Mac OS X Snow Leopard Discussion

[Quillz]

How is it any less likely for an application to become Snow Leopard-only than Leopard (and above)-only?

Well, Leopard-only applications were so because Leopard introduced things like Core Animation. But all of that is also in Snow Leopard. So unless an application absolutely requires something like Grand Central Dispatch, I just can't see an application for Snow Leopard also not being able to run on Leopard.

[.Neo]

Well, Leopard-only applications were so because Leopard introduced things like Core Animation. But all of that is also in Snow Leopard. So unless an application absolutely requires something like Grand Central Dispatch, I just can't see an application for Snow Leopard also not being able to run on Leopard.

I can definitely see applications make use of Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL and QuickTime X. More so than Core Animation.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

my laptop came with 10.4, i got 10.5 due to the Dock/UI and changes from 10.4 ( 10.6 changes arent even close to those of 10.5 ) that made it worthwhile, i did not notice any speed increase from 10.4 to 10.5. as far as windows, i use whatever OS my games will work on, i didnt get Vista cause the hardware i had didnt give much of a benefit regarding it ( no DX10 vid or 64 proc and only 1 GB mem ) made the upgrade worthless for my desktop at the time ( desktop didnt run it that good and i got my Mac before Vista came out relegating the XP desktop to games only ).

my previous desktop is running XP, the desktop i build 2 months ago is running 7, built it cause of Aion Online, its running 7 cause its free and will be free when it comes in on the Action Pack @ work as i already have authorization for whatever the company gets in the pack.

i dont play games on my Mac anymore, only thing i did with it was Browse Net/WoW/WC3/Email, i dont play WoW anymore and Aion Online wont run on it and WC3 runs beautiful on it.

so far ( to me ) it doesn't seem like a worthwhile upgrade, and besides, while writing this, i remembered despite everything about the laptop being said as 64bit when i got it from apple, months after i bought it, found out i cant go over 4GB of memory as the Hardware wont support it, making the whole interested in pure 64bit worthless

Using that logic you could have stuck with Mac OS 9 or Windows 98 back in the days.

[.Neo]

For the second time it was a quick joke, nothing more nothing less. In the end I don't really care if you upgrade to Snow Leopard or not. It's your Mac, your choice.

PS Sentences filling up three or four lines don't make your story particularly easy to read.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

i doubt Quicktime X will be 10.6 only as it will be ported to windows ( its part of iTunes, and i doubt Apple will be running/supporting 3 separate versions of Quicktime , aka a Quicktime for iTunes a Quicktime for Windows, and Quicktime separate from iTunes )

and as far as your OS " Joke " the smiley at the end looked different before you edited

I can definitely see applications make use of Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL and QuickTime X. More so than Core Animation.

Edited August 15, 2009 by Hell-In-A-Handbasket

[.Neo]

They're supporting QuickTime 7 Pro on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. In fact it's still on the Install DVD, so I wouldn't be too sure of that...

Edited August 15, 2009 by .Neo

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

interesting, didnt know that, doesn't make sense but /shrug, guess they may do that for QuicktimeX then

They're supporting QuickTime 7 Pro on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. In fact it's still on the Install DVD, so I wouldn't be too sure of that...

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

i was hoping for the black " Pro " UI myself, but yes what you see is what we will have to next couple years. if you dont like the UI though, have you tried a GUI Kit to replace the look of the UI ? would prolly ease the look of it if you dont like it

All in all though, it's a good, solid release. But it kinda left me wanting more... Is that what we'll be stuck with for the next couple of years? Aqua needs to go IMO.

[.Neo]

Snow Leopard theming is impossible at the moment.

Of course it's waaaay to early to even think about it, but I dare to speculate that a Mac OS X v10.7 won't be too far away.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

What did they do with the font smoothing? The text is **** now (Dell LCD) black text looks dark gray and small font is barely readable (seems less strong/bold).

Is it set to Automatic? That relies on the display driver to detect what type of monitor it is, so it applies the smoothing setting for the monitor. Of course sometimes it gets it wrong (it detects my LCD as a CRT), so I have to manually set it to Medium.

