Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Yesterday I purchased Mac Box Set, which contains three updates or new packages: Mac OS Snow Leopard, iLife 09 and iWork 09. For sure I need the first two but I was hesitated about iWork. I thought that NeoOffice should be good enough. However, one of my friends has iWork and he likes it very much and told me that iWork is totally different thing comparing to Microsoft Office. I decided to give it a try with this whole set.

SNOW LEOPARD

First, it was very smooth to install the Snow Leopard. It took less than one hour to install it to my iMac 24, which I got about one and half year ago. Before I installed it, I cleaned up my hard disk and emptied my trash, and cleaned all the caches by using OnyX. Then I shut down my iMac and restarted my iMac. When I insert my OS CD during the log in screen, there was nothing happening. I had to log in and then I saw the OS CD. I clicked on this CD and the Install OS icon is there. I clicked it to start the installation.

The installation screen is very clean: big X and a progress bar with a message of estimated time remaining. There is no any commercial messages or graphics about OS X. The status bar displayed a message to tell me how much time left. At the beginning it was 45 minutes and soon the time increased to about 1 hour. I let it run and went to my kitchen to help to clean dishes. I came back frequently to check its status. At about the time 10 minutes to its end, I came back. Like any OS application, the installer displays a group of menus on the top. When the installation finished, it displayed a message saying that it would restart in 30 seconds. If you click on any menu, the count down stops. There is one menu item for displaying Installation Log (this one also available for iLife and iWork installations), I opened it. The log have three options, Errors, Errors and Progress and All. If the log is opened, the countdown is also stopped.

From the log, the start time was at Sept 5 19:48:02 and end time as Sept 5, 20:15:52. However, I think I started the installation at about 19:30:00. About 45 minutes time, it is still very fast! I made a note about my HD status and here is the comparison:

	Capacity(GB)	Available(GB)	Used(GB/Bytes)
Before	465.44	266.85	198.59(211,092,037,632)
After	499.76	299.3	200.47(200,067,039,464)
Difference (A-B)	34.32	32.45	1.88(-11,024,998,168)

NOTE: see my correction in another blog.
There is no requirement for serials number or key for the installation.

After I installed the Snow Leopard, I shutdown my Mac and restarted it again. The first time it took a while to start, about 2-3 minutes. Then I checked my Safari and FireFox. They work fine without any issues. Th OS itself looks as same as before. I shutdown my Mac again. This morning I started it again. It took about 45 seconds to start from the power on to the login screen. and just 5 seconds from my login to my Mac. It is really fast!

iLife 09

After I installed the Snow Leopard, I checked several programs to make sure everything is fine. Then I started to install iLife 09. The installation does not require to enter a key or serials number. The installation says that it requires about 5.37 GB HD space. Actually those are the numbers I noted:

	Capacity(GB)	Available(GB)	Used(GB/Bytes)
Before	499.76	298.96	200.81 (200,806,490,112)
After	499.76	297.56	202.21 (202,207,981,568)
Difference (A-B)	0	-1.4	1.4(1,401,491,456)

iWork 09

Finally it is the time for iWork. It requires less space as indicated in the installation (898 MB). Here are the numbers:

	Capacity(GB)	Available(GB)	Used(GB/Bytes)
Before	499.76	296.52	203.24 (203,241,398,272)
After	499.76	296.01	203.75(203,749,146,624)
Difference (A-B)	0	-.51	.51(507,748,352)

After the installation, I was eager to see how it works. I tried to type Numbers from SpotLight(Cmd+space). I got iNumber 08 and prompt me for a serial number key (I did not get iWork 08 and the try-version was expired). Then I realized that the installation does not overwrite my iWork 08. I find out that iWork 09 is in my Applications.

Then I trashed my iWork 08. The first time I run the iWork 09 again, I was prompt to register it with my name and email. I clicked on the Register button. That's all I need to do. I watched a tutorial video Introduction in the welcome(it only displays first time). It is very different from Excel. All the worksheets are tables in Numbers, and they, including graphics or chats, are placed in a canvas. It is very smart and impressive! This is just my first quick look and I did quickly try Pages and KeyNotes as well. I think I am going to use iWork for my works and I'll share my Mac experience during my exploration.