Hi.

I am happy to have this latest update. You have been missing for over 20 months! Are you back for good? I convinced my brother to get a mac – well his wife bought it for him for Christmas – a 24″ refurbished iMac and he loves it – BUT HE NEEDS YOUR TIPS. He’s driving me crazy!

Also, I heard that Snow Leopard had a bunch of issues with compatibility with other programs (read about them months ago) and wonder if you know if these issues have been resolved, or what issues still remain?

Thanks!

Judie

Hey hey, welcome back in my RSS folder
Been missing your very informative postings, tips and tricks that helped me a lot while being a OSX rookie.

Happy new year from Hamburg(GER)

@Judie,
We are trying to be back for good. Shooting for once a week posts. Possibly two, I am still trying to figure out how to work it all into a schedule.

As to the compatibility issues, you did hear correct, but most of those claims were probably a little exaggerated. If you look in the post, you can see we linked to wikidot, which has a breakdown of which apps will run on Snow Leopard, and which will not.

Thank you for the long time support.

I went to order this via your link, and in reading through Amazon user comments on the Snow Leopard Missing Manual, somewhere I read there’s a 10.6.1 version out, and that it removes the ‘bugs’ in 10.6 – that scared me. I’d like to order 10.6 – but would appreciate your comments on this concern first. Thanks so much – Karen

@Karen, once you install 10.6, it will prompt you immediately to update to the 10.6.2 release, which is if course free. If it does not, you just go to the usual Apple Menu, and select “Software Update”, follow the steps, and you should be pretty good to go.

It is all rather painless. Also, keep in mind, the chances of you buying a copy of 10.6.0 are slim, Apple makes sure to restock with the most current version they are shipping, so you more than likely will be buying 10.6.1 at least, maybe even 10.6.2.

Thank you – it’s ordered! I look forward to the faster operations – some functions on my Mac are frustratingly slow. Karen

Snow Leopard is still bug-ridden:
1. hanging when a blue tooth modem is used (that can’t be fixed by a Forced Quit) at the drop of a feather
2. failing to display the proper calendars when F4 is pressed
3. still calling the Jewish calendar (based on calculated new moons) Hebrew (based on observed new moons, and other differences for the sake of convenience; alternatively, failing to implement the Hebrew calendar properly)

@Milton
Yes, Snow Leopard is not perfect, I could add to your list as well. But from the underlying performance boost that I was mainly referring to, I consider it a great step in the right direction. I am not aware of any other company putting a full OS development cycle in which they concentrate on cleaning API’s and core aspects of the OS, and then releasing that OS for such a trivial price.

Your issue with the bluetooth modem, I would only be curious as what makes you believe it is a Mac OS X issue, and not the vendors issue for their drivers? BlueTooth also maxes out somewhere around 1Mb/s, which is slower than most internet connections.

On your #2, I would need more detail. I am not aware of F4 being a shortcut in relation to any calendar aspect of OS X.

#3 I would suggest you file a feedback report with Apple. That is the only way to make them aware of these issues.

All in all, relatively small issues for an entirely new update to an entirely new OS that breaks the 32 bit barrier and moves almost all aspects of it into 64 bit land.

Simply by reading in-between the lines, one can see that Apple has simply enhanced the speed of Leopard, including those of the simplest bugs to fix, yet remain unfixed.
The easiest one to fix is to stop calling the Jewish calendar (based on the calculation method of Hillel II) “Hebrew” (based on observation, and superseded by the Hillel).
The next easiest is to display international months to display properly when F4 is pressed. You obviously haven’t tried using a different calendar setting, and pressed F4. Try it – it doesn’t display the correct month.
The most difficult are those that are in the kernel, such as bluetooth modem code, even at G1 speeds, which are well below 1 Mbps> I have no issue with it,nor any beliefs on the subject: it is simply fact that they now execute faster than before.
Nor is this my opinion, but what I was told at the Genius Bar, by a Mac Genius, who gave me Apple’s feedback adress, and I filed a report last year.
Thus, I’d prefer only to pay for an update that has at the very least up-to-date calendars.

@Milton
About all I can add that will help our readers, is the changes in 10.6 are mostly developer related and end user performance related. The developer changes alone are huge. Nothing says it better than the 23 plus pages at Ars Technica.

Unfortunately, you are experiencing front facing software bugs. This post was mainly about the performance gains you will see from 10.6, not the bug fixes, for which there were very few to my knowledge.

I do not see F4 attached to any of the menu items in iCal, so I can not test what it is you are mentioning. I believe to see what you are talking about I would have to change the language of the OS, is that correct? I am also on a laptop, and F4 is the volume down key for me. You will have to explain in more detail what your issue is for those who are only familiar with a US-English layout.

