Review: Apple Mac OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard

On the 28th of August Apple finally released its latest version of its Mac OSX – called Snow Leopard. While it is a new version, the changes are very subtle, but those little things add up to highly revamped experience of using your Mac. While the traditional Apple fanboy/journalism bigshots like Walt Mossberg and David Pogue got hold of it a while ago, we regular little people had to wait.

First thing you notice it is quite cheap – at $30, it is much cheaper than any release of OS X up to now (except 10.1, which was free…). While this “new” price for an OS seems great, the honest fact of the matter is that Apple could not actually ask more for this OS upgrade. The typical user will not necessarily notice any of the changes, except for the big speed increase…

Installation:

The typical user will simply insert the Snow Leopard and click on install. Thereafter it asks you your password and thats it. On my machine the entire install took about 39 minutes, which is pretty brisk for a machine which has a lot of software and customizations running. No mess no fuss. Seriously, I cannot think how this can be easier. Even though the licence permits only a upgrade from Leopard, supposedly the upgrader updates Tiger without issue as well. (Microsoft might want to take note of this, their new Windows 7 install process does not allow a straight upgrade from Windows XP).

Apple tells us that we can expect up to 6 gigs extra back after the install of Snow Leopard, and reviews everywhere seem to concur with it. I got back 10 Gigs, which is always great. Apple gets this right by not storing all printer drivers on disk anymore, and also not installing Rosetta, which is now a optional install on the install DVD. (Rosetta is the translation software which enables you to run older PowerPC based applications that has not been coded in Universal code).

Speed, Glorious Speed:

After the first boot up you will notice that the interface is much quicker. Objects and buttons just seem to react quicker in all day to day activities. Opening up large files such as videos open instantly, thumbnails get generated much quicker and you don’t really ever feel that their is a lack of power in the machine. I am running Snow Leopard on a stock standard Macbook unibody with 2.0GHz processor and 2 Gig RAM. I only upgraded the hard drive to a 7200 rpm model. Things that used to crunch the little guy in the past like Time Machine is much, much quicker now.

Talking of Time Machine, not only is it quicker, but it clearly uses less processing power in Snow Leopard. (Apple says 80% faster, but that sounds a little optimistic. I would say 50%) In fact, I noticed many apps use less processing power than before, and the machine does run a little cooler because of it. However, I did notice that apps that are dependent on pure processing power like Handbrake run about the same, and CPU use might have even gone up, because there are more idle CPU power available. Whether it indeed results in faster encoding, I am not sure.

Apple has also rewritten all (or most) of its core applications in 64 bit now, which does make them faster in environments where machines have large memories (more than 4GB). I could not however test this, seeing as I did my testing on a Late 2008 Macbook. However, all the built in Apps do launch much quiker than before.

The other reason why things happen a bit quicker in Snow Leopard is down to a few things, most importantly Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL. Here is Apple’s official statement on GCD:

“With GCD, threads are handled by the operating system, not by individual applications. GCD-enabled programs can automatically distribute their work across all available cores, resulting in the best possible performance whether they’re running on a dual-core Mac mini, an 8-core Mac Pro, or anything in between. Once developers start using GCD for their applications, you’ll start noticing significant improvements in performance.” Well that beats the technical explanation.

OpenCL is a new way of employing graphics processors in modern Macs to assist with everyday processing jobs. Considering the amount of processing power in new GPU’s, it is really a great thing – instead having a graphics card that sits idle waiting for the next game, it can now continually contribute to all apps that have OpenCL code. This however only works on newer Macs with relatively modern GPU’s.

Ever since I started using a Mac, I was always dumbfounded at how well sleep works with a Macbook. I have not had any Windows machine that have worked so flawlessly for travelling – Snow Leopard makes that even quicker. Not that I have ever considered Leopard slow for sleeping and waking.

New Features:

Not counting the major changes in the background, Snow Leopard does not have a lot of new features – in fact, you have to look pretty hard to spot them. Most of the changes are small enough that you will only run into them m
Apart from the speed increase, the only major interface change you will notice is that the “stacks” in the dock is suddenly a whole lot more useful. Clicking on a icon within a stack reopens the stack with new icons, instead of opening up a Finder window as in Leopard. Also, you can scroll around in the stack if you use the Grid view. I find this much quicker than in Leopard.

