What more can I say about OS X?
So last night I pulled a Milton and messed up my OS X install. OS X comes with about every freaking possible language on Earth and this obviously takes up some space. Being the geek I am I just had to get rid of these languages and get back my hard drive space. Now, I totally didn’t consider that I’d only save about 1 of 100 gigabytes on my drive. Mistake number 1. So I downloaded and ran an open source piece of software I found on Digg to do just what I was looking for. What I didn’t realize, hence the Milton moment, was that this software also removed support for old architectures you may not be using on your system. So, once I ran the application the only support I had on my system was the English language and for the Intel hardware architecture since I have a new, Intel based, MacBook Pro. So what’s the problem you ask? Some of my applications, Quicken to be specific, are old school OS X programs written for the Power PC (PPC) architecture. Thankfully Tiger (OS 10.4) supports these outdated applications through a translation process known as Rosetta. However, since I removed the PPC support none of my applications that require Rosetta translation would run. Yay indeed.
After some searching I discovered I needed to reinstall OS X. A few four letter words quickly came to mind. After a little more reading I discovered that OS X carries a wonderful feature called “Archive and Install“. As the article will show my settings and user data will be preserved but I assumed system files and applications would be basically “from the factory”. I figured I’d spend all evening reinstalling the software I had and configuring everything again.
So I popped in the OS X install DVD and rebooted the system. After a few screens I was able to choose the “Archive and Install” option and let the system do its thing. Once everything was finished the system booted and everything was preserved, and I mean everything. My dock hadn’t changed minus a few factory additions like iWeb and GarageBand. My background and screen saver were the same. My desktop had the same files and all of my personal files remained unchanged. All of my applications were as I left them. I see no duplication in the system and everything is like it was before I pulled my Milton moment. The only issue I had was with Parallels. I had to reinstall it because it was complaining about a driver. After a quick reinstall everything was fine and it still had my Windows XP partition ready to go.
Impressed by OS X yet? I sure am; again.
Was MATT one of the four letter words that came to mind (on the idea of reinstall)?
Awesome feature find though man. As if I wasn’t already proud enough of my OS choice.