Three Useful Snow Leopard Links…
Yesterday I came back from a week at the beach and found my copy of Snow Leopard waiting. I have an up-to-date Time Machine backup, so I figured I’d dive right in. The upgrade was the easiest OS upgrade I’ve ever experienced. It took an hour, but required no babysitting. Really quite impressive.
Once I was booted in Snow Leopard, there were a few things that required my attention.
The first was Adobe Flash. I read this article, which says that the Snow Leopard upgrade replaces the current version of Flash with a previous version that is vulnerable to a variety of attacks. No problem there. Once you finish your Snow Leopard install, go to the Flash site and download/install the latest version of Flash Player.
Next up is for developers. You’ll need a new version of the Mac and iPhone SDK for Snow Leopard. In the past, this has always been an all-in-one upgrade. For the moment, Apple has split Xcode and the SDK into two separate downloads. And, as far as I can tell, there’s no single page containing both downloads. Argh.
Go to http://developer.apple.com to download the SDK. As usual, you’ll need to first select the dev center you are interested in, then login. Once logged in, scroll down to the downloads area and download the SDK of choice.
Next, go to http://connect.apple.com to download the Xcode package. Login, click the Downloads link, scroll down to Xcode 3.2 and download/install. I don’t believe the order matters. I installed the SDK first, then Xcode and everything worked fine. Note that you can pull Xcode off the Snow Leopard install DVD (see the Optional Installs folder – thanks for the pointer, @akulbe), but if you do have net access, I’d always go for the download, since it ensures that you’ll always get the latest version.
The third item I needed to deal with came up when I double-clicked on a .wmv file. I got the message:
“quicktime player must be installed to run this application”
Turns out I have Flip4Mac installed to play my .wmv files. I went here and downloaded the latest version. Installed, and the .wmv file now opened in the gorgeous new QuickTime Player. Brilliant. Note that you don’t necessarily need Flip4Mac if all you want to do is play .wmv files. You can just use “Get Info” and associate .wmv with the QuickTime Player. Thanks to @mikejuergens for that suggestion.
Overall, an incredibly easy upgrade experience. Now to go find my new printer drivers. 
– Dave