One of Mac OS X’s standout features – Expose, has been changed slightly as well. Doing the traditional four finger swipe now works the same as before, but holding onto a icon in the dock now gives a quick preview of what it’s window looks like. Very similiar to Aero Peek in Windows 7, yes, but it does not feel as well implemented. Using traditional Expose is still way better than anything in Windows though.

The application with the biggest changes however is Quicktime Player. When I first read about the changes coming I could not care less – after all, who cares about Quicktime? In my mind, Quicktime has never been something more than a useless app that comes with iTunes. However, Quicktime X is completely different beast. Seeing as the preview function (which opens movies, documents and pictures quickly) is built on Quicktime, I find myself using preview a lot more. Where in the past I would fire up VLC for any video file, preview is now much, much quicker. In fact, opening up a multiple gigabyte HD file takes a matter of seconds. H264 files also seem to play very smooth thanks to Quicktime now using the GPU for decoding.
Snow Leopard has now also got support for Microsoft Exchange built in – but it requires that you run Exchange Server 2008 in your organization. I tested it and did not find a single problem – Addressbook and Calendar synced easily enough and it was easy enough to set up as well. I have never been a fan of Entourage for Mac, and this change is most welcome. (Luckily MS is going to switch to Outlook now for Mac as well in its next release). Funny bit of irony: Apple’s operating system comes with support for Microsoft Exchange out of the box, Microsoft’s own OS does not. Office for Mac is suddenly becoming a much tougher sell for the average user.

Issues:

To be honest, Snow Leopard has not given me any headaches so far. Some users have been complaining of incompatible apps, but I have not found any. My productivity software like Microsoft Office 2008 is functioning without issue, and Adobe CS4 is also problem free. However, I did find that these apps did not get the great speed boost I so wanted from Snow Leopard. I reckon the next version of Office for Mac will have better use of technologies like GCD and OpenCL. (Office for Mac is not exactly quick to launch).

I only had a small issue with a Wifi network using VPN for authentication at work, but I sorted it out within 5 minutes. Other than that, it has been problem free.

Wrapup:

Overall, I am very impressed by Snow Leopard. The entire upgrade process was hassle free, and the changes are apparent almost immediately. I commend Apple for keeping the upgrade prices low at $30 (not so much Core, who charges R329, I guess the tiny double CD sized boxes are very expensive to ship here.), but after reviewing it, it becomes apparent that the question is rather whether they should charge for it at all.

The fact of the matter is that yes, Snow Leopard is a service pack when you are looking at features. On the other hand, the speed increases are so welcome that I would easily pay the money. I am trying not to sound like a fanboy, but if you use Leopard, you are pretty silly not to make the upgrade.

Rating:

9 out of 10 (10 if it was free, but again, would it even warrant a review then?)

PS:

Then of course there is the constant comparison with Windows. Windows 7 is arriving end of October in stores and is already complete in RTM guise. We all want the next Windows to cost $30 as well, but Windows has to cater for such a broad range of hardware, that it obviously takes a much larger effort to refine its operating system than Apple. (Face it, Windows 7 is as much a service pack to Windows Vista as Snow Leopard is to Leopard.). While Microsoft will not bring it to market at $30, it will release a Family Pack for multi PC households. I am actually very excited by these two very mature new operating systems now available. (See my review of Windows 7 here.)

Mac OS X Snow Leopard in SA…

It seems South Africans wont have to wait for Snow Leopard after all, it will be released on Friday 28 August at premier resellers. The good news is that the price is not too bad – R329. Compare that to $29 in the US and 29 pounds in the UK, and I guess we are OK.

The official reviews by the typical Apple bigshots have started to trickle in, and the opinions are universally positive. The major plus for Snow Leopard is the performance boost – many built apps launch much quicker, and there is big potential for speed improvements once third party apps start taking advantage of Grand Central Dispatch – Apple typically fancy name for its service that enables better handling of applications in multiple core environments.

The other major advantage is that the built in apps have been rewritten in 64 bit which gives great performance boosts in environments where the machine has large amounts of RAM. OpenCL will enable Macs to use their graphics card (anything from a Nvidia 8600 and up) to contribute processing power to everyday applications. While many of these new technologies are not necessarily going to be used immediately, it does show that performance in the future on Snow Leopard might improve more once third party developers harness these tools.

