http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/technology/david-pogue/119481162227…
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...from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/technology/personaltech/27pogue.html?ref=…
STATE OF THE ART
Apple’s Sleek Upgrade
Stuart Goldenberg
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By DAVID POGUE
Published: August 26, 2009
Buying software is not like buying a vase or a comb or a lawnmower
where you pay, you take it home, and the transaction is complete.
Pogue's Posts
The latest in technology from the Times's David Pogue.
Go to Pogue's Posts »
Related
Times Topics: Apple Inc.
Enlarge This Image
A laptop screen demonstrating the Snow Leopard; movies can be viewed
in a frameless playback window.
No, buying software is more like joining a club with annual dues.
Every year, there’s a new version, and if you don’t upgrade, you feel
like a behind-the-curve loser.
There’s a time bomb ticking in that business model, however. To keep
you upgrading, the software company has to pile on more features each
time. Sooner or later, you wind up with a huge, sloshing, incoherent
mess of a program; a pile of spaghetti code that doesn’t run well and
makes nobody happy.
You’re in even worse shape if that bloatware is your operating system
— the software you run all day. Just ask anyone with Windows Vista.
This year, though, Apple and Microsoft both realized that the pile-on-
features model is unsustainable. Both are releasing new versions of
their operating systems that are unapologetically billed as cleaned-
up, slimmed-down versions of what came before.
Microsoft’s, called Windows 7, comes out in October. Apple’s, called
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, arrives on Friday, a month earlier than
announced. (Apple to Microsoft: “Surprise!”)
Apple’s release strategy is highly unorthodox: “Leopard, a k a Mac OS
X 10.5, was already a great OS-virus-free, nag-free and not copy-
protected. So instead of adding features for their own sake, let’s
just make what we’ve got smaller, faster and more refined.”
What? No new features? That’s not how the industry works! Doesn’t
Apple know anything?
And then there’s the price of Snow Leopard: $30.
Have they lost their minds? Operating-system upgrades always cost a
hundred-something dollars! ($30 is the price if you already have
Leopard. If not, the price is $170 for a Mac Box Set that also
includes two suites of Apple software: iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD,
iWeb and the GarageBand music studio), and iWork (the Numbers
spreadsheet, Pages word processor and Keynote presentation software).
In any case, Snow Leopard truly is an optimized version of Leopard. It
starts up faster (72 seconds on a MacBook Air, versus 100 seconds in
Leopard). It opens programs faster (Web browser, 3 seconds; calendar,
5 seconds; iTunes, 7 seconds), and the second time you open the same
program, the time is halved.
“Optimized” doesn’t just mean faster; it also means smaller.
Incredibly, Snow Leopard is only half the size of its predecessor;
following the speedy installation (15 minutes), you wind up with 7
gigabytes more free space on your hard drive. That, ladies and gents,
is a first.
Unfortunately, Snow Leopard runs only on Macs with Intel chips — that
is, Macs sold since 2006. If you have an older Mac, you’re stuck with
Leopard forever.
(Techie note: Popular conception has it that the space savings comes
from removing all the code required by those earlier chips. But that’s
not true, according to Apple. Yes, that code is gone, but new 64-bit
code, described below, easily replaces it. No, Apple says that the
savings comes from “tightening up the screws,” compressing chunks of
the system software and eliminating a huge stash of printer drivers.
Now the system downloads printer drivers as needed, on demand.)
As it turns out, Apple programmers could not leave well enough alone.
They disobeyed the original “no new features” mantra. As they pored
through all the bits of Mac OS X, they kept stopping and fixing little
things that had always bugged them, or coming up with neat little ways
to make things better. So:
The Mac now adjusts its own clock when you travel, just like a
cellphone. The menu bar can now show the date, not just the day of the
week. The menu of nearby wireless hot spots now shows the signal
strength for each. When you’re running Windows on your Mac, you can
now open the files on the Macintosh “side” without having to restart.
