A Look at WWDC 2009 Build of Snow Leopard

[MacRumors]

World of Apple recently posted a look at the build of Snow Leopard (10A380) provided to developers at WWDC 2009. Despite being described as "near final", the build did not contain all the features that were demonstrated in the WWDC keynote such as the Dock Exposé. As a result, most of the changes found were rather minor.

Some of the changes detailed include:

- Snow Leopard now counts data sizes in base 10. In the example shown a 320GB hard drive shows as 320GB as opposed to 297GB
- Your timezone can be determined automatically
- System-wide spelling correction

The final version of Snow Leopard will be released in September 2009.

Article Link: A Look at WWDC 2009 Build of Snow Leopard

 

[messedkid]

I'm so looking forward to this release!!

Can't wait to dual boot SL and W7 on my soon to come 13" MBP.

 

[emt1]

The base 10 sizes thing will be a little weird at first. I think I'll grow to like it.

 

[yg17]

I hope there's a way to change it to base 2, that's how it's supposed to be

 

[X5-452]

Doesn't counting in base 10 go against what's actually there? Wouldn't that artificially inflate storage size?

 

[Schtumple]

Ahhhh can't wait for Snow Leopard, it's definitely going to be good release.

X5-452: It doesn't inflate it, it just counts it differently, so when you buy a 250GB hard drive from PC World, you are actually going to get 250GB... instead of it showing up at 225 or whatever it would say.

It's a step in the simpler direction.

 

[intel]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

 

[ju5tin81]

Does that mean the upgrade from Leopard really only frees up 5.8 GBs of space rather than 6?

 

[Roller]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

 

[Ivan P]

The base 10 thing is because Apple got sick of all the "why have I lost HD space??!!!" topics on MR

 

[miket019]

snow leopard, can't wait

 

[Oirectine]

Why?

Does the change to base 10 give any sort of benefit? I don't understand why they changed that. I mean I know the hard drive manufacturers do it, but their reason is to make their hard drives look as big as possible.

 

[backdraft]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

What don't you like about the Finder versus Windows Explorer?

 

[xraydoc]

I hope this is optional! But, knowing Apple, it will not be.

What kind of confusion will a non-geek experience when a Windows user sends a Mac user a 300MB file that suddenly balloons in size? I can think of a thousand ways this will do nothing but confuse people - especially those that live in a cross platform world.

Unless Apple can get Redmond to do the same thing, this will further add to the confusion between Mac and Windows users.

 

[Machinima]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

Developers aren't allowed to say too much, however the current build of Snow Leopard doesn't even support many current Leopard apps, such as Little Snitch, and basically no PPC apps, however PPC support is an install option, which means Apple is either actively blocking older apps from working, or they aren't going to work in the final release, basically someones going to have to remake them.

 

[AET10]

- Your timezone can be determined automatically

Oh goodie! I've been waiting YEARS for this feature!

 

[syklee26]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

 

[Tygernoot]

I agree, using base 10 doesn't make any sense at all. That HD manufacturers use base 10 instead of base 2 is bad enough already.

The only reason I can see Apple doing this, is to make it look like your (e.g.) 8GB iPhone actually has 8GB of space. Whenever you download a file it will look bigger on your HD than indicated because they multiply the size.

And if you want to write something on a 700MB CD, all of a sudden your 680MB file won't fit anymore or will apple also enlarge the CD size?

I don't know everything, so maybe I'm missing the point but I really don't agree with this and I'd like someone to explain me a single benefit (except for Apple making their HDs look bigger than they really are).

 

[MartiNZ]

my build doesnt have dock expose, need it bad. micosoft has long had a solution for this.
the interface on finder really really sucks compared to what microsoft offers, and they sai that they wont change any of it, that is just total and utter BS, they should get their act together.

I guess people will use doxposé for different things - the example they showed in the keynote of dragging a file for attachment onto Mail in the dock and having its windows appear ... Windows has nothing near as useful as that in my experience. Dragging anything from explorer to anywhere is a pain, and the taskbar never ceases to fail at helping - the interface for that with Outlook just locks out the rest of the app, and dragging files to open in Excel or similar usually fails. I keep Notepad in the quick launch bar to open all sorts of files and even then just as often i'll end up with a shortcut to the document in the quick launch bar ... because I was really likely to want that.

 

[liv4Mac]

I remembered the early OS the thumb of rule was that you should always leave 10% of your your hard drive space Free. OSX automatically did that for you. Does that mean we have to use that thumb of rule?

 

[Hot Snowboarder]

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

How is it like that at all?
lol

 

[Schtumple]

I'm looking forward it to SL as well. But my major concern is whether it'll have Rosetta support. I've read differing comments on this, ranging from "no" to "it'll be an optional install." There are a few PPC apps, especially Quicken, that I still rely on (thanks, Intuit).

It's optional on install. Don't panic.

 

[ipedro]

that's like saying Camry is better than Ferrari since Camry offers automatic transmission for free and Ferrari doesn't.

Why would you want automatic transmission on a Ferrari?

 

[Machinima]

I remembered the early OS the thumb of rule was that you should always leave 10% of your your hard drive space Free. OSX automatically did that for you. Does that mean we have to use that thumb of rule?

That was for swap file space because computers a few decades ago didn't have enough RAM, however it hasn't been necessary on Windows or Mac for a long long time, however certain distributions of Linux, including Ubuntu still need it.

 

[Kelmon]

Real English?

I don't suppose there is support for additional languages in Snow Leopard, as far as the system-wide dictionary is concerned, is there? I'm kinda fed up with Leopard (and previous releases) insisting that I spell using American English rather than British English.