Snow Leopard GM "Unofficial" First Impressions

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

Let's get this first bit out of the way up front. I am not a developer and have no NDA to break. I acquired my copy through "unofficial" channels. Having established that, I will be providing no spoilers and I will be purchasing the OS as soon as it hits the store shelves.

After running it for about two hours, I have experienced nothing that makes me think this is anything but the final version. It is absolutely ready for prime time. I have no fear about running it on my production machine. Sometimes beta software feels like beta software. This feels like polished, retail software.

Yes, it is quite snappy. I can't find anything in the interface that seems sluggish. I am running it on a stock, 15" MBP from the previous generation. I only have 2 GB of ram. It feels like I got a ram upgrade. I have been looking at the activity monitor to check my CPU usage. The most I have been able to push it to is about half running and intense Logic Pro file. Watching a 1080 P movie does not even cause it to break a sweat.

Speaking of movie playback, QT is what it should have been all along. It is light, clean, and useful. The bezel is completely gone. That, alone, is almost worth the price of admission. When you click on the green window button, the window actually resizes to fit the screen as it should have all along. Additionally, you can now do video capture right from QT. It works flawlessly. There will be a new era in how-to videos for the Mac. You can also make video and audio recordings from within QT. It is a lot easier than having to open iMovie or GB. Again, the features work flawlessly.

The enhancements to the Dock are subtile but meaningful. Stacks now works as it should. You can drill down into folders without leaving it. Previewing all windows in a running program, even minimized windows, is now easier than ever. The feature works a little like it does in W7 only better.

The install was painless. It was completely unsupervised. Other than the Welcome screen, I would not have known that had installed anything new. Everything looked exactly the same as before, including my wallpaper. The first thing I did was open system profiler and check the OS version number. Do not expect a whiz bang new look. The refinements are subtle, but real.

I am no developer and will not be able to answer the types of questions that advanced users will no doubt have. Still, if you have any questions within my power to answer, I will be more than glad to. I mostly started this thread because I have been looking for this type of first hand review and discussion. Well, here it is. Have at it.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

Additionally, you can now do video capture right from QT. It works flawlessly. There will be a new era in how-to videos for the Mac.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

On a related note, I gained about 20 GB after install.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

This is a quick and dirty example of what I mean. It is not at all choppy in real life. It was uploaded directly from QT. The youtube compression was not kind to it. The feature is fantastic.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

First, there is no clean install option

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

This thing was made for upgrading

Originally Posted by tvon

Does double clicking the titlebar still minimize for you? I did a fresh install and it's not working for me....

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

Additionally, you can now do video capture right from QT. It works flawlessly. There will be a new era in how-to videos for the Mac.

Originally Posted by ascii

Be careful with "Mute" - if you are listening on headphones and have it muted and unplug the headphones, mute is turned off - or at least it doesn't apply to all outputs in the first place.

Originally Posted by Mr. H

This isn't new to Snow Leopard. Both my MacBook running Tiger and my MacBook Pro running Leopard do this. The headphones and built-in speakers have independent volume control. So, if you're using the speakers and have the volume set to max, then plug in headphones and adjust the volume to half-way, when you remove the headphones the volume will go back to max; plug the headphones back in and you return to half volume.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

After a day of banging on this thing, I am fairly certain that this is not the final build.

First, there is no clean install option. There really is not much of any install options, though it is nice to have a simply, no fuss, install. I wiped my HD and did the install as clean as possible. On two computers I have done the install a total of three times. Each time, it took about forty minutes. No way will the final version ship without install options.

QT has no preferences as previously mentioned by another poster. There are also no import/export options nor an option to upgrade to pro. Clearly, these are features that will be added to the final release as well.

VoiceOver has a major bug which they will no doubt fix. VO is the built in screen reader. Most people will never even no it is there.

Other than those few things, this is a fantastic release. I am excited about the prospect of it getting even better and more optimized.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

When you release your fingers, it stays at what ever state it was in when you fingers were last touching.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

First, there is no clean install option.

