Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6)

[editor]

I picked up the Snow Leopard family pack over the weekend while I was at the flagship Apple Store in San Francisco (it's actually not so great compared to the stores in London and Tokyo and Chicago). Here's what I've noticed so far:

• Killed my custom mail icon.
  
• Killed dock symlinks to folders in my local iDisk.
  
• New Quicktime icon.
  
• Killed my custom Terminal icon.
  
• More reliable iDisk syncing.
  
• Safari 4 seems somehow different.
  
• Menu bar text and icons seem crisper.
  
• Killed my PPC-only menubar weather app.
  
• Killed my custom time zone settings.
  
• Safari renders way faster.
  
• Dashboard is instant now. No delay.
  
• Calendar graphics in dashboard have been redone.
  
• Expose is less messy now.
  
• Many apps open instantly.
  
• iCal is amazingly fast and useable.
  
• Makes Multiclutch unusable.
  
• Giant icons in Finder rocks, especially in photo folders.
  
• Snow Leopard reset all of my Little Snitch settings.
  
• Installation freed up 17GB of space.
  
• Disk eject warning dialog has changed and auto-clears.
  
• Rsync makes the fans run.
  
• Mail is still a hog and refuses to quit if there's no network connection.
  
• Progress bars are smoother and more precise.
  
• Drive icons turn grey when they're being ejected.
  
• Preview can now save 16-bit TIFFs to 8-bit JPEGs without going through an extra conversion step.
  
• Stickies now have a maximize widget.
  
• Time from boot bong to login: 21 seconds.
  
• Time from login to system ready: 5 seconds.
  
• Command-Z can now undo the moving of a mail message into a different folder
  
• When the wireless network you're connected to shuts down, the Airport icon does a little dance while searching for a new signal.
  
• When presented with a list of wireless networks, the signal strengths of each are also shown.
  
• Mullticlutch support can be re-enabled by forcing Safari to open in 32-bit mode.
  
• Adding my wireless printer has gone from a 90-minute process to a 90-second process. It was virtually instant.
  
• Snow Leopard now detects low ink levels in my printer.
  
• Snow Leopard detects other printers nearby and offers to print on them.
  
• Printer icon now has a badge showing the number of queued documents.
  
• Printer dialog now has presets for draft printing, etc…
  
• Time Machine actually responds to the "Stop Backing Up" command for a change.
  
• When the printer queue is empty, the print monitor automatically exits. This was an option at the beginning of Leopard, but stopped working around 10.5.5. Now it's the default.
  
• Snow Leopard is a lot less network-intense. Leopard was constantly sending out and seeking DNS and Bonjour updates.

The biggest problem has been with my accounting software. I use Quickbooks 2007 to run my business. Intuit says it had no idea an operating system upgrade was coming and was caught completely off guard by Snow Leopard. Strangely, thousands of other software companies received regular updates and builds of Snow Leopard over the last nine months or so in order to test their products. Regardless, Intuit will not issue an upgrade or patch for my software.

So what I've done is installed Leopard on an SD card (remarkably easy since there's no copy protection or product activation on Apple's operating systems, unlike some other company that promises a Genuine Advantage) and I just keep that SD card in the slot on the side of my computer. At the end of the day I just boot into Leopard and do my accounting and get on with my life.

The other upside is that I can take that SD card with me anywhere and boot any Mac into my custom Leopard environment without disturbing that Mac's files or settings. Neat! It's similar to the Mac Anywhere feature that Apple promised with the second generation iPod, but then yanked never to be seen again.

[marmer]

Intel only. I can't use it at home or at work. Besides, 10.5 Leopard irretrievably broke three third-party add-ons I used a lot: Cooliris, Soundfont Synth and Senuti, so I'm not in that big of a hurry to see what else will break. Maybe if I weren't so busy trying to fix everything Leopard broke I could get more indignant about the lack of PPC support in Snow Leopard. My iMac G5 with 2 GB of RAM is still a perfectly decent and usable machine for everything (except what Apple and developers are deliberately taking away by dropping PPC support.)

[editor]

Intel only. I can't use it at home or at work. Besides, 10.5 Leopard irretrievably broke three third-party add-ons I used a lot: Cooliris, Soundfont Synth and Senuti, so I'm not in that big of a hurry to see what else will break. Maybe if I weren't so busy trying to fix everything Leopard broke I could get more indignant about the lack of PPC support in Snow Leopard. My iMac G5 with 2 GB of RAM is still a perfectly decent and usable machine for everything (except what Apple and developers are deliberately taking away by dropping PPC support.)

Leopard was announced more than four years ago (June 6, 2005). It was released two years ago (October 26, 2007). I think the time for complaining about Leopard is over.

