Review roundup: Snow Leopard sports subtle improvements - Page 3

Good to know. I was going to visit my Apple store right away and pick up Snow Leopard, but I use Word a lot, and if it's buggy, I'm going to have to wait for them to get those bugs fixed first....

Totally possible. It would make perfect sense.

You don't even know the name of the version of OS X that comes before Snow Leopard, you don't say what Mac you're using and you have the nerve to tell people to boycott? you must be any of the following.

1. 13 years old.
2. Ignorant of computer hardware.
3. A total and complete dumbass.

My site said the same until a few minutes ago. No I havereceived notification that the shipment is on the way.

yep, been there...but you know the old saying, "you can lead a horse to water, but....sometimes you just end up hurting the horse's neck!'

What the heck kind of comment is this? By your account then, Snow Leopard is just really what Leopard was supposed to be (even more so), rather than something worthy of a whole new name and pricing structure.

You forgot #4:

Racist.

Not a fair assessment: I just finished reading Mossberg's review. He has a whole subsection on "Underlying Technologies," and talk about GCD, OpenCL and their implications from the standpoint of a typical user.

There are actually more changes in Snow Leopard than Windows 7, they just aren't visual and wont become apparent until new software utilizes them. At that point however, they changes will become very apparent. Windows 7 looks like a bigger upgrade because they changed the dock... er.... taskbar. Had Apple introduced a new dock, people would consider it a much larger upgrade. Funny how something as simple as that can skew perceptions. That said, I quite enjoy the Windows 7 taskbar, and I like most of the transparency effects, although nothing matches expose yet. Document flip should just die.

Edit: I agree, the comment you were responding to wasn't needed.

Yes, he may be right, but then again Apple isn't charging anywhere near full price either. Microsoft did a great job with Win7, then again they had to. All Apple had to do was clean out legacy code and introduce some new technology to serve as a base for 10.7 and beyond.

Oh, I missed the keychain change - what was that?

Darn, shouldn't have deleted my post (#26).... didn't have a picture though.

PS: Nice pic, but the font needs fixing.

I'm hoping Apple will make this a habit. One year lay the foundations, with no apps changes, to give them a reference to test the new subsystems. Then the next year blast out some great features on the solid base.

A ridiculous number of skus? Based on who's information? My last look at Microsoft's site lists Home, Professional, and Ultimate as the 3 consumer versions, with (I think) 3 additional versions specially tailored toward retailers, servers, etc. How is that anywhere near "ridiculous?" Some people here make it seem like Microsoft is offering 20 versions, which is a flat out lie. Microsoft is also charging a "high" price for Win7 because they are purely a software company. I love it how people here constantly remind others how you can't adequately compare Apple to Microsoft because one is a hardware/software company, and the other is a software company. But man, do they SURE love to compare prices! Sorry, doesn't fly. Anyone will be able to just walk in and buy the Win7 Home Retail version for $199 (Home Upgrade will be $120, or if you got the upgrade special, a mere $50). For anyone to just walk in and buy Snow Leopard, the cheapest offering is the $599 Mac Mini, which is technically a $400 difference to acquiring an operating system. Sure, you can get it for $29 greenbacks, but you 1) have to already be a Mac user, and 2) had to have been running Leopard. Both are barriers to paying "only" $29; unfortunately, the barriers are large. There are no barriers to installing Windows, because Windows can be installed on any machine, giving the right hardware, obviously.

Mr. Svensson is clearly not a Mac fan.

I know that somewhere, there's a little boy inside of him who just can't contain his excitement over Snow Leopard.

Really? I'm unaware of Apple saying any of the technologies available in 10.6 were supposed to be in 10.5. I must have missed something - did they have a full 64-bit OS in 10.5, advertised it and then said screw it, it's too hard, let's just wait until later and make more money off of it?

Oh, they didn't? Well then, I guess my point stands... 7 is nothing more than what MS envisioned Vista to be - the technologies available in SL were never envisioned or advertised to be in Leopard. There's a pretty obvious difference there...

Actually, if you read the article you'd know you don't have to be running leopard - it installs on 10.4 machines just fine...

EDIT: And you have to already be a Windows user to have any use for a Windows update if you're going try to compare via that route

wow that is bad.

I'm not going to bother responding to your comments, as you write like a 15 year old. But I would like an explanation of your subject title: "Interesting the Thumbs Up critics are the same media jews as always". Did you really mean to say that?

You should try the Intel drives. I think Apple may start using them now that they are compliant with green standards.



It may come tomorrow, regardless, it will be the most comprehensive review on the nets.



If you read AnandTechs and others comparative reviews you see that Win7 didnt really make any fundamental core changes that affected speed or battery life. They basically removed things that were too bulky in Vista to make it run on better on slower/older hardware. Its a shame really.

Personally, I hope they use Lion for 10.9, save the best for last, right. Maybe use the tag line "It's good to be king."

After that, come up with a whole new naming scheme. Maybe something musical? "Mac OS XI. This one goes to eleven."

See the article for what it was. A ploy to drive traffic to the site. Would you have followed the link if it wasn't so biased against Apple?

PCWorld may appear stupid, but they got more people to that page than normal. Who goes to PCWorld anyway???

Yeah, I'm going to spend $600 to shave a second or two off from startup time.

CyberDuck's latest beta works perfectly in Snow Leopard. Just a heads up.

Technically they don't have to stop at 10.9, they can go on to 10.10, 10.11, etc. Wherever they you Lion, that OS better be mind blowing to live up to the name.

That is why I didnt get an SSD at this point. I find getting a much larger HDD is more beneficial to my needs.

