It's Friday the 28th August, I'm in central London heading towards one of the Mac shops on Tottenham Court Road. An email alert on my iPhone: "Snow Leopard Don't Do It!"
I'm a tidal wave in search of a Snow Leopard, nothing's going to stop me now. I walk toward the Apple dealer at the same time reading the email. Talk of SxS cards not being recognised through the Express 34 slot on the 17 and old 15 inch MacBook Pros.
Snow Leopard in my hands I'm out the store and driving back to install, set-up, test and enjoy the latest that Apple has for us in the development of OSX.
The email was from Matt Davis. Matt is an EX1 shooter and Final Cut Editor, I've worked with him on loads of jobs and regard him to know what he is talking about and more.
Regardless I have to try this for myself.
I load Snow Leopard onto a fresh Mac with a clean install of Leopard.
Then I load Final Cut Studio - the whole suite.
Then the Sony XDCAM Transfer Software and also the SXS Device Driver.
The SxS Device Driver fails to load. I try again. Again it fails. Restart - try again - no luck.
I then plug an SxS card into the Express 34 slot on my Snow Leopard updated 15 inch MacBook Pro. The card is not recognised.
I boot into Leopard on a disc plugged in via FireWire. This is Leopard with the latest version of Final Cut Studio, SxS Device Driver and XDCAM Transfer software loaded.
The Mac boots up, in the slot with the SxS card, and there it is mounted on the desktop.
So unfortunately folks, at this stage SxS does not work using Snow Leopard through the Express 34 slot on the MacBook Pros - though, I have been told that SxS does work via a USB adapter which is available from Sony. Furthermore, I have been told the KxS and MxR solutions do work fine using Snow Leopard.
Thanks to Matt for making me aware of this, and for myself, having tested it, and being the owner of both 15 and 17 inch MacBook Pros - both with Express 34 slots, I sure hope this little glitch gets sorted out quickly so we can use SxS again via the high-speed Express 34 slot.
