Snow Leopard 10.6 released! August 28th, 2009

And here we are :)

Apple Online Stores are down :)

Exciting :) Bit too early for Snow Leopard, no? :)

Snow Leopard aka "Golden Master" first impressions ...

I couldn't help and had to try the rumored Golden Master - almighty 10A432 build. Now - don't judge me - I am going to go to my local store the first thing when Snow Leopard is released - but i'm not a patient person :)

Installation went nice and smooth - much faster than the first Developers preview (10A380, was it?). Great move. Hard not to notice, that License Agreement doesn't read "Developers' preview" anymore.

"It really could be the real thing" I thought.

After installation, quick look around, installing few Apps, I am somewhat ... disappointed. Not much changed since last developers preview (then again, it shouldn't really, should it?). No WOW factor. Then again "wow factor" sort of lost it's meaning after Vista launch campaign called same... :P

I'm going to go straight to negatives ;) not because I would like to slag operating system altogether, but there's like a million reasons to upgrade it straight away on Apple website, so we all know those. I would like to mention few cons of upgrading...

Now, I know, Safari 4 is great :) and it is, but it's 64-bit version has this "feature" called sandboxing (I believe?). Idea is somehow taken out of Google Chrome, which lets 3rd party plugins (like Adobe Flash) run as a separate process, and as a result if that one fails, it won't take our entire browser with it. And that works. I noticed however two issues with this feature. First - and I am not sure whether is this related to the sandboxing or not - but Flash seems to be slower than in 32 bit Safari. Not much, but I'd say frame rates are about 10 - 15 % lower than in 32 bit. I am guessing I can survive, although my Facebook Restaurant just doesn't look the same (it's a 100% flash based game, which isn't as smooth as used to be :( ). I got similar results running several Flash 3d demos (like this one). Interestingly, even though the demo reports pretty much the same FPS, the graphic is clearly much less smooth when Safari is running in 64 bit... according to atMonitor, about 30% slower in frame rate...

Now here's a real killer. In 32 bit Safari, as it is in most browsers - when running my Flash Game, my CPU is working hard, at average of 160% - 170% of a core power (according to Activity Monitor, with 2 core of course). What I often do is - opening another browser tab. My flash game can be running in background, CPU goes down to about 20%, but game is still playing, and I can hear it's music :) I am guessing Flash simply doesn't render graphic anymore, as there is no need for it. This not only let me save some CPU resources, but also slows down my laptops fan, let it cool, and - what's most important - SAVES MY BATTERY.

64 bit Safari DOESN'T DO THAT. Or at least not at the same scale... Regardless, is my game active, in background, in different browser window or not - it's still using 170% CPU :(

I know what you're going to say - I don't play your game. Maybe you're not. But imagine, if you have 5 tabs of Safari open at the same time, with different websites. Each website has one - two flash ad. And all of them are being rendered. I'd say that can put strain on any system, not only my poor laptop running on battery, and trying to keep itself cool with a fan...

It's not too bad though - remember, you can always run your application in 32 bits if you wish, by changing it's preference in Get Info window. When switched to 32 bit, Safari doesn't use sandboxing, but it does solve the problem...

I also noticed Safari in Snow Leopard is also not compatible with LogMeIn plugin :( now, in 64 bit it's just not working, in 32 bits it's running it's Java based client :( I know that's not really Apple's fault, but then again, if you use LogMeIn, I would suggest to hold on couple of months, until LogMeIn releases compatible plugin...

Speaking of compatibility, I also have a problem with my favorite photo editing tool (no, not Photoshop :) ) - PhotoLine 32. I use this since around 1998 and love it. Latest version is a 64 bit app, and works great in Leopard. Unfortunately crashes shortly after start in Snow Leopard (one may wonder why...). Turns our running it in 32-bit doesn't solve the issue. I made it work however, slowly but surely (although not very steady ;) with Rosetta (yes, you can still run apps with Rosetta in Snow Leopard).

This brings me to conclusion. Remember over two years ago when Vista was criticized for it's compatibility issues? Even though it not necessarily was Microsoft fault? I have a feeling this time Apple make similar mistake. I really don't use many apps, but already found two that are having problems with SL, and worked seamlessly with it's predecessor. In the mean time, since I've started using Windows 7, haven't had a single compatibility problem...

Now, something that Apple was always great at. Look. I love pretty things, love pretty looking software. I love MacOS for what it looks like. But here we are. Windows 7 again. I think, it is beautiful. Now saying that I know it still has often this "computer" feel, as opposite to Mac, where experience is more seamless, and fonts are more print-like. But I must admit that I loved aero since VIsta, and now, in WIndows 7, there's even more of it. What I am trying to say is first of all, I am disappointed, that Apple haven't upgraded it's UI almost at all in years now. I do feel that application windows are bit outdated at this stage. But what I am really trying to say is that Apple forgot ... about wallpapers :( yes, there is a few, including well known picture of Snow Leopard, which appears to be a theme for the box as well as installation DVD itself (it's not default wallpaper in 10A432 however!), but I must say they are very average... especcialy when compared with absolutely gorgeous wallpapers which are now coming along with Windows 7... Call me shallow, but I am using them for my Mac OS desktop and they look great!

