A Look at WWDC 2009 Build of Snow Leopard

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Thx, but where can I select this? I can't find it anywhere.

Select some text in any application that handles text input, such as TextEdit. From the menu choose Edit->Spelling & Grammar -> Show (or whatever it is called in you language). You can also press 'Cmd + :'

A new window will open highlighting your text and giving you alternatives. In the list at the bottom you see your current language. From this list choose 'Multilingual' and Apply and you are set up...

 

[tdream]

Are you serious?? The list is huge, i feel as if you are trying to make me write an essay, the list is that big.
Lets get some things clear, the left side of the finder window is complete genius in it's simplicity and elegance. The right side of the window leaves much to be desired.

Widows has a clear address bar in a very intuitive position, where you would expect it consistent to the browser. Minor issue but still worth mentioning.

Windows has space available on drive in a clear graphical and easy to read written size of drive and free space.

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Windows has selection folder/file attribute assign, simply select file/folders, rightclick properties, click readonly, ok, and you're done. In finder, you have to do each individual get info window separately as they pop up.

Don't get me started with automatic clean up in finder, it's ridiculous. It should be set by default. As well as folders to be neatly aranged first then files, it just makes more sense.

Say you have 30 video files and you want to rename the last one... you can start to rename but you can't finish because finder cancels the rename to refresh the icon list even if its not refreshing or accessing the file you are trying to rename. you have to wait until every file is read and a thumb is generated every time that folder is opened.

This is something that really pisses me off, say you want to move one folder from one location to another drive. You option click and move folder. That's all well and good... but for some unforseen problem... priveleges to some files or network connection problems disconects or times out, the folder move is stopped. You go to move the folder again.... and the first lot that you started moving gets deleted, and data loss happens right there, YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE OPTION TO APPEND OR UPDATE. IT'S DELETE YOUR MUCH NEEDED DATA, OVERWRITE OR NOTHING. Don't say that you should copy and delete, that's an extra step that no end user should ever have to worry about like the french dude said about Microsoft's defrag. Sorry but microsoft at least got this right. and it can be done. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

I have bought everything apple. From apple monitor, mac pro, macbook pro, iphone, ipod, ipod hifi speakers, apple tv, and apple 30 inch cinema display, i love all things apple, i used to be a windows user up until 3 years ago.

At this stage, MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER RUNS CIRCLES AROUND FINDER THEN PISSES ALL OVER IT, LAUGHS AT IT THEN DEFACATES ALL OVER IT. FINDER HAS LESS FUNCTIONALITY THAN WINDOWS 95'S VERSION OF WINDOWS EXPLORER.

I'm sorry but that's how i feel about finder and how i lost a lot of data. Please, friken append or update and don't just delete the frikin folder.

This man speaks the truth. You can't make a wheel into a different shape and expect it to perform like the original. Microsoft got there first and perfected it.

 

[ptsube]

I don't like the difference to counting; hard-drive manufacturers should report the actual, base 2 (number system computers work in!) value for their drives, instead of falsely advertising a value you don't get. A gigabyte is 1024 megabytes, anything else is a lie intended to make you believe you're getting more than you actually are.

It's not going to change the fact that block-sizes will be measured in base 2, and that files must therefore fit within these blocks, so why make this change? It's stupid IMO, and I'll turn it off if there's a way to.

In that case we should all learn to type, and read in binary. That is what the computer uses. Shouldn't we make it easier for the computer?

 

[aardwolf]

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).

Ignore what the other guy said. I'm a beta tester...

Rosetta isn't isntalled by default. The first time you try to run a PPC app, it asks if you want to install Rosetta (which is included on the install DVD).

Although it didn't work in earlier betas, the last two versions of Snow Leopard have in fact worked with Quicken 2007 on the Mac. That was actually a bug report I filed to get it working.

 

[slightly]

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Select your multiple files/folders and click alt-cmd-i. This is a floating info window which will automatically size your selections (and changes to match any new selections).

Matt

 

[ojwk]

Why do I have this feeling that Apple is selling us a huge Beta-testprogram for just 29$?

This whole SnowLeopard thing feels so immature...

Immature is rolling out a buggy GUI eye-candy which continually saps away system resources.

Immature is phasing out OS support for 'legacy' applications simply because they are old.

Immature is having 8 versions of essentially the same software.

Immature is Vista.

I'm glad that Apple has taken the initiative to concentrate on performance and efficiency rather than focusing on what could be described as superficial features. The whole concept of Snow Leopard is anything but immature.

