Filed under: Software, Snow Leopard
What Snow Leopard feature are you anticipating the most?
Now that we have the actual ship date for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (August 28th for those who haven't yet had a cup of coffee to wake them up), it's time to start thinking about what benefits you can gain from the newest member of Apple's cat family.Apple has told us from the start that Snow Leopard is predominantly about streamlining both the size and speed of the operating system. Installing Snow Leopard should take about half the time of performing a Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard install, and it's expected that you'll gain about 7 GB of space back on your hard disk.
Snow Leopard is also bringing some new features to the table, including 64-bit support, Grand Central Dispatch's multicore support, and OpenCL, all of which can provide better performance for applications. There are amazing improvements to the Mac OS X Universal Access features, particularly for the vision-impaired. For those who use their Macs in a predominantly Windows office environment, the full built-in support for Exchange should make life much simpler.
TUAW would like to know what Snow Leopard feature you're anticipating the most, so we've come up with a short list for you to choose from in a poll. We'll use these results to provide you with detailed coverage about those features. If your favorite improvement or feature isn't on the list, leave a comment and tell us what you're excited about.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 8)
John.B said 11:50AM on 8-24-2009
I'm most looking forward to deleting the Chinese Text converter, just like in Leopard. ;-)
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michael said 3:33PM on 8-24-2009
the day that you have to translate something from chinese is also the day you will be completely f****d
Bingo said 3:41PM on 8-24-2009
@Michael
Get racist much?
JMV said 4:17PM on 8-24-2009
@Bingo: I didn't really take it as a racist comment.
He said "the day that you have to translate something from chinese is also the day you will be completely f****d", which would be true if John.B needed to translate something from Chinese and no longer had the converter. He would be "f****d".
Chris Stevens said 10:25PM on 8-24-2009
Funnily enough I am looking forward most to the new ability to write Chinese characters directly onto the touch pad. Each to their own I suppose.
cmsb55 said 11:19PM on 8-24-2009
All I know is that the majority of those things have all been done in the many FREE Windows Service Packs that have come down over the years...
People keep saying $29 is cheap. Sounds like a rip off to me when there are no real feature updates.
jb510 said 11:06AM on 8-25-2009
Funny, I was looking forward the the Chinese text input too, but realized a while ago it was only for unibodies.
Mostly I'm excited to see what future apps do with 64-bit/grand central/open CL, but the ability to move through folders in stacks it's pretty damn nice as well.
mentalsticks said 11:53AM on 8-24-2009
it's not just startup and shutdown that are faster, everything is, and that's great
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dagaz said 4:46AM on 8-26-2009
I can't believe how many people put faster startup and shutdown times as their most anticipated feature - I hardly ever shut my mac down and hence hardly ever go through startup.
betafrog said 11:54AM on 8-24-2009
Looking forward to seeing how developers use OpenCL and GCD...
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dagamer43 said 11:55AM on 8-24-2009
I'm waiting for apps that will make Leopard look like Windows: slow and confused!
I kid, I kid. I love my Windows PC too. :)
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guinnessgadget said 12:05PM on 8-24-2009
I was really excited at first but after other articles and the link below, not so now.
http://www.osnews.com/share/22009/Snow_Leopard_Seeds_Use_32bit_Kernel_Drivers_by_Default
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Quinn Taylor said 12:35PM on 8-24-2009
The reason it defaults to 32-bit kernel is because performance is better. Most end users don't need the 64-bit kernel, but it's important that it's capable of 64-bit for the future and for high-performance scientific apps and the like.
robogobo said 4:50PM on 8-24-2009
Yeah this was confusing me too. 64bit support is key for me, for allowing bigger applications like Photoshop and Aperture to access more memory (if we in fact get a 64bit Aperture in version 3- if in fact we ever get a version 3). I wish everyone would stop talking about kernels if it really doesn't matter, which is the general response. I just want to know if my machine, a 2007 Mac Pro, will be able to take advantage of 64bit apps' addressing more than 4GB of RAM. I almost get a straight answer, and then someone has to throw in the kernel bs again. So I guess I'll have to wait, and wait longer for Aperture 3.
SpinThis! said 5:22PM on 8-24-2009
A lot of confusion going on here. You don't need a 64-bit kernel to run 64-bit applications—the reason why Apple touts 640-bit is all of Apple's currently shipping apps are now 64-bit and will run 64-bit regardless of how you boot. About the only practical reason you need a 64-bit kernel is to use more than 32 gigs of memory in your system, which current Macs can't do anyway.
So whenever Apple and Adobe get around to compiling their pro apps to run 64-bit, SL will be ready for them. And some apps don't really need to address 64 bits of memory by themselves. Examples: After Effects and Apple's logic, for example, have always been able to use more than 4 gigs of ram because they use helper processes that each can use up to 4 gigs of ram. Where you get the speedup is in some math routines, not necessarily by addressing more memory.
http://www.macworld.com/article/142379/2009/08/snow_leopard_64_bit.html
guinnessgadget said 5:29PM on 8-24-2009
You have the same Mac and ram amount that I have. I got mine in Fall of 2007. See, I don't really know now. When all this came out about Snow Leopard 64-bit and OpenCL I was excited thinking how much more my Mac Pro was going to be. Later, I started seeing specs about the OpenCL. I had bought a compatible card already, but it only works if it is pci-x 2.0. I figured oh well I have an 8-core machine to work for Grand Central Dispatch. I guess it still will take advantage of that. I am confused as the next I guess about what is need or will work. I guess if you wanted it all the deal is you got to buy a new Mac.
Luke Allen said 12:10PM on 8-24-2009
What about the improved eject feature -.-. Man that's annoying hitting the eject button over and over till it actually spits the disc out.
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Jordan said 12:35PM on 8-24-2009
I agree. Why can't they just put a damn button on the drive, makes no sense.
Stuart Carnie said 12:51PM on 8-24-2009
Just press Option+Eject to eject immidiately
Joel said 12:08PM on 8-24-2009
actually the thing I'm looking most forward to is the change of the default gamma from 1.8 to 2.2. its going to make things so much easier.
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