I’m typically not an early adopter when it comes to an OS … Having survived the Windows 98 implementation, I learned to take it slow when I new one comes out. I finally broke down and upgraded to OS X Leoopard a couple of weeks ago … Mostly because it would work betterer with my iPhone 3G and under the delusion that I would actually be learning enough Objective C to be able to write some little iPhone apps that I thought would be fun.
Note to self: Any sentence with the words Objective C and fun in it is an oxymoron. C’s still a drag.
Anyway, the first thing I noticed after upgrading my iMac was that it started crashing, almost immediately. It was also running as slow as the old grey mare (you know, the one they shot because she was too old for the glue factory?) Someone suggested I up the memory to a full 4 Gb … and it worked.
The machine’s running well again, and doesn’t take forever to boot.
After getting through that, I really love the upgrades … Time Machine alone was worth the price of the upgrade. Of course, I haven’t tried restore anything yet, and will happily live under the delusion that it will all work like a charm if need be.
I got the trial subscription to mobile me, and so far I’m loving the ability to sync my iMac, iPhone and MacBook with all my crap. The new version of OmniFocus also uses Mobile Me for syncing with the iPhone, which is cooler than snot.
I haven’t been able to decide how to handle email, though … Perhaps some adventurous soul out there could give me some advice.
I’ve been using Yahoo’s mail client ever since my hard drive went south on the Mac Book last year and took about seven years of Entourage email, notes and contact data with it (Did I have a back-up? Right.) It’s worked out okay, but I’ve been planning on switching over to the Mac Apps and have heard some great stuff about the new version of Mail from the other Apple Propellerheads at work. But the iPhone throughs in a twist.
Do I just live with the Yahoo mail client, or do I set up Mail using Yahoo and Mobile Me as POP servers? What to do … What to do … I’m thinking the latter scenario gives me more options and will sync well with my iPhone, but I’m just not sure.
Oh, and forget about using the Mobile Me email address for anything … I don’t want to have any email address that directs someone to “me.com”. It’s just … wrong.
The only downside was my ProTools situation … I forgot that anything DigiDesign is highly adverse to change … Not only did ProTools 7.3 yack on Leopard, but all of my Waves plugins started to choke as well. For some reason the Waves plugins are now being recognized by FCP 6.0.4 under Leopard, and promptly gagged Final Cut at the splash screen, leaving me to install the whole me until I can come up with a few undred bucks to upgrade Waves with … Kind of pisses me off.
They build Apple’s OS upgrades into their scheme for planned obsolescence of the plug-ins … Genius. Evil Genius. Remind me to remember that if I ever start a software company.
So, on the whole, I’m liking Leopard and all the functionality. How I ever lived without the iPhone and instant access to, well, everything, I don’t know. I don’t want to know … All I want is longer battery life and 3G networking everywhere I and I will be in nerd Heaven.
I’m looking forward to Snow Leopard and the promised Jenny Craig edition of the OS …