A single OS controlled thread pool can be much more powerful than multiple application controlled thread pools in a concurrent environment, since the OS has more knowledge about the current state of the overall system.
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Anyone else think Snow Leopard... sucks?
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A single OS controlled thread pool can be much more powerful than multiple application controlled thread pools in a concurrent environment, since the OS has more knowledge about the current state of the overall system.
Vista/Server 2008 has a native Thread Pool API.
In the .Net Framework you have it since Version 1.1.
Apple invented a Buzzword for this and so many Fanboys are thinking, that this is something really new...
If Apple had simply used something existing and slapped a new word on it for marketing, then I would agree. However, Apple has developed a library to enable developers to take better advantage of multi-core hardware. I don't see how this is simply Apple inventing a buzzword -- someone actually had to do the work to create the library, no? Must Apple use MS's (mostly) lame marketing terms for its own products to make you feel happy?
Finder's better. Little welcome improvements all over it.
Safari's faster, even while loading all the pretty ads that I'll have to put up with for a while.
Stacks are much more practical, even on a slower, older machine that ran stacks in Leopard pretty mediocrely.
Battery life is better or is being measured better.
There are other improvements that I'm running into all the time. The only negatives are the lack of Prefs for Quicktime, and that iTunes isn't different at all, but I'm hoping iTunes 9 fixes that.
Edit: The slowest thing by far on my Mac right now is MacRumors.
Is this site running on a Lisa?
Safari's faster, even while loading all the pretty ads that I'll have to put up with for a while.
Stacks are much more practical, even on a slower, older machine that ran stacks in Leopard pretty mediocrely.
Battery life is better or is being measured better.
There are other improvements that I'm running into all the time. The only negatives are the lack of Prefs for Quicktime, and that iTunes isn't different at all, but I'm hoping iTunes 9 fixes that.
Edit: The slowest thing by far on my Mac right now is MacRumors.
Is this site running on a Lisa?What are you talking about? Microsoft doesn't use a marketing term for the thread pool api in vista.
Apple seems to reinvent the wheel, is using a buzzword for it and many of the fanboys without any technical background are thinking that this is that big thing and also a big advantage over windows. ;D
Implementation pointers in Objective-C are bulky so the new library seems to be something like sugar for many developers.
If it's not stable yet, it'll likely be bug-ridden on release.
So let's hope it is stable now
Blocks are really a new and easier to use abstraction than a classic thread pool facility where you have to design all synchronization by hand. And this ease of use does not come at the cost of performance. A block can be scheduled for execution with just 15 CPU instructions, which is blazingly fast.
Someone could have crept into my room and secretly installed Snow Leopard on my MBP and I wouldn't have had a clue, so lame are the 'refinements'.
Beyond a couple of UI changes related to the dock, this thing is an embarrassment.
The fanboys on here are swallowing Apple's marketing guff with alarming alacrity. They're trying to justify this waste of space by just trotting out the buzzwords, with no correlation to real world usage.
Re-writing Finder in 64-bit is a means to an end, not an end of itself. If it is almost exactly the same as it was before (which it seems to be) then the fact it was rewritten is neither here nor there. It's like doing a second draft of a story with every word the same but just using a better pen with which to write it.
And can we please stop with the idiotic assumption that '64-bit must be loads better than 32-bit because 64 is double what 32 is'. This shows a complete ignorance of the subject. With almost every app you use, the difference between 32 and 64-bit would either be absolutely nothing or almost nothing.
All the people replying with "but Snow Leopard has OpenCL and Grand Central": so what? Again, what is the practical benefit to me, the end user, the paying customer? I was told these things would make Snow Leopard faster but I have noted zero discernible improvement in system speed since installing. Boot times are the same, app launch times are the same. If these technologies don't make a practical difference, then what's the point. It doesn't matter a jot what tech jargon my system is able to boast if I can't actually notice the difference.
You might have thought that a $29 OS couldn't be bad value for money. Well, Think Different, because Apple have managed it.
Beyond a couple of UI changes related to the dock, this thing is an embarrassment.
The fanboys on here are swallowing Apple's marketing guff with alarming alacrity. They're trying to justify this waste of space by just trotting out the buzzwords, with no correlation to real world usage.
Re-writing Finder in 64-bit is a means to an end, not an end of itself. If it is almost exactly the same as it was before (which it seems to be) then the fact it was rewritten is neither here nor there. It's like doing a second draft of a story with every word the same but just using a better pen with which to write it.
