Snow Leopard
Sep 17 2009 09:39 PM Filed in: Apple
I've upgraded one of my Macs, the MacBook, to the
newest Apple OS, Mac OS 10.6, Snow Leopard. I still
have to upgrade my Mac Mini. Snow Leopard isn't as
drastic a change as the previous OS, Leopard, was.
This is labeled as a release where Apple refined the
OS. Instead of concentrating on adding a ton of new
features, Apple has made the existing OS better. Some
people have been calling it what Microsoft would term
a Service Pack, but it's a bit more than that. Even
though there aren't many visible changes, there has
been a lot of work done to refine the OS.
Smaller Footprint
One of the more interesting features of Snow Leopard is that you will actually gain back hard drive space once the OS is installed. This may seem weird, but once you understand one of the main refinements of Snow Leopard it totally makes sense. Back in the day Apple ran with the Power PC (PPC) architecture. A few years back Apple switched over to Intel. To allow their software to work on both architectures, they implemented a technology called Rosetta, that allowed for universal binaries. What this allowed was for a developer to compile their software against both PPC and Intel, and the resulting binary had the smarts that allowed for it to run on both architectures. This was great, but the downside was all these programs had a lot of extra baggage that was unneeded. With Snow Leopard, Apple is no longer supporting PPC. While this sucks for users that have the older Macs, this is great news for everyone on Intel, because there is no longer the need for the wasted space. Another space saving feature is that Apple is no longer bundling a butt-load of printer drivers. Now, when you hook up a printer, Snow Leopard will download the needed driver from the web. Before installing Snow Leopard I had 55GB of available space on my MacBook. After the install I had 68GB. The amount of space you get back varies per user, I believe the average is around 6 - 8 GB.
64 Bit
Apple has been in the process of converting all of the applications in their OS to 64 Bit, from 32 Bit for a while, and with the release of Snow Leopard they are mostly complete. Whereas with Microsoft Windows you would have to purchase a specific version of the OS depending on if your machine was 64 Bit or 32 Bit, Mac OS X was always smart enough to run a mixture depending on your set up. Finder, the file explorer on the Mac, has been rewritten using the Cocoa Framework from the previous Carbon Framework to allow access to all the new features.
New Expose' and Stacks
Stacks, where folders in the Dock expand, has been enhanced to allow for scrolling in grid view, and also allow drilling down in directories. Expose' has been enhanced to show minimized windows. You can also click and hold on an application icon in the dock and all associated open windows will Expose' themselves.
Quicktime X
There's a new version of Quicktime, which has a new look-and-feel, along with the ability to share directly to YouTube or FaceBook.
Grand Central Dispatch
This is something great for developers. Programming to take advantage of the new multi-processor machines available today isn't an easy task. With Grand Central, a developer just adds a couple lines of code around a section in their application that they feel would benefit from multi-processing, and Grand Central will take care of handling the rest.
Exchange Support
This feature to me is just crazy. Out of the box, as long as your company isn't in the stone age and still running Exchange 2003 like some company I now **cough** Tuner **cough**, you can use the built in Mail.app and iCal.app to connect to your companies Exchange server. This is a welcome addition, seeing as Microsoft doesn't currently produce Outlook for the Mac. This isn't native in Windows, you have to spend money on Microsoft Office to get that functionality, which can cost a pretty penny. Snow Leopard costs $30, or $49 for the family pack, which allows for installing on up to 5 machines.
A couple other features I've seen is support for up to 512 x 512 for icons, and you can play videos directly in the icon for a quick preview.
Overall I feel that Snow Leopard is a nice update, and you can't beat the price. The OS is snappier, and boot up, shut down is super fast.
Smaller Footprint
One of the more interesting features of Snow Leopard is that you will actually gain back hard drive space once the OS is installed. This may seem weird, but once you understand one of the main refinements of Snow Leopard it totally makes sense. Back in the day Apple ran with the Power PC (PPC) architecture. A few years back Apple switched over to Intel. To allow their software to work on both architectures, they implemented a technology called Rosetta, that allowed for universal binaries. What this allowed was for a developer to compile their software against both PPC and Intel, and the resulting binary had the smarts that allowed for it to run on both architectures. This was great, but the downside was all these programs had a lot of extra baggage that was unneeded. With Snow Leopard, Apple is no longer supporting PPC. While this sucks for users that have the older Macs, this is great news for everyone on Intel, because there is no longer the need for the wasted space. Another space saving feature is that Apple is no longer bundling a butt-load of printer drivers. Now, when you hook up a printer, Snow Leopard will download the needed driver from the web. Before installing Snow Leopard I had 55GB of available space on my MacBook. After the install I had 68GB. The amount of space you get back varies per user, I believe the average is around 6 - 8 GB.
64 Bit
Apple has been in the process of converting all of the applications in their OS to 64 Bit, from 32 Bit for a while, and with the release of Snow Leopard they are mostly complete. Whereas with Microsoft Windows you would have to purchase a specific version of the OS depending on if your machine was 64 Bit or 32 Bit, Mac OS X was always smart enough to run a mixture depending on your set up. Finder, the file explorer on the Mac, has been rewritten using the Cocoa Framework from the previous Carbon Framework to allow access to all the new features.
New Expose' and Stacks
Stacks, where folders in the Dock expand, has been enhanced to allow for scrolling in grid view, and also allow drilling down in directories. Expose' has been enhanced to show minimized windows. You can also click and hold on an application icon in the dock and all associated open windows will Expose' themselves.
Quicktime X
There's a new version of Quicktime, which has a new look-and-feel, along with the ability to share directly to YouTube or FaceBook.
Grand Central Dispatch
This is something great for developers. Programming to take advantage of the new multi-processor machines available today isn't an easy task. With Grand Central, a developer just adds a couple lines of code around a section in their application that they feel would benefit from multi-processing, and Grand Central will take care of handling the rest.
Exchange Support
This feature to me is just crazy. Out of the box, as long as your company isn't in the stone age and still running Exchange 2003 like some company I now **cough** Tuner **cough**, you can use the built in Mail.app and iCal.app to connect to your companies Exchange server. This is a welcome addition, seeing as Microsoft doesn't currently produce Outlook for the Mac. This isn't native in Windows, you have to spend money on Microsoft Office to get that functionality, which can cost a pretty penny. Snow Leopard costs $30, or $49 for the family pack, which allows for installing on up to 5 machines.
A couple other features I've seen is support for up to 512 x 512 for icons, and you can play videos directly in the icon for a quick preview.
Overall I feel that Snow Leopard is a nice update, and you can't beat the price. The OS is snappier, and boot up, shut down is super fast.
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