Icons can now be 512 pixels (several inches) square, turning any
desktop window into a light table for photos.
There’s now a Put Back command in the Trash, just as in Windows’
Recycle Bin. You can page through a PDF document or watch a movie
right on a file’s icon. When you click a folder icon on the Dock, you
can scroll through the pop-up window of its contents, turning a
worthless feature into a useful one.
Buggy plug-ins (Flash and so on) no longer crash the Safari Web
browser; you just get an empty rectangle where they would have appeared.
There’s an impressive trove of tools for blind Mac users, including
one that turns a Mac laptop’s trackpad into a touchable map of the
screen; the Mac speaks each onscreen element as you touch it.
There are some bigger-ticket items, too. Movies open up into a
gorgeous, frameless playback window with built-in trim handles and a
“Send to YouTube” command built right in. You can now record your
screen activity as a movie — fantastic for tutorials. The old Services
feature has been reborn as powerful commands that appear only when
relevant — and you can modify, make up or assign keystrokes to them.
Once a system administrator provides setup details, your company’s
Microsoft Exchange address book, e-mail and calendar can show up in
the Mac’s own address book, e-mail and calendar programs, right
alongside your own personal information. That’s irony for you: the Mac
now has Exchange compatibility built in, but Windows itself does not.
There are hundreds more little tweaks. In all, Apple says that more
than 90 percent of Leopard’s 1,000 software chunks were revised or
polished. Many are listed on Apple's site, but I kept finding more
undocumented surprises until the deadline for this column. Just little
stuff. Like: When you rename an icon on an alphabetically sorted
desktop, it visibly slides into its new alphabetic position so you can
see where it went.
Despite all of this, the haters online deride Snow Leopard as a
“service pack” — nothing more than a bug-fix/security-patch update
like the ones Microsoft periodically releases for Windows.
That’s a pretty uninformed wisecrack. Especially because the biggest
changes in Snow Leopard are under the hood, completely invisible, but
responsible for some big speed and stability advances.
A big one: Mac OS X and most of its included programs (the desktop,
Web browser, calendar and so on) are 64-bit software, a geeky term
that, for now, pretty much means “faster.” Other new underlying
technologies, called OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch, are features
that software companies can exploit for even greater speed in their
new or rewritten programs.
That Snow Leopard’s looks haven’t changed at all, in other words,
betrays the enormous changes under its pretty skin. Unfortunately,
that fact also explains the number of non-Apple programs that “break”
after the installation.
I experienced frustrating glitches in various programs, including
Microsoft Word, Flip4Mac, Photoshop CS3, CyberDuck and TextExpander,
an abbreviation expander. (Interestingly, Snow Leopard offers its own
typing-expander feature, but it works primarily in Apple programs,
like TextEdit, Mail, Safari and iChat.) The compatibility list at
snowleopard.wikidot.com lists other programs that may have trouble.
Most of these hiccups will go away when software companies update
their wares (although Adobe says, “Just upgrade to Photoshop CS4”).
Let’s hope that Apple hurries up with its inevitable 10.6.0.1 update,
too, to address the occasional Safari crash and cosmetic glitch I
experienced, too.
Otherwise, if you’re already running Leopard, paying the $30 for Snow
Leopard is a no-brainer. You’ll feel the leap forward in speed polish,
and you’ll keep experiencing those “oh, that’s nice” moments for weeks
to come.
If you’re running something earlier, the decision isn’t as clear cut;
you’ll have to pay $170 and get Snow Leopard with Apple’s creative-
software suites — whether you want them or not.
Either way, the big story here isn’t really Snow Leopard. It’s the
radical concept of a software update that’s smaller, faster and better
— instead of bigger, slower and more bloated. May the rest of the
industry take the hint.
Wayne Billing
Classroom Technology Support
Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support
123 Fletcher Argue Building
474-6649
474-7598 (fax)
Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca
Hello All:
For those of you wondering about the level of support Adobe will be
providing for their existing CS-3 & CS-4 suites of software, they've
published a PDF document, "Adobe Creative Suite 4 Solutions and Mac OS
X Snow Leopard" (see link below).
