Apple Testing Snow Leopard 10.6.1 Update
It has been one week since Snow Leopard’s worldwide launch and, predictably, it appears Apple is already testing its first OS software update. According to a report by AppleInsider, the update has not yet made its way to Apple’s large community of paying developers — the Apple Developer Connection member base — but instead is confined to a small and very select invitation-only group.
Exactly what the update includes is, at this point, entirely speculation. Since Snow Leopard hit the shelves, most of the incompatibility reports we’ve seen crop-up on the ‘net are mired in the muddy waters of third-party software and not Apple’s responsibility.
Apple’s official list of problematic apps remains concise. A far more exhaustive compatibility list is provided by the community-edited snowleopard.wikidot.com.
AppleInsider’s Kasper Jade mentions reports of problems with Snow Leopard’s built-in Cicso VPN technology and various complaints of system “bricking” and the spinning wheel of death.
Of course, every major operating system upgrade on every major platform introduces new problems while it resolves old ones. Despite exhaustive testing during development, it’s impossible to emulate every possible permutation of hardware and software configurations in the world. Therefore it’s something of a testament to the quality and craftsmanship of Snow Leopard that we’re not hearing of any (officially confirmed and reproducible) show-stoppers ‘in the wild.’ Sure, it’s early days yet, so anything can happen. But if the only updates we can expect from 10.6.1 include an upgrade for the Flash player plugin and some tweaks to Cisco’s VPN technology, Apple can pat itself on the back for a very big job very well done.
Feel free to add a comment below to tell me I’m completely wrong and explain in detail why Snow Leopard is a disaster because your ancient HP Laser Printer no longer works.
Tweet This (16)
Shadowbottle on September 4th, 2009 at 9:48 am
WHAT? 10.6.1?!?! Next thing you’ll be telling me there’s a 10.6.2! Lordy lordy lordy.
Skeptic on September 4th, 2009 at 10:12 am
The annoying vertical lines in Top Sites could stand to get fixed…
Staff Comment Josh Pigford, TheAppleBlog on September 4th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Amen to that.
Jimmy Cracked-Corn on September 4th, 2009 at 10:22 am
My 1993 HP Laserjet printer has an ethernet card, so I should be good when I upgrade.
Bill Davenport on September 4th, 2009 at 10:30 am
I installed SL successfully on a Macbook and have been enjoying the Exchange integration and overall performance improvements.
However, with a different SL disk (family pack) my install on a home iMac (17 inch) went horribly awry. Install got about 15% through, then brought up an error message (contents of the disk can’t be changed), then brought me to SL bootup type screen with disk utilities. Ran Disk utilities, said the hard drive couldn’t be verified or repaired. So now I’ve got to figure out next steps and there’s quite a few other people reporting issues like this.
http://www.contentious.com/2009/09/01/my-mac-snow-leopard-installation-disaster-so-far/
Bottom line is I was working fine with a Leopard machine pre-install and now this one machine is currently hosed.
Doggle on September 4th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
(Almost) Everything seems fine. Well worth the nominal upgrade price. However, my Apple Remote has picked up a distressing behavior: It opens iTunes when I hit pause in VLC.
Hieronymus on September 10th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
Yep, the Apple Remote is completely tied to iTunes now which is really, really pissing me off as I use VLC to watch video.
roselinke on September 4th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
leave it to the endangered species to need an update already:
http://onthebutton.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/apple-snow-leopard/
Gabe on September 4th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Killing AppleTalk and not sharing the “news” ahead of time is another Apple way to tell you that they do not care of back compatibility. There are significant issues in 10.6 with printing.
M on September 4th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
my hp printer still doesnt work, yes new problems always arise from old solutions but i just thought it was very unbecoming of apple. i wouldnt of cared getting it a week or two later @ 10.6.1 already, and i dont understand how apple could let a third party company taint there image, very unbecoming
Tomas on September 5th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I recomend that Graphic Designers and artist should not update to Leopard because a lot of programs are not working properly and will make you go back to 10.5
If you really desperate to try Leopard then you should create additional partition and install leopard seperate so you can always use Startup Disk utility if something goes wrong to go back.
