MacDailyNews Take: Anyone calling Apple’s Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard “little more than a service pack” is either paid-off, ignorant, and/or too lazy to do even basic fact-finding.
Sorrel continues, “But under its furry black and white skin, the $30 upgrade is worth it, and will reach into every corner of your Mac to speed things up. Surprisingly, Snow Leopard’s biggest improvements are to your hardware. Think of it as a tune-up for your machine.”
“For instance, on my MacBook, Safari would run at around 25-35% of CPU, and spin up to around 100%+ under stress in 10.5 Leopard,” Sorrel reports. “Right now, under 10.6, it’s not even showing up in the top five list, meaning it is idling at under 4%. This is with 12 tabs open.”
“The whole OS is snappier. Applications now load instantly… Menus appear and disappear faster (although this is surely an interface timing trick),” Sorrel reports. “And when software vendors update their wares to take advantage of some new tech, slow, heavy applications should scream along.”
Sorrel reports, “In short, the new OS has more than $30 worth of new features, it’s just that they don’t stick out at first. But think about this. What are the usual reasons to upgrade a computer? Bigger hard drive, faster processor, better battery life, right? For just $30, you get all this on a DVD.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
for anyone that wants to record screencasts, it is a great bargain because SL comes with that built into the new Quicktime according to..
http://www.derekunderwood.com/general-computer/snow-leopard-includes-free-screencasting-software/
This new leaner faster OS X is what will drive the tablet and other devises that are yet to come making them the great user experience we have all come to expect from Apple.
“Menus appear and disappear faster (although this is surely an interface timing trick),”
no, it’s not a trick like MS uses in Windows. It’s actually snappier.
That dude wrote “snappier”.
Apple used it in the advertising for S Leopard.
Here at http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/refinements/
It says: “snappier” about half way through
A more advanced, more nimble Finder.
The Finder has been completely rewritten in Cocoa to take advantage of all the modern technologies in Mac OS X, including 64-bit support and Grand Central Dispatch. It’s more responsive from top to bottom, with snappier performance throughout the Finder. And it includes new features such as customisable Spotlight search options and an enhanced icon view that lets you thumb through a multipage document or watch a QuickTime movie.
Not so fast……
I now have an ATI 3870 HD that can no longer output to two monitors. So yes, Snow Leopard solves many problems; many which are software development issues beyond the scope of this web site…and yes my computer is much faster. But, I still have new unwanted monitor shaped paper weight on my desk now. And that is not cool at all.
just my $0.02
“slow, heavy applications should scream along.”
How much does a gigabyte weigh anyway?
WARNING: Poor me story ahead.
I ordered SL family pack in the evening of Aug. 26th and its status shows it hasn’t shipped yet. WTF?
I thought I’d have it on the 28th, and now I’ll be lucky if I have the damn thing before the end of the week. C’mon Apple. I want my shipping to be snappy too!
I’m sure ATI 38970 HD issue will be solved very quickly (so your paper weight will resume its destined duties).
For me, SL has been an incredible transformation. Everything is SIGNIFICANTLY faster, and the additional features are just totally neat. Extra disk space didn’t hurt either, and even the battery life reports longer on a two-year old MBP with a battery at 65% of original capacity.
I’ve been updating my Macs since System 7.5 (8 various desktop Macs, 3 different ‘books over the years) and Snow Leopard is, without a doubt, definitely, most significant improvement for me. Following this, other significant improvements were the introduction of Exposé (Panther), System 9 to Cheetah, then Widgets and Spotlight (Tiger), iChat AV (Jaguar), etc…
I’m waiting on my family pack from Amazon. Didn’t ship till Friday and now scheduled to arrive Thursday. Which kinda sucks, but Amazon gave a discount plus free shipping so that helps prevent the riot. LOL
@ Ray
Check with ATI to see if there is firmware update for your card. Same thing happened to me with an ATI card back about 10.2 or so. There was an update for my extra video card I had never installed and it was causing a kernel panic on boot.
Cheers
You losers should have bought from apple or gone local, only have yourselves to blame. I for one have been running this glorious update since Friday afternoon, and I can attest that it did indeed add a great chunk of more HD space, and is indeed noticeably faster.
I rule, you drool.
@Joe
I bought from Apple on Monday last week. It still hasn’t shipped…
I think is funny for all of you that got so excited and ordered on line, expecting to get it on the 28th. I feel for you if you don’t live near an Apple Store, since you don’t have other means of getting it. But for those that do, you can walk in to any Apple Store and have it in your hands in less than a minute. Mine is laying by my computer. I am waiting to see more extensive reports of what got broken. On the other hand, it is installed on my wife’s MacBook, and it is very fast indeed.
@Jubei
Same boat, family pack from Amazon will be here on Friday… along with a big firewire HD for backup (original backup drive died, waited way to long to replace)
It’s going to be a torturous week listening to all you describing your nice new shiny OS that I can’t play with yet…
Joe
Does buying software locally truly you “rule” and others losers? Take a break man.
In the article he mentions the OS allowing you to “ignore your iPhone”, having one camera go here the other there. Is that something out of the box, or is he referencing a service you can create (his next paragraph)?
@Prudence,
I played with the screen capture part of the new QuickTime. While it does a nice job of recording your screen, it is limited in that it only records your screen. You have no option of recording a portion of the screen or a window. You will still need to use other software if you want to zoom in, or record a specific window.
@jocknerd
yes, I see the limitation you mean, is there a way around that or a setting that can be adjusted? otherwise if you have a big a** monitor, you end up with a big a** screencast that is clumsy to put online or for others to view
I’ve been updating since System 6, so I’m a better person than you are.
Sadly, major applications like ProTools are keeping me from it…..
Leo LaPorte poo-pooed Snow Leopard, and he knows everything – just ask him. Maybe SL will come back and poop on him.
@Mac-Nugget
I wouldn’t have got so “excited” about getting by the 28th if Apple hadn’t e-mailed me a message that said if I ordered it by 11:59 p.m. on the 26th that I would have it by Friday.
I don’t even care that it didn’t arrive on Friday. I’m more perturbed that it hasn’t even left the warehouse yet.
That whole post was meant as a joke. Sorry guys/gals.
@Mac-nugget
Or people could have just gone into a Best Buy. That is where I got mine on Saturday and there were plenty of copies for the same $30. As far as I know everything is the same price as in an Apple store. I’m actually really happy they carry Apple stuff now because its only 2 minutes away while my Apple store is 25 minutes away.