I’ve spent the last week MIA. Earlier in the week, I installed Snow Leopard on my Macbook Pro. The install went smoothly. Then I tried to accomplish things.

A real snow leopard would have done less damage. Microsoft Office products would open but were unable to save or print or print to PDF without crashing. I had the same experience with Adobe Acrobat 7 and Photoshop Elements 6. To add insult to injury, iCal and Mail were acting funky, with repeated crashes. I was unable to do anything I need to accomplish on a daily basis. I made sure I had the latest and greatest updates of all the software, but that didn’t fix the problems.

Luckily, I’d backed up all of my personal files before I started the upgrade. But I hadn’t backed up my entire machine, including all those tiny extensions, plug-ins, and shareware apps that add tweaks to different programs and the overall operating system. However, I bit the bullet. I performed a clean install of Snow Leopard, wiping out everything. A clean install means that I then had to re-install all the programs on my machine, from the iLife suite to the Adobe and Microsoft suites. Again, I made sure to download the latest and greatest of everything.

At this point, I’d invested almost 2 days in trying to upgrade my system. Imagine my surprise when I was having the exact same problems as before. I was unable to save or print and my iCal and Mail were crashing repeatedly. I investigated my issues on the Web, but these didn’t seem to be common problems. Seeing as how I needed my email, appointments, and applications in order to run my business, I had no choice. I downgraded. In order to return to Leopard (10.5), I had to do a clean install, again wiping out everything.

Day 3 found me re-installing and updating everything for the second time. Everything worked – almost. Mail didn’t function – it wouldn’t even open. I tried everything I could think of, but ended up making an appointment at the Apple Store. Unfortunately, the appointment was a day or two away.  In the meantime, I had learned a lesson – for the second time. I obviously have a hard head. About a year ago, I had a backup drive give out, and I hadn’t backed up my backup, so to speak. At that point, I gave serious consideration to storing everything in the clouds, but I never followed through. This time around, I’m all about the cloud.

I was already halfway there. My photos are already on Flickr, so I didn’t lose those. My mail is completely IMAP and/or Gmail, which means I didn’t lose too much of it. Using Gmail has gotten me into the habit of not really filing things – I just tag things and sort them into Smart Folders in Mail, but they remain on the server. I did manage to lose a couple of things, but overall I ended up okay.

Since Mail.app wasn’t working, I was able to access my mail through various webmail applications. I seriously considered moving everything into two Gmail accounts forever, and not needing to use Mail.app ever again. Unfortunately, I’m not willing to part with my IMAP accounts and move to POP. In order to use only Gmail and/or Google Apps for Your Domain for all of my email addresss (six of them), I would have to change them all over to POP. So Gmail for everything was out. Alternatively I tried Mozilla Thunderbird, which I disliked, and Entourage. Entourage had some nice qualities, but like Outlook, it doesn’t handle IMAP very well. I was stuck.

As for my iCal, I was already in the cloud. When I made the decision many months ago to switch away from an iPhone, I knew I’d need to sync my calendar and contacts somehow – and it might not be Mac-friendly, so I bought Spanning Sync and started syncing everything with Google. So my calendars were synced not only with my Google account, but with Mobile Me. The only change I made was to install Google Gears so that now I can access my calendar if I’m ever offline.

For To Do/Tasks, I finally broke down and started using Remember the Milk. I know, everyone has been using RTM for ages. I’m behind the curve. Using Gears, I can access it when I’m offline, and I installed the widget to the right of my Google Calendar as well.

I downloaded DropBox and I’m going to use all 2 GB, I think, and I may upgrade to a paid version (50 GB for $10/month). I’ll store all of my client contracts, latest and greatest client updates, and so on out there. I can access it from anywhere and I feel better with my most important files in the cloud instead of just sitting on a backup drive. I’ve already been bitten by that.

My bookmarks and passwords were lost. In a way, this was probably a good thing. I’m now going to be a lot more secure. I downloaded KeePass, an open-source password manager that will store my most important passwords, including passwords to things on my computer (as opposed to just things online). The database file for KeePass is stored in my DropBox. Additionally, I started using Xmarks. Xmarks syncs my Firefox bookmarks across computers. Additionally, it syncs my Web passwords and brought in my Delicious bookmarks as well. However, it does seem to blow up if it tries to sync with Safari, but only if Safari is already syncing with Mobile Me.

So that’s how I’m moving into my own little cloud. I still have a few issues to work out. Logging into bub.blicio.us, for example, only seems to happen if I use Safari and not Firefox. The Apple Store Geniuses played around with my Mac yesterday and rescued Mail.app for me. It was using a Snow Leopard preference file in regular Leopard. So much for a clean install. But overall, I’m finally back in one piece – and cloudlike.

