Snow Leopard

[danieldk]

Today, Mac OS X Snow Leopard had been released. Judging from the list of features, it is definitely the most interesting OS upgrade this year I'd say, even more interesting than Windows 7:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Most of the changes are under the hood, a lot of optimizations, but also new technology such as OpenCL that will enable applications to perform calculations on GPUs and Grand Central that makes use of multi-core CPUs far easier.

I have the disk now (very cheap, 8 Euro for my MacBook, and 29 Euro for my Mac Mini), and will be installing it on my MacBook today.

If someone is interested, I can report on the experiences...

[Leon]

Re: If someone is interested, I can report on the experiences...

Daniel, please do. It is interesting to see what can be done on a PC with a UNIX-based OS.

[danieldk]

Did a clean install today, and installed the usual batch of open and closed-source programs:

- Xcode (IDE + gcc and llvm compilers)
- Adium (chat client)
- Transmission (bittorrent client)
- Little Snitch (handy firewall)
- TextMate (text editor)
- Expandrive (tool for mounting SFTP/FTP/S3 as drives)
- Aperture (photo management/editing) + flickrexport
- Adobe Creative Suite CS4 Web Premium (Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.)
- Adobe InDesign CS4
- Microsoft Office 2008
- MacPorts, and compiled various stuff such as git and Scala

All applications seem to work great. Still have to install PixelMator and some other applications.

Snow Leopard feels even a lot snappier than Leopard. It also takes about 7GB less disk space. It's great that they took the time to improve the underlying system and making it faster/leaner rather than adding more features/bloat.

[danieldk]

Hmmm, no ghc Haskell compiler yet through MacPorts, they are still working on the bootstrap compiler for Snow Leopard:

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/20132

Can work in a Debian VM when this works. So, let's see if VMWare Fusion works ;).

[Leon]

Snow Leopard feels even a lot snappier than Leopard. It also takes about 7GB less disk space. It's great that they took the time to improve the underlying system and making it faster/leaner rather than adding more features/bloat.

This confirms my suspicion that OS X was "kludged" for the Intel CPU. It sounds now that the OS is finally being written natively for the PC. Just my 2 cents.

I have an old G4 Powerbook I play with from time to time. My interest is Snow Leopard and its further developments lies in the possible future purchase of a laptop.

[danieldk]

This confirms my suspicion that OS X was "kludged" for the Intel CPU. It sounds now that the OS is finally being written natively for the PC. Just my 2 cents.

Note that it is still a multi-platform OS though - the iPhone and iPod touch run OS X on ARM. It's the same kernel and underlying system, and uses almost the same frameworks.

But they clearly took Snow Leopard as an opportunity to cut out the cruft. All PowerPC support is gone (accounting for the decrease in disk space use), there are still fat binaries, but only for x86_32 and x64_64. Besides that they rewrote many applications in Cocoa (rather than Carbon), with primarily iTunes and Movie Player as leftovers.

Although I lot of cleaning has been performed, Leopard also introduces new cutting edge features yet to be seen in other systems such as OpenCL and Grand Central.

I have an old G4 Powerbook I play with from time to time. My interest is Snow Leopard and its further developments lies in the possible future purchase of a laptop.

I have recently bought a new (unibody) MacBook. And I couldn't be happier with it. The unibody aluminium case is really solid, it has a glass screen with LED backlighting (that alters the brightness based on environment light), glass multitouch trackpad (not just two finger touch), the usual great battery time, a nVidia GPU, 1GHz memory, etc. It's basically the best hardware ~1000 Euro can buy.

If you want to run Linux a MacBook may not be ideal, since it usually takes some tweaking to get everything working, and battery time one Linux sucks (but that seems to be more of a Linux-ish problem). That said, Linux, Windows, and BSD run fine under VMWare Fusion.

[danieldk]

This is a very excellent review that goes into all the background, the nitty gritty details of the technical enhancements, and also the less technical user interface stuff:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars

Really recommended! There's a lot of discussion about technology that may shape the future, such as OpenCL and LLVM.

[Leon]

Thanks, again, Daniel.

My interest in a Mac laptop is just hypothetical at this time; I presently have no need for a mobile computer. My old Mac Powerbook is adequate, if a bit slow, but its battery is only good for about 30 minutes now.

Although the Mac laptops are pricey, they tower over the PC competition in reliability. Do you have to go through the rigamarol of "activating" the OS installation and software as is customary with M$ products?

[danieldk]

My interest in a Mac laptop is just hypothetical at this time; I presently have no need for a mobile computer. My old Mac Powerbook is adequate, if a bit slow, but its battery is only good for about 30 minutes now.


If it's still reliable, maybe it is worthwhile to replace the battery?

Although the Mac laptops are pricey, they tower over the PC competition in reliability. Do you have to go through the rigamarol of "activating" the OS installation and software as is customary with M$ products?

