Bites from the Apple: Snow Leopard in the Wild

September 1, 2009 · Posted in Apple

While perhaps not as momentous an occasion to require The The as background music (”this is the day, your life will surely change…”), Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is officially released today. As most reviewers have pointed out, Snow Leopard is more about streamlining and quickening the operating system as well as focusing on improvements to existing features rather than throwing gobs of new code at the wall and hoping something interesting sticks.

My colleague Jeff Carlson reviewed Snow Leopard in the Seattle Times and says that the speed increase is palpable in newer machines, and he also feels that it’s helped give an uptick in speed to his 2006 model MacBook Pro, thereby extending its useful life. It’s also sleeker, as David Pogue in the NYTimes notes that the Snow Leopard installation frees up about 7 GB of space (nothing to sneeze at–that’s about half a season of LOST episodes in HD). Brian Lam at Gizmodo sums up OS streamlinging thusly: “The little UI tweaks are no different than when a great sculptor’s chisel works to remove everything non-essential during the final steps on a statue.”

For the most part, most reviewers are giving Snow Leopard positive marks, but some such as Brian Chen at Wired reminds everyone that it’s not a radical upgrade, but it is affordable at $30. And Walt Mossberg offers his own reservations at All Things D:

Overall, I believe Snow Leopard will help keep the Mac an appealing choice for computer buyers, and I can recommend it to existing Mac owners seeking more speed and disk space, or wanting to more easily use Exchange. But I don’t consider Snow Leopard a must-have upgrade for average consumers. It’s more of a nice-to-have upgrade. If you’re happy with Leopard, there’s no reason to rush out and get Snow Leopard.

If you’re wondering what all the hubbub is all about, check out Pocket-lint’s overview of what Snow Leopard can–and can’t–do for you (the latter being particular to those still using PowerPC hardware). For myself, I’ll be upgrading my recently purchased 2009 MacBook Pro via Apple’s Up-to-Date upgrade program, but I’ll probably wait a bit to upgrade my 2006 Mac mini just to see how Leopard and Snow Leopard interact with each other. What are your thoughts–will you be upgrading this weekend, or waiting a bit until the 10.6.1 update comes out? Let us know in the comments. Now onto more Snow Leopard coverage as well as bits and bytes of other Apple-y goodness from the week that was…

If you are thinking about upgrading to Snow Leopard this weekend, hit the pause button for a moment and head over to Take Control books and purchase Joe Kissell’s Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard ebook. I’ve used his previous editions as a roadmap when previously upgrading to Tiger and Leopard, and they’ve been enormously helpful. And with a new installation process used for Snow Leopard (giving you a choice of automatic upgrade or erase & install), this ebook is well worth the 10 clams. While you’re at the Take Control site, you should also consider Matt Neuburg’s Take Control of Exploring & Customizing Snow Leopard (which can be purchased in a bundle with the Upgrade tome for $20).
If you don’t buy Joe’s ebook, at least take his (and John Gruber’s) advice to create a cloned/bootable backup of your current system to an external hard drive before upgrading.
Additionally, for some free advice on upgrading to Snow Leopard, check out Leander Kahney’s brief step-by-step posted over at Cult of Mac (which also goes bootable drive backup route) and Gina Trapani’s post at Lifehacker (which goes with Time Machine backups for restoring data).
Another item that could give you pause before upgrading is compatibility with your existing applications. The Apple Blog points to an Apple support page that lists some of the biggest titles that are incompatible with Snow Leopard, including older versions of Parallels as well as some Apple software (Keynote 2.0.2 and earlier and Aperture 2.1.1 and earlier). Also, Cult of Mac reports that Adobe’s Creative Suite 3 (CS3) might have some problems with Macs running Snow Leopard based on user forum discussions and conversation with users running the 10.6 Snow Leopard beta (though Adobe says that they should play fine).
My colleague Glenn Fleishman writes in TidBITS about the improvements to Snow Leopard’s handling of the Airport menu, which now includes the ability to see how fast your network is transmitting data (which, he notes, can be useful in finding the right placement for your wireless router).
More hidden features (”refinements”) found in Snow Leopard from the TidBITS staff.
Apple Matters takes a look at the big cat nomenclature that Apple uses for its operating systems.
The iPhone isn’t the only Apple product to produce lines on its first day of release–Pocket-lint reports (with photo evidence) of a queue formed in front of the Apple Store on Regent Street in London.
Rumor Revue: The long-rumored/speculated-upon Apple tablet PC may be coming out in more than just a 10-inch model. Gizmodo reports that a source (who, they write, “has always been 100% reliable”) says that the iTablet/iTouch will also come out in 13- and 15-inch flavors, with one of them (my guess, the larger) running the full Mac OS X. Ars Technica reports that the classic white plastic MacBook may be getting a design overhaul which would shave off both some millimeters from the enclosure as well as dollars from its list price.
TUAW reports that the iPod classic could also get a new camera in addition to the previously rumored iPod nano and iPod touch when Apple rolls out its new lineup on September 9 (though that date hasn’t been confirmed yet. And speaking of September 9 (aka, Beatles release day), Jason O’Grady at The Apple Core keeps stoking the Beatles/Apple fire with hopes for a limited edition Yellow Submarine-themed iPod touch.
The Facebook iPhone app (sad to say, it’s the app I use the most) got a facelift this week to version 3.0, which overhauls the design with a news feed display that better mirrors the web browser design, ability to “like” items, and choose album destinations for photo uploads.
Yelp iPhone app got updated to version 3.0 this week and it includes the new augmented reality feature, which activates the camera (3GS only) to view what’s before you, while also overlaying nearby places of interest. However, it’s an easter egg (i.e., hidden feature) that requires you to shake your iPhone (some sites report one good shake does it, while others report that three is the magic number) to bring up the secret Monocle button to activate the AR feature.
After downloading the app update last night, I was shaking my iPhone like a crazed 21st century Nikita Khrushchev to get the new feature to work. At which point, my wife asked, “Is this something that’s supposed to be making your life better?” Well, that’s still to be determined, as the AR feature is really quite shaky, but it could prove useful due to it being tied into the iPhone 3GS’s compass for finding places in crowded, confusing areas.
Another official Apple announcement–the iPhone is coming to China via the Unicom carrier, starting sometime in the fourth quarter of this year. However, the iPhone that’s to be sold in China will have its Wi-Fi crippled to comply with Chinese government standards.
Macworld has a review of the X2 Soccer 2009 iPhone app, giving it 4-1/2 mice. I downloaded the free lite version of the app (which just offers a training mode), and I think it’s going to be my preferred soccer game over my previously purchased Real Soccer 2009 from Gameloft as the controls feel much more intuitive.
And finally… you can now get the iPhone (or the Palm Pre) in the form of soap from Two Eggplants (via CNet’s Technically Incorrect blog).