For me Photoshop and a lot of other programs are not working well (slow and crashing) so I had to go back to previews OS version. This is always like that with Apple new OS versions.
Larry on September 21st, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I use Photoshop CS4, Illustrator, and In Design 8 hours a day. I’ve had not a single crash or slow performance issue. If anything I’ve found it to be faster. I love the extra space I’ve gotten on the drive and the faster shut down and start up speed.
nurali on September 27th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I agree,
I now have to roll back to 10.5 because it simply not possible to calibrate my eizo screens anymore. Its just looks too cold and pale somehow. I can see on apple’s discussions forums many people experience the same issues I have. Its extremely annoying that apple cant figure this out for such a long time now.. its a shame.
Now I have a problem: I didn’t backup before i did the upgrade. Dont ask why, I know its stupid. I believed that its not necessary as I didnt have any issues to upgrade to 10.5 from 10.4..
So is there way to downgrade to 10.5 and restore my settings and files etc from time machine backup if i’ll make one now? will it work?
I just installed 10.5 on another hd and was not able to transfer files & settings as target system was newer..
Any help would do a lot to me:-)
macguy on October 3rd, 2009 at 5:22 am
CS4 and Snow Leopard apparently are not fully compatible. I wasted a good part of a day with numerous crashes in Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign, reading forums, looking for updates, etc. Went back to working on 10.5 on an external disk until Adobe/Apple get things straightened out. My work flow is more important than struggling with compatibility problems.
Gordon on September 6th, 2009 at 11:42 am
They could fix all of the stupid bugs in spaces.. that’d be good…
Cecil on September 12th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Ye that’s true. Spaces has been screwed since 10.5. I stopped using it
Ryan on September 19th, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Definitely. Is anyone having super long delays with when moving windows between spaces? I tried hacking the speed using terminal, but it still doesn’t improve. Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this problem. I’m using a macpro dual quad 3ghz with plenty of ram. Same problem in 32 or 64 bit.
Paramvir Singh on September 6th, 2009 at 11:44 am
I hope the new upgrade fixes the MacBook Pro Unibody (mostly 2008-09) screen blinking/flickering problem. So many people have tthis problem and its frustrating that there’s no fix/official acknowledgement from Apple. I am hoping its a software bug.
I upgraded to 10.6 hoping to find a solution to this annoying problem. It seems the blinking is partially fixed, though it may be my over-optimistic mind.
anyone else face this problem?
Lay Swinger on September 13th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
I’m not sure if this is the same thing you are talking about, but my screen’s brightness is always going up and down. I assumed that it’s a poor implementation of the ambient light sensor. It’s never bothered me enough to even turn off the feature, but if it were actually flickering, I would have a problem with it.
Ken Hare on September 7th, 2009 at 2:00 am
I have never had so many problems with a Mac OS upgrade. Mail crashes when you try to attach images. Safari crashes opening web pages. CS3 (OK it’s unsupported) crashes. Word crashes… most programs I use have fallen over at least once. More than a little frustrating.
Lay Swinger on September 13th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Yeah, I’m experiencing a lot of crashes of Apple apps. The one that surprised me the most was iTunes 9. It seems like they should have gotten that right, if nothing else given the fact it was released after SL.
Rogerio Almeida on September 7th, 2009 at 9:20 am
I just wish Apple fixes the screen flicker on my MBP late 2008 Unibody, which has started since I upgraded to Snow Leopard…
Matthew Vetter on September 8th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
Okay its not only third-party software thats been crashing, even apple’s safari 4, and the new mail is crashing on my iMac. What’s weird is that it only happens on the iMac and not my Macbook Pro, but the weirdest part is that at work most of the macs in my department are the same configs, and all have been upgraded to snow leopard, with that said half the machines experience crashes with both apple and third party software and the other half do not, it is not an application issue, but more of a weird set of bugs deep within snow leopard itself, or so we believe.
Marty on September 9th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Safari 4 crashes, iTunes crashes, InDesign crashes (both running snow leopard).. what’s going on? Please fix this Apple..
