Apple Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Comments

Sooo much faster! Boots in a few seconds and shuts down almost instantly, I like the new features, cheap, well done Apple!

Not bad overall, it could have been better...and worst.

I can't really upgrade at the moment because of software incompatibilities with some 3rd party solutions, in my case DxO, Fujitsu ScanSnap and DEVONthink Pro Office, which get somewhat broken under 10.6, but for 30€ you can't complain much about the limited number of new features it brings to the table. In mostly interested in Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, but it might take some time for software to catch up; if ever with OpenCL. GPU acceleration has existed now for some years, yet very few software actually uses it and to limited effect.

Another Lustful Victory For Uncle Steve

Cue the windows 7 funboys.............

Actually a Snow Leopard isn't just a different looking Leopard; it's a big cat that looks like a Leopard, but whose exact taxonomic position is unclear, with its nearest relative likely to be the Tiger.

This comment brought to you by Pedants Anonymous.

On the flip side - I can barely notice the difference here on my UBMB. Seriously - I can't tell I'm on SL. I wasted an afternoon upgrading. Maybe in 6-12 months when dev's have begun to use the under-the-bonnet differences in SL, but in the meantime, I've found it a waste of time.

I'd be applauding Snow Leopard - if it hadn't decided that everything in my Documents folder was unnecessary, also my Downloads folder, removed all of my contacts from the address book, made my Adobe CS4 unstable, removed the website list from Dreamweaver and generally been, well, a bit unkind to me. (thankfully, back-ups were to hand).

This doesn’t read like a review, more an extended marketing piece for Apple. I don’t see any benchmarks to test performance against 10.5, just enthusiastic explanations that read like its from Apple’s website. I have 10.6 on two Mac’s – a 24” 3.06Ghz iMac and a 13” MBP, both with 4Gb Ram. I don’t notice any speed improvement in performance in either, but at least the MBP is stable – the iMac now only exits Apple Mail using force quit and crashes other software. I’ve seen warning screens I’ve never had on a Mac before. I know, I know never buy the “.0” version of any software. Well I though as this was an upgrade to 10.5 that I’d be OK. Wrong. So this article with its lack of analysis and refusal to report user problems (HP printer recognition?) makes it, in my view, anything but “trusted”. I’m sure 10.6 will be great. But avoid it until 10.6.1 at the very least.

I would imagine the latest and greatest (controversial, I know) 64-bit iTunes will be out later on today. Personally, I've never experienced problems with my immense musical library.

Expecting war to break out within the next 4 posts.

But isn't it just a service pack?!!! ;-)

I upgraded (foolish early adopter that I am) and have actually regretted it. The applications I use are actually a tad more sluggish (especially 'save' routines). Google Desktop indexing does not work any longer so I lost that (I prefer that to Spotlight), with its huge archive of my emails and documents; my HP C4280 printer scanner lost its scanning function (since recovered by searching forum advice, but with a new interface that is worse than the old one). In short I see no speed or other benefits and some definite losses (admittedly in the narrow perspective of the office suite applications I use every day). In short I regret the upgrade, ands if I could be bothered, would roll back to the last OS.

@ Ironduke - No, it's only Mac fanboys that invade PC forums with messages of hate. Windows users generally just don't care about Apple's releases. Nothing more, nothing less. There's no bitterness from this side ;)

I've had a somewhat clean run with Snow Leopard at home, as my Mac came with it when I bought it - so I simply went through software updates and then installed Snow Leopard before installing any applications.

At work however, I have noticed some applications not working, and the open/save process in the CS3 suite certainly being a lot slower - sometimes crashing.

i upgraded to snow leopard. i'm happy overall, some nice and neat changes and improvements, but nothing fantastic either

i've upgraded with no issues. I bit disappointed with the boot times, almost no change, I had hoped they could make a big difference here especially as they know the hardware that will be booted on every time. Looks like ubuntu will get theirs down to 10 seconds or something way before anyone else.
Just of note it seems my white macbook when from 45 seconds to 35-40.

@Jordan, good job you put the smiley on, I thought you were being serious then.

Slightly faster boot, much faster shutdown, much faster wake from sleep and near-instant WiFi reconnection, so that's all good. Performance was jittery to start with, only after a couple of restarts have things settled down - but everything's definitely faster now. aMSN didn't work, but if you google you'll find a link to the latest beta, which does.

rollix jordan they invaded the macbook air thread

I'm not usually an early adopter (the time between admiring Macs and actually buying one was very long) but I upgraded this week for two reasons :

1. Stinginess. I'd rather pay £8 for a currently minor upgrade than £25, and I didn't want the offer to disappear.
2. Fear. I really don't want to fall off the wagon trail by being more than one OS X behind. Apple really have punished Tiger users, and if I'm not mistaken, even the Intel ones.