Yea they really messed those up aswell. I used to use the SRGB one in Leopard, but now in Snow leopard the SRGB profile is garbage (extremely bright). So now I'm on the Generic RGB one :(

And don't use sRGB, sRGB is designed to model an average Office CRT from the 90's. I use the profile OS X generates from the monitor info, looks good enough for me (although if you're doing pro work, you'd want to make your own profile)

[PyX]

and i dont have to get snow lepard if i dont want to, my Programs will not Magically stop working when 10.6 come out, my laptop will still turn on, and run what is installed, if a program isnt compatable with 10.5 anymore, guess what, nobody is holding a gun to my head to install it/use it.

I am pretty positive you will end up with Snow Leopard a day or another in your life. Mac users are more eager to upgrade than Windows users, it's been shown in one of Steve's keynote statistics (I think it was him). If you decide to wait 2 more years until the next OS, not my problem, but you will represent a small % of the Mac user base who do this.

oo, 10.6 saved me +/- 1second on a program opening, OMG what will i do with all the free time. if a program opens in 2 or 3 seconds, so what, i dont care.

It's called optimization.

Some people think : It works, therefore it's well conceived. You know what? This statement is wrong. (I have a background in web development and I didn't understand that before - well now I totally do).

It's as if Apple packed their stuff with mercury in their monitors. I mean, 1 mg of mercury, who cares? It's not much... Well, mercury is not environmentally friendly and should be banned! That's what they did. If they sold 1 000 000 Macs with 1 mg, well it makes 1 kg of mercury, it's good to see that they saved that...

Or it's as if they shipped your MacBook in a 1m x 1m box. Ok, you got your product in the end, why should you be dissatisfied? It's the same product, same quality. But things weren't optimized. By doing this, it's not just for the end-user that you save some room, it's for the truck that delivers stuff as well. You're saving fuel by packing like 300% more computers if you optimize stuff.

Well I'm thinking the code of Snow Leopard is not only faster, but it's also easier to maintain, fix and develop - I'm pretty positive it's shorter and more concise. Why? Because the apps are smaller, and usually they add new APIs that add shortcuts to the programming language that is used. They did that in each version of OS X, and it's common sense, it's not going to change.

Maybe I like my field of study too much or something, and I'm blindly sold for the idea, but when I look at the everyday world, I see that things aren't optimized and sometimes, that 2-3 seconds that you save, well you can save it 100 times a day, and it's gonna make a big difference. Plus, you're saving CPU cycles, which means that you save energy. It's repercuted in a couple of places that we don't even take the time to notice. As stupid as that.

This is exactly why I'm happy about Snow Leopard. Sad thing is, the end-users won't notice a lot of changes (I am included).

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

dude, get over my opinion it is my own i speak for nobody else, im shure there are other things to do with your life

I am pretty positive you will end ... Leopard. Sad thing is, the end-users won't notice a lot of changes (I am included).

[pdmcmahon]

It's called optimization.

Some people think : It works, therefore it's well conceived. You know what? This statement is wrong. (I have a background in web development and I didn't understand that before - well now I totally do).

It's as if Apple packed their stuff with mercury in their monitors. I mean, 1 mg of mercury, who cares? It's not much... Well, mercury is not environmentally friendly and should be banned! That's what they did. If they sold 1 000 000 Macs with 1 mg, well it makes 1 kg of mercury, it's good to see that they saved that...

Or it's as if they shipped your MacBook in a 1m x 1m box. Ok, you got your product in the end, why should you be dissatisfied? It's the same product, same quality. But things weren't optimized. By doing this, it's not just for the end-user that you save some room, it's for the truck that delivers stuff as well. You're saving fuel by packing like 300% more computers if you optimize stuff.

Well I'm thinking the code of Snow Leopard is not only faster, but it's also easier to maintain, fix and develop - I'm pretty positive it's shorter and more concise. Why? Because the apps are smaller, and usually they add new APIs that add shortcuts to the programming language that is used. They did that in each version of OS X, and it's common sense, it's not going to change.

