Snow Leopard Unmitigated Disaster 4Me

It's not a matter of "taking it easy on her" but rather, replying to her fairly scathing "review" of her experience.
We have no idea of the state of this Mac beforehand.
We have no idea of her skill-level.
And most importantly, we have 1000s of happy users like me with multiple installs and almost no problems whatsoever.
Now here's another fact: Apple and MS will have to ship a new OS with known bugs. You gotta. It's never going to be perfect, and you have to start somewhere.
Lots of testing was done, and it's solid for most.
Nobody relying upon a computer - Mac, PC or Linux, should upgrade an OS without doing a lot of research and testing and having backups in case.

This has been one of the easiest and most trouble-free major upgrades in the OS X series.

"This has been one of the easiest and most trouble-free major upgrades in the OS X series."

For you, not her. That's my point. My personal experience has been less than ideal.

c.

RealPlayer 10.1 works fine with SL. I never upgrade RealPlayer because I only use it for the BBC Listen Again widget.

Not just for me.
I said that as I've been on these forums for over 10 years.
Every OS upgrade brings way more issues to the forums than this has.
I get she (and you) have had issues, but every OS upgrade does.
Even dot-updates.

Disaster for me, too. I have a MacBook Pro. SL was installing then I get this error message after choosing the HD as the destination drive for SL: The contents of this disk can't be changed. Mac OS X couldn't be installed on this disk." Wha? Then my computer shut down. And when I tried rebooting I got the gray Apple screen with a circle moving in, well, a circle. Then my computer shut down. This scenario played out several times, all the while I couldn't get the SL disk to eject. Got on my husband's PC and found a whole slew of people having the very same issue. After reading about and trying several Apple Help Desk recommended fixes, this one worked. Power up the computer and hold the "c" button until the screen turns blue and you have an option bar on top of the screen. I found the option that allowed me to restore my disk and I did just that. Thank goodness I used Time Machine and backed up my HD before the installation. I am now running on Leopard and that's fine with me. Thank goodness Snow Leopard was only $29 bucks. I was so disappointed that the install fell flat on it's little Snow Leopard face. So used to that when I had a PC and never expected an Apple product to totally and utterly fail like this did. Oh yeah, after the restore I could get the disk to finally eject and I couldn't get that thing out of there fast enough!

Are you by chance using the MAcbook's drive for Time Machine, or did you at some point in the past maybe say "yes" when asked if you wanted to use it for Time Machine? Because that would prevent Snow Leopard from installing. So would bad permissions. If the computer thinks you don't have the proper privileges to write a new OS to the drive, then it won't let you and will say pretty much what you were told.

And the way your computer reacted after kind of says there might be something wrong with your HD. Whether physical damage or just a file structure that needs repair I can't tell as I doubt you would send your computer to me (and that would be a smart choice not to!). It could also be a failing optical drive as it sounds like it was trying to boot off the DVD and not having much luck. That happened to me with either 10.5 or 10.4 on my old iBook.

I installed Snow Leopard on the 28th with no problem at all. However I have to agree with Lisa4720. This release is full of issues. Here's my list so far.
.Safari Frequently crashes at random
.TimeMachine backing up any one machine take the entire network to it's knees and frequently loading web pages time out.
.Media files that used to play with ease in VNC, Nice Player and QT don't.
.Selecting multiple video clips in Finder and choosing Open with now randomly puts only about 1/3 of the files selected into the play list. This happens in all my media players.
.Network connect shows active but randomly stops and requires reboot.
.Context Menu Pluggins are all broken.
.Permissions are reset on items and folders within Applications. I could not copy/move replace until resetting permissions to propagate to the contents of Applications.

I am a HUGE Apple fan and have found a reliability and consistency that other platforms and OS's simply cant touch. However Snow Leopard is a MASSIVE disappointment thus far. Why rush to beat Windows 7 out the door with a product that is clearly not ready. With all the press about Snow Leopard being a refined more stable version of what I have found the best OS to date anywhere I expected at a minimum of more of the same exceptional quality found in Leopard. I may spend my evening going back to 10.5.8 on ALL my Macs! GRRRR.

While in gripe mode I'd like to also share that my experience with the iPhone 3.x OS to be equally lacking in quality and polish. Basic features that worked well and consistently in older versions are nothing less than a major aggravation in 3.x. Not the least of which is this auto login garbage for AT&T hotspots. Pre 3.0 I was able to easily connect and stay connected via WIFI at those hotspots with EasyWIFI. With the built in crap, It typically takes 4, 5, 6 attempts before I can load a web page. Of course as soon as the phone locks I have to go through this non-sense all over. I've finally given up and turned WIFI off.

The point here is of the 2 OS upgrades for Apple's 2 main products in the last 2 months both have promised more stability with some level of feature upgrades. In both cases the features either didn't happen (yes AT@T played a part) MMS, Tethering on the iPhone, neither delivered natively in the upgrade, and STABILITY on the Mac, clearly not. Apple need to go back to being Apple. The quality of the recent OS releases is far to MS like. It's the quality and reliability that converted me to an Apple user. In both cases my confidence level in the tools I'm using has plummeted.

Hi Lisa! So sorry you have problems installing Snow Leopard. I have the same machine you have and funny thing - when I went to install SL on my machine it found two versions of Leopard running, my original on the Mac HD and a carbon copy on my 6th drive. What surprised me was that it said I could not install on my Mac HD because it wasn't Journaled (Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I thought what???

