Flash no longer crashes Mac OS X

When I was running Tiger, occasionally a Flash Player problem would create a critical crash of the Mac OS X kernel. After having upgraded to Snow Leopard, I can say that I have not had a single issue with Flash Player crashing the Mac OS kernel. Now with Flash Player 10.1, there are even fewer performance issues related to Flash content on the web while browsing from my Mac.

With the latest Google Chrome 5.0 which integrates Flash technology and the FireFox 3.6.6 crash-prevention features, my multimedia Flash experiences on my Mac are even more solid, reliable, and stable. Since Mozilla and Google has upgrade their browsers for more stability of Flash web apps, I really don't use Safari that much on my Mac. Google Chrome has become my preferred web browser now and FireFox remains my workhorse web browser.

Google Chrome

Google finally release Chrome for the Mac OS X that is on par with the Windows version. After using it for the a while, it is quite nice. There is still room for improvement with Flash content.

Snow Leopard Status Report

It runs faster than Tiger and is more stable. I have not encountered a single lockup or crash due to Flash video on Snow Leopard after a month of heavy use. In Tiger, Flash would occassionaly cause Mac OS X 10.4 to interrupt me and tell me to restart the OS. When I purchased my first MacBook back in 2006, streaming video was not a daily routine where today it is a use of my Mac that happens all day long.

The Spaces (virtual desktops) and other enhancements to Mac OS X are really nice. Everything just appears to run a bit better compared to Tiger. I should have made the switch sooner but I had my reasons and they were all legitimate.

The next decision is, what is my next Mac computer?? Is it a MacBook Pro, iMac, or other? I like the portability of notebooks and the screensizes so it looks like an iPad is out of the question.

The MacMini, MacBook, and MacBook Pro are in the top three for now. My 4-year old MacBook has been reliable and I am entirely satisfied with it. It is still holding its own after 4-years of daily use and the reasons I have for upgrading is to get a more capable GPU with more Video RAM for handling the increasing streaming video and graphics demands I now use on a daily basis. Additionally, the capability to support more installed system RAM 4-8GB preferred for virtualization purposes where I run Windows XP in VMware Fusion. If possible, an 8GB MacBook Pro would be nice. The more RAM the better. I don't think there is a 16GB MacBook Pro yet, that would be a nice icing layer on the cake.

HowTo Migrate iTunes after HD upgrade

I recently upgraded my HD on my MacBook and upgraded Mac OS X from Tiger to Snow Leopard. So how did I migrate my iTunes from my old HD to the new one? I just simply copied the entire \username\iTunes folder to an external drive. Then I copied onto my new HD. After doing this, everything works fine including syncing with my iPod Nano.

There may be a better way of doing this but the method I used is simple and just worked.

MacBook Snow Leopard Upgrade and Duct Tape

Well, I originally planned to upgrade my MacBook to Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) over the holiday break which never happened. My MacBook running Tiger is so reliable that I just did not want to compromise it over the past few months. I finally got around to it yesterday and it was a complete success. In the process I also upgraded the hard drive to a 7200rpm 320GB Western Digital Scorpion drive and installed Snow Leopard on it.

I can now run Google Chrome on my MacBook and all the other newer releases of software that have a minimum requirement of Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. Nice.

The only issue I encountered during the upgrade was an issue with the white plastic tab attached to the hard drive caddy broke. I consider this a design problem and component failure (ha, ha!). Luckily I could still remove the hard drive using a small pair of pliers pulling on what was still connected and graspable of the white plastic tab. One other item where I was very fortunate in this activity was owning a precision tool set that contains the right sized six-sided bit (hexagon shape) so that was not an obstacle. If it wasn't for the precision tool set which I got for X-mas, this would have been a show stopper.

So how did I fix the white plastic tab you might wonder, duct tape! I never envisioned using duct tape to fix a Mac or any computer for that matter but once again, duct tape has proven to be the universal "MacGyver" fix it all component. Now that I have put the duct tape to good use, it even feels more solid than the plastic strip that Apple uses. Maybe the Apple engineers and designers need to take note here. Ha! I suspect the white plastic degraded and eventually broke due to the heat from the hard drive enclosure.

Anyway, I am just glad that I had not issues with hardware or software during this upgrade of my MacBook HD and OS. A first for me and I got it right on my first attempt overcoming all minor obstacles I encountered.

Google Earth 5.1 Awesome Performance

I upgraded my Google Earth 4.1 to 5.1 on my MacBook this week. Wow! The latest release is blazingly fast. Prior to version 5.1, Google Earth on Mac OS X always felt slower than the same software on Windows. After comparing it to Windows computers running XP and Windows 7, I have verified for that Google Earth 5.1 on the Mac is now much faster and responsive compared to the software installed on Windows machines. I am impressed.

Upgrading from Tiger to Snow Leopard

After using my MacBook for 3-years, I finally have a reason to upgrade... Google Chrome for Mac OS X which requires 10.5 or later. So, I have purchased the Mac OS X Box Set (Snow Leopard) and plan to also get a new hard drive. I plan on making this happen while on holiday break and see what happens.