All that makes me wonder - have Steve Jobs seen Snow Leopard at all???

Snow Leopard less and less fancy...

I found it very intriguing, that while Windows 7 with it's release scheduled for late October just hit RTM (or did it? :> ) at the same time, when Apple is still straggling with yet another Snow Leopard builds, after promise that it's going to be completed a month before Microsoft...

And to be very honest, I am still not sure weather Snow Leopard will be able to compete with Windows 7... I never realized, that majority of most useful "new" features, like Mail support for Exchange, CalDAV etc. are already available in MacOS 10.5... I also noticed, that in the latest build of Snow Leopard, 10A411, QuickTime playing HD movie is using much more (about 40% (!!!), up from about 6%) CPU... boooooo!

I decided to switch back to 10.5.8 for now. The day Snow Leopard appears in store, I'll be first one there. But I won't hesitate to visit shop next door a month later, when Windows 7 hits the shelves either.... And to be very honest, watching the way both OS's are going at the moment, more and more often I am considering choice of PC for my next laptop... (no, not $400 model :) time will tell!

Somewhere, deep deep in my heart, but far away from my head, there's hope that Apple will pull out a big surprise from their sleeve (or should I say Steve? ;) which will be sooo big, that we all forget about new Windows :D

In the meantime I visited local PC World store (there's no dedicated Apple stores in Ireland :( ) and here's what I found. Must be the only MacBook Pro 13" with GeForce 9600 in the world :) and that's for just €0.99 more than the 9400 model from Apple themselves :)

Snow Leopard is messing up with bluetooth

It looks like new Snow Leopard, and that after installing latests build, which was pushed via Software Update, seems to have problems with bluetooth...

Everything works perfect when computer is switched on, or woken up from the sleep state. However, when "safe sleep" is used (known as "hibernation" in Windows), where computer's memory is saved on the hard disk, and computer effectively switched off, it looks like our bluetooth isn't being revoked , and becomes unavailable, at least from the icon in the menu bar...

in order to switch bluetooth on again, I need to either reboot Macbook, or enable it in bluetooth preferences panel.

Weird...

MacOS X 10.6 Preview, day two. SSD anyone?

Another day of using Snow Leopard. So far I love it, however I am really disappointed with lack of Dock Expose in this build. I would really hope this would be at least as good as Aero Peak introduced in Windows 7, but again, simply can't test it :(

You can hold mouse button as long as you won't, but you won't get Dock Expose :(

OS start-up

Another change I noticed, comparing to MacOS X 10.5 is a booting up time. Unfortunately, despite of what we've heard during WWDC, it's hard to call it an improvement. I tend to keep my MacBook asleep as opposite to switching it off, however when I do, I never waited longer than 15 - 20 seconds for my login screen to appear. Now however, since upgrade to 10.6, I have a questionable pleasure of staring at Apple logo alone for minimum of 30 seconds, before first signs of desktop appear. Now in all fairness this could be due to operating system still being under heavy development, as well as fact of me upgrading from Leopard rather than performing fresh install. I would expect most Apple users to follow upgrade path though, so I hope boot time is going to be radically reduced before hitting Golden Master. Hope, hope, hope :)

What am I missing???

One of the features I read about, and I am pretty sure that was implemented in one of the developers builds, was "Restore" option available for files within Trash. It supposed to work the same way as it does in Windows - restore file to its original location. After quick check - this feature seems to be missing from 10A380 build. :(

No "Restore" option for files in Trash...

I remember back in 2000, when Steve Jobs, demoing MacOS X for the very first time, showed us fancy animation of window being minimized down to the dock. I distinctively remember him showing us Mission Impossible movie being minimized and saying:

"Pretty cool, huh? [...] and we are going to make it so you can even watch them when they're in the dock."

Well... when? It's 9 years later, and it still didn't happen. What did happen however was that Microsoft added this very cool functionality in 2006 to Windows Vista, and greatly improved it in Windows 7. And it's not about watching video in the dock I am talking specifically. What I would love to see is real-time window preview down in the dock. I am bit intrigued, that this has been omitted first two years ago when dock has been redesigned into 3D, but also again during Finder rewrite, or at least during changes being made to the Stacks...

On top of all the new technologies in the back of Snow Leopard I couldn't help but wonder... did anything change in regards to Solid State Drives? This is another area where Microsoft prepared plenty of improvements for it's upcoming Windows 7, not only boosting performance, but also wearing off such drives by reducing it's I/O operations (some of them are specifically enabled when SSD drive is detected). Of course, MacOS by design is much lighter for our I/O than Windows ever will, however before I let Leopard put it's claws on my brand new €600 SSD drive, I would like to know that something has been done to assure that I'll enjoy my investment as long as possible... Any comments on this, Apple?

