Snow Leopard Installation news
Euan Williams Referring to the supposed "Gold Master" it concentrates on changes to installation procedures, but the inclusion of Rosetta (or not) is significant for those of us currently running older PPC software on Snow Leopard-capable Intel Macs -- upgrades from Adobe CS2 to CS4 or later are expensive.
Quote from AppleInsider/MacFixit...
As it stands, the changes serve to overcome many problems or limitations that OS X users currently have when either upgrading or reinstalling their operating systems. Here's the list of enhancements, according to AppleInsider (keep in mind these are not official):
"Although Rosetta and QuickTime 7 are both included on the Mac OS X 10.6 installation DVD, both are designated as optional installs by default. However, if Mac OS X 10.6 is being installed on a Mac that contains a registration a key for QuickTime 7 Pro, the installer will install QuickTime 7 automatically."
"Options to "Erase and Install" and "Archive and Install" are no longer present in the Mac OS X 10.6 installer. According to those familiar with the software, this was done for convenience, so that users do not accidentally erase and install their Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard partitions. However, "Erase and Install" remains available through Disk Utility, which is also included on the installation DVD."
"If you need to reinstall 10.6, it automatically archives and installs for you."
"A reinstallation will not affect your Mac OS X version number. In other words, reinstallation of Mac OS X 10.6 on a Mac that contains Mac OS X 10.6.1 (when it becomes available) will not overwrite any new components delivered by 10.6.1. So when the reinstall is complete, you will still be running Mac OS X 10.6.1. This will save users considerable time."
"There is no "Previous System" folder at the root level after reinstalling."
"If a power outage occurs, installation will pick up from where it left off."
"To prevent the Blue Screen error that plagued some users when upgrading to Mac OS X 10.5, a software compatibility check is included that has a list of known "bad" apps, and disables them. Those programs are moved to an "Incompatible Software" folder."
"Unlike Mac OS X 10.5, you cannot install Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard on computers where the hard drive reports a S.M.A.R.T. failure."
"Installation initially triggers a large chunk of data to be copied from the installation DVD to the user's primary hard drive. The bulk of the installation is then managed from the hard drive, speeding up the installation process considerably. After a successful installation, that large chunk of data is automatically removed."
"From a troubleshooting perspective, some of the more intriguing features are the capability of the system to pick up where it left off after a power outage, checking for and disabling incompatible software, and not overwriting new system components when reinstalling an older version. These changes basically mean that system reinstallation will be more practical for people who run into problems, especially after an update to third-party software. I am eager to see how well they work for the average user, since if Apple implements them well this would mean an OS reinstallation could be a much more feasible workaround for certain problems than it is now."
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