Moments ago, I did the upgrade… to Snow Leopard! I did this on my laptop first, leaving my desktop out of the picture until I have worked through the process and kinks. This post will serve as my notes, plus assisting you, on some of the good and bad.
First, have you cleaned up your mac? Before you even think about upgrading, there are a few tasks you should do—like backing up and simple maintenance tasks. LifeHacker has a GREAT post on this, so before you even think about starting, follow their guide to making a sluggish mac more snappy. That is simply one of the steps in their larger guide to preparing your mac for the Snow Leopard Upgrade. You should also see if you run any software on this list of incompatible Snow Leopard apps.
After your upgrade, you may notice a few things not working. Here’s what I ran into, and how I fixed it.
Quicksilver: This productivity exploding application is a staple for me, and most power Mac users. If you have never heard of Quicksilver, first, kick yourself in the head (seriously, no moving to step 2 until you have finished that), then go get it. For those of us with unbruised heads, get the NEW version (b56a7) and replace your existing version. I had to do the additional step of deleting my ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver directory. Once I did that, it fired up just fine. I had to reinstall my Showcase skin, and then reinstall all the plugins I use, but it’s all good now.
Tip: Take screenshots (Cmd-Shift-4 from Leopard) of all of your configuration windows so you can restore your environment relatively quickly.
Odd note, QS just crashed on me while writing this post. Maybe a one time deal (I’ve had it crash maybe a half dozen times in the last couple of years).
According to Christopher Hoff, PGP Desktop does not work with Snow Leopard. You must uninstall it until PGP Desktop 10.0 is released.
Update, 8/29: Also just learned that Forklift needs an upgrade. Thanks James!
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