Maybe I like my field of study too much or something, and I'm blindly sold for the idea, but when I look at the everyday world, I see that things aren't optimized and sometimes, that 2-3 seconds that you save, well you can save it 100 times a day, and it's gonna make a big difference. Plus, you're saving CPU cycles, which means that you save energy. It's repercuted in a couple of places that we don't even take the time to notice. As stupid as that.

This is exactly why I'm happy about Snow Leopard. Sad thing is, the end-users won't notice a lot of changes (I am included).

I subscribe to your theory in that if the overall OS/application footprint is tiny, but then a ton of fluff is added on top, it leads to an inefficient end-product. Back in the Windows days, I was a huge fan of NLite and the process of slip-streaming hot-fixes and service packs. You are not just bundling them in there, you are actually updating the source repository before you even install the OS, which gives you an installed system that is not bogged down with a post-installation mess. By providing a solid foundation for the OS and core apps, you end up with a highly-efficient base on which to work.

Unfortunately, the concept of having to install a base Leopard OS and then upgrade SL on top of that just bugs me. I would be more than happy to pay 129$ and get a non-upgrade DVD of Leopard. Please Apple, tell me you will sell a full install DVD, not just the "29$ special"

[Astra.Xtreme]

I subscribe to your theory in that if the overall OS/application footprint is tiny, but then a ton of fluff is added on top, it leads to an inefficient end-product. Back in the Windows days, I was a huge fan of NLite and the process of slip-streaming hot-fixes and service packs. You are not just bundling them in there, you are actually updating the source repository before you even install the OS, which gives you an installed system that is not bogged down with a post-installation mess. By providing a solid foundation for the OS and core apps, you end up with a highly-efficient base on which to work.

Unfortunately, the concept of having to install a base Leopard OS and then upgrade SL on top of that just bugs me. I would be more than happy to pay 129$ and get a non-upgrade DVD of Leopard. Please Apple, tell me you will sell a full install DVD, not just the "29$ special"

They will sell the full install DVD, but I think it's $169 this time instead of the usual $129 that has been.

[Quillz]

They will sell the full install DVD, but I think it's $169 this time instead of the usual $129 that has been.

It's only $169 because you're forced into buying the Mac Box Set.

[Explore]

The people who installed Snow Leopard here, did you guys do a upgrade or a clean install?

[PyX]

Unfortunately, the concept of having to install a base Leopard OS and then upgrade SL on top of that just bugs me. I would be more than happy to pay 129$ and get a non-upgrade DVD of Leopard. Please Apple, tell me you will sell a full install DVD, not just the "29$ special"

You mean a non-upgrade DVD of Snow Leopard? :p This naming scheme is confusing sometimes!

But yeah, I agree that users should be able to just buy the thing for $129. The Mac Box Set isn't expensive at all for all that you get, but some people really want just the OS and don't care about the rest. They should have kept the big DVD for $129 IMO.

But then again, Snow Leopard is Intel-only... I guess 80% of all the Macs shipped with Intel processors had Leopard installed on them. So there's a remaining 20%, like mine who shipped with just Tiger back in the time.

[Timan Veteran]

Is it set to Automatic? That relies on the display driver to detect what type of monitor it is, so it applies the smoothing setting for the monitor. Of course sometimes it gets it wrong (it detects my LCD as a CRT), so I have to manually set it to Medium.

And don't use sRGB, sRGB is designed to model an average Office CRT from the 90's. I use the profile OS X generates from the monitor info, looks good enough for me (although if you're doing pro work, you'd want to make your own profile)

There is no "medium" setting for font smoothing (least not in the system pref).

And as for those saying don't use srgb, it is the ONLY color profile that displays colors correctly on my monitor. (Dell 2408wfp).

I also notice when I do a custom color profile, when I'm in the setup process the monitor looks correctly, and then when it saves the profile and goes back to system pref (display settings) the colors get messed up again (even after re-selecting the profile I just made).

