But its not a major upgrade. Apple has stressed that this OS mainly delivers a performance boost for Macs equipped with 64-bit Intel processors. Thus, many of the changes arent going to be immediately obvious.
Apple did not provide Wired.com with an official review copy, but we did have a chance to test drive the Gold Master version of Snow Leopard, which should be functionally identical to whats in stores Friday. Based on our tests, heres a list of things you should know about the OS before installing it on your machine.
Its a Performance Boost, Not a Roaring Upgrade
The changes in Snow Leopard are, for the most part, invisible. This OS is built to take full advantage of faster 64-bit Intel Macs. That means all apps included with Snow Leopard have been rewritten for 64-bit processors. Apps coded by third-party developers who opt to rewrite their software with 64-bit support will also be snappier.
If your activities are not very processor-intensive, then you wont notice a huge difference. If youre editing movies or photos regularly, youll immediately be able to feel the improvement. We tested movie exporting in iMovie and photo editing in iPhoto, and both apps ran much more smoothly than on Leopard.
There are a number of other performance improvements that arent obvious. For example, when you wake up a MacBook from sleep, the AirPort connection will only take about a second to reconnect to your Wi-Fi network, compared with a few seconds on Leopard. Also, the Finder, which you use to navigate your files, is a lot less laggy than before: Thumbnails display almost immediately, and scanning through folders is smooth. Subtle and sweet.
Not All Third-Party Software Is Guaranteed to Work
As is often the case with OS upgrades, there are going to be some third-party developers who procrastinated on testing their software to ensure compatibility with Snow Leopard. Most applications working on Mac OS X 10.5, aka Leopard, will most likely work in Snow Leopard. Leopard was a 64-bit system that also supported 32-bit software, and Snow Leopard is still compatible with 32-bit applications.
If a developer hasnt rewritten his or her application for Snow Leopard, that most likely means its just not 64-bit capable. Itll still work, but just not as fast as it could be if it were optimized for 64-bit computing.
However, if youre running third-party software that you absolutely need, its always smart to check the developers website to see if the app has been tested on Snow Leopard. Adobe, for example, has already stated that Creative Suite 3 has not been tested on Snow Leopard and may have compatibility issues. We were able to test Adobe Photoshop CS 3 on Snow Leopard and thus far have had no problems. We also tested QuickSilver, App Zapper, Adium, Tweetie and Evernote, and all seemed to work fine. But do some research and pretest on a nonproduction system if youre concerned.
Apple has promised that after installing Snow Leopard, the OS will note which applications are incompatible with it. On the test machine we saw, none of the apps became incompatible after upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard.
In short, if youre running relatively new software, you probably wont have to worry. With more dated apps (three years or older) you should consider double-checking.
Minor Tweaks to Interface, Usability
Dont expect this to be a brand new experience: Most of the UI changes are small. For example, Expos, the window-management tool, has been implemented into the Dock. Clicking a Dock icon and holding it down will show only the windows of the selected app, which could be useful if youre a digital clutterbug like I am.
What else? For owners of unibody MacBooks, which feature multitouch trackpads, swiping upward with four fingers performs the show-desktop function in Expos. And swiping downward with four fingers will trigger the show-all-applications function in Expos. Both nice additions though we find the former more useful.
Another small but good change: When snapping screenshots, the images are assigned a file name containing a time stamp of when they were taken.
The most significant refinement to built-in software occurs in QuickTime, now dubbed QuickTime Player X. The player interface gets a makeover a gray-and-black gradient. Other than that, there are new tools including movie recording from your webcam, audio recording from your microphone, and screencasting.
For more information contact All About Jazz.
