My Mac mini is ready to change its spots
Many of you may not know this, but on Friday, Apple will release its new operating system, OS X 10.5, a.k.a. Leopard, into the wild. This is the sixth major operating system that Apple’s delivered in six years (compare to Microsoft, who has said there will only be one major upgrade to Windows during the ’00s, and that was Vista).
With more people buying Macs than ever before (from PCWorld: “the company sold 2.2 million Macs during July, August, and September–a new high watermark for Apple. That’s a 34 percent growth over the year-ago quarter, and up by 400,000 over the previous quarterly record on file”), the release of Leopard becomes not only a major event for Mac users like me, but a major event for anyone planning to upgrade their computer in the next eighteen months (From CNet: of the 473,000 Macs sold in Apple’s retail stores, “something like 200,000 people last quarter…were new to the Mac”).
For a man who spends ten to fourteen hours a day on his computer, upgrading my operating system is akin to moving to a new home. With a new home, you’ve got to worry about the strength of the foundation, the quality of the plumbing and wiring, the age of the roof, the energy-efficiency of the windows, etc. With a new operating system, you worry about the strength of the core, the quality of the process and memory management, the age of the networking protocols supported, the efficiency of the backup system, etc.
Many of these things are relatively standard, however, in both houses and operating systems, and so the biggest concern is usually more prosaic: How comfortable is the layout and design? Is this the kind of kitchen you see yourself cooking in? Are the stairs in the right place? Is the yard big enough? — or — Do you like using the file browser? Are all your applications within reach? Will it make your future boundless?
It’s a big decision. But sometimes, you’re so damn frustrated with your current situation that you simply have no choice: you just have to move. And that’s what happening to me.
I bought my Mac mini in February of 2005 for three reasons: I was moving to Alaska and my iMac was too big to ship; my student loan refund came in, giving me a wad of cash; and the Mac mini was just too darn affordable. The mini came installed with Mac OS X 10.3, a.k.a. Panther, and both it and the operating system served me well throughout my Alaskan days.
In April 2005, Apple released Mac OS X 10.4, a.k.a. Tiger. When I got back to Vermont that summer, I upgraded. The system ran well at first, but as the months and years rolled on, and the OS got upgraded with system enhancements and security fixes (I’m currently running OS X 10.4.10), Tiger got too fat, and somewhere along the line, it broke my mini.
Normally, this is no big deal. Apple gives all its users a little application called “Disk Utility” that will usually fix whatever issue has cropped up. Unfortunately, to use it, you need the operating system’s install disk, and mine got lost in all the moving I’ve done, so for the last several months, I’ve been living in a virtual home where the roof leaks, the wires flare up, the doors stick, the floor is slanted, and there’s a giant spinning beach-ball blocking my view of the outside world.
Moving to a new operating system is a big step, but sometimes, we don’t have the luxury of being able to remain in the same place.
Leopard should arrive at my home in less than week. I can’t tell you how excited I am.