Snow Leopard

So I've been reading up and thinking about purchasing the upgrade for my OS I am currently running OS X 10.5.8 so I am here to ask those who have upgraded to Snow Leopard, is it worth it? What I am getting different with this upgrade?

 

Dont bother , it`s a minor upgrade , stick with leopard.

If i had not got it for $9.95 , I would not have bothered, very little difference in my opinion.

 

So in the end it's not worth the cash?

 

I suppose lots will disagree with my opinion.

 

Well I mean I'm just curious as to weather or not it's worth the $, when I got the e-mail about the release a little ago I was excited but I haven't really looked too too much into it. Like have you done the upgrade? If so any key things that would make it worth it, or a dealbreaker?

 

The nice thing about Snow Leopard is that it contains 64bit versions of most of the native OS X applications, such as iCal or Mail.app. This means that on a 64bit system, those applications launch and run noticeably faster on a Core 2 Duo Mac.

However, apart from that, there isn't much else. The notice that states which application is currently using a file when you try to delete it is nice, as well as the Restore to original location function for items in the trash. Whether those items are a must-have is up to you.

On the downside, Snow Leopard currently breaks pretty much every third party plugin that acts on the updated applications that come with OS X. This means that you will have to get updates for Glims, Growl, Plugsuit, etc. many of which aren't available yet. If those plugins are a necessity for you, then I suggest waiting until Snow Leopard compatible versions of those plugins are made available.

 

Whether or not it is right for you is really up to you. Because everyone has a different worth on $29 or $9 dollars. One persons benefit may outweigh the cost whereas the cost for another may outweigh the benefits.

 

Thanks for the detailed info and thanks for the input it's helped with this decision. I do use 3rd party apps, that might not be compatible yet so thank you for that. It was very helpful. Anything really new with user interface?

 

User interface is 98% the same, minus the slightly new dock and expose features. All of my 3rd party apps worked.

 

What 3rd party apps are you running? And any chance someone has a list of the apps that currently work correctly with snow leopard? Or big 3rd party apps that don't work correctly?

 

Buy it.

Snow Leopard won't fully flex its muscle until Grand Central and other features are fully utilized by other developers, but it is heads and shoulders better than Leopard.

Every 3rd party app that I have also works, including older versions of Unison, Rar, Mac Par, etc.

 

I think the statement was about 3rd party plug ins for Apple 64 bit apps...

I don't know of any software that isn't a few versions old that doesn't work

 

I read somewhere that it boots into 32bit by default and you have to hold down the number keys 6 and 4 to boot into 64bit. Seems kind of dumb..

 

Why is snow leopard only v10.6.0 , and not v11.0.0 , you would never see Microsoft releasing Windows v6.5 , instead of v7.0

 

snow leopard is only a tweaked leopard. it's not a completely new OS. Just like w7 is a smoothed up vista. snow leopard is the same. Both os are improving their previous versions. the only difference is that vista was a lemon and leopard wasn't, so, no need for apple to advertise snow leopard that much and seed it to testers all round the world. imo, i would suggest you upgrade because each upgrade be it small or big, brings better user experience(except from vista).

 

I thought Vista was great , much better than Xp , the only problem i found was the constant nagging of the UAC , but it can be circumvented.

Vista is put down far too much in my opinion, I wish i could afford to run Vista in bootcamp instead of Xp.

 

because macs OS go 10.x since 2000... next major OS will be 10.7,then 10.8 will be an update!

 

I believe that was a conscious decision on Apple's part - something to do with avoiding possible compatibility issues with 3rd party software that wouldn't function properly in a true 64b OS environment?

Vista64/W7 64 works the same way if I recall correctly.

 

I believe Vista 64 always boots into 64bit and uses a 32bit emulator for 32bit applications.

 

There was a paper that was issued about a month ago that explained the difference between 64bit on Windows and OSX SL. A lot of us who are used to the Windows ways of things couldn't wrap our heads around this new 64/32 bit in SL.

I’ll try to dig up the paper because it makes a lot of sense when you read it which I’m sure I’m going to butcher here. But here's the bottom line; OSX' SL Kernel only needs to be booted in 64Bit in order to be able to address over 32GB RAM (Yes, you read that right; 32GB), which all of Apple's consumer products can't even handle.

All apps that are written in 64bit will run in 64bit in SL even when the Kernel is booted into 32bit mode, which is the default boot. And they will still make full use of the memory address space up to 32GB. In SL, I think all of iLife's apps, iCal and Mail have all been re-written in 64bit and they will run faster than they did before.

The reason for booting the Kernel in 32bit is to assure on-the-fly backwards compatibility because there are a ton of third-party apps that are, and will continue to be 32bit only.

But for those who require booting the Kernel into 64bit, SL allows that on compatible hardware and in fact the Server version of SL by default boots in 64bit which makes sense.

For all of us consumers, there really is no reason to even want to boot SL in 64bit but many misinformed bloggers made a lot noise and hype about this, which really seems to be a non-issue to begin with.

 

Actually, that's not entirely true. Vista is listed as 6.0, but despite the "Windows 7" public name it is officially version 6.1.

 

But are you not using a beta , because Win 7 has not been released yet.

 

No, this is the final (RTM) release. I have a Technet subscription and it was released to Technet and MSDN on August 6.

 

just a 32 bit kernel, you do not have to run a 64 bit kernel to run fully 64 bit apps

because they want to keep the 10 number because X is roman numerals for 10, but also fits nicely for Unix... and a lot of people don't see it as Mac OS 10, they see it as Mac OS X, and Apple wants to keep the name they have been building going, and do not want to do a Apple OS X 11 ... as where was 1 through 9? or a Mac OS XI cuz it looks silly... so what exactly should they do? Mac OS X 7 next?

 

It sounds like apple needs to get over itself and move on , come on OS-XI

 

what's in a name?

a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

anyway, snow leopard is mostly an under the hood upgrade and you will notice very little differences on the surface. some applications should run faster and there are a few developer-centric features that are pretty exciting that should trickle down to users eventually. it's not worth a ton of money right now, but the kicker is that it doesn't cost a lot of money. you can pick it up for $25 flat from amazon.com

for $25 it's worth it in my opinion. if it had been more expensive i would say to skip this iteration. but its $25.

 

It`s worth $25 if you have a an older os like tiger, but it`s not to go from leopard to snow leopard in my opinion.

 

Gosh, so many of you guys are just making up something to address the question. "Mac OS X" is a branded name and it does in fact go by version numbers. It's not suppose to be Mac OS 10, 11, 13...., It's Mac OS X version 1,2,3,4,5,6.

 

kind of.. but thats not the offcicial numbering scheme

Snow Leopard isn't Mac OS X 6 ... its Mac OS X 10.6

it would have been smarter if they just named them like Mac OS X 6 and do updates like Mac OS X 6.1 ... instead of the 10.6.1 stuff, but it doesn't matter.

People put too much into version numbers. People assume its somehow nothing major if its just a "point update" but they don't realize there is no official way to do version numbers... its all arbitrary and completely made up