@GoldenGuy - While I agree Apple could have been fairer on Tiger users, I think punished is a bit harsh. Anyone using Tiger obviously didn't see any advantage in upgrading to get the extra features of Leopard... With there been no real extra features for the end user in Snow Leopard, why would people that are still on Tiger want to upgrade? Yes, it offers a speed boost, but so did Leopard offer a speed boost over Tiger.

There is an upgrade bundle that Tiger users can get which includes the latest iLife and iWork and will boost your system to 10.6 for around £120, which for everything you get, is a good price.

Excuse me for asking this, as I've been living under a huge rock for the last decade or two, but are Apple users those odd folks that pay a huge premium for hardware with a little round thing branded on it because they'd feel bad if they didn't contribute to Steve_J's billion dollar pension pot?

As for the new flavour of OS, I can't say I noticed, but it appears to be slick, shiny and everything else you would expect from Apple. Personally, I still wouldn't buy an Apple product though, out of general principle.

I agree that for everything you get that suite is worth the price, but it's the same problem the PS3 had - good value if you want what's an offer but undeniably a lot of money. As always, I was bit melodramatic but I think the main point stands - if you get off the Apple conveyor belt, there can be a higher premium to be paid in cost and performance. However, I don't want to get into a total cost of ownership debacle, as the PC/Mac fanboys really don't need more baiting. Anyway, I just hope to God they're not planning any big processor switches in-the-not-too-distant future!

All in all I believe that apple products, and most of all the Macbook range, are superior to PCs in general although undeniably overpriced. Clearly the hardware isn't as good as many PCs out there but the combination of hardware and software designed to work together is worth the price to me. Been using a macbook for the last two years for Uni and not a single problem with it. Infact its a pleasure to use compared to my laptops and pc before that.

Just thought I would add my opinion. (welcoming the aggressive replies as I type :))

@eyepopper Apple hardware prices have come down to a more reasonable level, and in some cases like my Mac Pro (8-core, 14 Gb RAM, internal SSDs, RAID-6 and GTX 285 cards), it's very competitive from a performance/construction quality/noise level/price perspective compared to anything from Dell/Alienware or HP.

Hopefully Apple with come up with a new Mac Pro design when the Nehalem-EX‎ hits the streets.

Seems very nice I'd have no problems upgrading if I owned a mac, infact I'd buy one just for iLife, more specifically iPhoto, (just not a macbook air ;P) but I still stand by my view that an OS is just an OS, all have plus points and all have negatives, listening to your music, surfing the internet and even to the editing of photos and movies are the same or very similar on all.

But forget about this, new iPods today :D

@GG (can I call you GG?) - yup, good value if you want what's on offer. Undeniable. The alternative is that you don't want what's on offer, in which case, of course it's bad value because you don't want it.
I am *not* a rich man, but I joined the PS3 and the Apple camps because they offer the best quality and the best value in my all too humble opinion. I stick by my decisions not through blind brand loyalty or a refusal to admit when I'm wrong, but because they have continued to be fantastic pieces of kit that don't let me down and give me everything I was promised and more.

@Hugo - Arguably so. But did Leopard not retails at around £120 itself? In which case, it's still good value because you're getting everything you would have, plus more! I may be thinking of $120 though... Been a while since I've purchased an Apple OS having purchased a couple of computers in the past few years. You make a fine point, and *perhaps* I do too...

Ironduke - don't be silly, the Macbook Air thread was not "invaded" by Windows fanboys; Quite simply, many people (both PC and Mac users) were shocked at the scores awarded to a style-over-everything device which they felt was rather under-featured and spectacularly overpriced. Many of us pointed out that a "proper" Macbook was much better value - hardly a plug for Windows. I get that you are sufficiently obsessed with Apple to describe an operating system update as a "lustful victory", but don't assume everyone else is that fanatical.

In my opinion Snow Leopard is a worthwhile upgrade, having used it for a while now. I've only noticed a few incompatibilities. And my Mac feels subjectively quicker in boot up and shut down. The only niggle I have is with a few preferences panes being 32-bit which requires a restart of System preferences to use them. Overall, can't complain for the low price.

@Pbryanw - I'm not saying 10.6 doesn't boot/shutdown faster than 10.5, but unless you are constantly performing boots/shutdowns (you do?), it's not a very big motivator to upgrade per say.

My Mac Pro runs 24x7 and is processing data constantly when I'm not there, and I don't always reboot once a week; most often it's because an update requires that I do.

When I have laptops, I just use deep sleep - is this much faster now? as usually it's pretty much IO-bound to the speed of the system disk.

upgrade proces smooth - except now my printer wont work and there is no driver for it. No other discernible differences - so what was the point of that?

Too bad I can't do a clean install with the $25 upgrade disc (obviously). Instead I used SUperDuper to image the drive before doing the update just in case it goes into the weeds.

