A quick thanks to our friends at MacDailyNews for sharing this with us. Wikidot has published a fairly exhaustive list of Mac applications and more importantly are sharing information about their compatibility with Snow Leopard. I suggest that you take a moment and go visit to see what the status of your applications are. Also, they are encouraging early Snow Leopard adopters to share their experiences here.

Whether you plan to upgrade as soon as you receive your install DVD on Friday or are planning to wait a few weeks or months, this post will detail the minimal steps you should take in preparation for upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard.

Step 1 – Check for application updates/Snow Leopard compliance

Start with your most regularly used, mission critical applications, and make sure that they are up to date. More importantly make sure they are ready and compliant for running in Snow Leopard. If you are running applications that are not Snow Leopard compliant, you might want to wait on the upgrade until the developers release a Snow Leopard compliant version.

Step 2 – Purge

If you are like me, I NEVER take time to purge my Mac. Ever since Leopard was installed and all downloads went to the downloads folder instead of the desktop I haven’t purged a single thing. I’m certain that at least for me, 90% of the contents in my downloads folder can be trashed. While your at it, go through your applications folder and do the same thing. I probably have at least 100 trial versions of applications that I need to trash. Chances are that you do too. Don’t forget to empty trash after you finish purging.

Step 3 – Verify/Repair Disk and Verify/Repair Disk Permissions

When you are installing or upgrading an operating system, it’s always a good practice to make sure that the Disk onto which you’ll be installing or upgrading is in tip top shape. Apple has an application called Disk Utility that you can use to make a quick diagnosis of your hard drive’s condition. This application can be found in the Applications > Utilities folder. When you launch Disk Utility you’ll want to select your internal hard drive on which your current operating system is installed from the left hand sidebar and then click on the Verify Disk button which can be found toward the bottom right hand side of the application interface. Upon completion of the Verify Disk process you’ll receive a short synopsis of what the process found when it ran. If all is well, the final message will be listed in Green text. If there is a problem with your Disk, the final message will be listed in Red. If you get a Red message, your first course of action should be to manually initiate a Time Machine backup. Your second course of action should be to return to the Disk Utility application and click on the Repair Disk button located just beneath the Verify Disk button. Apple’s Disk Utility application is capable of making minor Disk repairs. If after running the Repair Disk process you still receive a Red final message, you should call AppleCare or make a trip to the Genius Bar and let them take a look.

After running the Verify Disk and/or Repair Disk processes, you’ll then want to run the Verify Disk Permissions process by clicking the Verify Disk Permissions button. If you’ve owned your Mac for any length of time, it’s quite possible that there may be some permissions that need to be repaired. If after running Verify Permissions the Disk Utility application lists permissions that need to be repaired, simply click the Repair Disk Permissions button just below the Verify Disk Permissions button. The repair process should take a few minutes and then you should get a message indicating which Permissions were repaired.

Step 4 – BACKUP!!!!

At a minimum you should manually run a Time Machine backup before inserting your Snow Leopard install DVD. I also recommend that you download Carbon Copy Cloner and create a bootable clone of your existing Macintosh Hard Drive. You’ll of course need a spare Hard Drive of some sort on which you’ll create the clone. After you’ve created the clone you’ll want to boot from the cloned copy to verify that it works. Once you’ve booted and verified that the clone works, you should be about ready to move ahead with the Snow Leopard upgrade.

Step 5 – Enjoy Snow Leopard and leave us some comments about your experience

As always, we’d like to hear about how your upgrade experience went. Did you have any problems? Are there any big exciting features that are surprises? Did any big exciting features not make the final release? Leave us some comments.

I’ve heard from a lot of people who plan to upgrade to Snow Leopard as soon as they have it in their hands on Friday. For many this will be no problem. Others may find regret in their haste. Here are three reasons to consider postponing your Snow Leopard upgrade.

1. Apple projected a Snow Leopard release date of September. Most developers took Apple at their word because of their past track record on delivery. As a result, we’ve heard directly from several developers such as Marketcircle, Agile Web Solutions, and yes everyone’s favorite, Adobe, with news stating that their current versions are not compatible with Snow Leopard. Further these manufacturers don’t expect to have Snow Leopard compliant versions available for at least several weeks after release.
2. While early reviews from beta testers indicate many positive things in Snow Leopard including stability and Exchange compatibility, no one, not even the beta testers know what will officially be released to the public. You may recall that when Leopard was released, there was much hype about a lot of great new features that didn’t make it into the initial release; i.e., Air Disk functionality for Time Machine. While a few missing features may not be deal breakers, the features that you are planning to use after upgrade may not end up in the initial release. Believe me, wait a day or two and you’ll know for sure what did and didn’t make the final cut.
3. This reason specifically applies to business. If you use your Mac as your primary or even secondary business computer, exercise prudence and wait. Production equipment, desktops or servers, should be upgraded with much deliberation. You can always argue a worst case and say that if for some reason Snow Leopard isn’t all it’s cracked up to be or is problematic that you could do a reinstall of Leopard and restore from a Time Machine backup, but remember, that will cost you the better part of a day for most users. Lost productivity = lost revenue.

If you can’t stand it and you must upgrade on Friday, swing back by here tomorrow and read about how you should prepare your Mac for the Snow Leopard upgrade.

There has been a lot of talk about stability improvements and many minor, “under the hood”, enhancements that are coming in Snow Leopard. We’re certainly excited about getting our hands on it and learning about what has changed and what is new and different. While Kevin and I are sure that Snow Leopard is going to be an awesome upgrade, we are recommending that our clients wait until we give the upgrade nod before diving in. We’ll be sharing our Upgrade experiences and our initial thoughts here. As well, we’ll be posting regular updates about what we are finding relative to enhancements as well as any problems or bugs that might arise.

At $29, Snow Leopard is no doubt going to be a great value. Feel free to click here to pre-order your copy of Snow Leopard from the DDS Amazon Store. If you “must” have your copy of Snow Leopard delivered on August 28, 2009, click on the graphic above to purchase your advance copy directly from Apple, Inc.

If you have any questions, please leave us some comments.

• New MacBook Pro 15″ – improved display, improved battery life, processor speed increases, SD Card reader now included, entry level price dropped to $1,699.
• Enhancements to MacBook Pro 17″ – entry level product now has 2.8 GHz processor and 500GB Hard drive, entry level price dropped to $2,499.
• MacBook 13″ Aluminum is now MacBook Pro 13″ – tops out at 8GB RAM and 500GB Hard drive just like 15″ big brother, entry level price drops to $1,199.
• MacBook Air – entry level price drops to $1,499, processor clock speeds bumped up to 1.6 GHz, 1.8 GHz, and 2.13 GHz.
• Safari 4 is out of beta. (It is super fast BTW).
• Snow Leopard to ship in September – $29 upgrade for existing Leopard users, $49 family pack available too.
• iPhone 3G S – launches on June 19, 2009 in North America and parts of Europe, the S stands for Speed, will ship with iPhone OS 3.0 (which is available on June 17, 2009), includes Video Recording/Edtiting, Voice Control, 3 megapixel camera with auto-focus. Available in 16GB or 32 GB option at $199 and $299 respectively. iPhone 3G 8GB option continues to be available and price is reduced to $99.
• iPhone OS 3.0 – available on June 17, 2009, free to iPhone owners, $9.99 for iPod touch owners, over 100 new features including cut, copy, paste, and spotlight search.