By Monte Ferguson In September we had the opportunity to play with a new “toy”. Apple
surprised everyone when they released Snow Leopard, aka 10.6. Our
featured presenter was to be our own Kris Phillips. Thanks to his
student developers account, Kris had a chance to use Snow Leopard a full
month before it went on sale. That was the plan anyhow. At the last
minute Kris had something come up.
Filling in was our own Monte Ferguson. He told everyone upfront that he
was still waiting on his Snow Leopard disk from Apple (which arrived the
day after the meeting). He had read up extensively on the system and had
glean many insights that he shared with everyone. We used Apple’s Snow
Leopard site as the basis to show off features, as well as point out
interesting items. Monte also pointed out several good sites who were
tracking compatibility issues. The good news is most apps are
compatible. Those that are not are being updated, in most cases, and
will be available shortly.
The main point of the presentation was that this is not an earth
shattering update. It’s basically Leopard the Sequel. That’s not to say
there aren’t things to like. There are quite a few. It is definitely
more nimble. It takes up less space. It uses less RAM. It takes less
time to install.
There are a number of enhancements, which is the term Apple uses to
refer to features in Snow Leopard. Quicktime takes advantage of work
done to bring it to the iPhone. This means Snow Leopard has a retooled
and refined Quicktime. (The new QuickTime Player lets you take screen
movies. That used to cost extra.) Time Machine is faster and more
efficient. Stacks are more refined, and much more useful. Every Apple
supplied application, including the Finder, is now 64bit. This means
they will see a general speed boost compared to the same app under
Leopard, and they can address more RAM. Most of the changes are under
the hood. They will provide future benefits, such as Grand Central which
will simplify writing programs that can use multiple processors.
It is a subtle update. In fact basically the only way you can install it
is to either update over top of your existing system, or to wipe out the
drive and start from scratch. The installation process brought up an
interesting topic. Do you need to upgrade to Leopard to move to Snow
Leopard? Apple initially said yes you did. But numerous reports have
pointed out that you do NOT. That means you’re getting a full release of
MacOS X at a rock bottom price.
The general consensus is that this is a very worthy upgrade. Both in
terms of benefits as well as cost. We had a good time talking about this
release and answering questions. If you take the precaution of making
sure your third-party software is compatible, and your peripherals are
as well, you will have a frustration free upgrade. Posted: Saturday, December 19th, 2009 | 
