Mac OS X Snow Leopard is an even more powerful and refined version of the world’s most advanced operating system. In ways big and small, it gets faster, more reliable, and easier to use. New core technologies unleash the power of today’s advanced hardware technology and prepare Mac OS X for future innovation. And Snow Leopard includes built-in support for the latest version of Microsoft Exchange Server, so you can use your Mac at home and at work.

Top Updates in Mac OS X
Mac OS X is the world’s most advanced operating system. Built on a rock-solid UNIX foundation and designed to be simple and intuitive, it’s what makes the Mac innovative, highly secure, compatible, and easy to use.

Better, faster, easier. Mac OS X Snow Leopard includes hundreds of improvements that will help make your Mac faster, more responsive, and more reliable than ever. Installation is up to 50 percent faster than with Mac OS X Leopard; wake from sleep is as much as two times faster; shutdown is up to 80 percent faster; and initial Time Machine backups to Time Capsule are up to 80 percent faster than in Leopard.2

Dock. Now Exposé is integrated in the Dock, giving you a quick and easy way to see all the open windows of an application.

Finder. The Finder has been completely rewritten to take advantage of the new technologies in Snow Leopard. The familiar Finder interface is unchanged, but you’ll discover that the Finder is faster and more responsive. It also includes an enhanced icon view with live file previews, so you can thumb through a multipage document or even watch a QuickTime movie.

New core technologies. New core technologies in Snow Leopard unleash the power of today’s advanced hardware and prepare Mac OS X for future innovation.

QuickTime X. The next-generation media technology, QuickTime X powers the audio and video experience in Snow Leopard. It debuts a completely new QuickTime Player application with a clean, uncluttered interface as well as an easy way to record, trim, and share your media.

Out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 in Mail, iCal, and Address Book, so it’s easier than ever to take your Mac to work.

Safari 4. The latest version of the blazing-fast web browser delivers up to 50 percent faster JavaScript performance2 and is more resistant to crashes than ever.

Universal Access. Every Mac comes standard with a wide range of assistive—or Universal Access—technologies that help people with disabilities experience what the Mac has to offer. Snow Leopard continues this support with a variety of innovative features that advance accessibility even further.

1. Price is $39 CDN as of August 2009, is subject to change, and does not include taxes or shipping. 2. Testing conducted by Apple in August 2009 comparing prerelease Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard with shipping Mac OS X v10.5.8 Leopard. Performance will vary based on system configuration, network, file sizes, data sets, and other factors. These tests reflect the approximate performance of Mac OS X.

TM and © 2009 Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Product specifications are subject to change without notice.

Q. We would like to use Time Capsule for back up but we may also need to store the backup off site. We have about 100 GBs of data we don’t want to lose. Can we also back up the Time Capsule and keep it off site?

A. Discussions around backup and archiving can be confusing and people often say “backup” when they mean to say “archive”. Backing up data is done to prevent loss of information currently stored on your computer. We “backup” our computer’s data to in case of disasters such as fire, flood, theft and mechanical failures. We are most concerned with backing up the information that we need for “day to day” operations.

Archiving on the other hand is meant for storing information “offline” for a long term – even permanently and stored on inexpensive media that is designed to last. A DVD is better than a hard drive or tape over the long haul because the information is burned on with a laser or permanently stamped on with commercial DVDs. All new Mac systems have dual layer DVD drives capable of writing 8GBs of data to DVDR – for long time storage and archiving. Hard Drives and magnetic tape are susceptible to magnetic corruption. DVDs can be corrupted by light and heat. Environmental conditions must be considered when considering how “archive media” is stored. I recommend that you make two copies of anything you seriously value – and store one copy offsite.

The “Time Machine” runs once every hour on your Mac using a service or daemon called “/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd”. Daemons are background services that run processes independently of the users. The “Time Machine” software can use a second hard drive, removable drive or a Network Area Storage called “Time Capsule” as the destination. Apple’s “Time Capsule” runs a specialized service and is the only network device that “Time Machine” will back up to on a network. The Mac has to be “awake” in order for the backupd to run properly – and Time Machine comes with and only runs on Mac OS X 10.5 (aka Leopard).

