Basically I demonstrated for them the improvements (under the hood) that Apple have made in the latest version of OS X (10.6). By my count Snow Leopard contains over 100 significant modifications and improvements, but more than enough people have already covered most of these on other blogs so I’ll not add to the noise on this. If you are interested to find out more then check out Apple’s enhancements and refinements page.

Other then the update to 64 bit in the system and many of the core apps the big ticket item is the upgraded to the services menu. In older versions of OS X the services menu appeared as a menu item in the drop-down menu under the program name in the menu bar. It contained a long list of ever service, functions provided by other applications to the system and other applications on it. Whilst this was a cool way of extending the overall functionality of the system it was not very user friendly as the list contained every service available whether you used them or not and whether they were relevant to what you were doing  at the time. Having a service to rotate an image available when your editing text in a text editor is obviously as useful as proverbs on a Bull.

Well Apple have made some very significant changes. The service menu is now contextually aware so if you are editing text in a text editor you will only see the services that are relevant to the task at hand. Even more handy is the appearance of the services menu in the context menu (control+click / right click) of all applications that support this functionality and in the Action drop-down menu in finder (the button with the cog wheel icon on it). So there are at least three convenient locations you can find the services menu now.

The services menu is also configurable now. To do this all you have to do is click on ‘Service Preferences…’ in the service menu or open the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keybord preferences pane and you can switch the service on and off as you like. You can also change the keyboard shortcuts for each service. The trick is to double click on the existing shortcut (or select a service and hit enter) to make changes.

If you want to take things to the next step and create your own services you can do so with the new service template in Automator. All in all I think what Apple have done with services in Snow Leopard is brilliant and should bring the power of automation to many more Mac users. I suspect this is due in no small part to Sal Soghoian [2] the product manager for automation technologies at apple who introduced me (and about a hundred other transient BFFs) to the new services menu a few months ago.

The Mac OS X Automation web site, which was set up by Sal, is the best place to find out more about services. There are a number of service you can download from the site as well and tutorial on how to roll-your-own as well. There is a good primer article over at MacWorld and a Wikipedia entry about the service menu too.

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.