@Spikediswhack I just logged out to see that - it's horrible! I'd be interested to know the user research that got them there (perhaps the shake made people think something was broken), but the implementation of that text (garish shade of red, odd centred positioning) makes me think it's something that's slipped through QC without being picked up...
I'm having mixed results with SL - my (3 year old) macbook feels a lot snappier and has found 11GB of new disk space (which was my main reason for upgrading). My (2 month old) iMac, however, doesn't feel noticeably quicker and a couple of programmes (Firefox in particular) actually feel a lot slower.
Plus my printer doesn't work yet, but that would seem to be HP's fault for being slow with new drivers (and my fault for not checking the compatibility table before installing!). And yes, I know this is what MS got flamed for when Vista came out, but no, I personally wasn't someone who flamed them for it :-)
Are you sure? Mine kept the same settings I had before the upgrade (even down to what I'd allowed and what I'd blocked). It's still a good idea to check anyway of course.
My only complaint is that when you type the password in wrong on a locked screen you get a boring bit of red text telling you instead of the screen shaking it did before. I think I can live with it though.
I was pleased to see that Apple's assertion that you needed 10.5 to install the ordinary box version of Snow Leopard is misleading (come on, Technology, why haven't you made anything of this yet?).
However, I've found it frustrating that SL's minimum requirements are actually hardwired into the installer, so it won't install on my Mac Mini (2 years old) as is. That is quite pathetic: Apple sell kit that their OS doesn't run on 2 years down the road. Realistically, there is no reason to *force* 1GB ram on people; I've got the latest Linux kernel happily running on something with 64MB of ram. And frankly, I'm prepared to run with 512MB on that box as it doesn't have to do anything that is memory intensive. If I find the performance sluggish, I'l live with it.*
Oddly, the installer asserts that 512MB is not enough to run OS X full stop, not SL in particular.
On other machines, the difference between .5 and .6 isn't noticable in my day to day usage, though things you might only use occasionally seem faster (such as the system profiler).
* other users asking about this on some mac forums have been given typical short shrift from the zealots. Apparently you have no "right" to expect them to support old hardware, and you shouldn't be such a cry baby whinger. No wonder mac users have such a bad reputation in parts of the internet. So, before I get any of those, I'll say that I'm happy to fork out the 9 quid to bring the machine up to the minimum specs.
I think GCD possibly has more to do with speed improvements than OpenCL, however, its worth noting that OpenCL isnt just for code which will get palmed off to the GPU—it produces code executable by the host CPU (possibly a different core to the one executing the rest of the app), too.
I dont think theres any one single thing which you can point at to say ah, yes, this is what makes it faster, but the combination of them all working together certainly is.
Interestingly, I think the mystery of the additional free disk space has been solved: reports suggest that Apple may have implemented transparent compression at filesystem level (examining 10.6 binaries from a 10.5 command-line yields results which suggests that executable code has been moved to a resource fork).
I'm not convinced that 64-bit or OpenCL have anything to do with those perceptions, but am willing to be corrected.
Both 10.5 and 10.6 support 32 and 64 bit code; they've just built 64 bit versions of all the main apps now.
On an Intel Mac, 64 bit means that your CPU is no longer quite as crippled by the lack of registers as it used to be: there are twice as many as in the IA32 architecture.
I'm still running 10.5, but in 64 bit mode my audio software (an experimental synthesiser) runs about 30% faster than in 32 bit mode, which was pleasantly surprising. Other inner-loopy code may well see similar benefits; modern bloated object-oriented code will likely see almost none, code somewhere in between (for example, the OS kernel) will see a boost somewhere in between these two limits.
As for OpenCL, well, it does exactly what all those old DSP coprocessor boards for Macs did, so Photoshop and friends should benefit greatly from it, but other stuff probably not at all.