For the sake of correctness to others reading… There is no bluetooth code in the kernel. I am not really sure what the issues are with your BT modem, as in your first post, you were not happy, and now you seemingly state things are faster.

Users here, and myself, can try to assist, but it works better to have detailed technical data, over what we are getting now. Good luck with your troubles, I hope they work out for you with a software update some time soon.

Why do you people insist on making false accusations against me? It is not me who is having
problems with Snow Leopard’s bugs! All I did was talk to the MacGeniuses at an Apple Store,
who told me that none of the bugs that I mentioned had been fixed. Misnaming the Jewish
calendar “Hebrew” is the easiset bug to fix, as that’s like the difference between British
“Old Style” & “New Style” calendars except that the Hebrew calendar has been outdated for
much longer. Or is Apple now employing Levites to make sightings of the moon? On a 10.5
MacBook, F4 brings up a calendar display of the current month, which has the correct month
name & date on top, but is displayed incorrectly DIRECTLY underneath, I.E. WITHIN THE SAME
APP, so it’s not a problem of the left hand not know what the right’s doing. Otherwise,
perhaps they didn’t mean to imply that the modem code was in the kernel, but they did say
that the modem bug will still hang the system; or still require a reset, despite a popup
implying that a modem error had occurred. The error is definitely in the OS – only resetting
it will get it to reconnect from scratch.

Make that “OS bug” rather than “modem bug” – there’s no bug in the modem, esp. as resetting the modem is never necessary.
Also, the BT modem code isn’t an application that runs under the OS, because it’s not possible to “Force Quit” it when it hangs.
At least this is what I was told at the Genius bar.
Is there another way to kill it & restart it from scratch?

@Milton
The people you are referring to here ( in this case ) are just me, the site owner and admin, and I am doing the best I can to help you, despite your hostility.

I think I will close with doing what I can to answer your final questions. Beyond that, perhaps there are other forums you can find that are more suitable for venting.

On Mac OS X Laptops, the F4 key is generally the volume down key. It can differ from laptop to laptop, and on other keyboards, it can control other things.

I have no idea what application you are referring to when you speak of a calendar. I have, as mentioned before, looked at iCal, and F4 is not a key that controls anything in that application. I can only guess you are using F4 to activate the OS X Dashboard, which is usually reserved to key F12.

The calendar widget in DashBoard probably does have a bug in it as you suggest. Those widgets are nothing more than html and css with some javascript. I would imagine if you found forums that catered to Dashboard Widgets, someone could easily explain to you how to change the name of the calendar.

Is this the calendar you are referring to?
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/340087/drops/02.25.10/db-caledar-e0360396-194325.png

If not, what calendar is it, where did you get it, and how are you changing the behavior of it? Are you not running US English as the language for the OS? Or is this a localization change that is just for this calendar?

If F4 does not bring up the Dashboard, then I am at a loss as to what calendar you are referring to.

I will emphatically state, no one here has made any accusations toward you. If you were to read our FAQ, you would see that goes against a core principle of why I even started this site. Any such behavior is not tolerated.

Remember, everyone’s computer is configured differently, and to their own liking. While some things are the same, others are not. In order to get the help you seek, or a workaround, those that are offering help will need to first be able to replicate your problems.

When I press F4, my volume goes down, so I obviously am not on the same page as you, and am not able to replicate your issues.

On a semi-related note, while the Genius Bar employees, are indeed well versed in Macs, there is in all honestly, not a time I have been in an Apple Store, which I have not witnessed first hand, the dishing out of false information. It is a clear attempt to create an analogy, or an explanation that is “good enough” to move the customer along, so they can move alone to the next customer. And of course, as with anything technical, they can make mistakes, and are prone to simply not understanding everything 100% accurately.

I would not be so quick to point the modem error at the OS. If it is a 3rd party modem, and I am not aware of Apple making any BlueTooth Modems, then I would lean on it being a firmware issue, or software issue of the modem itself. Again, it is not possible to say without looking at the logs, or taking a physical look at the system. As it is now, I am not even aware of the brand, make, model, etc, of the modem.

It is largely debatable as to who is at fault when a system is stuck. On one hand, the OS should never allow any application to hang the system. On the other hand, bugs happen, and programmers can in fact do things deep into your system that will cause it to hang.

The Genius Bar gave you false data in regards to something not being running under the OS if you can not force quit said application. I could name 100’s of sub processes that can not be force quit that are indeed applications that are in fact running.

Yes, you could find a way to restart the modem, though it would require digging into the terminal and looking at how it works.

What modem is this? Is this just a BlueTooth bridge to a PPP type internet connection? Then at some point you get a message that something is wrong, and you have to perform a reset? Actually, before I make more conjecture, perhaps you can explain in as much technical details as possible, specifically what the modem is doing wrong.