August 2009 - apple-list - University of Manitoba Mailing Lists

INTEREST: Apple’s Sleek Upgrade: OS X Snow Leopard
by billing 27 Aug '09

27 Aug '09

http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/technology/david-pogue/119481162227… and ...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/technology/personaltech/27pogue.html?ref=… STATE OF THE ART Apple’s Sleek Upgrade Stuart Goldenberg SIGN IN TO RECOMMEND COMMENTS(153) E-MAIL SEND TO PHONE PRINT SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS SHARE 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

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Snow Leopard (10.6) and Adobe Creative Suites (CS3/4)
by Doug Hamilton 26 Aug '09

26 Aug '09

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/

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Snow Leopard release on Aug 28 confirmed
by Tom Dubinski 24 Aug '09

24 Aug '09

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/

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10.6 is coming soon, so pick up your 10.5 ...
by Doug Hamilton 19 Aug '09

19 Aug '09

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/

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FYI: Outlook for Mac to Ship With Next Version
by Doug Hamilton 13 Aug '09

13 Aug '09

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/

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FYI - Apple reintroduces antiglare screen for 15-inch MBP
by Doug Hamilton 11 Aug '09

11 Aug '09

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/

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ATTN - VMWare Fusion & 10.5.7 Update
by Doug Hamilton 06 Aug '09

06 Aug '09

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/

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