 

[Veri]

The standards bodies defined "Giga" to mean 10^9 a long time ago, and they're pushing the computer industry to stop misusing the term.

I tend to like the rule of thumb, "If it's addressed by a binary address bus, it's a power of 2. Otherwise, power of 10." Of course, there are exceptions, like the common name for the 2880 sector floppy.

The resistance to doing something comes from each camp being so polarised. One considers convention to be de facto correct and sees redefinition as just further confusion: 1 MB of RAM = 1 MiB, and god knows no RAM manufacturer is suddenly going to sell "a 1 GiB stick" just to please standards bodies. The other camp recognises that "1 MB" has no precise definition even given many general contexts, and is concerned with its use for marketing deception.

Personally, I think standards bodies and new age nerds like those who edit computer articles on Wikipedia would do a lot better if they listened to practitioners rather than considering themselves blessed authorities (not just over this, but many things). Every time some dolt changes MB to MiB in Wikipedia I'm reminded of the disconnect between those who do and those who proclaim.

Immature is phasing out OS support for 'legacy' applications simply because they are old.

My XP installations from license purchases in 2001 are chugging along fine. How's your 2001 OS X box supported? 2005?

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Immature is rolling out a buggy GUI eye-candy which continually saps away system resources.

Immature is phasing out OS support for 'legacy' applications simply because they are old.

Cough, cough, tell this to the PowerPC guys in this forum...

Immature is having 8 versions of essentially the same software.

Immature is Vista.

I'm glad that Apple has taken the initiative to concentrate on performance and efficiency rather than focusing on what could be described as superficial features. The whole concept of Snow Leopard is anything but immature.

Ohh, nothing against the concept. Conceptionally also Vista was a nice OS.
It is the implementation of the concept that matters most. And the most stable and mature concept is nothing if the implementation is buggy...

But, please call this debate off. I will wait and see patiently what the Goods at Cupertino will hand down to me...

 

[*LTD*]

Are you serious?? The list is huge, i feel as if you are trying to make me write an essay, the list is that big.
Lets get some things clear, the left side of the finder window is complete genius in it's simplicity and elegance. The right side of the window leaves much to be desired.

Widows has a clear address bar in a very intuitive position, where you would expect it consistent to the browser. Minor issue but still worth mentioning.

Windows has space available on drive in a clear graphical and easy to read written size of drive and free space.

Windows shows the how many files are selected and dinamically updates the size of the selected items in a neat little description down at the bottom. Finder only shows how many items are selected and how much space is available. If you select 6 folders in finder, and you get info wanting to find out if they all will fit on your usb pen drive, 6 info windows clutter your screen and you have to manually calculate and add the size of all the folders. Seriously, that is total BS.

Windows has selection folder/file attribute assign, simply select file/folders, rightclick properties, click readonly, ok, and you're done. In finder, you have to do each individual get info window separately as they pop up.

Don't get me started with automatic clean up in finder, it's ridiculous. It should be set by default. As well as folders to be neatly aranged first then files, it just makes more sense.

Say you have 30 video files and you want to rename the last one... you can start to rename but you can't finish because finder cancels the rename to refresh the icon list even if its not refreshing or accessing the file you are trying to rename. you have to wait until every file is read and a thumb is generated every time that folder is opened.

This is something that really pisses me off, say you want to move one folder from one location to another drive. You option click and move folder. That's all well and good... but for some unforseen problem... priveleges to some files or network connection problems disconects or times out, the folder move is stopped. You go to move the folder again.... and the first lot that you started moving gets deleted, and data loss happens right there, YOU DON'T EVEN GET THE OPTION TO APPEND OR UPDATE. IT'S DELETE YOUR MUCH NEEDED DATA, OVERWRITE OR NOTHING. Don't say that you should copy and delete, that's an extra step that no end user should ever have to worry about like the french dude said about Microsoft's defrag. Sorry but microsoft at least got this right. and it can be done. IT MAKES PERFECT SENSE.

I have bought everything apple. From apple monitor, mac pro, macbook pro, iphone, ipod, ipod hifi speakers, apple tv, and apple 30 inch cinema display, i love all things apple, i used to be a windows user up until 3 years ago.

At this stage, MICROSOFT WINDOWS EXPLORER RUNS CIRCLES AROUND FINDER THEN PISSES ALL OVER IT, LAUGHS AT IT THEN DEFACATES ALL OVER IT. FINDER HAS LESS FUNCTIONALITY THAN WINDOWS 95'S VERSION OF WINDOWS EXPLORER.

