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.]
I’m seriously getting SL envy. I’ve got a really great scanner that’s not supported by the new OS. I’m so pissed off, I really was waiting for a new purring cat and there’s nothing I can do. I absolutely refuse to to dump the scanner so I can get slugged twice three times (a new scanner, a new operating system and then endure my wife tearing strips off me for being wasteful).
“[…] and spin up to around 100%+ under stress in 10.5 Leopard […]”
Emphasis: “100% + “
How does one achieve more than 100% of processor power?
So far, the only stuff that I’ve found ‘broken’ is:
– some screensavers that I never used. [My two favs: Mr. Sparkle and Time Machine still work]
– Final Draft needed to be re-activated. Don’t remember de-activating it. Maybe, I should have. Thoughts?
– Samsung’s ‘Smart Panel’ software. Shows up on menubar. Doesn’t work.
I stream wirelessly to my ps3 using medialink on my Mac. I noticed immediatly after the update my medialink connection on ps3 comes up immediatly ( usually about a minute ) and HD files like the Avatar trailer stream better – 1 stutter vs unplayable stutter. Nice!
ordered mine online from macmall; got it Friday at about 1:00 pm…. installed and hapy about 42 minutes later!
mdn mw: yes, as in, YES! this OS Rocks!
Pet peeve… Why is the price of the upgrade described as “$30” by so many journalists? Are they mathematically challenged. The price is $29, not $29.99 or $29.95. If it was $29.99 or $29.95, definitely call it $30, to get it to two significant digits. But $29 is simply $29.
I got mine at Best Buy for only $25! Some price-match thing. Neener-neener!
——RM
Safari is definitely quicker, and my umb shuts down quicker now. Not wild about losing support for advanced features for my HP printers (Weren’t we all hating on Vista a short while back for its driver issues?).
I’ll admit I was taken in by the media hype machine over the features of 10.6, and should have waited a week or two to see if there were any issues before I bought it.
OTOH, it was only thirty bucks. I’m just happy apple fixed my intermittent wifi dropping issues on my unimb with one it’s updates a couple of weeks ago.
This writer has good perspective on the true value of Snow Leopard. I think it is my favorite big cat release so far because:
(1) It mostly does NOT mess with Leopard’s interface.
(2) It has been so trouble-free and SMOOTH.
(3) It really does improve my hardware.
(4) It cost me $29 plus tax.
(5) It was released EARLY.