Originally Posted by OldCodger73

I haven't been keeping up with all the information about Snow Leopard and have a question. I'm using a TiBook G4 867mhz with 1GB RAM using 10.5.8 as a second computer. Since Snow Leopard is more of an update of 10.5, will it work on a G4 computer?

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

I agree that there are no show stoppers, nor are there any bugs that would make you want to go back to Leopard. I suspect that all minor annoyances will be addressed in the first point released. There is enough, however, for the loud-mouthed podcaster and poisoned-fingered tech journalist to latch on to. Apple's biggest problem with this release will be managing expectations. MS has allowed the hype of W7 to get completely out of control. The truth is both of these releases are service packs, at least to the end user. Microsoft had more to fix so W7 may seem like a bigger upgrade. I have been using W7 for some time so my opinion is seasoned with personal experience.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

The good new is that printing works flawlessly as near as I can tell. The bad news is that SL does not run on PPC. SL is Intel only.

On a related note, I gained about 20 GB after install. This is probably due to getting rid of PPC code.

Originally Posted by ascii

Quicktime not autoplaying is a big annoyance for me.

Expose is sluggish until you do it 2 or 3 times and then it mysteriously speeds up. Typically you will only do it once therefore (for practical purposes) it is always sluggish. They really need to work on fixing this.

The two most common Dock menu items I use are "Keep in Dock" and "Force Quit." All the others I couldn't even tell you what they are. What they have done is move "Keep in Dock" in to a submenu, another little annoyance. The most common ones should not be in submenus.

The new Finder is great. If you configure it right you can have a true spatial Finder. Windows remember their positions, and you can't have two windows of the same folder open at once, and when you restart, any windows you had open come back open. It requires some configuring to get this effect, for example you must hide the sidebar to avoid two windows with the same contents. That online commentator guy who has made this his pet issue should be happy now.

The fact that the Spotlight search in a Finder window now searches that Window is a good new option, but is not on by default.

Be careful with "Mute" - if you are listening on headphones and have it muted and unplug the headphones, mute is turned off - or at least it doesn't apply to all outputs in the first place.

There is a bug in the keyboard shortcut preferences. In the Expose tab, try setting the 3 expose modes to F13, F14, F15. It will show you the little yellow roadsign warning that you are conflicting with another shortcut. Click on it and it takes you to the keyboard shortcuts tab but there is no conflict present. Maybe those keys do something on a notebook, but on my desktop it shouldn't be showing a conflict.

Other than that I guess it is a technical tour de force, with 64-bit throughout and the new queue-based system for programming multicore.

Originally Posted by Marvin

I just tried it out and I think QuicktimeX is ok but it's the whole imovie thing all over again. People who used Quicktime for quick edits, audio pasting, converting to a multitude of formats are going to have to install Quicktime 7, which now gets relegated to the Utilities folder.

While I like the empty Quicktime window pane, having two installations is just a nuisance because double-clicking a movie will always open in one or the other so I'll have to make sure all the movie types open in Quicktime 7 and not Quicktime X by default but I'll have to right-click open with every one I want to specifically play in the new player.

I don't know why they can't just merge projects together instead of pushing all these various branches of the same app onto users. As if they couldn't simply have made a presentation and edit mode for Quicktime.

Some other observations about Snow Leopard:

Install size is small but it still puts languages on and you need to install Rosetta and Quicktime 7 via customizing. Total size required without drivers or languages is 3.9GB, which is pretty good.

Install time, same as usual - about 35 minutes but it will depend on the options and if it's from a disc.

A few things seem to be broken, it doesn't feel production-ready. Shake and AE crash. It seems like there may be some issues running OpenGL apps. I'll have to test that more. There were a number of visual glitches like menus not appearing, window panes just blank in all parts of the system.

It does feel snappier but it's hard to judge as it's a clean install after a fresh boot.

There are a couple of new things in the system. The OpenCL framework is in there as expected and there are some new Core Animation things like 3D mesh support. The quartz composer has some additions like a 2D fluid dynamics solver - I guess this comes from the OpenCL stuff as that's one of the CUDA demos.