I'm sorry but that's how i feel about finder and how i lost a lot of data. Please, friken append or update and don't just delete the frikin folder.

Although I'm inclined to disagree with you in certain areas, I have to admit you do make some good points, and you're not alone. Reading your post reminded me of the musings of Jon Siarcusa, one of the more learned among the technorati. He wrote some wonderful and very insightful essays about the Finder and our modern way of file navigation in general over the years.

OS X is designed around the supreme simplicity of the OS interface, and the rendering of the most powerful features available to the user in a manner as uncomplicated as possible. The Finder is meant to be simple and visually interesting. Apple has tried to turn file navigation into an "experience", not just a mundane task. But by doing so, they lost some things.

It is interesting to note that the original intent, way back during the development of Tiger, was to use Spotlight for virtually everything - no file organization or extended Finder-play necessary. It didn't quite pan out like that. Although I imagine that if I was forced to do it the Spotlight way, then perhaps it might be a more efficient way of doing things. It turned out, however, that we are wedded to the process of file navigation, and when that process isn't quite right, it can cause a lot of frustration.

 

[lamadude]

Select some text in any application that handles text input, such as TextEdit. From the menu choose Edit->Spelling & Grammar -> Show (or whatever it is called in you language). You can also press 'Cmd + :'

A new window will open highlighting your text and giving you alternatives. In the list at the bottom you see your current language. From this list choose 'Multilingual' and Apply and you are set up...

Thanks, that seems to work

 

[intel]

Select your multiple files/folders and click alt-cmd-i. This is a floating info window which will automatically size your selections (and changes to match any new selections).

Matt

thanks for the info, it was very useful. But is was like giving me a crayon when i need a fine pen.

I'm working with the mouse, i should have all the options in my mouse hand. I don't want to find the i key with my mouse hand because my next step will be to bring my hand back on the mouse and find the cursor then find the close button once i have gotten my information and my hand back on the mouse. Apple brags about intuition but in reguards to finder.... they should really employ a click counter to count the amount of clicks required for specific tasks especially in finder. and getting negative points if you ever have to take your hand off the mouse when it doesn't deserve it. when you have to input a whole sentence, only then it is deserving to take your hand of the mouse, otherwise it's just hopeless intuition and lack of effort of apple's behalf on thinking different (hopefully different in the easy way for the user)

APPLE, YOU NEED TO EMPLOY A CLICK COUNTER BEFORE MICROSOFT LEAVES YOU IN THE DUST.

 

[Victor Odin]

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).

You are missing the point.

Apple tells you what you want, and you say "Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted. This is the greatest thing ever."

God, one more question and you are sooo out of the cult.

Frigging disbelievers.

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Thanks, that seems to work

Great! It is a pain with OSX that some of the very nice features are so well hidden that nobody finds them.

And Apple does not even bother to educate people about these features. Or does anybody know a hidden online Help-File for things like Grapher?

 

[SomeSwede]

It is a really bad change. You can't just change a decades old industry standard like that. It will just add to the confusion and the old myth that Macs are incompatible with everything.

 

[tdream]

You are missing the point.

Apple tells you what you want, and you say "Thank you, this is exactly what I wanted. This is the greatest thing ever."

God, one more question and you are sooo out of the cult.

Frigging disbelievers.

 

[MD5Hash]

It seems like no one is actually bringing up the REAL problem - which is that for years we've been letting hard drive manufacturers get away with incremental hard drive robbery.

Sure, Base 10 is easier for counting in, but Base 2 is what it's actually in - this isn't the important thing.

The important thing is that we should be telling hard drive manufacturers to either "tell it like it is" leading to amusing storage amounts like 931GB disks, OR they should use the GiB title on the side of the box instead of GB, OR my actual favorite - they should suck it up, give us the extra 70 GB of space in the 1TB(ish) drive because really, if you've just paid for a 1TB drive, they really shouldn't mind tossing the extra 70 in there to make it come out even.

(as if that will ever happen, but until then I sometimes have mental flashes of red light which involve burning down a platter production facility)

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

thanks for the info, it was very useful. But is was like giving me a crayon when i need a fine pen.

I'm working with the mouse, i should have all the options in my mouse hand. I don't want to find the i key with my mouse hand because my next step will be to bring my hand back on the mouse and find the cursor then find the close button once i have gotten my information and my hand back on the mouse. Apple brags about intuition but in reguards to finder.... they should really employ a click counter to count the amount of clicks required for specific tasks especially in finder. and getting negative points if you ever have to take your hand off the mouse when it doesn't deserve it. when you have to input a whole sentence, only then it is deserving to take your hand of the mouse, otherwise it's just hopeless intuition and lack of effort of apple's behalf on thinking different (hopefully different in the easy way for the user)

APPLE, YOU NEED TO EMPLOY A CLICK COUNTER BEFORE MICROSOFT LEAVES YOU IN THE DUST.

