Upgrading to Snow Leopard.

This was thoroughly discussed at the recent meeting, but a couple of points are worth mentioning.

1. Randy DeSerranno mentioned having problems with applications not running. It seems that some apps are simply incompatible with Snow Leopard. For a list of these, see:

http://snowleopard.wi...

2. If files have been transferred onto the computer from an older machine, for example, using Migration Assistant, applications which should run, may either fail to run or crash very quickly. This due to a problem at or near root level. Crash reports like: "Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)".

A fix which worked for me, involves clearing out any shared files, in "Sharing", and was found on:

http://discussions.ap...


-1. Open System Preferences
-2. Select 'Sharing' from the Internet & Wireless section
-3. From the list on the left choose 'File Sharing' and turn it off.
-4. Delete anything listed in the Shared Folders section
-5. Turn File Sharing back on
-6. Log out, then Log back in.

A more radical fix, which also worked for me, is:

1.Open Sysptem Preferences
2.Click on accounts.
3.Unlock
4. Create New account.
5. Close lock.

Try running the application under the new account.

3. What about installing 10.6 on older Macs? I can only rely on my own experience here, but an attempt to install Leopard on a 20" iMac (MA200LL/A) bought just over three years ago failed. This was a 2.06 GHz machine, Bus Speed: 667MHz.

Apple's ,most recent communication about compatibility of Snow Leopard and earlier computers is Article: SP517, June 04, 2009.

http://support.apple....

which gives the general requirements needed to run Mac OS X 10.5 as:

Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor. I am pretty sure they are not thinking of processor speed, but rather bus speed. (I think this is related to the speed of the Memory Chips). This would explain my failure to install Leopard on the machine mentioned above.

I will be interested to hear if anyone else has experienced problems with Leopard or Snow Leopar and older machine.



John Harland

Thanks John....

Excellent post!



Randy

Some afterthoughts:

As mentioned in the earlier post, my effort to install Leopard on an IMac with a Bus Speed of 667MHz was unsuccessful. This represents a trial series of one, and I was wondering whether we would hear from someone who had managed to install 10.5 or 10.6 on an older machine. Bulletin SP517 found on the Mac Support site, says the critical factor is a CPU speed of at least 867MHz, and I wondered if the author of the bulletin had confused CPU and Bus speeds. An e-mail to apple asking for clarification went unanswered.

However, there are a couple of reasons for the contrary view that installation of 10.5 on an older machine might be possible. First, see the comments at:

http://forums.macrumo...

Secondly, I went back looking for an older machine featuring the magic figure 867MHz and discovered that you have to go a long way back to find a machine with a processor speed of 867MHz........ the 2002 Power Mac G4. [iMacs dated early 2003 had CPU speed of 800MHz (Bus (100)]. Specs can be found at:

http://www.apple-hist...

So perhaps the question should remain open.

One other thing about older machines.:The Leopard and Snow leopard installation discs are double-layered DVDs, so older machines which cannot handle the two layer technology obviously cannot make use to them. To tell whether your drive has the necessary capacity: Go to About this Apple/More info/disc burning. If opposite DVD you find the notation "+R DL", double-layer DVDs are OK.


John Harland