And can we please stop with the idiotic assumption that '64-bit must be loads better than 32-bit because 64 is double what 32 is'. This shows a complete ignorance of the subject. With almost every app you use, the difference between 32 and 64-bit would either be absolutely nothing or almost nothing.
All the people replying with "but Snow Leopard has OpenCL and Grand Central": so what? Again, what is the practical benefit to me, the end user, the paying customer? I was told these things would make Snow Leopard faster but I have noted zero discernible improvement in system speed since installing. Boot times are the same, app launch times are the same. If these technologies don't make a practical difference, then what's the point. It doesn't matter a jot what tech jargon my system is able to boast if I can't actually notice the difference.
You might have thought that a $29 OS couldn't be bad value for money. Well, Think Different, because Apple have managed it.
On a early 2008 MBP my Finder is faster by a good margin (not because of 64 bit but probably more parallelism), also Mail and 64-bit Safari. The JavaScript engine is one of the few components that could obviously really benefit from the doubled word length, though.
That alone is worth the $29 to me. That might not be the case for everybody. Just stick with Leopard if it is not to you. SL is really not such a big deal, but $29 isn't either.
That alone is worth the $29 to me. That might not be the case for everybody. Just stick with Leopard if it is not to you. SL is really not such a big deal, but $29 isn't either.
You don't see a lot of speed improvements with the startup of other applications because for things like OpenCL and Grand Central, the programmers of those applications must design their software to work with these new technologies. Without that, your still suck on the slow running software. This is not Apple's or SL's fault. Simple the fact that no one has had time to incorporate these new technologies into their software as of yet.
There is a big difference between 32bit and 64bit. You can process twice as much data with a full 64bit OS/Hardware than you can with 32bit. You will see most of the improvements when you are shuffling a lot of data between RAM and the CPU. You will also see a lot more improvement in areas where heavy numerical calculations take place.
The fact that these programs were re-written is very important. If the core programs of OS X were not re-written in 64bit code, they would never be able to take advantages of the 64bit hardware and kernel.
As people have been saying, SL is not a means to an end, it is a means to bring the software up to date with the hardware Mac's are shipping with. It is a means to lay the groundwork for a LOT of improvements down the road in both computing power from the OS and potential software performance. These technologies will help ensure that the programmers can take full advantage of the hardware given to them.
Again, SL is not even released yet. People say 10A432 is the GM, but honestly, no one really knows this for sure. Even if it is the GM, as people have mentioned, it could be a debug build and the GM may not have extra code to slow things down.
Also, are you even sure you have the hardware to take full advantage of the SL advances in technology?
You should really have all your facts in line before cutting down a system. Honestly, no one will have all the facts in line until SL is actually released, at that point, feel free to purchase it and complain all you want about how ****** or great it is.
I personally have not used SL, but it has very promising features. I will not make a stand for or against SL until it is released. The rest of us (including developers with legit copies of the seed releases) should do the same.
That's a tad harsh.
64-bit IS faster than 32-bit (most of the time), primarily because of when code is 64-bit, there are access to additional registers and other processor features, as a MR member pointed out to me in the past.
Grand Central and OpenCL will make a difference to you in the future. When other technologies, like Java, .NET, and dual core processors came out, they didn't make a difference at the time... but having a multicore processor is almost a requirement now (for me, anyways
)App load times are faster. Much faster. iTunes/Safari took forever to load in Leopard, they are faster in SL. But yes, other than that, nothing is really faster, which was a big disappointment for me.
I guess "sucks" was a little harsh... but there are a ridiculous amount of bugs with this build... and it's supposedly GM? I've already had the window server crash on me twice, causing the Mac to reload all of the windows and close all open applications. (and I haven't even thought about trying to boot the 64-bit kernel). I can't do video chats in iChat; it just crashes before I get a chance to do anything. A lot of my extensions, like CoolBook, are broken and do not work (although I kind of expected that). IMAP support for mail is terrible... I got so frustrated with it that I've been using google's client online, and dropping Mail.app altogether. The boot times are a lot slower than what I was experiencing with Leopard. Expose lags horrendously (less than 5fps), when I try to switch windows... so much so that it's hard to control the computer. Stacks don't pop up right away and display contents like they did in Leopard, either. Tools like diskutil aren't as reliable as they were before... when I tried to resize my drive, it corrupted it (but was able to fix it later), and was much more finicky about resizing volumes. I was really hoping my graphics drivers (GMA X3100) were improved, because of how horrendous they were in Leopard, but it appears that they've gotten... even worse; and with the NVIDIA integrated chips now in production, I don't see the drivers getting any better.