Good for you for sticking with your G5 PPC machine. I still have a G4 that gets lots of use, and it, too, will remain on Leopard because of the Intel issue. But I don't hold a grudge about it. It's just one of the things that come from using Apple machines -- they remain useable for so long that they frequently are left behind by changes in technology. When 10.0 came out, I had a 601 machine. It happens. As long as the machine still gets the job done, who cares?

[hadooga]

[*]Snow Leopard reset all of my Little Snitch settings.

Good to know, as I haven't made the move yet and I wouldn't want to forget about that when I do. I'll probably make the jump this weekend.

[marmer]

Leopard was announced more than four years ago (June 6, 2005). It was released two years ago (October 26, 2007). I think the time for complaining about Leopard is over.

I concede your point, sorta, but it's new to me. I went ahead and updated when my hard drive failed, in the hope that it would improve stability of Safari and iTunes. (not all that much.) Imagine my surprise when I found that there were still lots of issues. Unresolved issues. And I am particularly unhappy about Soundfont Synth, which I had purchased and used a lot. The developer pulled the product off the market rather than support it under Leopard.

Good for you for sticking with your G5 PPC machine. I still have a G4 that gets lots of use, and it, too, will remain on Leopard because of the Intel issue. But I don't hold a grudge about it. It's just one of the things that come from using Apple machines -- they remain useable for so long that they frequently are left behind by changes in technology. When 10.0 came out, I had a 601 machine. It happens. As long as the machine still gets the job done, who cares?

I'm typing this at work on a G4 Dual PowerMac from Spring 2000. It has been maxed out to 1.5 GB of RAM. This class of machine was the last that would actually boot into System 9 Classic. Believe it or not I still use that function once or twice a year. There are several people in my office still using G4 gooseneck iMacs and I wouldn't want to bet against a G3 iMac or two out there somewhere. It's a point of pride for me to actually do functional work on an old computer, sorta like some people like to have old cars as their daily drivers.

[editor]

I'm typing this at work on a G4 Dual PowerMac from Spring 2000. It has been maxed out to 1.5 GB of RAM. This class of machine was the last that would actually boot into System 9 Classic. Believe it or not I still use that function once or twice a year. There are several people in my office still using G4 gooseneck iMacs and I wouldn't want to bet against a G3 iMac or two out there somewhere. It's a point of pride for me to actually do functional work on an old computer, sorta like some people like to have old cars as their daily drivers.

I known an art department in Houston that still has a blue G3 MacPro or two under the desks. Now that I think of it, I've seen a bunch of those recently in a television newsroom. I can't remember where, though.

[HoustonMidtown]

I known an art department in Houston that still has a blue G3 MacPro or two under the desks. Now that I think of it, I've seen a bunch of those recently in a television newsroom. I can't remember where, though.

Still in love with my MacSE !!

Not really - but oh those were the days....

[marmer]

Still in love with my MacSE !!

Not really - but oh those were the days....

I clearly remember doing a lot of database work and early page layout work with a colleague of mine with a Mac SE, a "two-page monitor" and an upgraded video card. Certainly well up into the 90s. I'd be willing to bet the last toaster Macs went out of service around here closer to 2000 than closer to 1990.

[LTAWACS]

I've always wanted to start using a mac but Im a little worried about the learning curve.

[editor]

I've always wanted to start using a mac but Im a little worried about the learning curve.

I don't think you have anything to worry about. That's like saying you've been reading technical manuals all your life and your worried about making the transition to reading cookbooks. It's mostly the same basic skills.

• There are just a few things to get used to:
  
• Close/Minimize buttons are on the top left instead of the top right.
  
• Status bar is at the top of the screen.
  
• There's no such thing as A:, B:, C:, D:, etc... Disks and discs have names like "Macintosh HD" or "Ischia" or "Photos" or "Backup Drive."
  
• For most things you want to do, there are several other ways of doing it, so pick the one that fits you best, and don't be afraid to experiment because there are all sorts of hidden shortcuts and tricks in the operating system.
  
• For example, to eject a CD:
  
  • You can click on the disc's icon and press Command-E.
    
  • Or you can drag the disc to the Eject button in the dock.
    
  • Or you can select it from the eject widget in your menu bar (if you've chosen to activate that).
    
  • Or you can click on the eject icon in the sidebar of any Finder window.
    
  • Or you can clock on the drive icon and select "Eject" from the Finder menu.
    

  [*]Another example -- if you want to copy a file:

  • You can hold down Option and drag its icon.
    
  • You can right-click on its icon and select "Duplicate"
    
  • You can right-click on its icon and select "Copy"
    
  • You can select its icon and press Command-C, then Command-V (paste) it somewhere else.
    
  • You can select its icon and choose "Copy" from the Finder menu.
    

