Snow Leopard from the eyes of common users

The Overview

It's been a year since Apple announced their latest installment of the OS X Leopard namely "Snow Leopard" in WWDC (World Wide Developers Converence) and now its finally here the world most advance operating system at least that's what the advertisement said. Nevertheless, we never knew until we tried true? went to the Apple store and bought it day 3 after the initial release date.


Cost me about $AU 69 for the family pack which will allowed me to installed SL for five Macs (must be in the same household they said) It's bloody damn cheap! since the Leopard DVD I bought cost me $AU 129 for single user when I upgrade my OS from Tiger to Leopard. I am very excited yet worried at the same time because every major technological advancement has its own benefits as well as the downfall. Base from previous experience of OS upgrade (Tiger to Leopard) its been horrific. In Australia, September can be considered as hell for Uni student for one specific reason ASSIGNMENT. Yes my main assignment production tool is Office 08 however due to the fact that I use other tools as well for research where 80% of them is Windows base applications I need to use VMWare. In simplified manner VMWare must not fail me after the upgrade to SL.

The Process

Backup is essential, and I did everything necessary to ensure that I do have proper backup in case of upgrade failure. Of me go to Time Machine and backed everything up to my external 1 TB "briefcase". It is still not convincing enough for me to just give it go as some people already had some minor issues during the upgrading process such as blackscreen, external monitor not working where any of these issues has not been dealt by Apple until this time. Anxiety and Curiosity contradict each other here. And I thought "lets do some pilot testing!" fortunately one of my mate who shares the same curiosity level as me offered his MacBook to be my first Pilot test for Snow Leopard upgrade and I said" why not?" unboxing it, boot up the DVD double click it, user license agreement, choosing where to Install it and of we go. It took about 45 minutes for installation process about the same amount of time as an upgrade from Tiger to Leopard.

"Ding!" the system rebooting, input the password, proceed to the main desktop, a little welcoming video and its done! pretty simple I should said. I noticed that at first the system a little bit sluggish due to the fact that spotlight reindexing all of the files over again. After a minute or two, Voila! it worked like a charm and it is faster (especially when you search for file in the spotlight). After convinced enough, now its the time to Installed it in my own system.

System Specification

MacBook Pro 2.2
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz
RAM 4 GB DDR 2 667 GHz
HDD Hitachi Travelstar 320GB 7200RPM SATA


Process Number Two

It is a 3 years old system but still works perfectly fine without hassle and its pretty damn fast. Lets buff up this baby with the new Snow Leopard. Samey installation process BUT uh'oh somehow the system failed to install after 50 % of the installation progress. Try that again and still never finished the upgrade. Everything still works perfectly fine, my Leopard still intact but there is no sign of upgrade to Leopard. When I checked yes, it is still the same old Leopard. "Time googling around" I said. And yes I did found couple of people who actually has the same issue as me during the upgrade process to SL and its all on MacBook Pro! There are no official response nor solution from Apple but unofficially some solution has been found by the expert.

1. Replacing the RAM with another RAM.
2. Use an external DVD ROM or replace the Internal DVD ROM.

Thanks to my housemate, I can go with the simplest solution which is use the external DVD ROM. I give it a go, and everything went smoothly! apparently there are some minor incompatibility issue with the old superdrive but then again it works perfectly fine by using the external DVD ROM. Other known issue I read on Mac-forums.com is the black screen where you can't see anything on your screen but actually the system is running well without proper backlight! Grab your torch boys and girls!

The Differences

Before

After

Can anyone tell the differences? Its almost seriously look identical and it is! as Apple said that most of the improvement from the new Snow Leopard is under the hood so the cosmetically face lift interface rarely present. The under the hood improvement will definitely improves speed but mostly will not be graspable by common users. I am not gonna go through all the details from under the hood improvement as my eyes are common user eyes now (according to the title).

One of the key usability improvement is in the expose feature, it is somehow more viewable and pleasant to look. It is definitely helping me to look at my stack of opened applications and works. Same goes for stack who went from annoying into more usable features.

The new expose

The new stack

Some precious hard drive spaces also has been freed up from this installation. Leopard took about 10 Giga of hard drive spaces while snow leopard took about 4 Giga! quite a save there!