Linkinus doesn't run :(

Edited August 15, 2009 by Timan

[.Neo]

The people who installed Snow Leopard here, did you guys do a upgrade or a clean install?

Clean Install. Absolutely not a fan of Upgrades.

[pdmcmahon]

Clean Install. Absolutely not a fan of Upgrades.

Upgrades = Fail

[PyX]

I did an upgrade and Snow Leopard betas were more smooth than Leopard's finals. I had to format it to reinstall Leopard and I can confirm this.

What's wrong with upgrades by the way? When I was back with Windows, I must admit that it caused me a lot of problems, so I always ended up making a clean install at the end, but it's well conceived on Macs. I did it and everything was working, even my custom prefpanes in System Preferences. I didn't have to reinstall anything more so it took like an hour and my MacBook was running Snow Leopard, smoooothly.

[Quillz]

I did an upgrade and Snow Leopard betas were more smooth than Leopard's finals. I had to format it to reinstall Leopard and I can confirm this.

What's wrong with upgrades by the way? When I was back with Windows, I must admit that it caused me a lot of problems, so I always ended up making a clean install at the end, but it's well conceived on Macs. I did it and everything was working, even my custom prefpanes in System Preferences. I didn't have to reinstall anything more so it took like an hour and my MacBook was running Snow Leopard, smoooothly.

Actually, upgrades work very smoothly on Windows, too.

The problem is that with both Mac OS X and Windows, the upgrade processes have a tendency to waste a lot of disk space because they essentially rename your current installation to something else and then install a new copy of the OS. And even though it's then a matter of just copying over your data, you sometimes accidentally overwrite important system files, etc.

With every operating system, whether it's Windows, Mac OS X or Linux, you're better off just backing up your critical (and personal) data and doing a clean install. With Mac OS X, just have Time Machine back everything up, do a clean install and then just restore everything again using your Time Machine backup. Very simple and it minimizes any trouble that upgrading might cause.

[JoHideo]

Just as an FYI

I've noticed that running in 32 bit prolongs battery life quite a bit over 64 bit. Don't have any benchmarks to prove it, but just an observation I've made.

[Si_]

Anyone know if the version of GM doing the rounds on torrent is legit/malware free? I've preordered anyway but don't want to wait for the media to arrive :D

[dyn]

It's only $169 because you're forced into buying the Mac Box Set.

No one is being forced into buying anything. You get a OS X license when you buy a Mac and since you may only install OS X on a real Mac there is really no sense in selling anything other than an upgrade license. That doesn't mean you will get a disc set that can only upgrade the already installed system, previous versions never did, they were also able to do a clean install. Most likely that this will be the case for Snow Leopard as well. The price is different this time because the changes are minimal, it's a polished version of Leopard.

To me those polishes are enough to make me buy Snow Leopard. Especially features like full 64 bit, GCD, OpenCL and smaller things like Expose in the dock and improved stacks. I use VMware Fusion quite a lot so the 64 bit, GCD and probably OpenCL will come in handy for this kind of stuff. The 64 bit stuff also enables a lot of neat stuff like more registers and more mem addresses. This means there is a gain in security regarding addressing memory. I'm also hoping Snow Leopard will add TRIM support like Linux already did and like Windows 7 will. Since I'm using an OCZ Vertex SSD that would be a very useful feature to me (OCZ is working together with Indilinx on a new firmware with garbage collection and TRIM, both techniques actually work together). Apart from that, an upgrade license for $29 is a bargain!

BTW: that Mac Box Set contains iWork 09, iLife 09 and OS X (still is Leopard but that will be Snow Leopard once it's released). The Box set is meant for people who want to upgrade to the newest iWork, iLife and OS X version. The chance of Tiger people wanting to upgrade those 3 pieces of software is a lot bigger than Leopard people wanting to upgrade those 3. Quite obvious why a company would aim for Tiger users and not for Leopard users. If you only want to upgrade to the newest OS X than you don't need the Mac Box Set, just buy Snow Leopard.