Don't buy Snow Leopard

If previously I was equivocal, now I’m clear: buying Snow Leopard was a mistake.

Sure, I was already irritated that Mac OS X 10.6 deletes AppleTalk and PowerPC support. However, a few people may not have a need for these technologies. I was running it on my Intel-based iMac which needs two printers, neither which of changed in the past 6 years.

But today, trying to scan a document for my tax return, I found that 10.6 breaks existing scanner drivers. Trying to re-install the scanner software, it refused to install one of the kernel extensions (kext), implying that some or all 32-bit kernel drivers are toast.

Sure enough, my scanner is known to be incompatible with OS X 10.6 and it’s not on the list of scanners HP plans to support for 10.6. This is the second time Apple’s broken drivers this decade, a record that seems to surpass Microsoft.

Facing this, I wasted most of the afternoon re-installing 10.5, copying user files and preferences, re-configuring printer and network settings, and installing post-10.5 updates. And I paid $50 for the privilege of having to do so. (If this had been OS 7,8 or 9, the re-install would have been done after 20 minutes).

As a systems programer and standards strategist, I can see why Apple developed 10.6 to help the Nexties force a transition away from legacy architectures and APIs. It appears to have succeeded wonderfully here.

However, unless you own a large-RAM desktop or server CPU, I can’t see why anyone would pay to buy this less capable software. Wait for the new one that actually does something new.