For 3 days I have been playing around with my new pet : a snow leopard. While this is not a typically Mac blog, I’m forced to post my early impression, before reviewing the security side of the new Mac OS X release.
So far, I have to say I am very, very pleased with Snow Leopard. The update process was smooth and fast. Yes, there are very few visual “improvements.” But you don’t get a new system with visual bling bling : after installing Snow Leopard I reclaimed 12Gb of hard drive, and all my applications run faster. No matter what you’ll tell me : I’d rather have a lighter, faster and more stable OS than a visual revolution. And let’s be honest, the visual revolution came with Leopard.
But the purpose of this little post is to point out one specific feature of Snow Leopard : its 64 bits capabilities. While the cat will boot by default in 32 bits mode (I don’t want to start a debate, but for the sake of ease of use I back Apple on this one). In order to boot in 64 bits, you first need to check if you have a 64 bits EFI :
ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi
The “correct” answer to this command is “firmware-abi” = <”EFI64″>
From this point on, you can reboot and hold the 6 and 4 keys (intriguing keychain…) at boot time to boot temporarily in 64 bits mode. Test it out, particularly browser extensions, third party (non Apple) applications and printer/scanner drivers. If some crucial element doesn’t work for you, or doesn’t launch in 32 bits compatibility mode, then just reboot and let your Snow Leopard roar quietly. If it all works out, then unleash your kitty permanently. Edit the following file :
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist
Edit it so it looks like this :
Kernel Flags
arch=x86_64
Save & Quit, reboot, and you’ll be in wonder-64-bits-land !