There's a few more bugs and quirks I found in SL, but I guess it has potential. I know for sure that I won't be buying as soon as it releases, as I had originally intended... I'll just stick with Leopard.
EDIT: Magnus, the developer of CoolBook, has already released a version of CoolBook that works with SL!
That's just plain wrong, because most data doesn't come in 64 bit word lengths. Neither executable code benefits (it just bloats) nor audio data (at max 32 bit) nor video (24-32 bits). You can only benefit if your working set's word length is higher than that (for additional precision) like in Photoshop or video processing. Putting it as you can "process twice as much data" just reveals that you don't have a clue. You can just process greater singualar numbers at roughly the same speed, but not twice as many numbers! That difference is fundamental, else 64 bit would be great.
I would bet that at most 10% of all desktop applications can benefit (speedwise) from 64 bit at all. And since the OS doesn't do a lot of number crunching itself (mostly scheduling and resource allocation), the only benefit here is the larger address space, but not speed. So the question wether you are running a 32 bit or 64 bit kernel is mostly irrelevant for machines with <= 4GB RAM.
I do a lot of internet browsing and was initially very disappointed with the slow/lagginess of Safari in Leopard. There was a significant difference when browsing in Windows on the same iMac, IE & Safari was much more swift.
Now with SL, Safari has become a far better experience. This alone is worth the $29.00. Did I mentioned being able to browse/drill down through the "Application/Documents/Downloads" without having to open a window is a HUGE plus!?
Now with SL, Safari has become a far better experience. This alone is worth the $29.00. Did I mentioned being able to browse/drill down through the "Application/Documents/Downloads" without having to open a window is a HUGE plus!?
Faster Install
I just installed 10A432, took about 20 minutes total to upgrade from previous release. Almost all of the apps are written 64bit for intel. The OS seems very stable, and runs maybe a little quicker. Bootup and Shutdown are also quicker. Not sure what all the griping is about, it is a more refined leopard install with updates to reflect the newer machines.
Peace,
Noushy
(Mac Pro 2.93 8 core, 12GB, GTX 285)
I just installed 10A432, took about 20 minutes total to upgrade from previous release. Almost all of the apps are written 64bit for intel. The OS seems very stable, and runs maybe a little quicker. Bootup and Shutdown are also quicker. Not sure what all the griping is about, it is a more refined leopard install with updates to reflect the newer machines.
Peace,
Noushy
(Mac Pro 2.93 8 core, 12GB, GTX 285)
I have no problem with this. My only question would be why Apple couldn't wait until they could include BOTH internal refinements AND updates to the UI/speed/software, etc. that the end user would actually notice and make them feel as if they've gotten their hands on something new? I understand the reasoning behind this release, but I expect a lot of people to be disappointed with the end result, even if they're paying $100 less than they would for a normal OS X release.
I think it's a marketing strategy.
WinXP was released roughly the same time as OS X...
Win7 is the refined windows, SL is the refined Leopard...
There sure is a lot of opinions being published from those who have Snow Leopard. I take it that Apple didn't require them to sign an NDA?
Anyone having any problems with their exchange accounts? Mine sets up fine on all fronts, but when I try to transfer an email from one folder to another, I get an error message which reads: The message "" could not be moved to the mailbox "" An error occurred while moving message to mailbox ""
Snow leopard is a dud. Leopard never got bogged down for me but Snow Leopard tends to get bogged down by things a lot. It becomes extremely slow if the HDD is copying a big file or doing something intensive. And Quicktime X freakin sucks. Where the hell are the preferences so I can tell it to play automatically???
Dont compare Windows 7 to Snow Leopard. W7 is a huge improvement over Vista compared to Snow Leopard over Leopard.
If you want an accurate comparison then compare it with Windows 98 SE.
Of course, its only $30 for a reason. At least you get what you pay for. The downside is that it will probably be another 2 years before theres a real OS upgrade since Apple twiddled their thumbs with Snow Leopard.
Dont compare Windows 7 to Snow Leopard. W7 is a huge improvement over Vista compared to Snow Leopard over Leopard.
If you want an accurate comparison then compare it with Windows 98 SE.
