Reigning in a Snow Leopard

So, Apple has dropped Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard. Apple ballyhoos it as the “world’s most advanced operating system”, as it does with every OS X release. (It is, of course, very comparable with a large number of other operating systems, including Windows Vista, Windows 7 (which just went gold and will be available October 22) and any number of desktop Linux distributions.) There are some neat aspects to it, of course; accessibility improvements, a ton of speed improvements, many usability improvements, more 64-bit code, Grand Central Dispatch (to get more out of multi-core processors), OpenCL support, and QuickTime X (which, notably, allows you to trim video clips with very little effort.) And if your work email is hosted on Exchange Server 2007, OS X 10.6 now supports it and all of those features out of the box.

I bought an upgrade package for Snow Leopard and installed it on my Mac Mini*, and it’s working very nicely for everything I use that computer for. However, all is not gumdrops and lollipops in Mac-land. As a result of shipping a little earlier than many developers were expecting, a few apps were broken by Snow Leopard. A community effort to track application status has popped up, featuring a few applications many Videomaker readers would use, including Adobe Creative Suite (CS4 is A-OK, CS3 works for the most part), and older versions of many apps including Audio Hijack Pro, Filemaker Pro, Telestream Flip4Mac, HP DeskJet drivers and Logitech Control Center will need to be updated. Updating a number of these apps should be painless; though the OS itself may provide similar functionality (notably, the printing capabilities of Snow Leopard are considerably beefed up compared to those of previous versions of Mac OS X, so print drivers should update automatically, in theory.) Final Cut Pro 6.0.6 looks to work fine; however, Avid and Media 100 do not show up on the list. Boris FX has a current press release noting that all current versions of Boris’ apps work fine under Snow Leopard; but they are mum about Media 100. We also haven’t seen anything on Avid yet. When we hear anything on these two, we’ll let you know; but if your Mac edit bay is running Avid or Media 100, it might be a better idea to hold off on installing Snow Leopard until you hear word that your editing app plays nicely with the new OS upgrade.

*Longtime Vidcast viewers and readers of my blogs over the years will probably ask, wait, I thought he had a MacBook? You’re right, I did–until a couple weekends ago, when its system management controller decided to quit working (e.g. trying to turn it on, you get half a chime and then *poof*.) I had hoped to put it into semi-retirement to use it just for doing video captures and the like, but now it has gone into my clothesbasket full of junk laptops to languish and eventually be cannibalized. I can’t justify getting it fixed, since it’s a three-year old computer. Luckily, something in the back of my mind told me this was going to happen… about six weeks ago I migrated to an MSI GT735 gaming/desktop replacement laptop. I’m finding I actually really like Vista, though I’m sure SP2 helps a lot on that front. That said, though, I’m planning to upgrade both it and my wife’s computer to Windows 7 on street date.