Appendix A. Installing Mac OS X 10.6
If your computer came with Snow Leopard already installed on it, you can skip this appendix—for now. But if you’re running an earlier version of the Mac OS and want to savor the Snow Leopard experience, this appendix describes how to install the new operating system on your Mac.
As you’ll soon discover, the installation process was the recipient of much love from Apple this time around. The whole thing is simpler, faster—and smaller; Snow Leopard requires half the disk space of the previous Mac OS X, saving you at least 6 gigabytes. (The savings comes from removing hundreds of printer drivers you’ll never use; removing some code that made Mac OS X compatible with pre-Intel processors; and using clever compression tricks to keep the system software small.)
The new installer is much smarter, too. There’s no longer any need for the classic “clean install” described later in this appendix; every installation is, in effect, a clean install. A built-in compatibility checker warns you if you have startup software (drivers or kernel extensions) known to be incompatible with Snow Leopard, and quarantines them by putting them into an Incompatible Software folder until you can deal with them.
You don’t have to restart the Mac when running the installer, either.
The new installer is even power-failure friendly. If something goes wrong during the installation, you can just run the installer from the DVD again; it picks up right from where it left off.
Getting ...
Get Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
