Like being able to log in after joining the computer to an Active Directory domain. If it's a clean install, no domain user can log on because Snow Leopard will not create the mobile account. This was not an issue under Leopard. You have to go into terminal to manually create the mobile account for each user. Not an ideal solution in an enterprise.
Or little things, like randomly changing desktop backgrounds not changing randomly. At least not with 3 monitors hooked up to two 7300 GT cards in a first-gen Mac Pro.
Or iTunes reporting a different file size than Finder, because of the base 2 vs. base 10 file size calculation. Or RAM still being reported in base 2.
Don't get me wrong, overall, Snow Leopard is fine. But for me, a lot of the glitches are things that used to work fine but are now broken.
The Snow Leopard appreciation society
Summary
Apple's latest OS doesn't aim to wow with a host of new features: it's the little things that count. It's kind of like repairing a used-car. You never realized how much better it could be.
Topics
A lot has been written about Snow Leopard since its release two weeks ago: but maybe the best way of describing Apple's latest operating system update is by comparing it to a second-hand Volkswagen I owned a couple of years after finishing university.
Apple aficionados will no doubt be appalled by the choice of car comparison. Usually, when people trot out car metaphors for Apple the company is represented by a BMW or a Merc.
Must Read: Snow Leopard Special Report
However, this was the early 1990s and arts graduates weren't loaded then (or now). Besides, it's my metaphor and I'm going to stick with it.
The Volkswagen in particular was a perfectly good car. Solidly made, comfy and easy to drive. It had around 65,000 miles on the clock. OK, it had some little idiosyncrasies - little rattles and tiny flaws. Nothing that stopped me getting from A to B. Slightly annoying, nonetheless.
It was serviced annually at a local garage and one year I happened to mention to the mechanic the little problems.
A few days later I realized the persistent rattle in the driver's door had gone. Bliss. A week went by before the heavens opened and suddenly it struck me that the wiper, which previously missed a patch of windscreen just to the right of the driver's eye line, had been sorted. Heaven.
Likewise, you can't fully appreciate Snow Leopard until you've spent a couple of weeks in the big cat's company and remembered what it was like before the upgrade.
Snow Leopard
There was a lot of talk from Apple about the disk space it clears up but this was just a fleeting joy. Yes, it was great regaining 12GB of HD space but as an external drive junkie, this was a mere drop in the terabyte ocean.
The delight that endures is the discovery, in many cases by surprise, that dozens of the little annoyances you'd forgotten because you've learned to endure them for so long have been swept away and have been replaced by elegant and swanky little finesses.
What was exciting about Panther, Tiger and Leopard were the range of new features. Plus the fact that your applications worked.
There were the essential new features, like Time Machine and Spotlight. The genuinely useful like Spaces, Dashboard (which still has its critics) and Expose.
Then, there were the clever but generally cosmetic stuff like Fast User Switching. Woo... oh. Finally, there were features that looked pretty but were frustrating to use, like Stacks.
Those shiny features gave Apple's easily excitable marketing department something to crow about. With Snow Leopard, you can imagine the tumbleweeds rolling through the minimalist Cupertino offices when the product spec landed.
Snow Leopard is not a brand new car, just the one you've already got with a lot of the flaws, problems and squeaks ironed out and some minor but noticeable tweaks to performance.
Some examples:
- A QuickTime player that lets you record video and audio and edit them simply, for free
- Quicker loading and more responsive native applications
- Allowing an application to be shared across multiple desktop Spaces
- Moving the keyboard and mouse preferences into two
In other words things that make a real difference to the way you work. Or at least the way I work, you may find other tweaks that delight the senses.
There have been reports of incompatibility with software (in my case with six-year-old Windows virtualisation software), some applications need the Rosetta software emulator and it is slightly puzzling that a week after the release of Snow Leopard the first update (10.6.1) was released.
In many way, it's very anti-Apple but I'd be very happy to dispense with future eye candy if the next iteration of the Mac operating system is as packed with hidden treasures. It's a software release which proves definitively the old aphorism that 'less is more'.
Beep! Beep!
This article was originally posted on silicon.com.
Talkback Most Recent of 16 Talkback(s)
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mrbofus17th Sep 2009 -
Yes it is basically nice.....
Not awe inspiring or anything like that but nice and you know
nice is well nice:P
As software is tweaked to take advantage of some of the
under the hood improvements it will be nicer still. So no bad
after taste just a good solid upgrade that will keep on giving
over time.
Pagan jim
James Quinn17th Sep 2009 -
RE: The Snow Leopard appreciation society
It broke Windowshades. An unforgivable sin given the developers 'tude, who don't seem to care about upgrading it.
Why Apple did away with this confounds me, Dock is good, but not nearly as efficient as windowshades, at least in the way I work.
Working Stiff
NH
WorkingStiff17th Sep 2009 -
Windowshades
Amen to that! The developers must be crazy, the way that they are
goofing off WRT updating this jewel, a bargain at twice the price.
hwgray17th Sep 2009 -
Can you say hack?
