JJB Blog

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

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.


4 Comments

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

Posted by Jeff on 22 September 2009 @ 1pm

So what are all those audio devices you have there?

Posted by Jeff on 15 October 2009 @ 2pm

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…

Posted by John on 19 October 2009 @ 4pm

John,

I have a Powerwave that I hadn’t used as a sound input for a while. The output works just fine. I love being able to power actual speakers with it. But, if I try and record with the Powerwave as a selected input, it crashes every recording app I have, except for GarageBand. It is a bit crackly, but it works. I can select it as the input, and it shows up in the sound control panel, and shows the level of the input. It also shows up in audio/midi setup. I use an iMic every day at work (I’m on the radio) and it works fine for both input and output. Thinking it might be only compatible to record with Apple software, I tried recording with Quicktime, but it crashed that as well. Just wondered if yours still works to record, with anything other than Garageband? I’ve been searching online, and this was the most current post mentioning it that I have found. I’m using a Macbook, 2.4 Ghz Intel Core Duo with System 10.6.6
Thanks!

Posted by Kevin Nelson on 8 February 2011 @ 12pm

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