. I have XP with tons of important software. SL did not harm, damage or go near XP at all. promise. It's a completely separate drive. The only way that could happen is a total systems crash. Just back up your Windows partition the same way you would back up your Mac, just for a worst case scenario. But it's really nothing to worry about.

Nikolauss · Sep 7, 2009

@ GARoss & bobross - thanks for the info, I feel much more comfortable knowing this. Now all I have to do is get my hands on SL and install it

mikekan · Sep 7, 2009

I did an upgrade and the only problem I had was that the Finder became unresponsive and slow sometimes. I then performed a clean install and I have zero problems!

Snow Leopard rocks!

McBie · Sep 7, 2009

After one week of working with SL , I am a happy camper.
The system is more responsive and that has increased my productivity slightly.

After the installation, I did boot the machine in 64 bit, just for fun, and haven't looked back since ( that is , I have not rebooted since, I just close and reopen the lid )

Not a single file lost or corrupted, had to update Flip4Mac and Perian, updated SuperDuper! to v86 and iStatMenu ......that's it.

I have the impression that Time Machine is faster, but that might just be an impression.

Before the update, I had the idea to upgrade the 5.4 K rpm disk to a 7.2 K to gain some speed, but I decided to postpone that purchase after the installation.

Cheers ... McBie

bobtomay · Sep 7, 2009

I'm really surprised it didn't break my HP MediaSmart Connect software.

Or that the infamous Application Enhancer didn't break SL.

erotav09 · Sep 8, 2009

bobtomay said:
My thought is that you have some 3rd party app common to both machines that is playing havoc with SL. I'd suggest start looking at the crash logs to see if you can get a hint of what it might be.

With that many problems, I'd be running from my Leopard bootable backup I made prior to installing SL until I figured it out. If you don't have that and don't want to take the time to troubleshoot the machine, think I'd suggest doing a backup now and clean install SL before living with that for a week much less the month or two until the first update and find out that still does nothing to solve your issues.

thanks bobtomay ...have a local macgenius(?) doing the troubleshooting in a day or so . will pass on your wisdom accordingly. personally the crash logs are a lot of goblygook to me . will leave it in the hands of the experts . ciao

skybunkerboy · Sep 8, 2009

I´m happy with the Snow Leopard upgrade (saved 20GB disk space on my macmini!) the only compatibility problem I´ve found so far is that I´ve lost some functionality with my Epson printer (maintenance - supply levels ect). I´ve been onto Epson support and been told they haven´t upgraded their drivers to SL yet.

Sharpshooter · Sep 8, 2009

Performed the upgrade today on my Macbook Pro. Computer was slow restarting after upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard as it went through the whole startup and welcome spiel. Once that and the registration was done the computer was noticeably faster. It boots faster and the user environment opens faster as well. My applications all seem to be loading faster and at least for now I am one satisfied customer. I am not thinking nearly as hard about an SSD upgrade as I was since my laptop has regained some of it's speed. Still want a 256 SSD but now I can wait for a few more months. Good Job Apple.

PsYkOoOoO · Sep 8, 2009

I've upgraded to Snow Leopard for about a week now, and I've had a lot of problems with it.

1) iPhoto takes forever to start up, and forever to close as well. It will cause the entire system to become sluggish, and I do wonder if it is because I have too many pictures inside.

2) Safari 4 doesn't handle multi-tabs very well. Whenever I open too many tabs, the beach ball will appear and, like the iPhoto case, slow down the entire system to a crawl.

3) Applications have been crashing left and right. iTunes 8, Adium, Skype, TweetDeck, and it doesn't seem to be just the third party applications too.

4) When I press COMMAND + DELETE to delete something on my desktop, even if it is just one item, it takes forever to delete.

5) It takes forever to clear my trash as well, especially when it comes to securely emptying my trash. That one takes such a long time that I have to cancel halfway.

6) The overall system does not feel faster than Leopard for me. Safari loads much faster at times, but then it slows down to a crawl as I continue to use it.

7) Pages crashes on me rather often.

8) I watched a video in full screen on Quicktime X and it restarted my Macbook.

9) Most applications seem to load slower than before.

10) Photobooth will load, and then the image will hang for about a minute or so before I can start to properly take my photographs.

11) Sending files from one Mac to the other throw a created network takes longer than when I transfer via a thumb drive.

12) Dragging pictures out from iPhoto onto the desktop takes about half a minute to happen, even if it is just one photograph.

13) Graphical issues when I am opening a new tab. The entire screen will screw up.

14) The same graphical issues when I am switching from one space to the other. The system becomes sluggish and the graphics screw up as well.

15) High heat when I am using flash player, causing the fan to spin out of control.

16) Audio and video synching issues when I record a video with Quicktime X.

17) Dragging a picture from Safari to the dock, bringing me to Pages in order to paste it into a document doesn't work like they demonstrated in the keynote. When it takes me to the space with Pages, I will let go of my mouse thinking that the picture will stick onto the blank page. Instead, it brings me back to Safari.

I am not entirely impressed by Snow Leopard. =(

mikekan · Sep 9, 2009

PsYkOoOoO said:
I've upgraded to Snow Leopard for about a week now, and I've had a lot of problems with it.

