Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Don’t Get Left Out in the Cold

Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) will be released this Friday. Although this upgrade promises a raft of optimizations and new features, the OIT Help Desk would like to caution you about rushing out to buy it immediately.

For starters, not all of your applications may work. Drivers may not be available for your (such as printers), either. The new OS only works for Intel Macs; older PowerPC (G3-G5) Macs cannot upgrade. And, you may have to install new drivers to get devices working at all in Snow Leopard’s 64-bit mode. Problems we’re currently aware of include:

• Snow Leopard cannot attach to many Novell servers on campus
• Adobe CS3 – Bugs in DreamWeaver and Photoshop
• Adobe CS2 – Likely doesn’t work
• Adobe Photoshop Elements – May give a licensing error
• Cisco VPN Client – Current 4.9.0100 client does not work
• Cyberduck – Does not work
• Google Gears – Does not work
• Microsoft Office 2008 – Works, but some reports of serious performance degradation
• Parallels 3.0 – Does not work
• Norton AntiVirus for Mac does not work

A complete list is being compiled at http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/

Let the Help Desk test Snow Leopard with commonly-used University applications first before you upgrade; we’ll report our results in a couple of weeks, and then make an upgrade recommendation at that time.

One of the most intriguing and promising features of 10.6 is OpenCL, which allows all applications to tap into graphics processors to run more efficiently. OpenCL is currently only available for the following Mac graphics cards:

• Nvidia GeForce 9400M
• Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT
• Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT
• Nvidia GeForce GT 12o
• Nvidia GeForce GT 130
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 285
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GT
• Nvidia GeForce 8800 GS
• Nvidia Quadro FX 4800
• Nvidia Quadro FX5600
• ATI Radeon 4850
• ATI Radeon 4870

Not sure which graphics processor you have? Go to Apple > About This Mac from your Mac desktop at upper-left, then click More info…

Under Hardware on the left, click Graphics/Displays.

For questions about the OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard upgrade, call the Help Desk at 426-4357, or send us email at helpdesk@boisestate.edu.