Snow Leopard

There are applications that are essential to both my work and personal life. I use my mac a lot and can’t imagine life without it. That being said, my Mac is only as useful as the applications I have installed. So these applications are must haves for me. If I can’t make it run on Snow Leopard or find an alternative to it then Snow Leopard isn’t that much use to me.

Let’s start of things with 1Password

1Password is currently on version 2 with the latest version partially compatible with Snow Leopard. The app works as well as the extensions for the other browsers except Safari. Safari in Snow Leopard runs in 64-bit mode thus the extension for it won’t work out of the box. You need to do some tweaking to get Safari to run in 32-bit mode in order for it to run 1Password.

Version three of 1Password will run in Snow Leopard out of the box with Safari support as well. However it’s still in beta mode with the final release set to launch at the end of the year. Agile Web Solutions, makers of 1Password currently has a promo for early bird upgraders. The license will only set you back $19.95 as opposed to $29.95 when it gets released. Buying now will get you access to the 3.0 beta.

Cost of upgrade – $19.95 (promo)

Next on my list is Adium. Both Adium 1.3.6 and 1.4 beta 9 work on Snow Leopard and Adium is free.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Adobe CS3

This suite of applications is the major workhorse of most Grahic/Web/Multimedia professionals in both Windows and Mac platforms. According to reports CS3 has minor bugs in Snow Leopard, Particularly Photoshop and Dreamweaver. I’m really more particular with Photoshop and Illustrator since those are the apps that I used. Adobe says the flaws are not critical and you can still use the Adobe CS3 apps.

Adobe CS4 is good to go for Snow Leopard.

So, Adobe CS3 for the most part should be ok for Snow Leopard but if you’re really a stickler for these things you’d probaly want to upgrade to CS4. In my case if I was to upgrade I would probably go and buy the Adobe Design Premium at a cost of $599.

Cost of upgrade – $599

Coda is one of the apps I use for designing web sites. The version I have is 1.6.4 and according to reports it is compatible with Snow Leopard. There’s an available upgrade to 1.6.5 that fixes some bugs.

Cost of upgrade – nada

CSSEdit is one of the apps that I really can’t live without. Since I code websites as my main job, this app literally paid for itself. The latest version supports Snow Leopard

Cost of upgrade – nada

FireFox is my main browser. Sure Safari is faster but Firefox just has a lot of extensions I use for work and so this is really my browser of choice. It works on Snow Leopard with some minor bugs reported. FireFox is free.

Cost of upgrade – nada

MAMP PRO is my server environment of choice. Thank god it’s also supported on Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Microsoft Office 2008 is still my default office suite, however iWork is getting more and more work time with me. It works though with Snow Leopard although there are some reports that it is sluggish.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Parallels is an essential app because it allows me to run Windows on a Mac. It’s important because let’s face it majority of computer users all over the world still use the Windows operating system and as such, I need to test web sites on this platform. I currently have version 3.0 installed and it sucks that it’s not supported in Snow Leopard. I need to upgrade to 4.0. The upgrade will set me back $39.99 after a $10 dollar discount due to their ongoing promo. This is a must have. If I upgrade to Snow Leopard, I need to forkout the moolah because well… I just need it for work.

Cost of upgrade – $39.99

TextMate’s latest build for Snow Leopard works fine. This is my text editor of choice. All my web projects are coded with TextMate. So it’s also a must have.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Skype is one of the apps I use for communicating with clients. Along with Adium this gets me through most of my communication needs save for email. Skype’s latest build works with Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Transmission is my bit-torrent client. The latest version is supported by Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Transmit works in Snow Leopard with some warnings. It seems that automator actions do not work. I don’t use automator actions so as long as the file transfer works I’m ok.

Cost of upgrade – nada

Versions is one of the latest apps I’ve added to my toolbox. So I would really be bummed if I had to pay for an upgrade or if it didn’t work. Good thing it looks like it’s good to go for Snow Leopard.

Cost of upgrade – nada

VLC is freeware and it works. So this is not a problem.

Cost of upgrade – nada

While most of my apps will work on Snow Leopard, there are still 3 apps that might cause a potential problem. Of the three, two of them can be run with Snow Leopard albiet with some problems. Minor and workable. The one app I have that won’t work is Parallels which is really a bummer because apart from the upgrade cost I paid for Snow Leopard I will need to fork out $40 bucks for the upgrade. Bringing my total upgrade cost to $78. This is the minimum. If I want to upgrade to CS4 this will add to it significantly. But since CS3 is still workable I might hold out on this.

$78 is still not a high cost to pay for an upgrade of the OS however given the trying times it’s still added expense that I could otherwise save on. Being the Mac addict that I am… all reason flies out the window. So I guess it’s time to backup my files and find time to upgrade.

How much will upgrading to Snow Leopard going to cost you?

Post from: EveryJoe

My Cost of Upgrading To Snow Leopard

However, when we were updating the OS and the computer asked for a password, it would not work. It kept saying that the password was wrong. Uh-Oh….

Good thing that there’s a reset utility found in the installation disc that ships with your Mac. For the times that you forgot your account password, you can use this utility to reset the account password. It’s fairly simple.

1. Boot up with your install disc by restarting your Mac and holding the “C” key on your keyboard until the Mac boots up using the install disc.

2. There’s a Utilities menu found that will appear during the install prompt. Select that and choose Reset Password. Select the startup hard disc volume of your Mac. Choose your original account and enter a new password. Hit save and it’s good to go. *Important! Don’t choose System Administrator (root).

For the original Apple support article, click here. Make sure to also check out this article that will help you solve Keychain issues that will come up as a result of the password reset.

Post from: EveryJoe

Tip: Resetting Account Passwords

Defrag on a Mac is known as optimization. Files on your hard drive can become fragmented over time. Due to the way OS X is built, there’s little need to optimize your HD. As such it hasn’t been really a practice for Mac users to do this. However if you’re really OC about these things, you can use apps such as Onyx to help you with your maintenance.

Here’s a good read from Apple’s support site regarding optimization.

Post from: EveryJoe

How Do I Defrag On A Mac?

How to activate Java 6 on OS X

1. Do a system update and download the latest Java installation.
2. Go to Applications –> Utilities –> Java –> Java Preferences
3. Click to activate Java Version 6 (refer to image highlights above)
4. Drag Java SE 6 64 Bit to the top of the priority list (refer to image highlights above)
5. You’re done! Now you can install the application onto your Macintosh

If you’re running on an old G4 Mac, you won’t be able to run this. Time for an upgrade?

Post from: EveryJoe

Making Woopra work on Mac OS X