Ok, I take back “nothing else” and replace it with “a lot of shit.” Turns out, Snow Leopard is rock solid, but there are hidden mysteries that it provides – especially where 64 bit is concerned – that make a lot of software out there… not ready.
Take for instance, MacPorts – a fantastic way of running some F/OSS on OS X. Doesn’t work. Experimental support is built in to nightlies… which I guess is getting there. Little Snitch simply disappeared. Programs with ktexts – kernel extensions – like SoundFlower and SteerMouse are also dead in the water.
Other more commonly used programs die as well. MS Office can’t update. The Aptna IDE is a non-starter. In fact, you’ll find that a large percentage of your software works in a large percentage of the way you expect but… wait… what’s that? Why does this particular function no longer work?
Granted, Snow Leopard won’t be out until September probably, so there’s plenty of time for programmers to get their code up to date. As one of those programmers, I can tell you that it’s going to be a bit of a battle. I’m running into major roadblocks with Twistori Desktop and the ScreenSaver.framework package that differs a lot from Leopard->Snow Leopard.
In fact, none of your screensavers on Leopard will run in Snow Leopard. Just an FYI.
Anyway, that’s enough of a rant. I keep going back and forth between downgrading or not. I need to start developing heavily in Snow Leopard to make sure that Multiplex and Twistori Desktop are ready. However, I also need to push solid releases sooner than Snow Leopard will be released to our Leopard install base.
Hmm… what to do…
Tagged apple, Experimental, IDE, little snitch, MacPorts, multiplex, new features, objective c, os x, OSS, programmers, roadblocks, ScreenSaver, screensavers, snow leopard, software, steermouse, Twistori, twistori desktop
8 Comments
Re: Snow Leopard software requiring rewrite
Spotlight screensaver and Lil Snitch works with recent SN update.
LittleSnitch and SteerMouse both work for me on 10A432…
for me multifirefox does not work on 10A432 release :/
It starts but when you try to load a profile firefox crashes…
Same here.
Will you update MultiFirefox in the near future?
Hey Dave, just wondering if there are any plans to update MultiFirefox to work in Snow Leopard? As a web developer, I use it literally everyday and would love to be able to use it again. I’ve done minimal research, but it looks like Snow Leopard runs Python in 64-bit mode. And wxWidgets doesn’t… I’ve tried launching MultiFirefox in Rosetta, but that doesn’t seem to help.
firefox profile manager is the problem with multi firefox (as far as i know) , trying to load firefox profile manager in snow leopard gives the same error. this only happens on some computers….(if you read this – now – i guess you one of them)
Seems to be a bug in Firefox – https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=513747. I created a Symlink /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin to my desktop. It launches the Profile Manager, and you can go from there. Would really love a fix, either from Mozilla, or here Dave
.
Seems to be a bug in Firefox – bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=513747. I created a Symlink /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin to my desktop. It launches the Profile Manager, and you can go from there. Would really love a fix, either from Mozilla, or here Dave
.