Snow Leopard upgrade issues: Gears, Quicktime Pro
Yesterday I took the leap (small jump actually) to Snow Leopard, Apples latest major OS release.
The upgrade process as expected was seamless, however, as usual we tend not to read up on problems and issues until we actually encounter them, so to help you through what were the 2 most pressing concerns i thought i should put them down for your reference (and to save you an hour of googling).
Google Gears and Safari 64 Bit – aka. GMail / MailPlane will not work on line / aka. Where have my Gears settings gone !
That’s quite long title i know, but given how this error may affect you, i thought it best to cover all the bases.
Firstly the problem. You have upgraded to Snow Leopard and once you open Safari you no longer have access to your ‘offline’ features in GMail. Those who use MailPlane or Fluid will also notice the same problem when viewing offline mail or anything else that requires Google Gears, …for me additionally, Wordpress install were no longer functioning in ‘turbo’ mode.
The apps all told me to go to my ‘Google Gears Settings’ menu, which funnily enough, had vanished :)
Don’t Panic! First of all why? …no not why you shouldn’t panic, why has this happened.
You may not have noticed it but your Snow Leopard upgrade actually installed a new version of Safari, even if you thought you had the latest version!! Why? this is because Snow Leopard natively runs in 64-bit mode as opposed to 32-bit mode, and quite simply Gears has not been released in a current stable format for the 64-bit browser. (MailPlane and Fluid of course both use the Safari engine and therefore are simultaneously affected).
Now you can actually force Safari to run in 32-bit mode (apple+i on the application icon, and tick the box that says ‘open in 32-bit mode’) …but who wants to downgrade their upgrade? :) not me.
The solution, a modified version of Gears released by the lovely people at MailPlane.
This of course resolves the problem for Safari, Mailplane, WordPress and Fluid, now enabling you to have your full gears functionality back.
Although they have a disclaimer on the page and offer no support, i encounter zero issues with this install and it picked up on all of my old Gears settings.
Phew, ..Gears issue resolved.
Where have all my Quicktime editing functions gone aka. What happened to Quicktime Pro?
Now open up Quicktime X :) …doesn’t it look lovely. It does indeed, and how nice to see that you no longer have to ‘upgrade’ to Pro (i use that term loosely as the same serial number has been floating around since i started using mac around 10 years ago) to access full screen playback, plus, and this one is very very useful to me, you can now perform movie screen grabs (my clients will be most pleased at the vast array of tutorial videos in the pipeline, ..and i will be quite pleased to say goodbye to the software i was using for this).
However, WHERE IS MY EXPORT MENU? and WHERE ARE MY EDITING CONTROLS?
This almost had me in tears as i spend quite a lot of time converting video and performing minor edits on video for clients, something that i have always relished the power of QT for, allowing me not to have to open up Final Cut and create projects that involve rendering and generally take more than twice as long.
For me Quicktime pro has been an indispensable tool over the years.
You can’t take it away from me Apple? Yes they can it would seem, they new QT is a while new product, yes you can have full-screen for free, but goodbye codec based exporting and basic editing.
Luckily before downgrading back to Leopard i had a little browse through the install DVD, and thankfull if you browse to the ‘additional installs’ folder on the CD you can in fact install a Quicktime 7 back onto your machine and still retain the nice new shiny X version.
Better still, QT will always opt for X, but if X cannot play the movie (which given the size of my codecs collection in 7 is highly likely) it will revert back to 7, allowing me to keep 7, and maintain the position of being able to quickly fulfil my clients basic video needs in next to no time.
So that is it for now, i am sure i will encounter new issues as my day progresses, but for now i can continue working as i was which at the end of the day is the most important aspect of a major OS release.
Thanks Apple, smiling resumed.
What I'm Saying - 
What I'm listening to
Thanks! I was frantic until I read your post. Now I have to figure out how to empty the mail without the warning message…
Thanks a lot. Your article clarifies the issue with the QT in the best way. I know what to do now.
Thank you so much!!! You rock for sharing this info. The folder is actually called Optional Installs (at least on my disc it is). Also, in order to restore all of my Quicktime functionality, I had to re-install Perian as well to be able to Export and Save As. I can’t believe that Apple would cause Snow Leopard to wipe out all of this stuff, but thanks again.
Apple historically DOES remove features all the time. This is one of the signs of their obsession with control and often a clue to future software they want to sell. Sometimes it is simply a feature they don’t like or want to deal with. Anyone remember “Save and Shutdown”? (otherwise known to the Windows world as “Hibernate”)
We use Hibernate constantly. It often SAVES your behind when taking laptops through airports or if you need to move a computer or temporarily interrupt the power on a station with a lot of open work. OS 9 had this briefly. Then Apple disabled it in an update and it has never returned. I actually had a conversation about this with some of their product VPs and an engineer back around the time of 10.2. The engineer remarked how he also would like to see that feature but was quickly drowned out by the pair of VPs (or whatever title they held) who tried to argue it was unreliable and would lose data.
Interesting that MS Windows and other platforms have been doing so for years with little or no problem.
Apple does remove features in my opinion as it moves fully from professional to consumer use through the maze of pro-sumer, …i wouldn’t say it is obsession or control, just catering to the core market as it changes.
..my main gripe was the removing of QT7 itself and all of its functionality from new QT, it was like the development team just couldn’t be bothered to make the new version even as good as the previous, which was inexcusable in my opinion.
I still find myself opening QT7 on a very regular basis as i need to do anything other than watch, and the ability to do a quick basic edit without having to open FCP is a highly profitable asset.
How Windows hibernation has to do with the post i am not so sure …..it was not really about Apples shutdown and sleep functionality, …that is for another post :)
You’re a legend thanks for posting.
Sai
Can i get that in writing :) ….not a problem. …i still find myself using QT7 over the new QT on a daily basis.