I am relatively new to Mac OS X. I got my MacBook in January, and I have never experienced a new version of the operating system. I am wondering if I should simply upgrade my install to Snow Leopard. I come from Windows where it is advised to do a complete reformat. I would rather not do this, however, and I have a feeling that due to Mac OS X' POSIX based nature, it might actually not be all that bad if I upgrade.
I guess if things end up screwing up I can simply go ahead and reformat, but I am wondering what it is like to upgrade systems running Mac OS X. I wouldn't want my Snow Leopard installation to be somehow deficient due to certain inconsistencies within the system.
Best Answer
OS X upgrades generally go extremely smoothly. You can imagine that most users will find it most convenient to upgrade rather than reformat, and Apple engineers work very hard to make sure the process is smooth. (You can rest easy that an upgrade install won't be missing anything you'd get from a clean install.) In fact, having upgraded to Snow Leopard on a few machines already, the install process is even more painless than ever before. With such a recent machine, I wouldn't foresee any problems.
It's always wise to check for compatibility of third-party software and devices — for example, my wife has a BodyBugg that depends on a kernel extension to interface with the system, and the driver hasn't been updated yet. For now, I'm keeping around a Leopard partition on the drive for the "just in case" scenario.
By the way, you can partition without formatting by using Applications → Disk Utility, and the migration assistant can transfer data between partitions. Thus, if you're paranoid, it might pay off to create a Snow Leopard partition, do a clean install there, and migrate your data from the Leopard partition. Once you know it all works, either upgrade the Leopard partition or stick with the new one, then erase and re-merge the unused partition.