Snow Leopard: hints, hassles and review roundup from around the web
Comments
@Spikediswhack
I just logged out to see that - it's horrible! I'd be interested to know the user research that got them there (perhaps the shake made people think something was broken), but the implementation of that text (garish shade of red, odd centred positioning) makes me think it's something that's slipped through QC without being picked up...
I'm having mixed results with SL - my (3 year old) macbook feels a lot snappier and has found 11GB of new disk space (which was my main reason for upgrading). My (2 month old) iMac, however, doesn't feel noticeably quicker and a couple of programmes (Firefox in particular) actually feel a lot slower.
Plus my printer doesn't work yet, but that would seem to be HP's fault for being slow with new drivers (and my fault for not checking the compatibility table before installing!). And yes, I know this is what MS got flamed for when Vista came out, but no, I personally wasn't someone who flamed them for it :-)
@maxmg
Are you sure? Mine kept the same settings I had before the upgrade (even down to what I'd allowed and what I'd blocked). It's still a good idea to check anyway of course.
My only complaint is that when you type the password in wrong on a locked screen you get a boring bit of red text telling you instead of the screen shaking it did before. I think I can live with it though.
Ahem, 'two'... sorry.
If anyone reading is installing 10.6, then check your firewall. Once more Apple decide two turn the damn thing off by default.
I was pleased to see that Apple's assertion that you needed 10.5 to install the ordinary box version of Snow Leopard is misleading (come on, Technology, why haven't you made anything of this yet?).
However, I've found it frustrating that SL's minimum requirements are actually hardwired into the installer, so it won't install on my Mac Mini (2 years old) as is. That is quite pathetic: Apple sell kit that their OS doesn't run on 2 years down the road. Realistically, there is no reason to *force* 1GB ram on people; I've got the latest Linux kernel happily running on something with 64MB of ram. And frankly, I'm prepared to run with 512MB on that box as it doesn't have to do anything that is memory intensive. If I find the performance sluggish, I'l live with it.*
Oddly, the installer asserts that 512MB is not enough to run OS X full stop, not SL in particular.
On other machines, the difference between .5 and .6 isn't noticable in my day to day usage, though things you might only use occasionally seem faster (such as the system profiler).
* other users asking about this on some mac forums have been given typical short shrift from the zealots. Apparently you have no "right" to expect them to support old hardware, and you shouldn't be such a cry baby whinger. No wonder mac users have such a bad reputation in parts of the internet. So, before I get any of those, I'll say that I'm happy to fork out the 9 quid to bring the machine up to the minimum specs.
I think GCD possibly has more to do with speed improvements than OpenCL, however, its worth noting that OpenCL isnt just for code which will get palmed off to the GPU—it produces code executable by the host CPU (possibly a different core to the one executing the rest of the app), too.
I dont think theres any one single thing which you can point at to say ah, yes, this is what makes it faster, but the combination of them all working together certainly is.
Interestingly, I think the mystery of the additional free disk space has been solved: reports suggest that Apple may have implemented transparent compression at filesystem level (examining 10.6 binaries from a 10.5 command-line yields results which suggests that executable code has been moved to a resource fork).
Both 10.5 and 10.6 support 32 and 64 bit code; they've just built 64 bit versions of all the main apps now.
On an Intel Mac, 64 bit means that your CPU is no longer quite as crippled by the lack of registers as it used to be: there are twice as many as in the IA32 architecture.
I'm still running 10.5, but in 64 bit mode my audio software (an experimental synthesiser) runs about 30% faster than in 32 bit mode, which was pleasantly surprising. Other inner-loopy code may well see similar benefits; modern bloated object-oriented code will likely see almost none, code somewhere in between (for example, the OS kernel) will see a boost somewhere in between these two limits.
As for OpenCL, well, it does exactly what all those old DSP coprocessor boards for Macs did, so Photoshop and friends should benefit greatly from it, but other stuff probably not at all.
This is a pretty good step by step outline for a safe install of Snow Leopard backing up in advance
Basically: create bootable backup (or has Time Machine up to date). Install.