Of course, its only $30 for a reason. At least you get what you pay for. The downside is that it will probably be another 2 years before theres a real OS upgrade since Apple twiddled their thumbs with Snow Leopard.
I caution you in saying statements like that, when you also say statements like:
GCD and OpenCL are most certainly in the seeds. You don't know what you're talking about.
Lots of miss-information in this thread!!
Some Facts:
You will not spot many visual improvements in SL, i.e. no major UI changes of the than the black dock menus and QuickTime interface, and a few other things.
90% of the changes are behind the scenes, I'm pretty sure that someone at apple mentioned that 90% of the OS X code had been looked at and tweaked for SL.
SL is faster than Leopard, or at least it should be. If not then maybe re-install or wait for 10.6.1!
Some opinion, and guesses:
Apple needed to sit down and go back through the OS code and tweak and clean it up, after 10 years it must be quite messy!
They must have realised that doing this would take quite a while, and so they probably had two options:
1. Make everyone wait 3+ yrs or so for 10.6 with the SL refinements and a load of new UI features
or 2. Release SL after 18 months so that we get a newer/faster/safer OS, and then in another 18months have a release with all the nice new UI features people like!
Imagine the complaints had they made us wait 3or more yrs!
I'm very happy with SL. At first I must admit I was a bit deflated that I started using it and well, it was just like Leopard, but thats exactly what its supposed to be. Speed wise i'm noticing improvements everywhere.
As for third party applications - guess we will need to wait a few months for them to take advantage of new SL technologies
Some Facts:
You will not spot many visual improvements in SL, i.e. no major UI changes of the than the black dock menus and QuickTime interface, and a few other things.
90% of the changes are behind the scenes, I'm pretty sure that someone at apple mentioned that 90% of the OS X code had been looked at and tweaked for SL.
SL is faster than Leopard, or at least it should be. If not then maybe re-install or wait for 10.6.1!
Some opinion, and guesses:
Apple needed to sit down and go back through the OS code and tweak and clean it up, after 10 years it must be quite messy!
They must have realised that doing this would take quite a while, and so they probably had two options:
1. Make everyone wait 3+ yrs or so for 10.6 with the SL refinements and a load of new UI features
or 2. Release SL after 18 months so that we get a newer/faster/safer OS, and then in another 18months have a release with all the nice new UI features people like!
Imagine the complaints had they made us wait 3or more yrs!
I'm very happy with SL. At first I must admit I was a bit deflated that I started using it and well, it was just like Leopard, but thats exactly what its supposed to be. Speed wise i'm noticing improvements everywhere.
As for third party applications - guess we will need to wait a few months for them to take advantage of new SL technologies
My main issues with Snow Leopard is Apple's marketing and its so-called feature list.
Apple touts 64-bit, OpenCL, QuickTime hardware decoding, Grand Central Dispatch and Exchange Support as Snow Leopard's main technological features.
However, OpenCL and QuickTime hardware decoding are only supported on a limited number of graphic cards. Even some recent (1 year or less) Macs, won't get the benefit of either. As of now, QuickTime hardware decoding only supports one graphics card, the 9400M.
64-bit has reached a new height in pure hype. Apple started hyping 64-bit back in the 10.3 Panther days, then they followed up by hyping it again in 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard. It's been a long time coming, and it's been listed as a feature on the last three versions of Mac OS X. However, in Snow Leopard, despite all the claims that it's now truly 64-bit, Apple has so far refused to write 64-bit drivers for all 64-bit capable Macs (Santa Rosa on). That's just unacceptable when the hardware supports it. Per their last seed note, only Xserves will ship with the 64-bit kernel enabled.
Additionally, was it even necessary to rewrite applications like Stickies, iCal, Font Book, etc in 64-bit? Why bother? Yet Apple didn't touch DVD Player, Front Row or even iTunes. (Yes, I'm aware iTunes is on a different development cycle and is now developed separately from the O/S. However, so is Safari. Yet it has a 64-bit counterpart.)
On that note, what the hell is even going on with Front Row? Is development dead in favor of the Apple TV or what?
Grand Central Dispatch is a welcome addition for the future. However, it's essentially a task scheduler with a fancy marketing name. Since the bulk of Apple's computers ship with Core 2 Duo processors, we don't know how big of advantage GCD will be with just two cores. Not to mention, it's another feature we have to wait for software developers to adopt.
Exchange support, while important to a select group, is irrelevant to most OS X users.
