Prepare for the desktop update onslaught with Snow Leopard and Windows 7

Note symptoms. Search for them on Google. Download update or apply fix. Test results. Rinse, repeat. Wait for the next problem to appear.

That’s been my life for the past several days, after updating my MacBook Pro to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the minor update to Apple’s desktop operating system.

Snow Leopard came out last Friday, Aug. 28, and I received my copy on Saturday. There are some nice benefits to Snow Leopard, and the update didn’t take long to install. The new software generally worked well right out of the box. Even so, I’ve spent quite a lot of time fixing things, including one critical app that simply didn’t work. I’ve been installing updates to utilities and diagnosing performance problems ever since.

Bear in mind that Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” truly is a very minor update, that Macs have a tiny market share in the enterprise, and I’m an unabashed Mac expert who can solve all these problems on my own.

Now imagine what happens when Windows 7 hits the market. Granted, many organizations are going to be slow and cautious when updating their Windows Vista and Windows XP machines to Windows 7. That’s the way it should be. Even so, any end-user upgrade means headaches for IT administrators, help-desk staff – and software companies and enterprise software developers. And what about your customers? You can’t control their rollout schedule.

BZ Media is a mixture of Macs and Windows. For the most part, individuals can choose which platform to use. The Macs are split, with most running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, but there are still some on Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. The Windows machines are mainly Windows XP Professional, though there are a small handful of Windows Vista desktops.

Like other companies, we suffer the pains of upgrading, not just with specific desktop applications and utilities that we use, but even with Web-based applications. It’s particularly painful when we’re working with a third-party Web application which has become essential to part of our operations, whether it’s the hosted CRM system that our salespeople use, or the digital page previewing system at SD Times’ printing plant.

These days, regression testing and rollout schedules are often predicated as much on how websites perform as well as anything else, because different browsers act differently on different operating systems. We had one case where we had to delay the Leopard upgrade because a hosted Web app simply wasn’t ready – and this caused real problems for new users, because their machines came pre-installed with Leopard.

It’s a headache of the first order. My Snow Leopard experience sucked up some time, but as the designated guinea pig, I’ve taken careful notes, and further deployments will be faster. Everything important is working okay now. Even so, I’m sure a major “gotcha” will show up.

Just wait until Windows 7 shows up – not just on our own company desktops and notebooks, but initially for SD Times readers who might experience issues accessing sdtimes.com’s functionality.

Operating system upgrades. Get ready for the coming storm.