Time for an official Snow Leopard thread (1 Viewer)

[JohnRice]

I am backing up as we speak. Preparing for the switch.

Jason, $120 for a 320 GB drive is really high. You can get a Mini Max 1GB for that from Amazon.

 

[JohnRice]

It definitely requires recalibrating the monitors. I had to select the profiles again, but they clearly aren't right, so I'll be running it through the paces. First thing I do is probably to burn a disc in Toast 9.

 

[DaveF]

I'm torn. I like the new shiny. I like the minor user-facing tweaks. But rationally, important things are broken and nothing immediately important has been added. Should I revert back to my 10.5 backup and wait for drivers to get sorted before changing to Snow Leopard?

Ugh. Why can't I be a sensible person and not buy it for six months when stuff is all updated? (Or: why are companies completely unprepared for major OS revisions known about for over a year?)

 

[JohnRice]

I had checked for several updates just a couple days ago and found none. Today after upgrading, I found updates to everything that needed it, which actually was very few things. My somewhat old Epson Stylus Photo R200 did not download drivers, but going to the Epson site showed a complete software upgrade package, including an entirely new version of Print CD, finally. What I notice? Video is significantly faster on my 2009 Mini, even with Firefox, which supposedly is not taking full advantage. Web pages load like my internet speed has been tripled. It feels almost like I went from 2 cores to 4 and significantly upgraded my video card. FWIW, I am using the new Mini with (2) 23" monitors running at 1920x1080 each with a full load of RAM. Toast 9 works fine. I already burned a DL DVD. Get a load of this. Adobe GoLive 6.0.1 (a VERY old app) appears to work fine. Currently, a little app I have called Ardiem which lets me assign key combinations to open and close optical drives (I have several) does not work, but I have not looked for an update.

Dave, just go back to 10.5.

 

[JohnRice]

The only smal issue has been resolved. Ardiem appeared again once I restarted. Apparently it needs Rosetta (which I can only guess is to permit use of old apps) which had been downloaded, but I guess it didn't work until I restarted. I'm looking forward to significant speed improvements. I'll be checking to see if any of the apps I updated take advantage.

 

[DaveF]

Originally Posted by JohnRice

The only smal issue has been resolved. Ardiem appeared again once I restarted. Apparently it needs Rosetta (which I can only guess is to permit use of old apps) which had been downloaded, but I guess it didn't work until I restarted. I'm looking forward to significant speed improvements. I'll be checking to see if any of the apps I updated take advantage.

Rosetta is to run pre-Intel programs, those compiled for PowerPC CPUs. Office 2004 requires this, among others.

 

[DaveF]

Has anyone done a complete install from the $29 "upgrade" Snow Leopard disk? I'm wondering if it's safe to sell my 10.5 Leopard Family Pack.

 

[TonyD]

I have 10.4.11, Tiger?

From scanning in this topic i can buy this new snow thing for $29 and upgrade my macbook?

edit: $25 at bestbuy.

 

[TonyD]

.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TonyD

I have 10.4.11, Tiger?

From scanning in this topic i can buy this new snow thing for $29 and upgrade my macbook?

edit: $25 at bestbuy.

Correct. Apple confirmed that on the record for Mossberg/WSJ.

I finally got a shipping notice for my Snow Leopard -- it is due Tuesday. Now if only the almighty Google would tell me if SL breaks Ruby/Rails in any way or changes the preinstalled version...

 

[KeithAP]

Originally Posted by DaveF ....

Yes, it works fine. I used the $29 upgrade to disc to install 10.6 on a MacBook with a completely blank HD. Looking at the packaging, I didn't notice anything on it that said "upgrade". Just plane old 10.6. In fact, the system requirements on the outside of the box do not list 10.5 as being required.

-Keith

 

[DaveF]

It's too late to discuss the legal or moral points of violating EULAs. But I'll note that I pay Apple's price for family packs as appropriate. Their pricing and rules are so much easier than Microsoft's that I'm glad to pay the $$$ even if I could violate their terms.

But Snow Leopard is being explained very badly by Apple for no good reason. They've obscured whether it's a complete install DVD, as Leopard was, or if it won't work without aid from Leopard. It's not clear and simple and user-friendly: it's very un-Apple.

And if it is a complete install, I'm going to sell my Leopard Family Pack (because I paid extra to be a "legit"), as I've sold a PowerMac, iLife (Family Pack, again) and iWork after upgrades. I bought it. Now I'll sell it. (And my Snow Leopard retail packaging has no EULA in it.)




And all that said...I'm really close to rolling back to my 10.5 setup. I have the good fortune of using products from vendors with poor update response times.

 

[Southpaw]

Originally Posted by JohnRice

I am backing up as we speak. Preparing for the switch.