So if you own an Intel Mac that's a few years old like me (MacBook Core 2 Duo, Early 2007), Snow Leopard essentially boils down to this:
• Faster Finder in general (although in the beta builds, I can't tell a difference)
• Faster PDF and JPEG icon refreshes
• Dock Expose
• Folders in Stacks
• Quicker Time Machine backups
• Faster wake up, shut down and join a wireless network
• Faster installation
• Smaller disk space installation
• Screen Recording, HTTP Streaming and Trimming features in QuickTime X, QuickTime 7 Pro as free download
• Higher resolution iChat
• More convenient Services menu
• Smart PDF text selection
• Automatic printer updates
• Automatic time zone setup
• More reliable disk eject
• Wake-from-Sleep-on-LAN if using AirPort/Time Capsule
• Safari 4's plug-in crash detector
And some other minor refinements listed here:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-refinements.html
It's not the price of Snow Leopard that's troubling. $29 is an excellent price. However, it's the fact that we've waited two years for this? It's blatantly obvious that Mac OS X development has took a backseat to iPhone development over the last few years. And this sort of half-hearted upgrade to Mac OS X is what we're getting as a result.
Apple touts 64-bit, OpenCL, QuickTime hardware decoding, Grand Central Dispatch and Exchange Support as Snow Leopard's main technological features.
However, OpenCL and QuickTime hardware decoding are only supported on a limited number of graphic cards. Even some recent (1 year or less) Macs, won't get the benefit of either. As of now, QuickTime hardware decoding only supports one graphics card, the 9400M.
64-bit has reached a new height in pure hype. Apple started hyping 64-bit back in the 10.3 Panther days, then they followed up by hyping it again in 10.4 Tiger and 10.5 Leopard. It's been a long time coming, and it's been listed as a feature on the last three versions of Mac OS X. However, in Snow Leopard, despite all the claims that it's now truly 64-bit, Apple has so far refused to write 64-bit drivers for all 64-bit capable Macs (Santa Rosa on). That's just unacceptable when the hardware supports it. Per their last seed note, only Xserves will ship with the 64-bit kernel enabled.
Additionally, was it even necessary to rewrite applications like Stickies, iCal, Font Book, etc in 64-bit? Why bother? Yet Apple didn't touch DVD Player, Front Row or even iTunes. (Yes, I'm aware iTunes is on a different development cycle and is now developed separately from the O/S. However, so is Safari. Yet it has a 64-bit counterpart.)
On that note, what the hell is even going on with Front Row? Is development dead in favor of the Apple TV or what?
Grand Central Dispatch is a welcome addition for the future. However, it's essentially a task scheduler with a fancy marketing name. Since the bulk of Apple's computers ship with Core 2 Duo processors, we don't know how big of advantage GCD will be with just two cores. Not to mention, it's another feature we have to wait for software developers to adopt.
Exchange support, while important to a select group, is irrelevant to most OS X users.
So if you own an Intel Mac that's a few years old like me (MacBook Core 2 Duo, Early 2007), Snow Leopard essentially boils down to this:
• Faster Finder in general (although in the beta builds, I can't tell a difference)
• Faster PDF and JPEG icon refreshes
• Dock Expose
• Folders in Stacks
• Quicker Time Machine backups
• Faster wake up, shut down and join a wireless network
• Faster installation
• Smaller disk space installation
• Screen Recording, HTTP Streaming and Trimming features in QuickTime X, QuickTime 7 Pro as free download
• Higher resolution iChat
• More convenient Services menu
• Smart PDF text selection
• Automatic printer updates
• Automatic time zone setup
• More reliable disk eject
• Wake-from-Sleep-on-LAN if using AirPort/Time Capsule
• Safari 4's plug-in crash detector
And some other minor refinements listed here:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-refinements.html
It's not the price of Snow Leopard that's troubling. $29 is an excellent price. However, it's the fact that we've waited two years for this? It's blatantly obvious that Mac OS X development has took a backseat to iPhone development over the last few years. And this sort of half-hearted upgrade to Mac OS X is what we're getting as a result.
I agree completely. In contrast to their hype/marketing they really haven't delivered very much. The lacking (complete) support for only recently sold, premium priced gear is also a shame. A premium segment company should not treat its customers like that (even if you wish that they replace their gear every year). They control their whole hardware ecosystem. Driver development and testing should be kindergarten in comparison to Windows 7, which supports ten thousands of exotic hardware combinations without problems.