The big thing for me in the transition from Wintel to Mac was getting out of the habit of pressing Control-S every three minutes to save my work for fear of a system crash. I still do it sometimes; it's a hard habit to break.

[marmer]

The big thing for me in the transition from Wintel to Mac was getting out of the habit of pressing Control-S every three minutes to save my work for fear of a system crash. I still do it sometimes; it's a hard habit to break.

It's Command-S on the Mac. I wouldn't try too hard to break that habit, actually. Especially if working in MS Word.

I'm an original Mac user, since 1984, and I can get around on my daughter's Windows box just fine. I wouldn't worry about the learning curve.

[editor]

It's Command-S on the Mac. I wouldn't try too hard to break that habit, actually. Especially if working in MS Word.

I operate in a Microsoft-free environment. One of my larger clients had some kind of trouble on their end with a virus or a trojan or something (she wouldn't detail exactly what happened) and ever since, any company that exchanges files with them can't use Windows of any kind.

One other thing -- Don't think of the green button as "Maximize." It's not. It a change of state button.

[marmer]

One other thing -- Don't think of the green button as "Maximize." It's not. It a change of state button.

I wondered why I kept winding up in Louisiana!

[editor]

The Core Location library has been ported from the iPhone to Snow Leopard. Now SL uses wifi triangulation and IP resolution to figure out where you are and set your computer's clock. Good for people who travel with their laptops.

Unfortunately, it doesn't always work.

The top screen shot is me at home, and it's right. The bottom is me at the Starbucks across the street. The IP address for that location always resolves to somewhere in Kentucky or Tennessee. That, combined with the known location of the Starbucks wifi signal must confuse Core Location, so it shrugs its shoulders and gives up.

[editor]

The Screen Sharing/VNC is much faster now. Also, when remotely viewing another Mac, the Apple-Tab application switcher menu works on the remote computer. It used to only work on the local, even if you were working on a remote machine.

[editor]

With the dynamically-resizing icons now in the new Finder, if you've ever wondered what the maximum number of icons you could have on a 1920x1200 screen is, here it is:

[barracuda]

With the dynamically-resizing icons now in the new Finder, if you've ever wondered what the maximum number of icons you could have on a 1920x1200 screen is, here it is:

Good luck finding a file in there!

I'm typing this at work on a G4 Dual PowerMac from Spring 2000. It has been maxed out to 1.5 GB of RAM. This class of machine was the last that would actually boot into System 9 Classic. Believe it or not I still use that function once or twice a year. There are several people in my office still using G4 gooseneck iMacs and I wouldn't want to bet against a G3 iMac or two out there somewhere. It's a point of pride for me to actually do functional work on an old computer, sorta like some people like to have old cars as their daily drivers.

Nice. I still have my Quicksilver G4/800 DP which I keep around just in case I ever need to run OS9. Oh, and a Mac Classic stuffed away in a closet. The best thing about it was the old-school full-sized Apple keyboard. I miss those.

[editor]

Got an involuntary upgrade to first class, so for the first time in the two years I've had the Apple airplane power adapter for my MacBook Pro I was able to use it. Also, the in-flight wifi.

Turns out the 17" MPB uses 85 watts of power. The airplane only supplies 75. So the Mac goes into low power mode and just runs off the airplane power and doesn't charge or drain the battery:

When I got to the hotel, Snow Leopard automagically figured out what city I'm in and changed the date, time, and time zone correctly:

[houstonmacbro]

Snow Leopard (SL) sped up my black MacBook greatly. I didn't see such a dramatic speed increase on my unibody (aluminum, non-pro) MacBook. That said I believe everything about SL has improved my system. Never one to use Safari, I find myself using it more because of the speed in which the 64-bit infrastructure just wipes the floor with Firefox.

For $29 I think it is an amazing upgrade.

[arisegundo]

It runs surprisingly well on my old-timey Core Duo MacBook with only 1GB of RAM, which is the lowest-end Intel Mac of them all. I can't get it to network wirelessly with my Vista living room computer through SMB, probably because I toggled the wrong thing on or off on one of the five different Vista "Sharing" settings. Perhaps I should just turn the PC into a hackintosh...

[editor]

It runs surprisingly well on my old-timey Core Duo MacBook with only 1GB of RAM, which is the lowest-end Intel Mac of them all. I can't get it to network wirelessly with my Vista living room computer through SMB, probably because I toggled the wrong thing on or off on one of the five different Vista "Sharing" settings. Perhaps I should just turn the PC into a hackintosh...

I kept upgrading a 2001 OS9 iBook (10 GB drive and 768 megs of RAM!) all the way up to Leopard before I sold it. With each upgrade, it got faster and better. I bet you'll get a lot longer use out of your old Mac than your Vista box.