MacGetIT

Installed Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro and here are two little things that I saw after working with it for a while today.

First, this is the preferences screen and notice the little green and red dots next to your printers, these indicate whether or not your printer is connected and to be used by your Mac. Nice little touch here. The one thing that I have found is that using the Airport Extreme does not give a “quick” or updated indication if the printer is connected or not. In Leopard it just shows a green dot, in Snow Leopard the dot turns red if the printer is not available to be used.

Second, here’s the drop down box trying to print, notice the “indicator” that the two of the printers are not available to print to. If you could use the printer the small icons would be done. Also nice touch.

Third, low ink indicators are great and does not require the utility tool to find out, depending on your printer.

These are all nice little touches to indicate to the Mac user to what is going on with their Mac printers.

If you are a Mac person and have been living out of the country and been away from the Internet doing hiking you’re probably have missed that Apple is releasing Snow Leopard and today Apple announced that it ships Friday, August 28th.

So, crank up your credit/debit card and get:

• Snow Leopard (10.6), single version
• Snow Leopard (10.6), 5 user version
• Snow Leopard (10.6), Server version – in an Unlimited client version for $499, compared with “desk fees” or per-user fees for each desktop or laptop computer that will be accessing a Windows server that can run you into thousands of dollars for a small business.

If you want to know what has changed, take a look at the Enhancement page. Also, check the “specs” of your Mac to see if you qualify for the upgrade. Nothing like purchasing something that won’t work.

So, for those that want to upgrade ensure that you take a couple of steps before you install it.

• Back up your Mac. before you do the upgrade/archive install. Make multiple copies of things, such as your data, i.e. burn a few DVDs of your data, sometimes files go get corrupted.
• Clean up your hard drive and applications. Be aware that the more applications that you have loaded on your Mac the more chances are that there will be incompatibilities with Snow Leopard and will “break things” after installing it. If your business relies upon critical applications I suggest that you follow your critical applications vendor’s web site to see when they say it will be Snow Leopard ready. If not, wait a few months Get rid of those apps that you don’t use any more.
• Check out application compatibility. You need to check out if your application is compatible with Snow Leopard, otherwise you’ll be up the creek.
• Back up your Startup Disk. Using Apple’s Disk Utility follow those instructions to keep your Mac running smoothly, especially if there are critical uses of it for your business you can revert back to your current version of your Mac OS. Average users may not need this.

Lastly, Apple always has “easter eggs” in new releases that are not documented and it’s always fun finding them. Sometimes they’re bugs, but the “easter eggs” are nice little features that can make your life on the Mac more fun.