Jason, $120 for a 320 GB drive is really high. You can get a Mini Max 1GB for that from Amazon.

Okay, picked up a 500gb western digital my book on closeout at walmart for $57. I thought it was a good deal. Now I can back everything up and get snow lep installed.

 

[don monteith]

What I would like to know is if anyone has seen any sort of performance improvement. And if you have, what was it. I loaded it on my Mac Pro and MacBook Pro, yes I got the family Pack, and have seen very little difference in performance. Maybe I just had my hopes set too high. But I was thinking that Snow Leopard would really turn on all 16 cores and take advantage of all 16 gigs of ram. My 64 bit version of Vista still out performs Snow Leopard in a big way. That's frustrating!!!!

 

[DaveF]

Gizmodo did benchmarks and notes:

After some benching on a first-generation MacBook Air, an older MacBook Pro 15 and a pair of current-gen 13-inch MacBook Pros, it's clear that Snow Leopard is faster—sometimes drastically—but almost never in third-party applications.

They've got charts and other details, if you care.

Personally, I've not noticed anything on my 2007 MacBook Pro.

 

[Carlo_M]

I too notice very little. Here's what I have noticed, and they're mostly cosmetic improvements:

The "genie" effect of hiding windows into the dock bar has greatly smoothed out animation (yes I'm a geek and it bothered me before).

The Disk Permission Repair is much more accurate in terms of time remaining and where you are in the process.

Also, there is less to repair. Before (due to how much software I have on my MBP) there would always be a screen and a half of permissions needing repair and clearly 10.5.8 couldn't repair it because the same items were eligible for repair every time I ran Repair Permissions. Now when I ran it post 10.6 there were three things that were repaired.

Dock animation (and magnification) are smoother. Again, I'm a nerd and I have a ton of items in my dock, and I like to use the magnification effect, and it's much smoother in Snow Leopard.

I'm fairly certain they changed the anti aliasing on the items in the top menu bar of the OS (where time and battery life are).

iPhoto 09 (where I have thousands of pics) is both faster and smoother running.

I like how Disk Space remaining (at the bottom bar of windows) is more quickly updated when I empty the trash.

I find the new version of Quicktime X plays videos more smoothly.

Expose animation is also smoother (and I like how it also shows what is minimized in a smaller version of a thumbnail).

Haven't noticed much in the way of Pro apps. Logic Studio might load a little faster, but nothing I could pinpoint.

Oh, and my number 1 improvement (knocking on wood): I have less wireless drops than before (haven't had one yet).

 

[Michael_K_Sr]

Haven't noticed a huge speed increase on my MBP at the office although one of my colleagues swears that his Mac Mini flies after upgrading.

 

[DaveF]

Paying closer attention, I'm seeing some of the things Carlo does. Scrolling my Applications folder, in icon view, was choppy in 10.5. It's smooth in 10.6. iPhoto was always chopping to scroll through. Now, it starts choppy, but after loading fully it becomes smooth.

But in some few areas, I've noticed major slowdowns. It's probably / hopefully due to non-updated software that will be fixed with revisions.

I've found workarounds for my outdated Tivo and Logitech software, which helps a lot.

 

[JohnRice]

Where I am seeing immediate improvements is in a few specific areas, which also agrees with what I understand about 10.6. First, redraws are noticeably faster. My understanding is this will depend heavily on the video card. Web site redraws, scrolling, image resizing, all noticeably faster. I may be wrong about that, but I understand that was one of the major improvements in the new Mini that was going to come to light with 10.6. Any OS or Apple software intensive actions tend to be significantly faster. This makes sense since only the upgrades with the new OS are likely to be taking great advantage of the many speed benefits of 10.6. Disk intensive actions, like opening enormous apps such as PhotoShop CS4 or large image files are noticeably faster. I watch the various status info while opening PS CS4 just fly by.

Oh yeah, printer response is considerably faster. My old Epson Stylus Photo R200 used to think for about 30 seconds before finally starting to spit out a page. I don't think it is much longer than 5 seconds now. My Brother laser printer actually wakes up before I tell it to print, though this is not necessarily good, since it is my default printer and sometimes I actually am printing to the Epson.

 

[KeithAP]

One thing I think that is worth repeating is that Apple has changed how 10.6 reports drive sizes:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS2419

I see a lot of people saying 10.6 takes up less disk space and it very well may depending on how you installed 10.5 (I never installed the extra print drivers, languages or the extra fonts for the languages myself).

That being said, 10.6 reported my freshly formatted 500GB HD as having a hair over 500GB available where in 10.5, as I recall, it was only listed at about 465GB available. So, if you aren't careful, it is easy to think there is a bunch of extra space available.

-Keith