Review: Snow Leopard
Hi, this Bob Madden from FierySource.com and this is a first look at Apple’s new operating system, Snow Leopard. You can upgrade Leopard on your current Mac to Snow Leopard for $29.00 as of Friday August 28 2009. Snow Leopard is one of two operating systems coming out this year, the other one is Microsoft’s Window 7 due out October 22 2009.
Unlike in the past, Apple didn’t totally design a new product and intro it with a big dog and pony show with all the fireworks, instead they took there time rebuilding the already good operating system by modifying things you don’t see under the hood. They really didn’t add any new major features. There are a number of nice little modifications or refinements through out the system but really nothing lust worthy.
Apple says new technologies like 64 bit core applications, Grand Central Dispatch, and Open CL support all will make your system and applications run faster than before. Nevertheless there are a few other nice things about Snow Leopard. It’s speeds up some of the core applications a good bit such as e-mail and the Finder which is the Mac’s desktop. Stacks also got a much needed upgrade as well as Quick Time X.
Installation:
Installing Snow Leopard was simple and took about 40 minutes to do so without any issues what so ever. I believe the install was about 40 percent faster than Leopard and asked us only one question during installation. The default setting installs Snow Leopard without tampering with any of your saved files, music, photos, or documents.
Those who want to perform a “Clean Install” or a “Fresh Install” ( this option deletes everything for minimal issues ) you’ll need to use Disk Utility to first remove all data on the drive, then run the install.
Snow Leopard takes up less space on your hard drive. One of my computers I freed up 10 GB’s of space from it’s predecessor Leopard. Apple claims it will free up 7 GB’s.
Exchange
I think the biggest new feature in Snow Leopard is Exchange, which is a Microsoft product that large companies use to manage their email contacts and calendars of their employee’s. But previously on Windows or Leopard in order to use exchange you had to purchase an add-on product like Microsoft Outlook on Windows or Microsoft Entourage on the Mac.
Now Apples is building exchange capability directly into the operating system which means you don’t have to purchase any add-on software for features like calendar invitations, synchronized notes, Global Address Lists and automatic sync of messages, contacts and appointments are all integrated with Snow Leopard’s standard application set.
Expose:
In the past Apple operating Systems arrived on the scene with major features, there’s nothing significant in Snow Leopard, although the various changes to the operating system are certainly nice and all the little changes do add up. One such little feature is Dock Expose, just as it sounds this simply links Expose to the Dock. Holding down on an application’s icon triggers Expose for that application’s window, therefore you can drag a file onto another application and be able to select which window you want to drop it into. Nevertheless here’s a short video of it in action:
Stacks
Stacks got a much needed overhaul, it now comes with a scroll bar so icons are easy to read and anything can be launched out of the Dock. The scroll bar allows scrolling in the Grid view but by also adding a smart list view capable of showing numerous files at once. Folders are now accessible within Stacks as well, so you’ll be able to navigate to files within folders all without leaving the Stacks Window. These changes make Stacks much more useful than Leopard, probably one that should have been made a while back. Here’s a short video of Stacks in action.
Finder
The Finder didn’t get much in the way of tweaks cosmetics, however the way files behave in the Finder makes it easier to use. Icons now scale thanks to a zoom slider in the lower right of Finder windows. There is also an enhanced icon view allowing you to preview multiple documents or play Quick Time movies without exiting the Finder window.
Preview now allows you to preview any files weather you have the software installed or not. Therefore common file types from Microsoft’s Office or PDF files and so on can now be reviewed without owning the software the file was written in. Here’s another short video on Finder and how it works.
QuickTime 10
Aside from QuickTime’s acceleration, there are a few major changes to talk about here. One of which is when you play a movie and move your mouse outside the window, the video screen loses all the borders and buttons to give you a better video-viewing experience. The recording features for video, audio, and screencast capturing are the bonus points here and were previously only offered in QuickTime Pro.
Another nice feature, while watching a movie, one can click the Share button to convert your movie for iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV. If that wasn’t enough Apple has given us the ability to record video from your Webcam, audio, even the screen action from the desktop with a few clicks. Those of us with an iPhone 3GS will appreciate the new trimming feature in QuickTime 10, it will allow you snatch just the video content you want. Here’s a short video on QuickTime X.
Compatibility
Here’s where the sea gets a little rough. Although Snow Leopard’s changes may at first glance be hard to recognize there has been some serious modifications under the hood, therefore there is bound to be something that won’t work. Keep in mind that if you are running a stock or close-to-stock system, you probably won’t encounter any issues. On the flip side of the coin, if you have a setup tweaked like some folks around here do then no doubt you’re going to run into some issues.
Let me just say in our test common third-party programs, such as the Mac versions of Microsoft Office, Firefox browser, and Adobe Reader all ran smooth after the upgrade.
Conclusion:
After testing Snow Leopard on two of our Mac’s we have around here I have concluded it’s a good product. Like all new software products I did find a few glitches, bugs and some compatibility issues but over all it is a good sound product that has turned an already good operating system called Leopard into a much better operating system. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is not a complete system overhaul, instead it is a good modification of the current Leopard OS. Snow Leopard makes a good operating system a bit better and faster and a worthy upgrade for Mac users. I really don’t think everyone who has Leopard needs to run out and purchase Snow Leopard even though it is only $29.00. I’ll also add that Snow Leopard is Apple’s lowest-priced operating system update in eight years. However if your a serious Mac user parting with some of that cash in your wallet may be a good idea.
For you Window users I don’t think I would switch over to Apple. I mean most of these upgrades are already and have been in Windows for some time now such as 64 bit. I have been in the 64 bit arena for over three years now with Windows and Windows 7 is about to take that experience to a higher plain by making it a preferred flavor among business users.
As for the Expose Dock Integration, Microsoft has been offering this type of functionality ( known as thumbnail preview) for years as well, and Windows 7 has taken the concept further with Aero Peek. The new Expanded PDF Preview feature is another example of what Widows has been supporting for some time now via an install-able ifilter module.
Anyway I’m not here to bash Apple’s new operating system as I do think it is an excellent operating system for the Mac, if you already own an up-to-date Windows machine I wouldn’t spend the money on a Mac to experience Snow Leopard.
This is Bob Madden from Fiery Source.com and I will see you next time, thank you for reading this review.
Product page [Apple]
Brian, a really great review. I don’t think there’s much room for people to complain here. If this is a service pack, then they dove quite a bit deeper than normal and the price is well worth it. Like you said, especially if you get this amount of performance increase through software alone.
I preformed a clean install. I’ve got about 10 main stream apps that don’t work. Latest video codecs that continue to claim they can’t find Quicktime and won’t launch from the finder. Have about 3 friends that had serious upgrade issues and one upgrade that failed and his end result is an unbootable mac. He has had to erase entire hard drive and reinstall Leopard, and is restoring everything with time machine. He isn’t going to try again until snow leopard has had some time out in the wild. I am trying to decide whether to downgrade myself to get back the apps I use until upgrades are released. At Mac Store I was lead to believe that this should be fairly flawless and everything should work. Where are all the people bitching about this upgrade like they bitched about Vista?? I had fewer issues upgrading to Vista.
I had no issues on my 17″ Unibody MacBook Pro. However it has been a living nightmare for me on my 2008 Mac Pro. I have 6 drives inside the Mac Pro and I have two raid sets. Any time I tried to access anything for the raid sets I would get Kernel Panics. I had to slowly pull Terrabytes worth of data folder by folder onto external drives to kill the pre Snow Leopard raid sets. It is being talked about on the Apple Disccusion groups but no answer from Apple yet on the matter.