Living in the backwaters of the unfashionable end of the southern hemisphere has it’s advantages. Especially when lining up for the latest OS X upgrade means I’m standing in line for less than a minute. I didn’t even get to enjoy the antics of the guy in the sadly oversized Tiger suit, which no doubt was a good thing. In fact the whole process was amazingly painless.

I hadn’t done any preparations for installing Tiger. Simply because I wasn’t sure that I was going to buy it on launch day, but I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, what kind of gadget guru would I be if I didn’t. So I spent the hours between 7 and 10 p.m. backing up files, and saving license keys by emailing the details to my Gmail account. A handy way of keeping a permanent offsite searchable record.

I always reinstall the whole system. I prefer the method, because it removes unwanted applications, and generally cleans the install and layouts the files in a more optimized fashion. That means though that I have to ensure that I backup everything I’m going to need, because there isn’t any second chance.

The obvious files to backup are Documents, Movies, iPhoto and Pictures. I also include a few files from the Library directory like Mail, Calendar and Addressbook from the Application Support directory. The last two can always be backed up from the applications itself. I do both.

This time I also wanted to include backups from the Adium and Skype Instant Message log files. There have been some conversations recently that have included things like username and password that I wanted to keep. Again these are found in Application Support.

I also included the OPML files from my Podcast Tuner and NetNewsWire applications. I’ve spend months collecting them.

I use PodWorks as a way of restoring my iTunes music from my iPod. However, that doesn’t restore the meta data such as my ratings and number of times I’ve played the songs, so I always backup the iTunes Music Library data and xml files. I made the mistake of not including those in my first reinstall a few years ago.

Once I was confident I had everything, I slapped in the Tiger install disk and nervously (did I say I was confident) let it reboot and begin the install. There’s always one step that isn’t intuitive, because it’s easy to miss. It’ll automatically upgrade the system, rather than reinstall. So you’ve got to pay attention and make sure you select the right option. I’m guessing there’s another selection I missed, because I’m damn sure I don’t have to install all the language support and printer drivers that take up a good fifty percent of the install time.

Post install it doesn’t take long to get the system back with most of what I “need”. Broadband means I can drag down Adium, Skype, PodWorks, NetNewsWire and Quicksilver quickly and have the system working how I prefer. Applications like AudioHijack, Audacity, NeoOffice/J, VLC, Gimp and Podcast Tuner can come later once I have those core applications and my music back.

I had a short play with some of the new features before hitting the sack, dreaming of damn Dashboard Widgets all night.

Today, after getting the Podcasting tools to the right point, I’ve had more time to play with the system. First cab of the rank was finally syncing my Nokia 7610 with iSync. It didn’t work the first three times, making me wonder if the promise for greater support was an exaggeration by Apple. Eventually it worked, for no obvious reason.

Next I downloaded a few extra Widgets, like Wikiwidget, Gmail and Australian Radar Widget. It’s fantastic having a number of tools and data available at the press of a button. Simple things that would take a few clicks to find on the internet, now are available in the Dashboard. In many ways the leap in productivity I see this providing seems very similar to the change I found after installing Quicksilver for the first time.

I haven’t yet found the real uses for Spotlight. I’m sure I could spend some time playing with it and find many uses, but I figure that’ll be one that will show me through practical use. Especially at work. It certainly looks to be quick, and I love being able to see in documents, not just file names and folders. I’ve tested its ability to read inside the Instant Message logs files I mentioned earlier. Being able to instantly search historical conversations will come in really handy when I need to quickly remember what someone said. Finder and Mail also incorporate Spotlight, but I haven’t tested their results as yet.

One thing I spent a good degree of time setting up is Safari RSS. I converted the NetNewsWire OPML file of all my subscriptions into HTML and imported them as a book mark. I’ve then split them into categories so the 280 odd feeds are more manageable. I aim to see how useable the integration into the browser is. I like the look and feel, but I’m uncertain on the ease of use. It gets a little confusing looking at what is a new news item and what is old. Having said that, given I’ve been using NNW for a while, it might just need some getting used to. I’ll run them in parallel until I decide which I like more.

The major gripe I have with the new version is that lack of iLife applications. The last upgrade came with versions of iPhoto, iMovie and GarageBand. This time you have to foot the bill for the pack. I can live without most, but it’ll take some getting used to not having iPhoto. We’ll see if I can live with an iLife.

All an all the upgrade was incredibly painless. I remember doing upgrades with Windows, and the time taken usually ran around the three day mark. To have a brand new install up and running in under 24 hours is sweet work. A testament to a great operating system.

Anyone else got some tips for reinstalling OS X or perhaps some good uses for the features in Tiger?

Update : For those with Tiger already running, have a look at Apple’s Movie Trailers. They’ve put some High Definition Trailers online for viewing with Quicktime’s new H.264 codec. Saying that, my 1.5GHz G4 couldn’t handle the decompression and the play back was very choppy.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 30th, 2005 at 11:51 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.