There is a quicklook EPS plugin, this is available 3rd party for Leopard - useful for designers.

There seems to be a filesystem compression framework. I don't know if this is for compression like you get in NTFS. That could give you a good bit more space but might require formatting to enable it.

There is an IOSurface framework. To me, this points heavily to touch support in the full Snow Leopard. I reckon this is where Quicktime X mainly comes from too as you can drag windows around by clicking anywhere on the video - in Leopard, this made an image grab. The trim handles are easier for fingers too as well as the less functional Quicktime previews, Tiger had a much more useful preview but difficult for touch.

I'm sticking to the idea that if they make a tablet, it will run the full Snow Leopard and it will have an x86 CPU. It could be AMD as they have cheaper processors.

There is a NetFS framework, this could be for P2P bandwidth sharing legally or some remote service.

The expose thing for each app is a bit odd if you don't know it's coming as it creates a very pronounced vignette over the whole screen but still, it's a good addition.

The Finder FTP still doesn't work i.e no write support. But hey, at least the icons go up to 512x512 - y'know the important stuff gets done first as always.

It seems like it's ready enough for a September launch but people generally won't see the major improvements until 3rd party devs bring their software up to date and start taking advantage of the new features. The consumer benefits will be saved space, a bit snappier and a new Quicktime.

I wouldn't jump on the upgrade if you rely on specific apps - make sure they work ok before upgrading.

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

You want SFTP/SSH integration into Finder? Go run KDE and Konqueror.

At best, a Third Party SFtp/SSH application should export a Service to be accessible in Finder once such apps are ported Cocoa.

Originally Posted by Mac Voyer

Let's get this first bit out of the way up front. I am not a developer and have no NDA to break. I acquired my copy through "unofficial" channels. Having established that, I will be providing no spoilers and I will be purchasing the OS as soon as it hits the store shelves.

After running it for about two hours, I have experienced nothing that makes me think this is anything but the final version. It is absolutely ready for prime time. I have no fear about running it on my production machine. Sometimes beta software feels like beta software. This feels like polished, retail software.

Yes, it is quite snappy. I can't find anything in the interface that seems sluggish. I am running it on a stock, 15" MBP from the previous generation. I only have 2 GB of ram. It feels like I got a ram upgrade. I have been looking at the activity monitor to check my CPU usage. The most I have been able to push it to is about half running and intense Logic Pro file. Watching a 1080 P movie does not even cause it to break a sweat.

Speaking of movie playback, QT is what it should have been all along. It is light, clean, and useful. The bezel is completely gone. That, alone, is almost worth the price of admission. When you click on the green window button, the window actually resizes to fit the screen as it should have all along. Additionally, you can now do video capture right from QT. It works flawlessly. There will be a new era in how-to videos for the Mac. You can also make video and audio recordings from within QT. It is a lot easier than having to open iMovie or GB. Again, the features work flawlessly.

The enhancements to the Dock are subtile but meaningful. Stacks now works as it should. You can drill down into folders without leaving it. Previewing all windows in a running program, even minimized windows, is now easier than ever. The feature works a little like it does in W7 only better.

The install was painless. It was completely unsupervised. Other than the Welcome screen, I would not have known that had installed anything new. Everything looked exactly the same as before, including my wallpaper. The first thing I did was open system profiler and check the OS version number. Do not expect a whiz bang new look. The refinements are subtle, but real.

I am no developer and will not be able to answer the types of questions that advanced users will no doubt have. Still, if you have any questions within my power to answer, I will be more than glad to. I mostly started this thread because I have been looking for this type of first hand review and discussion. Well, here it is. Have at it.

Originally Posted by Marvin

FTP links from browsers will still open in the Finder by default though. There is another 3rd party app RCDefaults that lets you change this but few people will know that option exists.

Cyberduck is free and open source, Apple could have integrated it somehow if they couldn't write their own.