Mac OS X Snow Leopard Discussion

[Phantom Helix]

Um........ Wow, ok

Thx for the summarization

[Espada04]

Um........ Wow, ok

Thx for the summarization

I am sorry for stating and explaining what I liked and dislike about Snow Leopard.

I will never post my opinion again.

[Phantom Helix]

I am sorry for stating and explaining what I liked and dislike about Snow Leopard.

I will never post my opinion again.

:(

Thats not what I mean't, My apologies

[MasterC]

I am sorry for stating and explaining what I liked and dislike about Snow Leopard.

I will never post my opinion again.

:(

He said thanks for posting what you did, not "don't ever post your opinion again."

[Espada04]

It sounded like sarcasm to me. I could have misread it. idk.

[AltecXP]

Yeah I read that the same way you did Espada, wasn't just you. I thought Helix was trying to be sarcastic.

[PyX]

By the way, to all of us, fellow Canadians, it seems Purolator has either lost or stolen a couple of our shipments of Snow Leopard.

Oh where oh where is my copy of Snow Leopard? Oh where oh where can it be? Still in the hands of Canada Post I suspect. Damn You Apple!

Canada Post taking forever to deliver Snow Leopard -- it's 8 days now :(

Apple has shipped me my copy of Snow Leopard back on Aug 28, but I'm still without one. Snail Mail (i.e. Canada Post) hires thieves or dumb?

Oh yeah. Canada Post, where is my copy of Snow Leopard? WTF?

And so on. This sucks.

Sources :

Twitter's Search

MacRumors's Forums

[Espada04]

I dont think it's purolator thats losing the packages. I think Canada Post is. I dont know if the 2 company are the same or not. lol.

I pre-ordered mine, paid the 35 dollars for the leopard -> snow leopard upgrade and received it by the launch date from purolator. I was issued a tracking number and everything. However, 2 of my friends that I know upgraded it through the up to date program or whatever it was called for people who are eligible for the 13 dollar upgrade (10+3 shipping) But they weren't issued a tracking number when their order was shipped. They still haven't gotten their copy of Snow Leopard. I think it's only affecting the people who are doing the 10 dollar upgrade. Why Apple used Canada Post and charged 3 dollars for shipping is beyond me. lol I paid 35 dollars and got free shipping with purolator. hehe

[PNWDweller]

There is really no reason to be running the kernel in 64bit mode your APPS can STILL run in 64bit either way

Well...I thought I was running in 64-bit mode all along with SL but last night realized that it was only booting in 32-bit kernel. So, 32-bit and FF crashes, but not a big deal for me. I figure they will update it soon enough or at least my extensions.:):) So far, I have learned in the past 24 hours that my machine while it has a 64-bit EFI and Core 2 Duo, Apple restricts the 64-bit to other newer systems (Mine is Mid-2007 iMac 7.1) for now that is....

[Steve]

Cyberduck no longer works in Snow Leopard - anyone know a decent free SFTP client until it's fixed?

[cabron]

Cyberduck no longer works in Snow Leopard - anyone know a decent free SFTP client until it's fixed?

There is a beta compatible with SL. Download here.

[DrunkenMaster]

I'm getting a Mac soon. Any thoughts on the whole FTFF (Fix The .... Finder) problems of last versions? I was able to get Finder to beachball more than a few times at the Apple Store demos.

It felt snappier though when it worked :). I always found the Finder interface was minimalistic (which isn't bad) but doesn't have enough kick to it. I dunno it could be a bit more PathFinder like without all the extra 1 billion options.

I will say this though: the PDF previews and Image previews, the Preview App, and Finder with thumbnail browsing is so amazingly faster IMO - makes it worth the upgrade.

[Qoogirl]

With the problems I'm reading on a couple of forums I just cancelled my order via the Apple store. I'm just not convinced it's up to scratch yet. I'll wait until the first patch is released then make the transition.

That would be a good idea. I really think there's nothing wrong with waiting.

I've been using Exchange support in Mail, and it crashes at least once a day when I am writing an e-mail that's being auto-saved in Gmail, it seems. The service for Exchange is good and as expected; nothing to call home about. I freed up 24GB after installation (which took 58min).

It's not that much snappier, to be honest, for me. iTunes is maybe a few seconds faster, if that.

I don't recall anymore FF or Safari crashing, but that's because I keep getting frustrated by Mail crashes more often than not.

I also made sure to go upgrade my Adobe Flash.

Another thing that I think Apple should really handle, just as a personal gift to ME, is to stop letting blank windows open when I download PDF or other random file. I'm getting sick of logging in and downloading homework from the school website and Safari leaving these blank windows all over the place. It's a pet peeve of mine that pushed me to FF. The download window should also have an option to "close" after the download completes instead of just sitting there blank, if you've opted the items to disappear when they finish. OK, now I'm ranting. But yes, bide your time!

[Phantom Helix]

How are people coming up with these outrageous claims of how much space you got back?

24GB? really? based on what?

[cabron]

I am also not going to update anytime soon, I canceled the order after saw a lot of headache people are having with SL. I will wait until 10.6.5 is released.