1) iPhoto takes forever to start up, and forever to close as well. It will cause the entire system to become sluggish, and I do wonder if it is because I have too many pictures inside.

2) Safari 4 doesn't handle multi-tabs very well. Whenever I open too many tabs, the beach ball will appear and, like the iPhoto case, slow down the entire system to a crawl.

3) Applications have been crashing left and right. iTunes 8, Adium, Skype, TweetDeck, and it doesn't seem to be just the third party applications too.

4) When I press COMMAND + DELETE to delete something on my desktop, even if it is just one item, it takes forever to delete.

5) It takes forever to clear my trash as well, especially when it comes to securely emptying my trash. That one takes such a long time that I have to cancel halfway.

6) The overall system does not feel faster than Leopard for me. Safari loads much faster at times, but then it slows down to a crawl as I continue to use it.

7) Pages crashes on me rather often.

8) I watched a video in full screen on Quicktime X and it restarted my Macbook.

9) Most applications seem to load slower than before.

10) Photobooth will load, and then the image will hang for about a minute or so before I can start to properly take my photographs.

11) Sending files from one Mac to the other throw a created network takes longer than when I transfer via a thumb drive.

12) Dragging pictures out from iPhoto onto the desktop takes about half a minute to happen, even if it is just one photograph.

13) Graphical issues when I am opening a new tab. The entire screen will screw up.

14) The same graphical issues when I am switching from one space to the other. The system becomes sluggish and the graphics screw up as well.

15) High heat when I am using flash player, causing the fan to spin out of control.

16) Audio and video synching issues when I record a video with Quicktime X.

17) Dragging a picture from Safari to the dock, bringing me to Pages in order to paste it into a document doesn't work like they demonstrated in the keynote. When it takes me to the space with Pages, I will let go of my mouse thinking that the picture will stick onto the blank page. Instead, it brings me back to Safari.

I am not entirely impressed by Snow Leopard. =(

5) Go to finder preference and un-tick the "Securely empty trash"! I had the same problem.

Did you perform a clean install?

PsYkOoOoO · Sep 9, 2009

mikekan said:
5) Go to finder preference and un-tick the "Securely empty trash"! I had the same problem.

Did you perform a clean install?

Honestly, I didn't. Then again, when I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, it didn't have such problems before.

jennymac · Sep 9, 2009

PsYkOoOoO said:
Honestly, I didn't. Then again, when I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, it didn't have such problems before.

Whew, google SL problems - scary. Glad I waited. All the fixes on here are tedious for the most part, and shouldn't be. I'll just stick with Leopard until I think bugs have been worked out. If they are. Apple should be better than this. I'm sure (almost) they will work it out eventually.

cwa107 · Sep 9, 2009

jennymac said:
Whew, google SL problems - scary. Glad I waited. All the fixes on here are tedious for the most part, and shouldn't be. I'll just stick with Leopard until I think bugs have been worked out. If they are. Apple should be better than this. I'm sure (almost) they will work it out eventually.

Honestly, the exact same thing happened with Leopard. It wasn't until 10.5.2 until it really became rock solid.

This is most likely due to Apple's beta testing process. Unlike Microsoft, Apple tends only to release their betas to a handful of developers initially and then eventually to the larger developer community (usually within 6 months of release). But that's just a tiny microcosm of the Mac-using community. It's not until it reaches the masses that they start to see real compatibility issues and bugs.

Snow Leopard is really quite stable for such an early incarnation when installed on a clean system. In my experience, most of the issues people are seeing are related to third party software, particularly those programs that add kernel extensions and have supporting daemons.

And of course, if you're not the kind of person who can tolerate any sort of weirdness, by all means, wait a few months for things to shake out.

Cube1 · Sep 9, 2009

I haven't had any issues at all i did not do a clean install but i upgraded to snow as soon as i took the 17" out of the box. Everything is running great on this machine.....CS4, RoR, Skype......etc.....im sure time will tell....

Mac-Meri · Sep 9, 2009

My upgrade was done on Sep 2nd. Did not do a clean install but I did prep my system well. As of today still no issues.

macsdontfloat · Sep 9, 2009

Just upgraded tonight, took about 45mins, went smoothly.

Backed up to my time machine first. Running a very lean system anyway, barely any third-party software.

Not really noticed much of a difference. Apps boot just the same speed, things don't look any different either.

Hoping to see difference with opening apps after initial boot - Firefox and iTunes have seemed to take ages (maybe 6 or 7 seconds), but SL hasn't improved anything.

theoak · Sep 9, 2009

Got my disk yesterday. Did a clean install to a new hard drive I had bought a couple months ago (it was only $35.00 at newegg

). To answer my own concerns (in post # 251 of this thread):

1.) My Brother MFC-9440CN printer was a breeze to install and works great
2.) My MacAlly PHR-250 OTG external hard drive, which stopped working when Tiger was updated, and did not work in Leopard either, now works. I plugged it in, and Time Machine offered to use it!
3.) I've gotten over Apple taking so long to ship SL.

Over all, with a clean install, my only "problem" is that wine is not yet supported in SL. (MacPorts is!) I believe it will be supported soon. But I've currently got Windows XP loaded with Boot Camp for those few "Windows only" programs.

Very impressive Apple!!