This and the fragmented interface with this multitude of helper palettes all over the place. Why would I want this info in a separate window?
Even more fiddling to get rid of it again after I am finished with the fact...

 

[masse]

I guess now leopard will free up EVEN MORE hard drive space!

 

[Kelmon]

Can't you just drag "British English" to being above "English" in the International System Preferences pane to fix this?

I use "Australian English" and don't notice the spell checker being incorrect for me...

Hmm, I've never noticed that before (well, that British English is an available option if I select the "Edit List" button). It'll be interesting to see if that makes a difference to the spell checker or whether it simply changes the names used in menus (assuming that the developer added a localisation for British English).

 

[autrefois]

Wow! Apple corrects a mistake it made 25 years ago!

Thank you for the history on this. So it looks like Apple is changing its mind on this after being one of the early adopters of the current mixed-base usage.

+1000

In your opinion, would that be exactly 1k, or 24 short of 1k.

The more important news I think is that this "near final" release, isn't.

The whole concept of Snow Leopard is anything but immature.

This is what worries me. I'm not as interested in the concept of Snow Leopard, as I am in how well it works. A lot of things that are good on paper don't work as well in practice.

They say it's "near final", but some features mentioned in the keynote are absent, which I feel causes concern in a "near final" release that is 3 months before it hits the stores. Buggy would be understandable, absent is not at this stage IMO.

People can debate how good or mature Explorer is versus Finder (they each have their advantages and their quirks), but people aren't going to be happy if Snow Leopard's few new promised features are missing or not polished by the time it's released, or if a lot of applications don't work properly because Apple didn't give developers a final-enough copy far enough in advance.

I was all for a maintenance release instead of lots of new bells and whistles, I just hope they get it right.

 

[Detektiv-Pinky]

Hmm, I've never noticed that before (well, that British English is an available option if I select the "Edit List" button). It'll be interesting to see if that makes a difference to the spell checker or whether it simply changes the names used in menus (assuming that the developer added a localisation for British English).

This list typically only give the sort order for entries in the spelling alternatives.

If you want to change the spell-checker dictionary, you have to set it directly in the 'spelling & grammar' dialoge as described by my earlier post.

At least that is how it works in Leopard. And yes, Leopard already supports 'British English' spelling. I can testify to this.

 

[Kelmon]

This man speaks the truth. You can't make a wheel into a different shape and expect it to perform like the original. Microsoft got there first and perfected it.

While I tend to agree with all parts of the original rant against the Finder, I find myself able some of its sins for granting a keyboard shortcut to create a new Folder. Why this simple operation is not available under Windows without going through the "New" menu is quite beyond me. I may be wrong but I thought that there was a shortcut in Windows 3.11...

 

[intel]

This and the fragmented interface with this multitude of helper palettes all over the place. Why would I want this info in a separate window?
Even more fiddling to get rid of it again after I am finished with the fact...

i don't want it in a separate window, i am merely suggesting improvements to finder in the hopes that it will slowly catch up to windows explorer which is light years ahead of finder, please go back and read some of my other posts to get the context of my views. if you make a selection.... it should be like in windows explorer, no extra clicks, NOTHING, just a look see and you have all your information dynamically displayed so that you don't have to click and open other windows then close them once you have gotten your information etc

plus you don't need heaps of floating pallete windows, all you need is rightclick menu with cut copy and paste and rename, and file sizes should jsut be displayed neatly in the finder window. you dont need anything else in file brwsing or folder manipulation. its a complete set and all you need in a file browser, and even these basics.... FINDER DOES NOT HAVE.

 

[Veri]

(assuming that the developer added a localisation for British English).

As someone born and bred in Britain, I want to know what "English" is. If we go by origin, "English" is the English of Great Britain, and if we go by quantity of speakers, "English" is the English of India. But when I select "English" I get strange and mysterious spellings that don't accord with my experience of Eurasia. And something about walking like a jay.

 

[ghostface147]

I downloaded and installed 10a380 and found it to be much faster once you are in the desktop. I did notice that the boot time has increased by about 10 seconds, and shutdown has slowed by about 5 seconds. The install did recover about 12 gigs of space for me, very impressive. Overall, it's a decent upgrade, IMHO.