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Upgrading Mac OS rather than clean install

phexac

phexac

Senior member
I use Windows myself, but I got and iMac and a Macbook Air for my gf because it's easier to keep macs virus and spyware free and are just easier to take care of. Plus the Air is a great computer in its own right. As far as ultra-portables go, I think Air is one of the best offerings out there. But I digress.

Now she has an option to upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard for cheap. From what I understand, this upgrade process preserves all your files, programs and settings. Now, from my experience with Windows, it generally does not seems like a good idea to upgrade, but I don't know Mac OS well enough to know if for Apple this is not an issue. I don't see a reason to not upgrade since the OS is supposed to have quite a few under the hood improvements and is very cheap. But at the same time, I don't want to have a sub-optimal setup because of the upgrade. So what is the deal with the upgrade process on the Apple side? Is upgrading over the previous OS ok? Is there an option for clean install? Which is better?

Thanks.
 
Upgrading over the previous OS is quick, easy and trouble free. At least for me and my MacBook Pro. Not having to reinstall every application and set up email accounts again is a time saver.
 
Yes upgrading over the previous OS is ok. Yes there is an option for a clean install. It's up to you. You may see a slight hit in performance, maybe not even noticeable. It does give you a chance to redo everything so there is that advantage.
 
I've had problems in the past doing a Mac OS X upgrade.

Since then I only do clean installs.
 
Originally posted by: jonesthewine
Upgrading over the previous OS is quick, easy and trouble free. At least for me and my MacBook Pro. Not having to reinstall every application and set up email accounts again is a time saver.
Click to expand...

Ditto. No problems here either with Snow Leopard on my MBP. Even though I've only had my MBP for less than 1 month I've already done a fair bit of customizations so not having to redo the settings and install applications was a huge plus. My personal suggestion would be to do an upgrade.. and if that results in noticeable problems afterwards, then do the clean install. (unless you don't mind re-doing all the settings etc... in which case go straight for the clean install)
 
I think it depends on how you run your system. Do you install hacks, etc.. on the system? If so, I would either do a really good job of disabling them, or just do a clean install. If not, then just upgrade. I missed a few hacks on my system and something was causing my iTunes sync to not work.. I ended up just doing a clean install when the final retails version came out. No issues so far.. but it's a pain to move all your stuff back over.

My wife's Macbook, on the other hand, went without a hitch. So I think it mainly depends on how you run your system.
 
Is there an app that'll let me build a set of preferences and then allow me to apply those preferences to a new computer, or to my current computer after reformatting?

For instance, I always set my background to a plain blue color, I put the dock on the right side of the screen, I put my home directory, the Applications directory, and my documents and downloads directories in the dock, I set computer sleep time to 1 hour, display sleep time to 20 minutes, etc, etc. Is there an app that'll store all of those settings and apply them for me automatically after a reformat? I'm sure some backup or migration software would do it, but I want to restore anything beyond what I specify.

Or alternatively, is there some documentation of how to change those sort of things from the command line so I could write a shell script that will do it?
 
Snow Leopard upgrades smoothly as far as I can tell. That's good since clean installs are a colossal PITA time wise.
 
Originally posted by: mugs
Is there an app that'll let me build a set of preferences and then allow me to apply those preferences to a new computer, or to my current computer after reformatting?

For instance, I always set my background to a plain blue color, I put the dock on the right side of the screen, I put my home directory, the Applications directory, and my documents and downloads directories in the dock, I set computer sleep time to 1 hour, display sleep time to 20 minutes, etc, etc. Is there an app that'll store all of those settings and apply them for me automatically after a reformat? I'm sure some backup or migration software would do it, but I want to restore anything beyond what I specify.

Or alternatively, is there some documentation of how to change those sort of things from the command line so I could write a shell script that will do it?
Click to expand...

I believe that if you run migration assistant, you can then only tell it to copy over your settings and nothing else.
 
Considering it takes hours for me to install and setup everything after a clean install, I try to avoid it. I upgraded from Leopard to Snow Leopard last night on my macbook pro, so far so good.
 
I did a clean install from leopard to snow leopard on my mbp. From the initial setup screen I then restored from time machine which brought back my settings, apps and files and was up and running in about 3 hours. Seems to be good so far.
 
I did an upgrade on my MacBook, but then promptly dropped the drive into a unibody macbook pro, so I think when I get my own unibody macbook pro (borrowing Tyranicus' since he is an awesome friend) I will simply migrate my files over from my hard drive instead of switching drives.
 
I did an upgrade install on mine, and it appears to be working just fine. Parallels 4 launches my XP SP3 bootcamp install w/o issue.
 
I consider Windows to be a MUST clean install, never upgrade no matter what.

OSX on the other hand has been nearly flawless for me, especially Leopard to Snow Leopard.
 
I do clean installs on my Mac. I'm OCD that way. I keep a library of all of the apps I use in DMG format on both local hard drives and away on the cloud, so I don't have to re-hunt them down whenever a clean install takes place. Plus MobileMe backs up my calendar, contacts and bookmarks so those don't need to be backed up. Rest of it I just pull them off myself from old TM's.
 
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