The next Mac OS will be called (drumroll):

Mac OS X 10.7 Pussy

...hits the nail on the head IMHO

I use Windows Server 2003 for Active Directory. I can't use Microsoft's own Group Policy Management Tool because they don't even provide a 64-bit version! Most of the applications I've come across very rarely offer 64-bit versions. Most of my applications get relegated to the mandatorily segregated folder "Program Files x86". My first crude implementation of an iTunes media server required me to hack the Vista x64 version of iTunes to get it to run on my platform. Needless to say, it wasn't very stable.

While the availability of 64-bit drivers for newer, business class machines is typically better than the typical consumer-class machines, it still can not be expected. My recent model (last year) consumer Canon inkjet photo printer does not have 64-bit drivers available because the demand wasn't high enough in a consumer world of almost entirely 32-bit default Windows installations. This required me to use generic print drivers for sharing it to my 32-bit and 64-bit clients through Active Directory. This is because there is a limitation in Server 2003 where it is possible to serve both 32-bit and 64-bit drivers to clients for the same printer, but they have to be drivers registered under the same manufacturer ID. Though, my business class Canon Laser printer provided 64-bit drivers and all is well. I remember considering exchanging my 64-bit version of Server for a 32-bit one because of all of these problems, but I just ended up relegating it to nothing more than AD and all resources are shared via Leopard Server and Samba.


While the kernel, extensions, drivers, and UI frameworks (Carbon & Cocoa) were still 32-bit, Tiger brought 64-bit unix processes (not kernel) which enabled still 32-bit GUI applications to spin off intense, number-crunching 64-bit processes that could report back the results. The Universal Binary application strategy was born. Both 32-bit and 64-bit boot processes were provided to enable either architecture to be supported on the same OS! These design decisions enabled for a smooth transition to 64-bit as opposed to Microsoft's all-or-nothing approach, which explains the poor adoption of 64-bit Windows and their still-existing 32-bit limitation of 4GB of addressable memory.

As opposed to Windows, where you either get x86 or x64, Apple enabled a fail-safe of being able to switch between the two different kernels. They are now using this to give the manufacturer's one last change to complete their 64-bit kexts. As Apple was nearing completion of Snow Leopard, it put out a call to all device manufacturer's to make sure that their kexts were ready for 64-bit. Knowing that device manufacturer's very often experience delays in completing projects on time, they are giving them one last chance. They decided to unexpectedly release Snow Leopard as defaulting to a 32-bit kernel on most machines. All of the architecture is complete and ready for Apple to flip the switch. Excellent transition IMO! [source: AppleInsider]

No, Cougar should be the last one. The last hurrah for an operating that system that was once awesome in its prime, but is now showing its age after numerous coats of makeup, boob jobs, and horrible sprayed on tanner

Every OS "line" has to come to an end and Cougar would be the perfect fit.

Me too!

Only if you choose the last option, "Never check for updates", will you prevent automatic reboot. Under many circumstances it works as you would expect, but Microsoft releases some updates that are considered critical updates. They have it setup so if you are checking for updates at all (regardless of the setting about whether to download or install automatically) these updates are automatically downloaded, installed, and almost all of them require restarting the computer, which it does automatically as well. This is what is most likely happening to the OP. I've lost work because of this before and Microsoft really should fix this.

Huh? What's that got to do with what I said? I was comparing an SSD to a slightly faster SSD. SSDs are amazing. I have an SSD and the guy was telling me I should get the Intel SSD.

System Prefs lunches much faster and is slightly faster to use on my MacBook Air then my 2.8GHz iMac. Don't diss on SSDs. Sure some people need the space, I have that on my iMac anyway.

1. According to you, Msft has 6, count em, versions
Mac has 1 .... you're right ... bloody ridiculous

2. "Sure, you can get it for $29 greenbacks, but you 1) have to already be a Mac user, and 2) had to have been running Leopard." ..... And why would you want it if you weren't a mac user .... ...... bloody ridiculous!

3. " There are no barriers to installing Windows, because Windows can be installed on any machine, giving the right hardware, obviously." ....
So can SL .... (hint) .. key words ...right hardware .... bloody ridiculous !

Weren't 512x512 pixel icons on the critical path to Resolution Independence?

... from your dreams?

Dude... this is really getting old.

There is nothing wrong with Vista after SP1, and SP2 only improved things more.

Sure GUI is not as smooth as one would expect in this era, and that is major thing 7 is improving on. I've just moved from Vista to 7 on my old office PC (P4) and yes, I do like new dock and automatic windows resizing and shake-to-minimize and all that jazz... but while GUI is more efficient, I can't really say 7 is faster than Vista on the same box... nor can I say Vista felt any slower than XP I was previously running on the same box.

What I can say is, I haven't managed to crash Vista in the office, or at home, and I did try hard (not on purpose, it comes with what I do on my computers). It is solid. Much more robust than XP ever was. That alone was worth for me, even if there were no changes in interface compared to XP (and there were some nice, albeit subtle changes all over the place).

Vista did have rough start and there is only that much you can do once you get bad publicity. But do you really think US Army would adopt Vista as their desktop OS for the next couple of years was it not what is required - a real solid, no-nonsense platform?

You said that a little bit extra speed for read and writes wasnt that important for the cost to get it. I feel the same way about SSDs in general, not just cheap v. expensive SSDs, like you. Id like more drive speed but having a 500GB HDD is much more important to me.

Additionally, even with automatic updates ON, Vista will install most updates that require reboot on the system's shutdown, and not during the work. In fact, I can't recall more that a few occasions when system asked for 10-minutes restart (which could be postponed anyway).

If you also count full and upgrade versions, 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and each localization you have a lot more. Apple just has the one consumer disc except for the box set with iLife/iWork and the Family Packs with 5 licenses, but the OS is exact the same between them all.