Crash Plan Pro is also software that is installed on the Mac itself – and like the Time Machine software – runs in the background and backs up over the local network or encrypted over the Internet to a remote location. CrashPlan Pro client software is installed and runs as a daemon on the Macs. There is a software interface where you can select which files and folders are to be backed up. You can also set up the schedule which governs when items gets backed up. It can backup to another machine on the network, which must be running the CrashPlan Server software.

Companies such as IronGate in Ottawa and iT Guy Technologies offer third option of running CrashPlan Pro – that of setting the destination of the CrashPlan Pro back up to a remote “CrashPlan Pro Hosted Service”. Then you can rest assured that the data won’t lost in the case of theft, fire or flood. You also save the expense of setting up and mamaging a data center.

CrashPlan clients can also run on MacOS X 10.4 (tiger), Windows XP and Vista, linux and Sun clients. Apple introduced Time Machine because the majority of users never back up their data. So by making Time Machine as simple as “set it and forget it” the hope is that average consumers will not lose their data through inaction. Companies with mission critical data often spend thousands in hardware, software and labour to back up their systems – the budget is based on the time and cost required to recover from loss. Back up of live data is expensive and usually has a cutoff timeframe because of the expense.

Information should be taken “offline” and archived if it is not required for day to day operations – because of the relative expense of “online” and “nearline” storage. Time Capsule and CrashPlan are “nearline” solutions. Time Machine is by its nature an active process so it cannot really be backed up. Rather you could install Crash Plan Pro and backup in parallel. Then you would have two sources to recover from and eliminate another point of failure.

Q. I am having trouble with Time Capsule and I don’t think that it is backing up. I get an error saying that the back up disk image could not be mounted. How can I fix this?

A. Time Capsule, as you may know, is an additional tool to help users back up their Macintoshes wirelessly over a local network. Users running Mac OS X 10.5 aka Leopard, can take advantage of the new easy to use back up feature Time Machine. That way they can protect their valuable data in case some disaster strickes their computer.

Time Machine and Time Capsule will back up data every hour that the Macintosh computer is up and running. Initially it does a complete backup and then in tracks and backs up any changed files. With the back you can recover a file or the entire computer’s system and data if either is lost somehow.

Some users have experienced similar problems with the initial versions of the Time Machine. For every Mac that it backs up it creates an image of the hard drive in the form of a sparse disk image. A disk image is a file that behaves like a removable hard drive and a sparse one doesn’t have a fixed size so it can grow as required. For some reason, the sparse image may get damaged – afterwards it may not be able to mount normally, so that it can be read from or written to.

The fix for this is simple. Your Time Capsule should appear in the Finder’s Side Bar. Open a new Finder window if one is not open. If you don’t see the sidebar click the white lozenge in the top right corner of the window. Open the Time Capsule’s drive where you will see one or more “sparsebundle” files. Look for the one that matches your computer’s name along with a jumble of letters and numbers. My computer’s Time Machine file is named “macbook_001b639842a7.sparsebundle”. The jumble represents you “Ethernet Address”, which you can find under Network in System Preferences.

To fix the problem – simply rename the file by changing a few letters or numbers. The next time that the Time Capsule backs your Mac up it will see the file is missing and it will create a new one. After a few days of successful back up you can delete the older back up file.

Q. Does Windows File Sharing run automatically on Leopard, or is there something else I need to do?

A. Windows file sharing is still available in Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard although it appears to be hidden. To turn on Windows file sharing, open “System Preferences” and click on the sharing icon. Next put a checkmark next to “File Sharing” and with it highlighted you should see the current shared Folders and Users who are able to connect to your Mac. When a user from a remote Mac or Windows machine wants to access a file they would connect by either by choosing “Connect to Server” in the Finder on the Mac or by choosing your Mac from “My Network Places”.

In previous versions of OS X, Windows file sharing was sharing preference on its own. In Leopard, File Sharing is customized the “Options…” button. From there you can control whether users can connect to by Apple Filesharing Protocol, Windows File Sharing, also known as SMB and Samba, as well as FTP. By default only AFP is active. When you choose “Share files and folders with SMB”, you will also need to choose the user account that is able to access the files on your Mac and you will also need to authenticate the access by entering your username and password.

Apple has removed the FTP management functions in Leopard’s System Preferences. However it is still possible to run FTP on your Mac under 10.5.