Snow Leopard, day 1.

I eventually installed Snow Leopard Preview, build 10A380 on my Unibody MacBook 13". I decided to go for upgrade of my current Leopard enviroinment as opposit to clean installation, so that I could easily tell differences as well as test all my applications.

Installation

I kicked off setup from within Leopard (i don't think that was possible before?). First about 10 minutes of install happened here. Then my computer restarted and installation continued for another half an hour or so. To be honest: it did took a while. A good while longer than installation of Windows 7...

MacOS X 10.6 on my baby-Mac

After installation was completed, I was welcomed with my login screen and new Snow Leopard wallpaper. Inspired by Leopard one, though bit different :) after login however, all my settings were kept, including wallpapers (well, duh!)

First impression

First impression: nice :) system feels faster, more responsive. Activity Monitor showes lower CPU usage when idle. Good start :)

Memory usage - just after boot "wired memory" is just above 700 MB. Can't remember how much was it in Leopard, but it looks much more than it used to be on the graph. I noticed also, that when Leopard was showing my 4 GB of memory, Snow Leopard is showing only 3.75 GB. Now I am wondering, is this same thing with addressing memory space, as we know from PCs and older Macs, or it's simply subtracting 256 MB of memory shared with GPU...

256 MB missing vs 10.5. where did it go?

Safari 4 64-bit

I like new Safari 4. In Snow Leopard it seems to be even faster! Running in 64bit, it completed entire SunSpider benchmark with Total time of 503 ms (almost half of 32 bit version time, which received best result out of all web browsers)!!! Very impressive. Another, my favourite benchmark however, Futuremark Peacekeeper give Safari 4 in Snow Leopard only 2999 points (with Safari 4 in Leopard scoring close to 5000!). Some of the video transformations were clearly less smooth here, than in 32 bit version.

Another new feature of Safari (which apperently is shared with Finder as well) is keeping plugins as separate tasks. And that seem to be working great - in Activity Monitor we can see CPU usage of ie. Flash Player. If it crashes (or we kill it, to demonstrate the point:) it won't take down our browser (and all open tabs!) with it, will simply cause flash animations to be replaced with "missing plugin" icon. Pretty neat and very useful! It's worth to notice, that Flash player is running still in 32-bit mode. Also, most recent version available on Adobe website is 10.0.22.87, while the one which came with Snow Leopard is reported to be 10.0.23 .

10.0.23.1 installed...

...but 10.0.22.87 is the latest available...

I played around with QuickTime which is pretty cool too. 64-bit, seems to be much faster, clearly with hardware acceleration. I watched HD video file with CPU usage not going above 15%. Amazing. Well done, Apple!

Time Machine

I decided to take a backup of my Mac, using same disk I used for my Leopard. I not only had no problem with taking backup (8.3 GB of changes (!) ) but I also could access and restore files which were backed up with Leopard. We loooove backward compatibility :) especially when it comes to backup of our precious holidays photos!

Most visible change in time machine is, that instead of sometimes taking for ever "Preparing for backup" we can see exactly how many % of "preparation" has been done:

Security

There's quite interesting new feature hidden under Security icon of System Preferences. It let us choose after what time of computer being in sleep mode/or screensaver being running, we'll be prompted for password. It's small, but for someone like me, who loves saving life of my LCD by disabling screen constantly, or just often putting my Mac asleep, I love to have option to set it up for ie. 5 minutes. So that if I just open laptop up within 5 minutes of closing it - i won't need to go through login screen :)

Summary

Generally applications are starting up much faster, and general experience is really pleasant. Most of build-in applications has been recompiled in 64-bit mode. One of those omitted, is unexpectedly DVD Player, which still runs in 32-bits. Unexpectedly, as I would hope DVD Player will be one of those applications benefit from all new technologies of Snow Leopard, and surprise us with 1% CPU usage while playing DVDs :)

Still not sure is SL going to be Windows 7 killer however... What I like the most in new MS operating system is how dramatically they managed to improve managing of many windows. Now I would expect that new Dock Expose would be at least as good, but at the moment I can't tell. And that's because... [keep reading]

Some people were asking, is Developer Preview a Golden-Master. I really don't think so :) It appears that it's not even build we saw during WWDC. It lacks Dock Expose, also QuickTime icon is still same as in 7.x , as opposite to nice wallpaper-looking one we saw during WWDC...

still old QuickTime icon...

This is what I noticed over first few hours of using Snow Leopard. I'll keep it on for couple of weeks. We'll see how it goes :)

Snow Leopard

I am bit nervous about the new operating system from Apple, Snow Leopard. I know MacOS is "better" than Vista, however using at work Windows 7 RC for the last few weeks showed me that Microsoft learned something and created really solid piece of an operating system. I am bit worried, that new, improved Snow Leopard may simply not be enough of an upgrade to win with Windows 7. Time will tell of course. In the meantime I'll try to put my hands on Snow Leopard preview build, to see how much actually changed...