Snow Leopard

[MrDigital]

So... anyone got it yet?

I'm gonna grab a copy when I know for sure it will work flawlessly on my A90 (Mini 9). I expect it to have some nice performance improvements if it does work on my netbook, since they stripped a lot of garbage and finally got around to optimizing it (and fixing the f*&king Finder).

[ImaNihilist]

I'll buy the little box set for my MacBook at the end of the year. Or maybe just a new MacBook.

There's nothing terribly exciting outside of the performance tweaks. Finder does, indeed, suck... but meh.

Exchange support is really the biggest thing IMO, but I don't even want to get my work email on my personal machine, so I don't care.

[MrDigital]

Well the storage footprint should be a lot smaller since it no longer has the PPC code, so that by itself is nice for netbooks.

Exchange support is meaningless to me, and even if it wasn't I'd just as soon use Entourage. Most corporate Macs are gonna buy MS Office anyways.

[Concerned Citizen]

Bought it this morning. One "small" thing they added is that all 2-finger touchpads now also support 3- and 4-finger gestures. That was a nice surprise.

I'd guess that they broke hackintosh compatibility considering that there are tons of changes under the hood. Shouldn't take the hackintosh people long to catch up though.


edit: never mind, seems to work with the 10A432 release (leaked gold master) so it should also work with the retail.
http://www.ihackintosh.com/2009/08/h...pc-hackintosh/

[ImaNihilist]

Bought it this morning. One "small" thing they added is that all 2-finger touchpads now also support 3- and 4-finger gestures. That was a nice surprise.

I'd guess that they broke hackintosh compatibility considering that there are tons of changes under the hood. Shouldn't take the hackintosh people long to catch up though.


edit: never mind, seems to work with the 10A432 release (leaked gold master) so it should also work with the retail.
http://www.ihackintosh.com/2009/08/h...pc-hackintosh/

Huh. That is a nice surprise.

[Concerned Citizen]

edit: seems like the multi-touch thing isn't for all models. the very first generation of 2-finger touchpads can apparently only see the presence of two fingers, but not their position relative to each other, so the hardware doesn't allow the update.

one small annoyance is that they changed the default gamma to one where the colors are excessively vibrant. changing it back is easy though.

also stacks now have scrolling, but it's not as smooth as in other OS components - there's a small lag. still, stacks are much better than before.

after using it for a few days, it's already worth the $29. it'll only get better with time as the new multi-core libraries and OpenCL are used by software companies. can't wait for CS5.

[ImaNihilist]

I've read that they actually did something stupid and changed the definition of the KB/MB/GB from base-2 to base-10.

[James]

I've read that they actually did something stupid and changed the definition of the KB/MB/GB from base-2 to base-10.

Wow. Way to go Apple. You've just ensured I'll never use your products. Is this confirmed?

[ImaNihilist]

Wow. Way to go Apple. You've just ensured I'll never use your products. Is this confirmed?

Here: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/29/snow-...r-than-before/

To make matters even worse, terminal sizes are supposedly still base-2. So GUI reports one thing, terminal reports another. ****ing retarded if you ask me.

[MrDigital]

Anyone ever used the Finder replacement "Path Finder"? I might just get that to solve my Finder issues.

[James]

Anyone ever used the Finder replacement "Path Finder"? I might just get that to solve my Finder issues.

I believe some of the guys at work are using it. I'll ask for their feedback. As for Finder in general, most of the reviews I've read mention massive fixes for finder, especially when using large network shares.

[Concerned Citizen]

Path finder is very good. However, so is the rewritten (entirely Cocoa) finder. The difference in performance is several orders of magnitude. Of course this should have been introduced in 10.2, not 10.6, but it's still great to have now. However it still has my main issue: inconsistent window states. Other than that, two instances of Finder (both in column view) together do everything I need. I don't use Coverflow, instant preview, etc - I know where my files are.

What really turned me off path finder is the poor integration. They claim the ability to make Path Finder the default file manager, but I still got the occasional Finder window when I had it installed.


Here's a comment from that TUAW post that sums up my opinion on the KB/KiB thing:

I think this ought to be at least a toggle. I mean on the one hand I understand it, Apple is compensating for the misrepresentation HD manufacturers have been rolling out for years, saying a 500gig drive is such when you only have approximately 460gigs of usable space. On the other hand, other operating systems don't compensate for this, so there's going to be discrepancies moving content between them.

For consistency's sake I think this should be left to the user. I understand what it's there for, but I would prefer to leave it the way every other computer and electronic device calculates it.

It's kind of annoying that they changed it, but I'm sure there's a quick command line fix to change it back.



They also fixed some other stuff that I found perplexing in 10.5
- if you use the spotlight search within finder, it searches the folder you're in instead of the entire system. (this is a preference rather than a default, but i'm still glad it's there)
- screenshots no longer get generic names
- dragging a large number of files in that empty bit of desktop corner between the dock and an maximized window no longer makes them flicker (hard to describe, but if you've had this issue you'll know what i'm talking about)

- Safari 4 in Leopard was pretty crash happy (in fact I downgraded to Safari 3), Safari 4 in Snow Leopard hasn't crashed once.

[Recon]

Here: http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/29/snow-...r-than-before/

To make matters even worse, terminal sizes are supposedly still base-2. So GUI reports one thing, terminal reports another. ****ing retarded if you ask me.

Is there a fix in the works for this?

[MrDigital]

I'm not sure why so many people are up in arms over this. I really don't mind the base-10 change. The IEEE made the change as did other standards bodies, so we might as well get on with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541

Kilo means 1000 in everything else in life except computers, where it means 1024. It's base-2 that's the problem here, not base-10.

About the only place this is a problem is the fact that Windows and *nix haven't done it yet, so file sizes will appear different when you're transferring files.

edit: As a matter of fact, if Apple does allow you to change between base-10 and base-2 I certainly hope they follow standards and make sure base-2 says KiB and MiB so that you know which mode you're in.

[ImaNihilist]

I'm not sure why so many people are up in arms over this. I really don't mind the base-10 change. The IEEE made the change as did other standards bodies, so we might as well get on with it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1541

Kilo means 1000 in everything else in life except computers, where it means 1024. It's base-2 that's the problem here, not base-10.

About the only place this is a problem is the fact that Windows and *nix haven't done it yet, so file sizes will appear different when you're transferring files.

edit: As a matter of fact, if Apple does allow you to change between base-10 and base-2 I certainly hope they follow standards and make sure base-2 says KiB and MiB so that you know which mode you're in.

Or downloading something. You know how hard it is to make sure you have the latest pron when you can't compare file sizes?