Only minus is that support for PowerPC macs has been pulled – it is Intel only, which is just about any Mac after 2006. However, you can still run older PowerPC apps as with Leopard, but Rosetta is now an optional component. The install is much smaller because of this – you will have about 7Gig more space than with Leopard. (This is also because the giant printer driver database has been removed, it will by default rather download the driver)

Personally I cannot wait to load up Snow Leopard on my mac – not that I have noticed it was slow. Its almost like the iPhone 3G – I did not notice it was slow until I used a 3GS. Guess thats what technology companies should do – convince you to get something new, when you did not realize you needed it. Evil.

At R329 it is a must have upgrade though.

Now if Microsoft could have only followed suit with this pricing – but luckily they are bringing out a “family pack” of Windows 7, which is great for multiple PC households.

Review Round Up:
Engadget
Gizmodo
CNET
Walt Mossberg (you can even upgrade from Tiger for $29 – whoops!)
PC World
Slashgear

One more thing:
If you want to see if all your apps can run on Snow Leopard, go to http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/ – thanks @neio

Windows 7 will have XP mode

With the ever increasing abilities of computer hardware these days it is perhaps a waste to only focus that power on multimedia or games. How about virtualization? Well, Microsoft is the company to build it into their next operating system.

Whenever a new version of windows is released, the first concern is typically whether it has incompatibility with your current software. While Vista had very few incompatibility issues (except initially driver issues), consumers and businesses still rejected Windows Vista quickly due to “incompatibility issues”.

XP mode in Windows 7 will run as a virtualized machine on higher level (iow not those on netbooks) versions of Windows 7 as long as the hardware is up to scratch. There will be no licencing issues seeing as the virtualized machine will not require an additional XP licence as was needed previously with products like VirtualPC (also free) or VMWare. As long as your machine supports virtualized processors like the Intel VT or AMD-V, and you have more than 2 Gig RAM, you can download the free image of Windows XP.

What this basically enables Microsoft to do is to make the uptake of Windows 7 much, much faster than any previous version of Windows. You might think Windows XP is fine (and dare note touch Vista for some reason), but Windows XP was also slow to be adapted by businesses. I can guarantee you that with this functionality businesses will jump at Windows 7, and not do the agreed upon “wait for SP1 route”.

PS: I have mentioned before that I think Apple should bundle virtual machine abilities into the next version of Mac OS X. If Windows 7 can do it, Snow Leopard can as well. Think about how many people will go for a Mac if they can run Windows 7 and Mac OS X out of the box, without any additional software?

PS PS: One caveat is the XP Mode will require its own antivirus software as well. So I guess we will never quite get rid of the haunted ghost of XP security issues. For that very reason I might run my apps natively as long as possible…

Windows 7 RC, Snow Leopard

While I have always been a fan of Windows Vista, I have been feeling its lack of speed in the last few weeks. I am currently running Mac OSX and Windows 7 Beta. Both of these OS’s are what modern OS’s should be – bleeding fast, never mind what the feature set. Windows 7 addresses this situation with aplomb – things react quicker, the user is constantly reminded that the system is ready for your next move… I am pretty much getting the feeling that these two operating systems are constantly playing catch up. After many years of “look at the monkey!” features (like Time Machine – while brilliant, common, is that big zooming supernova really necessary?), the developers are finally starting to look at speed and general usability that doesnt necessitate very expensive fast hardware.

Snow Leopard is supposedly going to take this approach to the Mac – it is not going to be a big feature set upgrade (not that Leopard really was) but is going to be a big upgrade for what is going on in the background. Features that are definately coming is built support for Exchange (no more having to deal with Entourage), smaller footprint in terms of memory and storage and more efficient handling of multi core CPU’s. OpenCL will also give developers the ability to harness the tremendous processing power in GPU’s nowadays for more mundane tasks.
It is set for release in the second half of 2009.

Windows 7 will take a similiar route – not a lot of new features in terms of front end. Users get a new taskbar, new nifty control schemes that are actually quite intuitive and vastly improved speed. So Windows 7 will actually run decently on a Atom powered netbook.

Windows 7 is set to be in release candidate pose by April 10 2009, which means it will probably be released by July 2009. But the honest truth after using Windows 7 Beta is that the product feels finished. It might be in Beta, but it is remarkably stable and a absolute joy to use.

For excellent resources on Windows 7 (amongst other things) give winsupersite a read.