So I went to Preferences and started up the Disk Utility and sure enough, it wasn't journaled unlike the copy on my 6th drive. I wondered how that could be then I remembered carbon copying the Leopard on my Mac HD to the 6th drive a few months back, swapping out the Mac HD for a larger capacity drive and partitioning it up into three volumes, leaving that first Volume the Mac HD. I formatted it as Mac OS Extended then restarted and booted from the copy on the sixth hard drive. From there I carbon copied back the my working copy of Leopard. That's how I ended up with a Mac HD that wasn't "journaled". Apparently SL will only install on a Mac OS Extended Journaled formatted hard drive.

Ok. So how to fix? Pretty easy really. I restarted and booted into Leopard on the Sixth drive, reformatted the Mac HD so that it was now Mac OS Extended Journaled then carbon copied back the copy of Leopard on the Sixth Drive.

Next time I put the Snow Leopard DVD in it offered me two options of install - Mac HD or Sixth HD. I went with Mac HD (naturally) and it installed nicely in about 40 minutes.

So that may be a place to look. Confirm that you formatted your start up drive as Mac OS Extended Journaled. If you did then you might think about this:

I have a white MacBook 2.4GHz and the Optical drive has always given me problems. Rent a movie, slide in the movie and it spits it out. I have to do this sometimes five or six times before the thing actually sees the DVD. If I try and burn a DVD-DL using Toast 10 no matter what brand of DVD-DL I use the thing fails about 1/4 the way through citing a "media" error. It hands blank CDs just fine but sometimes it balks at plain blank DVDs.

It is still under warranty, covered by AppleCare but since I have a 13" 2.53GHz MacBook Pro I haven't taken it in to Apple for Optical drive replacement.

So I went to upgrade that white MacBook to Snow Leopard (yeah, I bought the Family Pack because I have five freakin' machines!) and I kept getting an error that the DVD media was bad and to contact Apple for a replacement. I thought that odd because no other machine in my house found the DVD bad. So - el braino am I - I connected my Lacie USB Slim Drive to the White Book and tried the SL DVD. Presto! NO problem! Snow Leopard was installed quickly and nicely.

So I know 'fur shure' now that I must take this white MacBook back in for Optical Drive replacement but that too may be a problem you are having. And if you experience rental DVDs failing to be found or ejecting for now valid reason then it may be that Pioneer Optical Drive Apple put in that Mac Pro for you!

Best wishes to you! You've helped me so many times and have never made me feel stupid of foolish. I know you to be very knowledgeable and sympathize with your plight but I also know you won't give up. If there is a problem you'll find the answer!

John

Apple need to go back to being Apple. The quality of the recent OS releases is far to MS like. It's the quality and reliability that converted me to an Apple user. In both cases my confidence level in the tools I'm using has plummeted.

With every upgrade, and I mean every upgrade since the launch of OS X (heck, even back in the pre-OSX days, there's been at least someone posting some version of that statement in some forum somewhere. Frankly, I don't even know what it's supposed to mean. Which version of Apple are the supposed to go back to being?

It seems to me there's something about your network, the media files you're using, the third party apps you're using, or your workflow etc. that could be contributing factors to the problems you're having. It's doubtful it just the OS. It's your particular system interaction with the OS.

Lot's of complicated parts and not all of them are under Apple's control.

WIthout knowing a lot more specifics, it's hard to offer any real help.

Matt

Delete System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist then reboot. You will need to do this as root, so go to Terminal and type: CD System/Library/LaunchDaemons/

Then type: sudo rm com.apple.audio.coreaudiod.plist - it will ask for your root password and then warn you about doing this. type your pwd, say yes, then reboot.

This will fix the performance issue. Safari screams afterwards.

I have a new MBP. The few problems I had in running other software was mostly resolved by trashing the preferences.

I can't help but wonder if people are installing incorrectly, not letting the system do it's thing and interupting, have non-conforming hardware, or whatever else.

As mentioned above this has been one of the best OS installs I have ever performed and I installed it on 3 different machines...one was the white plastic iMac...all Intel, and one had Tiger and 2 Leopard. I don't get it.

Yesterday, I installed Snow Leopard. I then tried to publish a DVd with IDVD. Unfortunately, iDVD no longer recognized chapters. To test, I retried this procedure three times, with the same result - no chapters. Has anybody else had this experience? Any solutions other than going back to 5.8?

Also, now Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 freezes up every time I open Word. Fortunately, I also have Office 09 for Mac and this does work. However, as nearly all my colleagues still use the 04 version, it would be more convenient for me if this still worked. Does anyone else have this problem? Any solutions?

I believe Office 2004 is going to require Rosetta.

It is part of the custom install. SL should have prompted you to install it when you ran something that needed it.

Try reinstalling it from the SL installer DVD.

Also make sure you have all the latest and greatest service packs for (whichever) version of office

Before you make that commit to moving to QT 10 (X), better check the QT discussion forum to make sure you know what you "lose" with QT X. Gone is the ability to export to different codecs and many many of the customizable settings. QT X is not a replacement for QT 7, if it was, they wouldn't have left QT 7 as an install option. There is no QT X Pro level and in fact the Apple apps like iMovie and pro series like Final Cut still export to QT 7.

QT X is simple for a reason. It is not geared at Pro level apps, but gives some basic editing with a fixed set of output options.

Jay S.

Some good technical and background information on QuickTIme and Snow Leopard here:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars/6

Matt