Photo credits: Snow Leopard via CC

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So a bunch of anouncements out of the Apple WWDC keynote this morning. Here’s the rundown:

iPhone 3GS

Time to break open the pocketbook. iPhone 3G S will be available in the US on June 19 for a suggested retail price of $199 (16GB) $299 (32GB) at Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. So obviously the capacity has gone up. What else is new?

• It’s supposedly up to twice as fast as the iPhone 3G, with longer battery life.
• 3 MP autofocus camera with video recording
• Hands-free voice control for dialing, working the iPod, and just about anything built into the system
• iPhone OS 3.0 with Cut/Copy/Paste, MMS (end of summer availability), Spotlight Search, landscape keyboard options
• Digital compass
• Remote wipe if you lose the phone

And for those of you who remember that I recently gave a talk on social media and accessibility, Apple has seriously improved the iPhone’s features for those with disabillities.

iPhone 3G S provides new accessibility features including VoiceOver, a screen reader that speaks what appears on the iPhone 3G S display, enabling visually impaired users to make calls, read email, browse web pages, play music and run applications. The new universal Zoom function magnifies the entire screen, and the White on Black feature reverses the colors on screen to provide higher contrast for people with low vision. iPhone 3G S also supports Mono Audio which combines left and right audio channels so that they can be heard in both earbuds for those with hearing loss in one ear.

iPhone 3G

The price on the current iPhone has immediately dropped to $99. It will run iPhone 3.0, which is available via download on June 17 via iTunes.

Snow Leopard

While this is really a great upgrade for developers, it can’t hurt for the rest of us to upgrade too. Especially since the new upgrade will only cost $29!  Oftentimes I’ll skip major upgrade like that because of cost, but at that price – I’m there. Snow Leopard hits stores this September. Engadget has a list of some of the new Snow Leopard features:

• Apple rewrote the Finder, while keeping it mostly the same on the surface, for a bunch of “little benefits.” Tweaks include faster Quick Look previews and Spotlight searches.
• There’s built-in Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 support in the OS, including Mail, Calendar and Address Book syncing.
• QuickTime X has a new “modern foundation,” HTTP streaming and a whole new look. Users can record and trim video, and upload to sharing sites like MobileMe and YouTube.
• Snow Leopard has half the footprint of Leopard, amounting to 6GB in savings and 45% faster installs.
• New trackpads can handle handwriting recognition now, and there’s new text selection “AI.” There’s also support for wireless Braille accessories (pictured).
• Safari 4 is available for Windows, Leopard and Tiger, but Snow Leopard adds “Crash Resistance,” which keeps browser and tabs intact even if a plugin crashes — user just refreshes the page. 64-bit version does JavaScript 50% faster.
• All core apps are 64-bit, and performance improvements abound. Mail boasts 85% faster message loads and 90% faster loads, while Time Machine has a 50% faster initial backup time.

Safari 4.0

Safari 4 was released today, and you can download it right now for both Mac and PC. It’s got a bunch of new features and is being billed as incredibly fast.

• Top Sites function: Similar to Chrome, you can see a visual of the sites you browse the most frequently, letting you rely less on bookmarks and toolbars. Markers indicate recent changes to the sites.
• Cover Flow & Full History Search: I guess if it works somewhere, implement it everywhere. You can view your bookmarks and browsing history using the nifty cover flow feature. This is actually handy. Sometimes I won’t remember the name of a site in my countless bookmarks, but I can identify it on site. Added to that, you now search your browsing history.

MacBook Updates

The new 15′ MacBooks have the same non-removable battery (I’m sorry but that’s annoying) as in the current unibody 17-inch option. The battery should last around 5 years and 7 hours per charge. They replaced the ExpressCard slot with an SD-card reader. That’s not a bad idea at all.  The starting price tag is around $1699, which is lower than previous incarnations. (No wonder Microsoft gets in digs at Apple’s prices.)  Prices run between $1699 for the low end to $2299 for the high end. The 17″ unibody MacBook Pro is being discounted *cough* to $2499.

The MacBook Airs have also received a bit of a refresh and a price cut to $1499 and $1799, depending on the configuration. It’s a $700 discount. Still too steep for me, but definitely an improvement.

That’s the major announcements from what I’ve read across the web this afternoon. I have to admit that as much as I love my MacBook Pro (non-unibody, 1 year old), I’m sort of feeling a little apathetic towards Apple. Even the commercials are getting to me. Backlash, maybe?

What do you think of the new announcements?

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