My Switch to Mac: Part 2, Operating System

First off: I am not partial to Mac. I actually like Windows very much, even Vista. In fact, I love Vista. Yes it might be slower than XP, but give it enough hardware to work with and it is actually a absolute pleasure to use. I have used it since it was released to developers as a Beta, and I have never looked back. But recently I purchased a new macbook, primarily for the hardware. I just believe Apple machines are better built and look really good. It might sound shallow, but for someone who works on a computer 10+ hours a day, I really dont want to vommit on my keyboard because my computer is so ugly. Case in point – my other machine is a Lenovo Thinkpad Z61m with 4gig ram and a decent fast Core 2 Duo processor. It goes like stink, but looks distinctly ugly. In fact a few people have asked me why I work on such a old computer, even when it was a month old. Doesnt say much.

But back to Mac OSX. I have used it for about a month now. First impressions – its fast. Much faster than Windows. Things actually react pretty quickly, boot up is quick and there is just a absolute feeling of speed, even with 2Gig RAM. Menus react quickly, pop ups occur instantaneously. Multitasking is much smoother – but my biggest issue with OS X is little niggles in the interface that a switcher has to get used to.

First off, closing something doesnt actually close it. You have to manually stop it by quitting. I find it a little quaint, and no, I believe it is a stupid principle to have everything running all the time in the background. Apple really has to identify this as a key issue for switchers.

The dock sometimes also doesnt always make complete sense. Some apps can be restored on screen by clicking its app icon, others you have to actually click on the window on the right side of the dock. I would like more consistency.

Also, the menu bar on the top takes some getting used to. I suppose it is not a worse system, but it can be difficult to use at first for a switcher.

However, most of these issues are negated by other great little features. Something as simple as expose makes a giant difference to yor workflow. Windows Flip 3D is eye candy, but doesnt actually carry much use. Expose is a much better system. Take notes Microsoft.

Unfortunately for Apple, most technical users cant be a complete Mac user in this day and age. I had to get VMWare Fusion, because there are too many apps I cant move away from.I had to install a XP virtual machine, because Vista was really sluggish. Even something as boring as Office 2007 is unparalleled on the Mac platform. I also run Office for Mac 2008, but it is absolutely shocking compared to 2007. Never thought I would say it, but I really miss the ribbon interface. I actually find myself opening most documents through the Windows version of Office. I would actually like to dabble with iWork, maybe its better than Office for Mac. In fact, I even think that OpenOffice will be better than Office for Mac.

If Apple is smart, they would consider making VM a built in feature of Mac OSX Snow Leopard. VMWare and Parallels is currently probably selling like hotcakes.

Overall I am very happy with the shift, but I am most definately not going to make a complete shift to Mac. VMWare is still my friend, and I will definately upgrade to a Vista or Windows 7 machine as soon as I can get 4 gig DDR3 memory. Laptop DDR3 memory is really expensive, so that will have to wait.

I find Mac OSX a very good OS, and I am sure it is a much better OS for someone new to computers. In fact, I wish my parents had a Mac, maybe I would get less tech related calls. I will revisit this topic over time, but for now I am not yet completely sold, but luckily I love trying out new software, so maybe over time I will change my tune.

iSkin Revo2 iPhone 3G silicone case

When I got my iPhone I bought a cheap little simple silicone sleeve which did not really protect the phone fully. The screen was exposed, and the silicone started to stretch somewhat which led to the case starting to fold over the iphone corners.

So I decided to take the plunge and buy a decent case for my expensive toy. I decided on the iSkin Revo2, (the black one) which was quite pricey at R400 ($40). The overall feel of the case is much better, and the silicone has much higher quality look. It also looks really good. It is also quite stiff silicone, and the front of the iPhone is much better protected. The earpiece and home button area is decently covered. The screen can be covered with a clip on hard plastic cover, which I doubt I will keep on using. It can be removed and clipped on the back but it is not an ideal solution.

The dock connector and earphone port is covered with decent clip on rubber pieces which simply fold over when they are in the way. A screen anti glare film is included, but I havent had a chance t use it yet, seeing as I have a film on already.

Overall the phone is very well protected without adding unnecessary bulk, which is in my opinion all I want from a case.

Would I recommend it? Yes, but take at the look at the just released iSkin Fuze. But it does look expensive as well…