Snow Leopard impressions

I was one of the nerds that went to church, er, the Apple Store, yesterday to pick up Snow Leopard, the OS X update. For $29, I think it's a pretty reasonable upgrade price (are you listening, Windows 7 pricing people?), considering it's an evolutionary upgrade and not feature heavy.

The first win was getting back 10 gigs of space from my hard drive. I thought it was supposed to be only 7, but I'll take what I can get. My Mac Pro's system drive is also where I put my iTunes library, and it's getting crowded.

Booting and shut down is faster, as they said it would be. Time Machine backups are crazy fast now, where it used to be that the icon would swirl for ages without anything new to even backup. Everything in Finder seems snappier, though it's hard to quantify it. The slider in Finder windows for icon size is a welcome addition. Spotlight seems faster. Stack navigation out of the dock is far, far better now that it scrolls.

I wonder if they haven't tweaked memory management. Parallels seems to be more responsive when I've also got Photoshop and/or Aperture open. Perhaps it's the CPU core management. It's all that under the hood stuff that's hard to measure.

Lots of little tweaks that I've read about, but not encountered, are intriguing. That it can figure out what time zone I'm in and adjust the clock is really cool. Definitely a worthy and inexpensive upgrade. And did I mention there are no install keys or other such nonsense?

8 Comments

  • It only took a half hour for some hater to make a comment. Awesome.

    Yeah, it is a lot like paying for a service pack. But then, there aren't a dozen skus ranging in price to $300+ if you don't want all the features turned off, so I suppose it's still a pretty good deal.

  • To be fair, you did post this on asp.net weblogs and start out with a jab.

    That being said, I'm not sure of your argument. Are you arguing and Macs are cheaper, or that M$ should only offer the most expensive of the SKUs to make things more simple?

    I apt-get upgraded my OS today instead of going to church.

  • I'm not the one making an argument, I was giving my impressions. You followed up with a snarky comment.

    For everyday computing tasks that don't involve writing l337 .NET code, I like OS X better. I'm not really concerned if you don't agree. I don't live in a binary world.

  • l337 .NET code? Nice oxymoron :)

  • Actually, not really like buying a service pack - more like getting Windows 7 for $29 if you already have Windows XP. Of course, Windows 7 (in this example) should have a smaller footprint than Windows XP, should run faster (not slower), have all of the features plus more, and take an hour or less to install - without any wonky install keys or anti-user software included. Oh, and it shouldn't install any extra crap on the machine like on-line services, force you to have to uninstall something like MSN, and have native exchange support right from the install.

    If I said to any Windows user "hey, if you buy a service pack for $29 that makes it so Windows has no viruses at all, and you don't even need a virus scanner" - I'm betting everyone would pay the $29. Of course, Leopard didn't have any viruses already... but still, I'm betting they would all doll out the cash.

  • OK I am sold on getting the Snow Leopard service pack.

    Just one thing can I legally install it on my HP Pavilion laptop oh wait I can't I have to first buy a Mac Book which is built with gold since they sure do cost as much.

    Or I can just pay $119.99 for the Windows 7 Home Premium because any way I put it it's a lot cheaper.

    Don't take this the wrong way but everybody has the right to use what they like but it's the part about false facts in this Macintosh VS Windows that just makes me sad and I say this from a developer's point of view.

    Other than that you should enjoy what you like and not care what others people say.

  • Yeah Bashier,

    you can't put it on your HP Pavilion laptop - but considering the mac lapotops have twice as long life as Windows focused laptops (average of 2 vs 4 years) then who is really paying more for their equipment in the end? :) Oh, and also the trouble free, virus free part... assuming that Windows 7 will even run on your HP laptop..

  • Don't take me the wrong way I agree with Bashir that you should feel free to use whatever you want. But in my experience the lifespan of pc/mac is about the same for the same use.
    If you want to use the latest in the best performance possible you change the computer in shorter time. And with that in my experience it's actually the thing you run on top of the os (Games/Graphics/Other) and not the os that drives it.

    Virus free.. yeah right you went to church.. If you keep belive that in any os you will wake up with a big suprise one day.

Comments have been disabled for this content.