Robert on September 9th, 2009 at 6:56 am
My Safari crashes quite a bit now with Snow Leopard. I thought maybe my upgrade was bad or something so I did a fresh install and Safari still crashes all the time. It’s *really* annoying. i do regular every day surfing, you’re telling me that no one caught this before they put Snow Leopard on the shelves? Plllllease.
JayBurbs on September 10th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
To be quite honest, snow leopard is very quick, and has improved its backround structure to enhance it general flow on things. I personally will just do a fresh install of 10.5.8 and start over. Yes 10.6.1 is awsome, but I will certainly wait until snow leopard hit 10.6.4 or higher.
Ryan on September 11th, 2009 at 10:44 am
The new OS is pretty good. They need to fix a bug in Safari where it often takes about 10 times of re-loading a page for your username and password that were stored in your keychain to finally appear.
EVDOalex on September 11th, 2009 at 10:54 am
10.6.1 adds support for some sierra modems, this article lists all the Sprint and Verizon EVDO devices that already work using Snow Leopard’s built-in WWAN support: http://bit.ly/1r5pNe
Platypus on September 11th, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I hate all big cats now
Thomas Irvin on September 12th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
I should have waited for the bugs to be worked out.
My Itune account does recognize me now since installing SL!
I agree with starting over.
Xanthorp on September 14th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Safari crashes allllll the time now. I don’t like Safari 4 anyway it seems like a resource hog.
Cecil on September 14th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Flip4Mac doesn’t work properly (WMV files)
It does not recognise the new Quicktime. I have to open manually every time. WMV files in the browser cause an infinite loop. (Have to hit the stop button quickly)
DIVX doesn’t close when opening a DIVX movie. Have to force quit.
federico Heller on September 14th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Do not update! every single app is crashing like never before and I see no useful improvements…
AndyP on September 15th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Have installed SN on imac and macbook and whist it generally runs faster – it crashes often and is driving me up the wall! Specifically Pages 09 crashed often and Mail crashes when attaching PDF documents to emails. It has improved a bit since 10.6.1, but far from perfect. On reflection, I regret installing SN so soon and should have waited a few months until all these problems are resolved.
Urban B. on September 23rd, 2009 at 10:13 am
@AndyP – agreed – I regret installing Snow Leopard too soon; have already had issues with Adobe CS3 products (specifically Photoshop 3 crashing), as well as iPhoto crashing, Pages crashing, and random, unexpected restarting.
Andrew Bednarz on September 15th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
For the record, I havn’t had one single crash since installing SN – in 10.6 or 10.6.1. Mail, Pages, Parallels, Safari or anything else. Rock solid and fast.
Cecil on September 19th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Try make a new folder in any folder with right click – (beside on the desktop) – it no Longer works.
Every day I see things that Leopard had that is now gone.
I use my Mac to watch TV in my small apartment. When the program stoped in Leopard, it would lose full screen, and mt Mac would go to slep nicely. – Volume on – I would be woken if the office messaged me on MSN.
Now the program stays maximized, sleep causes everything to sleep including downloads and uploads.
Plus clicking the power button no longer puts the machine to sleep properly. If I use it, it never wakes up. (But is still turned on!)
New iTunes – new features – but featureless. 3 steps to do something that should take 1 click. (sharing) All the help pages are generic. Thank gawd I know Leopard. No one would understand the quick hack programming hints Apple threw together.
Apple is turning into Microsoft – useless. Everything sux.
JOe on October 13th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Mine is working fine but I made a Shut Down and when I started it, it just stays in the white screen with de little apple on it. Every time this happens, in order to keep using my information correctly, I have to install the UPGRADE of SLeopard. Really annoying, al tech support points to erasing and starting all over again, any suggestions?
Cecil on October 13th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Try holding the power button down for over 8 seconds, until the Mac BEEPS.
I’m not sure if that will fix it, but I have used that to fix problems with my Mac itself in the past.
Cecil on October 29th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
I just bought a new iMac with Snow Leopard 10.6.1. I’m sending it back for a refund. I’ve never had so many problems with Mac in my life.
Wireless works when it wants to, HD videos stutter. It’s painful to use. The irony is that everything runs without issue when I install Windows 7 on bootcamp.
I’ll stick with my old Mac and Leopard OS.
Owning a Mac has become more trouble then it’s worth.