To start the FTP service in the Terminal type:
sudo /sbin/service ftp start

To stop it type:
sudo /sbin/service ftp stop

Enjoy

Addendum:
Duh! It looks like Apple moved the “FTP” and “Windows” under Options in the Sharing Preference in System Preferences. Oops!

We’ve had a lot of questions about Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard so rather than present them separately we will present them together.

Connecting to servers is not so simple, at first.

With Leopard, Apple has simplified the way we connect to servers and other computers that have enabled file sharing. However this has also confused a number of users.

In the past versions of the system you would connect to another machine from the Finder with the Go menu. You could either choose “Connect to Server” or press “Command K” on the keyboard. Then enter either the server’s IP address or local name. You click the “Browse” button, which took you to the “Network” window where Macintosh computers would be grouped under My Network and Windows computers would be grouped under the workgroup name.

There is a new “simplified” way to connect to remote computers. In the Finder, open a new Finder Window (Command N) where you will see a list of resources on the left. (If you don’t see the list on the left press the white lozenge in the upper right corner.) Normally the list shows “Devices”, “Shared”, “Places” and “Search For”. Under the Shared items you should see the various computers and servers that appear in your network. To connect to another computer, simply click on the name. If Guest access is turned on you will instantly “Connect as: Guest”. However Guest access is usually limited.
To connect as an authenticated user whom has more privileges you can click the “Connect As…” button in the upper right. Then you will get the familiar log in prompt. You then enter you login name and the password on the remote computer. Now you have more privileges than a guest.

Mysterious Black Boxes abound.

A user recently reported that she had black boxes appearing in her QuarkXpress document and that it had spread to the Mac. The real culprit was Universal Access’s Voice Over feature. In order to make Mac’s more accessible Voice Over reads dialog boxes and menus to users with impaired vision. To aid the user the feature also adds black boxes around the currently active area.
The mysterious black boxes appeared when the operator pressed “Command F5”, which in the past was the QuarkXpress short cut key to “send to back” and move a selected object to the back of a layout. In Mac OS X 10.5, “Command F5” turns on Voice Over. To get rid of the black boxes simply press “Command F5” again. The “Send to Back” command in QuarkXress is now “Shift F5”.

Fixing printing with QuarkXress and Acrobat Pro.

It may seem that printing in Leopard is not ready for prime time. Many users have found that in order to get QuarkXpress to print in Leopard they have to make a PDF and then print the PDF. Printing directly doesn’t work for them while others cannot print with the Adobe PDF virtual printer. You guess it, Apple has also changed the printing functions in Leopard – the PPDs that control how printers are sent files have been moved causing confusion.
Released before Leopard, Acrobat Professional initially was not compatible with Mac OS X 10.5. Adobe has since released version 8.1.2 of Acrobat Professionsal. Run, don’t walk and install this update and your PDF printing problems will vanish.
Additionally Quark has made their “Quark CUPS Filter” available to fix printing issues with their QuarkXpress application. Installing this patch and restarting the computer will correct many issues that prevent pages from printing directly.

Suitcase Con-fusion.

If you are planning to or if you have upgraded to Suitcase Fusion you may be surprised to find that many of your fonts are “Missing” or cannot be “previewed”. There is an issue with the database or font vault that suitcase uses. Most notably this is true when you use the Migrate option to move to a new Mac.
Before you move to the new Mac download the “Export Suitcase Sets” AppleScript from squarecirleconsulting.net . It will allow you to export your Suitcase vault and then import in onto the new Mac.

Q. I recently upgraded to Leopard and I wanted to use “Quick Look” but it is not coming in the Finder. How can I load it in the toolbar?
A. There is an unfortunate side affect to upgrading your Mac from either Panther or Tiger and that is the new features of the Finder don’t appear as advertised. The reason is that your preferences are preserved when you choose “Archive and Install” when installing Leopard over your Tiger installed Mac.
“Quick Look” and the new “Cover Flow” features normally appear in the toolbar at the top of the new Finder Windows. Quick Look allows you to read a text file, or view an image or even play a movie without having the open the application that created it. Cover Flow allows you to “flip” through your files and quickly preview them.
The upgrade installer preserves your preferences and doesn’t replace the toolbar items. To correct that or customize the toolbar choose “Customize Toolbar” from the “View “ menu while you have Finder window open. To get the standard Leopard settings choose “drag the default set into the toolbar”. You could also add any other items from the dialog box that you would like.