As anyone with a Mac knows, the new version of Mac OS X, the Apple operating system, is being released today. My copy from Amazon should arrive soon.
To prepare myself, I’ve got a checklist on my desk of things to do to be ready. I’ve had some pretty disastrous upgrades/migrations in the past. One thing that’s taught me is that no matter what the operating system is, you want to completely delete your hard drive and start over.
- Create backups of my computer somewhere else. In my case, I’m making one entire backup at work on a Firewire drive and one backup at home on another Mac (just in case).
- Backup my calendar, address book, and bookmarks. I signed up for a 60-day .Mac account to do this quickly and easily. I also synced all of it back to another Mac, just in case.
- I use Pulpfiction Lite for RSS right now. I don’t know if the new Safari will be adequate for my needs, so I exported the feeds list from Pulpfiction and copied the ~/Library/Application Support/Pulp Fiction folder to a folder on my desktop named “migration.”
- In a document, I listed all my applications, the URL to download them, and registration information if it’s a commercial app. Just to speed my setup time up, I also downloaded installers for all my applications and put them in that “migration” folder.
- In the same document, I’m going through my Keychain and entering my usernames and passwords for everything in my Keychain. This will be good to have anyway. I’ll print it out, put it in a safe place, and delete the digital copy.
- In the same document, I’ll put all my e-mail accounts’ information. I use IMAP for all of them, so it should be a snap. Depending on how well the new Mail’s Smart Mailboxes work, I may even delete all my folder structures and just use those to filter everything.
It’s going to be great! More news on this as soon as it comes in the mail!