Rui CarmoI took this evening to upgrade my iMac to Tiger, since I not only needed a break to watch Farscape while it happened but also had already made all the required backups during the week.
Plus there was a very slim chance of really needing to work on it until, say, Sunday or so, so it could be put out of commission for a couple of nights if needed be.
The upgrade went smoothly, with a few exceptions:
- Mail.app packed up completely again. I couldn't send e-mail until I removed the .plist and re-synced preferences from .Mac. Really, Apple, could we please have this "thing" that passes for a MUA fixed?
- My HP PSC 950 doesn't print. No wonder, the driver's gone, and it's not natively supported. Time to wade through HP's extremely unfriendly support site and see if there are any updates, try out the older driver, etc. It should work, eventually.
- My PowerMate driver also vanished, and Griffin Technology has the (apparently not updated) file available for download in... .sit format.
Yeah, you guessed it, I was caught out by not having Stuffit Expander in Tiger. I already dropped a note to Griffin to ask for an updated file.
However, not being in the least interested in using proprietary archive formats, I happen to think that Apple did the right thing by telling Allume to... well... to stuff it, actually. Stuffit Expander 8.0 was a hideously bloated piece of software I managed to avoid installing throughout two years, and 9.0 isn't getting on any of my Macs if I can help it.
All the rest works. Dashboard widgets are liquid smooth, Spotlight is actually usable (although I got rid of its key bindings and use Quicksilver to query it instead), and the amazing Quartz Composer feels like a taunt to start designing Minority Report-like user interfaces. I'm leaving Fink to install over the weekend - Darwinports, however revamped, still seems to have far less critical mass.
On the laptop front, while setting up Tiger on the iMac I also took the time to remove FileVault from my iBook. Lots of people think I'm crazy for using it on an 800MHz machine, but I kind of liked the idea of having a secure home directory on a laptop that often travels along with me.
Tiger is now usable on it, but I have to wonder for how long. Like the spool (yeah, guys, more linkage), I have mixed feelings about this approach to "upgrading".
And yet, when you think about it, Mac OS X is still the best game in town, so I'll just grin and bear it.
Minor Update: Is it just me, or is it impossible to buy QuickTime 7.0 Pro in Portugal?