No. I have two Snow Leopard DVDs:

1. The 10.5 -> 10.6 "upgrade" (the thing that sells ~30 dollar)
2. The 10.6 -> 10.6 upgrade for Macs purchased after june 8

(1) is only an upgrade in name, it checks nothing at all, and works on a blank machine. Additionally, there are no license codes or activation procedures. Off course, there is the usual "register with Apple" screen, but this can be skipped, and you don't have to register at all.

(2) is an upgrade DVD, which in the Apple world means that there is a script on the DVD that checks the existence of 10.5. But it is a normal DVD if you remove the script at install time, or by making a copy of the DVD without the script.

So, no product activation whatsoever. I heard that in iWork 2009 (I only have 2008) they also removed the need for a registration code (in contrast to OS X itself, most Apple applications require a registration code, but no activation).

It seems that they have learned that it is easier to just enlarge your market than annoying your users with copy protection schemes ;).

[danieldk]

One month of Snow Leopard:
http://blog.danieldk.eu/blog:one-month-snow-leopard

[danieldk]

About getting around annoying upgrade checks, and using an upgrade disk as a normal installation disk:

http://blog.danieldk.eu/blog:os-x-upgrades

[danieldk]

Ouch, my 5-month old MacBook died :(:
http://blog.danieldk.eu/blog:macbook-dead

[fos]

My Dell Inspiron 13xx failed to boot into Vista a couple of weeks ago. I restarted after going through a built in recovery process. It has been working fine since. I saved all of my personal files. Some of the numerous proprietary programs would have to be reinstalled on a new computer if (when) this one bites the dust. It is out of warranty. I purchased it last year during our three week hurricane siege. For the most part it has been a very satisfying computer.

Core2Duo, 4 Gb ram, nice screen size, double life battery (about 5 hours actual). For all of the utility it has provided, I would definitely buy another for the price I paid for this one. ~ $700 US.

Jeff

PS. I have had to record audio for some graduate projects. The built in microphone array stinks. I had to purchase an external microphone to prevent all of computer generated noise from being embedded in my recording. Other than that, no complaints. (The web cam works but I would never consider inflicting the internet with my pug.)

[uteck]

From the tech shows I have been watching, it seems that lots of people are having problems with the new MacBook Pro. For the most part, it seems that the hard drives are cheep and dieing quite rapidly, but some people have had multiple problems with them and gown through multiple ones this year.

[danieldk]

From the tech shows I have been watching, it seems that lots of people are having problems with the new MacBook Pro. For the most part, it seems that the hard drives are cheep and dieing quite rapidly, but some people have had multiple problems with them and gown through multiple ones this year.

I still have to see what went wrong with mine, but from the looks of it, it is a system board or memory failure. This laptop is practically the same as a MacBook Pro (just before the aluminum MacBooks were renamed to 'pro').

[uteck]

Seems that Apple kit is not all that reliable according to this report.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1562733/apple-machines-reliable
Seems thay are in the same class as Dell and HP in regards to failure rate with Sony and Toshiba taking top honors in hardware reliability.

[fos]

Any idea how Lenovo stacks up?

Jeff

[danieldk]

Well, I know plenty of people who have owned Apple laptops for years without a single problem. I guess I was just out of luck. I have received a letter that I can pick up my MacBook, so I guess I'll hear what was wrong. By the way, failures is not the only thing that counts, also how they are handled. And in this respect Apple has always been great.

In the future I think I'll buy AppleCare for the laptop so that I make use of the fast repair times of Apple Service Centers/Stores rather than the retail chain I have to go to now.

[danieldk]

Seems that Apple kit is not all that reliable according to this report.
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1562733/apple-machines-reliable
Seems thay are in the same class as Dell and HP in regards to failure rate with Sony and Toshiba taking top honors in hardware reliability.

There are very good arguments in the comments why the article, and the report it refers to is shaky.

Biased selection, no statistical difference in some cases cited.

[danieldk]

I have it back, and it's fixed :). Apparently, the memory failed.

[uteck]

I just saw this story about Apple refusing to fix computers because they were contaminated by cigarette smoke.
http://consumerist.com/5408885/smoking-near-apple-computers-creates-biohazard-voids-warranty

Seems that smoking next to your PC can have some nasty results and Apple is not the only one that may deny a repair because of it.
Glad I quite all thoughs years ago.

[danieldk]

Yes, there was also a discussion on Slashdot. But apparently the real reason is that it can make components sticky, which then gather a lot of dust. It seems fair to me, since overheating by such means is not a production error.

Anyway, I am still very happy to have my MacBook back. Even though I did not have AppleCare (meaning I had to take it to the retail store), it was still fixed quite quickly, especially after hearing horror stories of waiting for weeks to get an Acer fixed.

I will buy AppleCare for this laptop in the future, since it is convenient to take it to the authorized Apple repair center (a ten minute bike ride from here), and they usually fix hardware failures within three days.