[Elliott]

How are people coming up with these outrageous claims of how much space you got back?

24GB? really? based on what?

Based on the Base 10 standard for calculating storage size. It's the combination of Snow Leopard's slimming + getting "extra" storage.

I'm not sure why people are having Snow Leopard headaches. I've upgraded three machines and all of them are working flawlessly. All of them are using the new Exchange support and are much snappier and just happier in general.

[Quillz]

How are people coming up with these outrageous claims of how much space you got back?

24GB? really? based on what?

They're probably forgetting that Snow Leopard uses base 10, which would artificially seem to add more space than what you really gain back.

[Phantom Helix]

Based on the Base 10 standard for calculating storage size. It's the combination of Snow Leopard's slimming + getting "extra" storage.

I'm not sure why people are having Snow Leopard headaches. I've upgraded three machines and all of them are working flawlessly. All of them are using the new Exchange support and are much snappier and just happier in general.

Base 10 also makes the used data size larger not just the free space so that is moot, in order to get back 24gb you would be sliming OS X's install footprint far beyond its total initial clean state, meaning your new found freespace came from nowhere?

what one would need to do is get the total bytes of the drive,the total used bytes before upgrade and the total free bytes before upgrade and the total used and free bytes after upgrade.

I just do not see where 24GB can come from, i have even seen people on Apple's support forum stating 40+GB, even with the file compression (which i'm not even sure is used on the application/utilities folder)I just do not get it, something isn't right here

[the evn show]

Base 10 also makes the used data size larger not just the free space so that is moot, in order to get back 24gb you would be sliming OS X's install footprint far beyond its total initial clean state, meaning your new found freespace came from nowhere?

Consider a 500 GB iMac with 400 GB used on Mac OS X 10.5. The finder will display things as:

• Total Size: 500*10^9 / 2^30 = 465.6 gigabytes total space.
  
• Used Space: 400* 2^30 bytes = 400.0 gigabytes used.
  
• Free Space: 465.6 - 400.0 = 65.0 gigabytes free.
  

Those are the numbers readily apparent and the ones that most people are going to be going from unless they're very careful.

If they update to Mac OS X 10.6 and it removes 7GB (7*10^30 bytes) of cruft—as the Ars Technica review claims—and then they look at numbers in Finder and see:

• Total size: 500 * 10^9 bytes / 10^9 = 500.0 gigabytes total space
  
• Used Space after upgrade: ((400*2^30) - (7*2^30)) / 10^9 422.0 gigabytes used
  
• Free Space: 500-422.0 = 78 gigabytes free
  

People tend to think of their drives in terms of "how much free space do you have" as opposed to "how much space have you used." so it's reasonable expect them they'll compare before and after free space when trying to decide how much less space 10.6 uses rather than how much on-disk space it eats up. The show-item-info option tends to encourage this behaviour as it show "xxx capacity, yyy free" and get info makes available and capacity easy to see, but the used space is displayed as "130 gigabytes, (139,xxx,xxx,xxx bytes)" so the 'bigger' used number after install isn't as jarring as free space.

In the above example of a 500gb drive with 400gb used, if somebody was to compare before and after free-space (even taking in to account the growing size for 'amount used') they'll see a difference of 13 gigabytes. The difference will become even more pronounced on less full disks. Somebody with 100gb of data on a 1TB drive would be able to see a total before-and-after difference of about 60gb if they used 'free space' as their comparison.

• 1 TB drive capacity: 10^12 bytes = 931 gigabytes - 100 GB used (100*2^30 bytes) = 831 gigabytes free as displayed in 10.5.
  
• 10^12 = 1,000 Gigabytes - 100*2^30 bytes used = 107 gigabytes used = 893 gigabytes free as displayed in 10.6
  
• Not the above calculation doesn't take into account the ~7*2^30 bytes apple claims you really save. A user in this situation will see the 'gigabytes used' display (but not bytes used) remain more-or-less static after installing 10.6. The apparent size of their drive will increase about 60gb. Free space will appear to increase by approximately the same 60gb + anything removed in the upgrade process (another 7gb or so).
  

People making these claims without significant evidence are almost certainly just misreading the display of free/used/capacity. It's easy to understand how they're getting confused: the only way to avoid it would be to count bytes. Not even huge nerds do that sort of thing unless they're having a discussion like this.

[Phantom Helix]

I understand how they can say they now have 24 or 40 GB free, but i think are not comparing the before and after simply stating their total free space now.

Qoogirl said they freed up 24GB, to me that statement says 24GB evaporated, I want to know the used bytes before and after upgrade.

I lost over 3GB, meaning installing SL increased my "used bytes" with the options i chose, i'm trying to understand why that is, what about my process was different from apparently almost everyone.

I have even redone the upgrade on my pre-10.6 backup and it comes out the same, and using xslimmer or other tools won't net me any more than few hundred mb back

[PyX]

I understand how they can say they now have 24 or 40 GB free, but i think are not comparing the before and after simply stating their total free space now.

Qoogirl said they freed up 24GB, to me that statement says 24GB evaporated, I want to know the used bytes before and after upgrade.