Windowshade is a haxie that has many compatibility problems with Tiger and Leopard applications. It originally came into being as a third party init in System 6. Then Apple incorporated it into System 7. But with OS X, Windowshade was left as a third party haxie.
I am sure the developer will come up with a Snow Leopard compatible version of Windowshade in the next six months. Just be prepared to possibly experience some problems with some of your apps.
In the meantime, Snow Leopard offers some improvements to Expose you may be interested in at this link:
http://gizmodo.com/5285033/snow-leopards-new-expose-and-dock-explained
aj.redmond@...17th Sep 2009 -
If you think you need Window Shade, I don't think you're utilizing...
If you think you need Window Shade, I don't think you're utilizing Expos? to its fullest potential.
olePigeon24th Sep 2009 -
RE: The Snow Leopard appreciation society
Would be nice if the first time I booted into XP with
bootcamp I wouldn't have had to spend an hour and a
half thankfully repair my Mac partition so it would be
recognized as Mac HD instead of EFI Boot that didn't go
anywhere except back to Windows.
creep14417th Sep 2009 -
I must agree
For once, Apple hasn't oversold their new OS version. It also gives
the lie to those who think Apple will soon be giving up on
building computers. The new technologies in Snow Leopard are
extremely forward looking and, even so, they don't interfere with
operations on computers and with software that don't support
them (except for Power PCs, which are history). This alone is an
amazing accomplishment.
As for WindowShade, it took some time for it to be updated for
Tiger compatibility and even longer for Leopard. The same goes
for other Unsanity haxies. This is not Apple's fault. So those of us
who use them can expect to wait again. In the meantime, if I start
using Expose up to it's potential, I may never need WindowShade
again. The same goes for the Dock in relation to FruitMenu. How
many Mac users still pine for OS 9? The Chooser anyone? I think
I'll use the interregnum to learn to use OS X properly.
thewhitedog20th Sep 2009 -
RE: The Snow Leopard appreciation society
Sure would like to know more about booting into 64-bit mode; the 6+4 key combo at boot time doesn't seem to work for me. I have a Macbook 13", mfgd 9/2008, 2.4 MHz Intel proc, upgraded from 2GB RAM to 4GB ram; other than that, it's stock. Should I be able to run 64-bit, or do I need to install additional drivers/widgets/black magic?
nosnetrom20th Sep 2009 -
MacBook
Even though you and I share the 64 bit EFI in our MacBooks, Apple
purposely disabled our ability to boot into 64 bit mode. Not sure why
that is, but it's a fact. The upside is that booting into 64 bit mode really
only benefits you if you've like 32GB of RAM installed, which isn't likely to
happen anytime soon for our notebooks. Any 64 bit savvy application will
run as a 64 bit application on our MacBooks though, without having the
kernel running 64 bit. The point is, we really don't need to be running a
64 bit kernel and we have all the advantages of running 64 bit
applications. Hope that's helpful!
dheady@...25th Sep 2009 -
Apple defaults to 32-bit...
Apple defaults to 32-bit to ensure driver compatibility on consumer
machines. One of the criticisms of EFI is that Intel had the chance to
create a firmware that would allow software to address hardware in
both 32-bit and 64-bit, but they didn't. So unfortunately Apple will
have temporarily have to deal with drivers the way Microsoft does,
provide two different operating systems.
However, 64-bit applications will run fine under 32-bit OS X. At this
juncture, there really is no point in running 64-bit. I assume Apple is
in a transitionary phase. At some point XCode will be 64-bit only,
and all drivers and software will be written as 64-bit only. When that
happens, anyone running Snow Leopard or later will be able to
seamlessly boot right into full 64-bit without any major hiccups.
This will allow Apple to avoid maintaining two distinct OS products
like Microsoft does with Windows.
I wouldn't be surprised if 10.7 boots into 64-bit by default, with the
majority of all drivers ported to 64-bit.olePigeon25th Sep 2009 -
What about Photoshop?
Sure, this isn't Apple's fault, but Adobe is now demanding that we all upgrade to CS3 to use Photoshop on Snow Leopard. While I'm not a pro user, it will force me to stick with my ancient Powerbook, currently still running Tiger but to take on Leopard, to use Photoshop.
For shame, Adobe.
Radiothomas21st Sep 2009 -
RE: The Snow Leopard appreciation society
Just remember folks you could be a VISTA user. That puts it
all into perspective doesn't it?
jimzim22nd Sep 2009 -
Clarification about the freed space...
Clarification about the freed space: It only applied if you
didn't install Rosetta and X11. If you still have some
PowerPC apps or X Windows based UNIX apps, you're not
going to get that 12GBs.olePigeon24th Sep 2009 -
Further clarification
You are correct about adding or not adding Rosetta. However, it will still
'appear' that you've got more free space on your HD because of Apple's
shift from using base 2 to using base 10 to calculate drive space. Since
most computer companies and drive manufactures have been fudging
this for years I don't see an issue with the change. But some of that free
space with or without Rosetta is a slight of hand.dheady@...25th Sep 2009
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