About the VMWare compatibilities issue that worries me so much, I tested it and rest assure VMWare version 2.0.5 runs perfectly smooth in Snow Leopard *fuh. Well it works but compare to before, the performance is a bit slower for my VM, I reckon VMWare will release new updates to deal with this issues. As long as I can do my assignments everything is consider as fine.

Vista on VMWare Fusion

Final Note

As Im only play around for about two hours while writing this note at the same time, I can't says more. Further founding will be inform through this sites. If someone still confuse whether to upgrade or not I thoroughly recommends to upgrade. It is faster, it saves your hard disk spaces, and more importantly it cost you almost none. Its your Mac best friend, and once again another brilliant job from Apple. *sigh and now I really need to upgrade my Mac to utilize the possibilities of 16GB of RAM! -R-

Indonesia Malaysia conflicts

VS

Brief History

1960-1966

Hot topic that everyone loves to talk about. Although the conflict had already begun since early 1960 in the era of President Sukarno. "Konfrontasi" is the term referring to the open conflict between Indonesia and Malaysia. The core problem that erupted the conflict was none other than territorial annexation in the island of Borneo (Kalimantan Indo term for the whole island) as the new federation of Malaysia was being established by the Great Britain. Three Great Britain territories located in the island of Borneo are Sabah, Brunei(Britain protectorate bull crap) and Sarawak whereas in South lays the province of Indonesia. Thus the unification of new federation of Malaysia backed by British is hardly opposed by President Sukarno as it may threatened the Independence of Indonesia, Sukarno consider Malaysia as the puppet of Great Britain. The conflict ends in 1966 with the signing of peace treaty and the formal acknowledgment of Malaysia federation.

Current Situation

2000 - Now

Tension raise again between both countries fueled by territorial dispute over the Ambalat block in the north coast of Kalimantan where Indonesia already lost several portion of the block with the lost of Sipadan and Ligitan islands which upsets most of Indonesian. The saga between Malaysia and Indonesia continues it bearish trend; not only territories, Malaysia also claims some of Indonesian cultural richness such as:

• Reog Ponorogo ( traditional dance from Java)

Reog ponorogo dance

• Rasa sayange song ( from Maluku Ambon)
• Batik(textile styling from Java)
• Wayang (traditional puppet from Java)
• Pendet(traditional dance from Bali)

Although all of the self proclaimed heritage ownership by Malaysia has been heavily opposed by many Indonesian real action needs to be done swiftly or else Indonesia may lose their rights again. One noticeable action by the government is the implementation of Batik mark certification issued by Indonesia department of Industry to protect the originality as well as the quality of the Indonesian batik itself. Bloody well done I said!

Batik pattern from Jogja

Closing Point

As a native Indonesian, native Javanese who were born in Surabaya (to emphasize my Indonesian trait) I can't helped but sad and upset. Angry close to boiling point? well yes but not really because somehow in my point of view it's partly our fault as well as an Indonesian.

Why?

• Its been like a habit to us (bad habit) to act reactively rather than proactively. Point proven in this case. All I'm saying is we had like a thousand or maybe a hundred thousand of unique heritage in Indonesia but we never really preserved what we had then we "overhypely" react over the lost of says one song which we Indonesian doesn't really know who wrote this song(rasa sayange).

• Patriotic, seemingly never ending iterations of this words being spread around and use among Indonesian nowadays. Many claims to be so called the most patriotic person in Indo but what have they done? Nothing! we make a lot of noises, we always do but in practice? ZERO. want some real example? we always said bad things about Indonesian products, we never support it, we talk bad about it (Garuda airline, Bata shoes). We also laugh and said bad things when one of our original Nike jersey is made in Indonesia. Why?! I don't care whether anyone will agree with me on this but I seen fact.

In the end by saying patriotic, we should protect, preserve and cherish our national assets, by saying assets that includes our national products, our heritage, our people and our land. Spread all of Indonesian goodness to the world by acting like one. By being angry all the time and doing nothing or event provoke anarchism is just plain stupid and nowhere near patriotic at all. Therefore, as an Indonesian I encourage fellow Indonesian to fight for our rights, not by rage, not by words, but by action of wisdom. Brain over brawl.

Indonesia unite! let's make our country the best place to live!

-R-

Reference

http://www.33ff.com/flags/ (for flag image)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki

tugupahlawan.com(reog ponorogo image)

http://www.stratfor.com/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/nl/ (for Batik image)