I lost over 3GB, meaning installing S[increasedu>[/i]i> my "used bytes" with the options i chose, i'm trying to understand why that is, what about my process was different from apparently almost everyone.

I have even redone the upgrade on my pre-10.6 backup and it comes out the same, and using xslimmer or other tools won't net me any more than few hundred mb back

Maybe you used XSlimmer with Leopard, and Snow Leopard reinstalled everything?

But still, I wouldn't understand... as apps in SL don't include PPC code and are slimmed a lot compared to Leopard's.

[the evn show]

I understand how they can say they now have 24 or 40 GB free, but i think are not comparing the before and after simply stating their total free space now.

That's exactly what I'm arguing.

I lost over 3GB, meaning installing SL increased my "used bytes" with the options i chose, i'm trying to understand why that is, what about my process was different from apparently almost everyone.

If you have a backup of your original drive before upgrade please post hashes for the files. If I tried, I could probably find a way to make this happen, but I don't really have the time to go chasing phantoms. A much more direct approach would be to compare file data.

I have even redone the upgrade on my pre-10.6 backup and it comes out the same, and using xslimmer or other tools won't net me any more than few hundred mb back

Given that you're (to the best of my knowledge) the only person making this claim, you should post some more information. We can't go look up other people's situations to give you a solution. If I were in your position I'd start by looking in any folder that any that increased in size and then generating a list of file names and md5 hashes. You can either write your own perl/python/ruby script or use something like md5deep. We'll need both 'before' and 'after' data.

With that, we can compare it to standard 10.5.8(?) and 10.6.0 installations and spot differences.

Generating that many hashes is a "go to bed and come back later" task: it will take a long time.

[Phantom Helix]

Well damn, i guess i'm not that interested in finding the cause lol

anyway my biggest gripe is when i see these people stating they got 40 50gb reduced, i'm like no way

I guess i could do that, maybe i'm looking at the wrong part of the page but md5deep is windows binary? i've never successfully compiled a mac app to date so the source doesn't do me much good. with bootcamp 3.0 guess i could run it from there now with the HFS+ drivers

[Qoogirl]

How are people coming up with these outrageous claims of how much space you got back?

24GB? really? based on what?

Is it outrageous? I was using 136GB apparently before Snow Leopard. After install, I apparently was using only 112GB. I did basic math there...maybe there's a different way to quantify it, but I just did basic X - Y. ???

Consider a 500 GB iMac with 400 GB used on Mac OS X 10.5. The finder will display things as:

• Total Size: 500*10^9 / 2^30 465.6 gigabytes total spaceb>.
  
• Used Space: 400* 2^30 bytes 400.0 gigabytes usedb>.
  
• Free Space: 465.6 - 400.0 65.0 gigabytes freeb>.
  

Those are the numbers readily apparent and the ones that most people are going to be going from unless they're very careful.

If they update to Mac OS X 10.6 and it removes 7GB (7*10^30 bytes) of cruft?as the Ars Technica review claims?and then they look at numbers in Finder and see:

• Total size: 500 * 10^9 bytes / 1500.0 gigabytes total spacece
  
• Used Space after upgrade: ((400*2^30) - (7*2^30)) /422.0 gigabytes useded
  
• Free Space: 500-4278 gigabytes freeee
  

People tend to think of their drives in terms of "how much free space do you have" as opposed to "how much space have you used." so it's reasonable expect them they'll compare before and after free space when trying to decide how much less space 10.6 uses rather than how much on-disk space it eats up. The show-item-info option tends to encourage this behaviour as it show "xxx capacity, yyy free" and get info makes available and capacity easy to see, but the used space is displayed as "130 gigabytes, (139,xxx,xxx,xxx bytes)" so the 'bigger' used number after install isn't as jarring as free space.

In the above example of a 500gb drive with 400gb used, if somebody was to compare before and after free-space (even taking in to account the growing size for 'amount used') they'll see a difference of 13 gigabytes. The difference will become even more pronounced on less full disks. Somebody with 100gb of data on a 1TB drive would be able to see a total before-and-after difference of about 60gb if they used 'free space' as their comparison.

• 1 TB drive capacity: 10^12 by931 gigabyteses<100 GB useded (100*2^30 byt831 gigabytes freeee as displayed in 10.5.
  
• 101,000 Gigabyteses - 100*2^30 bytes u107 gigabytes useded<893 gigabytes freeee as displayed in 10.6
  
• Not the above calculation doesn't take into account the ~7*2^30 bytes apple claimreallyly save. A user in this situation will see the 'gigabytes used' display (but not bytes used) remain more-or-less static after installing 10.6. The apparent size of their drive will increase about 60gb. Free space will appear to increase by approximately the same 60gb + anything removed in the upgrade process (another 7gb or so).
  

People making these claims without significant evidence are almost certainly just misreading the display of free/used/capacity. It's easy to understand how they're getting confused: the only way to avoid it would be to count bytes. Not even huge nerds do that sort of thing unless they're having a discussion like this.

Ah...I see. Thx for this post.

[BoDEAN]

How do we clean install snow leopard. I have an upgraded version on now. I've seen videos saying reboot and press the "C" button, others say reboot and hold the "option" button. Which is it?