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The geek’s guide to upgrading to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Here are some good and bad things I’ve discovered since I’ve upgraded to 10.6 — I’ll keep adding to this post as I discover more.

Very new versions of software for software developers

  • PHP 5.3 (the very newest version, with many “modern” features, finally)
  • PHP also has Pear!
  • PHP and mod_php are compiled with GD, praise the lord!
  • Subversion 1.6.4 (10.5 didn’t have subversion at all)
  • Apache 2.2.11 (same as 10.5 I believe)
  • Python 2.6.1 (10.5 had 2.5.x I believe — there is also a 3.1.x series but AFAIK the majority of Python software is still made for 2.x) – easy_install is included, as I think it was in 10.5
  • Still no MySQL…

Nice!

your locate database is gone

At least mine was. You can rebuild it like this:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist

modifier key reassignment is now per-keyboard

A nice feature– but it took me 10 minutes of abject panic, despair, and tearing of clothes (and a couple reboots) before I noticed the new setting:

screen-shot-2009-09-05-at-51916-sep-5

You can change audio input and output from the menu bar

No more need for the (excellent) SoundSource, you can now option-click the menu bar volume control and change input and output:

Screen shot 2009-09-25 at 2.44.25  Sep 25

cp now has an -a flag

-a Same as -pPR options. Preserves structure and attributes of files but not directory structure.

Whoo hoo! It’s the little things…

Actually, I have no idea what “but not directory structure” means.

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3 Responses

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  1. Jeff says

    Nice. I missed a couple of those changes, particularly the per-keyboard bindings.

  2. Jeff says

    So what are all those audio devices you have there?

  3. John says

    powerwave is an external usb audio thing that gives me various inputs and outputs, and even has a little T-amp in it, which i used to power my speakers.

    c-media is my headset that i use for skype.

    soundflower is some sort of virtual interface thing that audio hijack pro installs.

    jawbone is my usb earpiece. i’ve never tried using it to listen to music…



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