Snow Leopard upgrade - Safe or silly?

[steko]

snow leopard works great.

force it to boot with 64 bit extensions and let ableton have a whole 4GB to itself (if you have more then
4GB of ram that is.. I've got and it's smooth..


sudo nvram boot-args="arch=x86_64"

will alter your com.apple.boot.plist to load
in 64bit mode by defaut (only xserves do it by default)..

that is assuming you can do 64bits on your mac..

This will allow you to use lots of ram... 64 bit apps will open even if you don't do this.

32bit apps can use 4GB ram, 64bit apps up to 16 exabyte (16 billion gigabytes…).
So Live, being a 32 bit app, can use up to 4GB ram on Tiger, Leopard & Snow Leopard anyway. Even if it would be a 64bit app, switching to the 64bit kernel would make no difference in its ability to use more than 4GB.

The reason why Snow Leopard boots per default in a 32bit kernel right now is due to a lack of 3rd party 64bit kernel extensions, as every kernel extension (like audio/midi drivers) would need to be 64bit, for OS X to be able to boot into 64bit.

I boot permanently the 64bit kernel, as my only 3rd party drivers (motu) are now 64bit.

Good app: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/32 ... e-selector - http://www.ahatfullofsky.comuv.com/Engl ... S/SMS.html

- it shows whether you have a 32-bit or a 64-bit processor
- it shows whether you have a 32-bit or a 64-bit EFI
- it shows whether the MacOS X Kernel is set to boot in 32-bit or in 64-bit mode
- it shows whether the MacOS X Kernel is running in 32-bit or in 64-bit mode
- it shows whether Apple officially supports booting a 64-bit kernel on your Mac
- it allows you to select whether you want to start the MacOS X Kernel in 32-bit or in 64-bit mode (the setting might be ignored on MacBooks, depending on how Apple implements the restriction)
- accompanying webpage explains what the whole commotion about 32-bit and 64-bit in MacOS X Snow Leopard is about

If you wanna try booting the 64bit kernel, be sure every 3rd party extension/driver is 64bit!

For Live there is no performance gain with booting the 64bit kernel (though for some 64bit apps there can be: http://www.macperformanceguide.com/Snow ... mance.html)

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3696 - http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology - http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/


Snow Leopard & Live 7.0.18 running fine here.

[anybody human]

Works fine. Except I have to plug/unplug my 400FW connector 3 or 4 times (Motu 828mkii) before my Macbook Pro recognizes it.

Also some issues with Column View in Finder not being remembered.

But the sucka sails!

For what it's worth I had this problem with my Digi002 but not at all with my Apogee Duet. Hmm...
That happened long before snow leopard though. Btw snow leopard has worked great so far, got it right away.

[alex.the.forge]

anyone got a firewire 410?

[xrayfish]

After I installed snow leopard on my macbook pro (2.5 gHz core2duo) my hard disk went crazy, never stopped. This happened for days after I installed it so it wasn't just spotlight updating. I was worried it would wear it out so reverted back to 10.5.8. Its a known issue, maybe the latest version has fixed it but 10.5 works perfectly so why bother? I'll only upgrade when some piece of software forces me to do it, maybe it will have become stable by then. (by the same token I'm not going beyond Live 8.09 until I'm convinced its worth it)

If it ain't broke don't fix it

[hoffman2k]

anyone got a firewire 410?

You got on of the few that actually worked. Most of us burnt ours in a ritual fire.
It takes about 3 burning Griffin imic's to get the Firewire 410 going.

[alex.the.forge]

anyone got a firewire 410?

You got on of the few that actually worked. Most of us burnt ours in a ritual fire.
It takes about 3 burning Griffin imic's to get the Firewire 410 going.

hasn't just worked, I've had it about 7 years with pretty much no problems...

there's drivers on the M-audio site, but I don't think they are for the latest snow leopard so I might just wait

[doghouse]

I had no choice...bought a new MBPro last fall and SL had just come out. Except for one app that was delayed until last week, everything I had been using on my WinXP laptop was working on SL already. I have had zero issues to date, but I am not a real "power user".

I'm never one to upgrade every time the new Mac OS comes out, I usually skip every other major release, I never used System 8, OS 10.3 or OS 10.5.
Unless you need SL (i.e. you upgrade other SW that requires SL) I'd stay put with 10.5 unless you're having issues with it.

[3phase]

I had no choice...bought a new MBPro last fall and SL had just come out. Except for one app that was delayed until last week, everything I had been using on my WinXP laptop was working on SL already. I have had zero issues to date, but I am not a real "power user".

I'm never one to upgrade every time the new Mac OS comes out, I usually skip every other major release, I never used System 8, OS 10.3 or OS 10.5.
Unless you need SL (i.e. you upgrade other SW that requires SL) I'd stay put with 10.5 unless you're having issues with it.

its difficult to say that.. the thing with macs is that you might benefit with the updates.. in general there is a huge performance win of the one kind or the others involved with theiere updates.. but..
smilar to ableton now they also had setbacks.. the snow leo is defently a bit more shaky than the previous releases that was from 10.3 all a performance and stability up..

10.6 is defently a performance up... for aplikations that use the features a significant up..

logic is a different world now.. its as it was on os 9 actually.. quick..

with L8 soem midi issues disappeared..but since i am on 10.63 its strange with the midi a bit..

i am not sure yet...

maybe dont go straight to 10.63 and stick with 10.62 for a while..


only real setback in snow leo is that certain apps now can hang so that you cant abort them anymore and have to restart the computer.. in older versions you never had to restart the comuter for anything..it allways was possible to get rid of the nasty app without rebooting..

thats actually bad...

[steko]

only real setback in snow leo is that certain apps now can hang so that you cant abort them anymore and have to restart the computer.. in older versions you never had to restart the comuter for anything..it allways was possible to get rid of the nasty app without rebooting..

thats actually bad...

Just use: Option-Command-esc - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3411 - Never had to restart on a hang here...

[arctic ranger]

for whatever reason i was having some performance issues with maschine in live. i then bit the bullet and upgraded to SL cause i wanted to run maschine 1.5 and all of a sudden i get better performance

[KrisM]

I've been using Snow Leopard since before Live 8's official Snow Leopard build. Currently on 8.1.1 essentially crash-free.

[detroitechno]

sudo nvram boot-args="arch=x86_64"

will alter your com.apple.boot.plist to load
in 64bit mode by defaut (only xserves do it by default)..

I used to edit my plist file also, until I ran across this... http://www.thrull.com/corner/mac/System ... figurator/

It adds a preference pane which allows you to switch between 32/64 with a button.

Much easier, and it's free.