Oh, and 'stuck with VLC' as if that's a bad thing. I switched to Mac a year and a half ago and I don't think I've ever used Quicktime on purpose.

For those interested, the £25 version installs over Tiger with no issues.

@Digital Fury - I tend to switch my Mac off when I'm not using it, so the quicker shut-down/boot-up times are a bonus for me. Seeing that your Mac runs 24x7 I doubt there'd be much difference upgrading to Snow Leopard. I think you'd notice that Apple apps open more quickly - even a few third-party ones too.

And then there's lots of little tweaks which, I think, make Snow Leopard a worthwhile purchase.

@Doc. Caliban - As far as I know, the default upgrade option in Snow Leopard (SL) is equivalent to the old Archive & install method. But with Snow Leopard, the old system directory is deleted instead of archived on your hard-drive. Hence, why people see big space gains after installing the new OS.

I also recall that you can boot from the SL DVD, use Disk Utility to format your HD, then proceed with SL installation, which is like a manual erase and install.

Doc. Caliban,

You can do a clean install from the SL upgrade disc. Just load the disc from the desktop, select utilities, then restart the system. It will now boot from the disc, select disk utility from the drop down menu, erase your hd, then install SL. Then just use the migration assistant to transfer your user account etc from your time machine backups or create a new account and install everything manually.

Cheers ravmania. I don't have Tiger myself but I imagine Apple's determination not to tell those users, has frustrated a fair few people still using older high-end machines.

"you can use a multi-touch touchpad to draw chinese symbols - a tad gimmicky, maybe"

There you guys go again. You mean "write Chinese characters". As for gimmicky, this is a key development in improving Chinese computer usability and this level of integration of this Chinese input method into the OS is unprecedented. And it's also clearly part of a major China strategy that Apple is embarking on.

@Pbryanw
@Carcharodon

I'm 'Less than a minute' from the basic upgrade process completing. Would I get a cleaner install if I do the reboot/format/install/migrate install? I don't have a TM, but I have a SuperDuper image on a USB drive... can it migrate from that?

@Indigo

Completely agree. Dismissing that as a gimmick is pretty narrow-minded - in this instance we're talking about a feature making life easier for a billion people. The whole computer input experience has been unfairly tilted in favour of the Latin alphabet, with a gleeful disregard for the number of countries that don't use it. To state the obvious, this is the first step in a major breakthrough for huge markets like China, Japan, India and so on. It's probably going to be a bit shaky at first but the support can only improve with time.

I think we still need far better translation apps across the entire computing world though, and I just wonder if that challenge might be made easier in the iPhone OS, particularly between non-Latin characters, say Chinese to Hindi.

All this talk of faster booting times and quicker access speeds, I think the real issue is where's all the time for nipping out to make a cup of tea gone?

Doc. Caliban,

I personally always do a clean install of a new OS as no one will convince me that its still not the best option. However, it does seem that Apple have done a pretty good job with the SL upgrade installer; a couple of friends have used it and had no problems, so you should be ok. As you’ve already installed SL this way I wouldn’t now both doing a clean install unless you run into problems.

As for the SuperDuper, I’ve never used it, so I don’t know if its compatible with the migration assistant; although the MA does give you a fairly wide range of option to install backups from. To find out if it is compatible, just run the MA from the desktop and see if it recognizes the SuperDuper image on your USB as a backup source.

Anyway, hope this helps.

@Hugo

I've seen at least two reviews which provided benchmarking along with useful comment and evidence of critical thinking which is sadly lacking in this piece.

My concern is I expect reviewers to test the claims of manufacturers, not explain their marketing literature in more detail. This is a superficial "review" - of the three I've read it comes dead last. I expect reviewers to provide their justification for comment - it lends to the credibility of the piece.

Instead having read your article I'm not even sure if you've used 10.6 - the entire piece could have been based around the information on the Apple website with a few extra background comments thrown in. You cite your opinion as something which should be sufficient for the reader to "take your word for it" but you but don't mention your experience of using the OS. You also fail to mention the numerous problems reported by users in your one line conclusion. Is your opinion based on what you’ve read from Apple or what you’ve found out by using the software?

Its Apple’s job to “sell” the features of the software – its TR’s job to see if it does what it’s supposed to. So – how long did the install take, what machine did you put it onto, how much HDD space did you save, what was the boot time in 10.5 vs the new 10.6. Did your printer work OK – how long have you been running 10.6 now? By all means explain the technology but balance that with the user experience.

Worst of all – you seem to take valid observations on weaknesses on the review as a personal slight, dismissing them out of hand. If readers of the TR website go to the trouble of spending their time saying what they feel is lacking from an article your could find a better response than the petulant comments that are sadly fast becoming your trademark.

Quicktime X does support plugins via Perian just as the previous Quicktimes, a little research wouldn't have hurt your journalistic aims.