When I was young and beautiful and was heading off overseas for my European tour my Father and Stepmother both individually gave me sage advise that I’ve always felt may have been related in some way. My Father said “Always wear a Prophylactic.” He was a pharmacists and my Stepmother said “Always drill a pilot hole first.”
To some degree I’ve have always tried to live by this creed. It works we’ll for intimate relationships such as the ones many of us have with our computers these days. We all like bright shiny objects and desire is a very strong emotion but we should all stop and think before diving into a new relationship be they Human or Digital and this is especially true of computer operating systems.
History has shown us that shiny new operating systems, like individuals dressed for a night out, are not always what they appear to be. Scrape off the paint and you’ll often find some skeletons in the closet. In the cold hard light of day things often look very different and you can never be sure just what you’ve brought home with you. So it pays to make decisions about a new relationship cautiously rather than basing a long term commitment on a five minute speed date. And, believe it or not, I am still talking about upgrading your operating system.
Single parents beware:
If you have just one computer (or very few) and you rely heavily on it for work / study etc. and everything on it works just fine then don’t be an early adopter. Lets take it as given that new systems are going to have bugs; they may be very few or many, but they will have bugs and if you rely heavily on your relationship being stable you don’t want to dip your toe in the water and loose something important to you.
Yes but there so attractive you just have to have them:
If you don’t want to abstain then you should take precautions. Do your research. Don’t believe what you are being told about the future of your relationship together by the one who want commitment from you. Remember they may be squeezing your buttocks or they may be checking the size of your wallet. Do some broad research about the OS and the applications you rely on heavily and don’t assume that no news is good news. Snow Leopard was released early and many developers were caught on off guard so some had not finished bug-fixes or product testing. If all else fails shoot an email off to the software developer asking specifically if their software is compatible with the new OS and if you can’t establish a that it is and you really rely on it working then you know what I’m going to say.
I know of one web site that rates ISP by the “my isp sucks” index. Basically they Google “isp name sucks” and see how many hits they get. As of writing “Snow Leopard sucks” produces 67 hits. I’d say that’s pretty low for an OS only release a few weeks ago. If you dig deeper into the sucking camp you’ll often find that the people making these statements made assumptions about the relationship they were going to have without going much past the promises made on a first date. There are many pearls of sage advise on the web about Snow Leopard but you need to be able to read between the lines of those statements made by cast-offs and jilted lovers. So her is just a few words of wisdom from those who believe it is better to work a relationship rather than cast it aside at the first sign of trouble:
Starting point read Apples info about Snow Leopard. No really rrrrread it. http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/
Search the apple support site for “Snow Leopard”. http://support.apple.com
Read the reviews of Snow Leopard: Starting point (bit heavy): http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars Google “Snow Leopard Review”
Check software compatibility: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3258 http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/
And check with the developer of your favorites.
Remember a lasting relationship is supposed to be built on a sold foundation not a quickie in the kitchen of a share hose in Marble Arch.