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/files/Adobe-SnowLeopard_FAQ.pdf
Regards,
Doug
-------------
Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP
Senior Computer Consultant
Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba
204-474-6196 (Ph.)
204-474-7556 (Fax)
http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/
Greetings, all:
Apple to release Snow Leopard [Mac OS X 10.6] on August 28
http://www.macworld.com/article/142383/2009/08/snow_leopard.html
And from Apple Canada "hot news":
Apple to Ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28
August 24, 2009
Apple today announced that Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard will go
on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple's retail stores and Apple
Authorized Resellers, and that Apple's online store is now
accepting pre-orders. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X
innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core
technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange.
Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard
users for $35 [CAD].
http://apple.ca/macosx/
* Remember, Snow Leopard is for Intel-based Macs only!
--
Tom Dubinski Phone: +1.204.474-8841 Fax: 474-7609
Computer Science, E2-596 EITC CompSci General Office: E2-445 EITC
University of Manitoba E-Mail: tom_dubinski(a)umanitoba.ca
Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~tdubins/
Hello Everyone:
A couple of things to keep in mind as Apple heads towards the release
of the next major update to Mac OS X, version 10.6 aka "Snow Leopard".
Firstly, please note that Mac OS X 10.6 only operates on Macintosh
systems with Intel processors. If you are unsure as to which processor
your system(s) has, here is how you can find out. Click on the Apple
Menu in the upper left hand corner of your screen, choose "About This
Mac". In the window that opens you should see the processor listed.
Secondly, the behaviour of software manufacturers is to make previous
versions of their programs unavailable for purchase. Therefore, once
Mac OS X 10.6 begins shipping sometime in September, Mac OS X 10.5
will in all probability become unavailable for purchase. Should you
have a system which meets the minimum hardware specifications for Mac
OS X 10.5, I would recommend you purchase before it's no longer
available.
Here are the minimum basic system requirements for Mac OS X 10.5, as
specified by Apple Inc.
Processor: Intel, G5 or G4 (867MHz or faster);
Memory: 512MB of physical RAM;
DVD drive for installation.
While Mac OS X 10.5 will operate in less, based upon experience I
would say the minimum processor is a G4 1.0GHz (ideally higher), and
the minimum amount of memory is 1GB of physical RAM.
Regards,
Doug
-------------
Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP
Senior Computer Consultant
Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba
204-474-6196 (Ph.)
204-474-7556 (Fax)
http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/
Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) today shared details
about the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac, announcing that a
new application, Outlook for Mac, will replace Entourage for Mac.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/aug09/08-13MacOutlookPR.mspx
Regards,
Doug
-------------
Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP
Senior Computer Consultant
Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba
204-474-6196 (Ph.)
204-474-7556 (Fax)
http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/
Hello Everyone:
For those of you who dislike the industry wide trend for computer
manufacturers to use only high-gloss screens (including Apple Inc.),
today Apple reintroduced the 15-inch MacBook Pro build-to-order option
for an antiglare screen. Like the 17-inch MacBook Pro which has had
this option for sometime now, this option doesn't come free, it will
set you back a maximum of $57.
http://canadaedu.apple.com/routing/index.php?lang=eng
Regards,
Doug
-------------
Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP
Senior Computer Consultant
Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba
204-474-6196 (Ph.)
204-474-7556 (Fax)
http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/
Just a word of caution, VMWare is reporting a problem between their
"Fusion" product and the recently released Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update,
specifically for Macintosh systems with ATI graphics chips.
http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2009/05/a-message-to-mac-users-with-atib…
Apple and VMWare are working together to correct the problem.
Regards,
Doug
-------------
Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP
Senior Computer Consultant
Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba
204-474-6196 (Ph.)
204-474-7556 (Fax)
http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/
