Mac OS X Snow Leopard Build 10A432 Designated 'Golden Master'

[jaw04005]

Personally, I haven't been impressed with build 10A421a. I still have problems with sluggishness and application instability with my MacBook Core 2 Duo (Early 2007). Hopefully, most of those quirks have been fixed by 10A432.

To be honest, if it wasn't for radically different QuickTime X -- I'm not sure I could tell the difference between Snow Leopard and Leopard. The new QuickTime X is a joke compared to the capabilities of the old QuickTime Pro.

If you're expecting some massive performance increase for your Core 2 Duo Mac, you're going to be disappointed. This reminds me very much of 10.1.

Back on QuickTime, I fail to understand how the future of QuickTime is going to work. Are future versions of iTunes going to bundle the QuickTime APIs within instead of requiring a specific version of QuickTime?

Otherwise it would appear Apple would have to port QuickTime X to both Windows and Leopard in order to maintain one standard platform (FairPlay DRM, container enhancements, future codec support, etc).

 

[TheSpaz]

If you're running Leopard: Here's an idiotic usability bug that I filed on 10.5.1. It was quickly flagged as a duplicate. 7 Updates later, nothing has changed...

Try opening a multi-page PDF file and then press Shift-Command-F (for a full-screen slideshow). Now click on the arrow pointing to the right and see if you advance to the next page .

Hint: Now press play, wait till it automatically advances to the next page and then go back. Suddenly the rightward-arrow works.


Gives you real confidence in Apple's ability to catch up with reported bugs. Admittedly this one only limits usability and probably never manages to get high up in Apple's bug priority queue, but still, it makes you wonder...

Works fine for me in 10.5.8. What version are you running?

 

[macintoshtoffy]

GMA 950 has a 64Bit driver.

Wow, that is weird; so Apple has a 64bit driver for 950 with Snow Leopard but no X3100? The last time I had a look, there are three components to a driver, one of them was 64bit, and the other 2 were 32bit. It seems strange they would make one part 64bit and leave the rest 32bit.

 

[tkermit]

Works fine for me in 10.5.8. What version are you running?

10.5.8

 

[jmlfl]

Anybody have a list of versions and bits. That is what is the version numbers of the open source packages supplied and are they built as 32 bit or 64 bit binaries. For example:

Java
Python
Ruby
Curl
Bash
and the list goes on.

Dave

Java SE 6 64 bit and 32 bit (Java Applets and Java Applications). The beauty of Java applications under SL is that many of the current ones I tried, not specifically designed for SL, launch as 64 bit: the modelers Art Of Illusion and JPatch, the RenderMan renderer JrMan, the RenderMan editor Cutter, 3D-XplorMath-J.
LightZone (Java photo and raw editor) still launches as a 32 bit app though. Too bad. I can't wait to see it run in 64 bit mode.

The Unix binaries usually have a triple architecture: Universal 32 bit + Intel 64 bit (python, ruby and so forth).

 

[macintoshtoffy]

Ask Intel about their POS IGP?...

What has Intel got to do with it - Apple maintains the driver.

Oh, and btw, enjoy your Nvidia product that dies every 6months.

I'd sooner have a 'slow POS IGP from Intel' than having a product that dies every 6months from nvidia.

 

[MorphingDragon]

What has Intel got to do with it - Apple maintains the driver.

Oh, and btw, enjoy your Nvidia product that dies every 6months.

I'd sooner have a 'slow POS IGP from Intel' than having a product that dies every 6months from nvidia.

Change to AMD and ATi!!!

 

[Hexley]

Looking at the Buyer's Guide it appears the iMac is the most likely Mac to get updated. It was updated 161 days ago and the average upgrade cycle is 220 days. So within 59 days we could see a new iMac with Snow Leopard. I Hope it sports a Blu Ray drive.

 

[macintoshtoffy]

Change to AMD and ATi!!!

I agree - Intel for low end, low powered laptops like the MacBook where high performance isn't a priority, and ATI for the iMac's, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro.

I've got an iMac 20inch with an ATI graphics card - I deliberately avoided the 24 inch because of it having Nvidia graphics.

 

[teknishn]

Personally, I haven't been impressed with build 10A421a. I still have problems with sluggishness and application instability with my MacBook Core 2 Duo (Early 2007). Hopefully, most of those quirks have been fixed by 10A432.

To be honest, if it wasn't for radically different QuickTime X -- I'm not sure I could tell the difference between Snow Leopard and Leopard. The new QuickTime X is a joke compared to the capabilities of the old QuickTime Pro.

If you're expecting some massive performance increase for your Core 2 Duo Mac, you're going to be disappointed. This reminds me very much of 10.1.

Back on QuickTime, I fail to understand how the future of QuickTime is going to work. Are future versions of iTunes going to bundle the QuickTime APIs within instead of requiring a specific version of QuickTime?

Otherwise it would appear Apple would have to port QuickTime X to both Windows and Leopard in order to maintain one standard platform (FairPlay DRM, container enhancements, future codec support, etc).

Not even sure where to begin here, but my opinion is 180 degrees in the other direction. The speed is off the hook for me. As a said in another post, simply doing a dvd5 conversion to 1gb h.264 w/ac3 passthrough conversion took nearly 2hrs with leopard and win7 rtm. With SL running full 64bit I did the same conversion in 1hr 1min..... literally cutting the time in half. The performance gains are simply astonishing. If you think you can't see the difference try going back to a Leopard rig (which I do every day for work). My Leopard rig at work has much faster proc than my MBP running Snow Leopard and it still feels slower in almost every respect.

Anyway, not even going to go into all the fine details, but my take on SL is that it absolutely rocks the house.

 

[MorphingDragon]

I agree - Intel for low end, low powered laptops like the MacBook where high performance isn't a priority, and ATI for the iMac's, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro.

I've got an iMac 20inch with an ATI graphics card - I deliberately avoided the 24 inch because of it having Nvidia graphics.

Or just ATi IGPs...

nVidia drivers honestly suck. On Windows and Mac OSX.

 

[davegregoire]

Not even sure where to begin here, but my opinion is 180 degrees in the other direction. The speed is off the hook for me. As a said in another post, simply doing a dvd5 conversion to 1gb h.264 w/ac3 passthrough conversion took nearly 2hrs with leopard and win7 rtm. With SL running full 64bit I did the same conversion in 1hr 1min..... literally cutting the time in half. The performance gains are simply astonishing. If you think you can't see the difference try going back to a Leopard rig (which I do every day for work). My Leopard rig at work has much faster proc than my MBP running Snow Leopard and it still feels slower in almost every respect.

Anyway, not even going to go into all the fine details, but my take on SL is that it absolutely rocks the house.

I agree with you 100%. I have owned many apple laptops in the tiger/leopard era and no single laptop spec bump has ever yielded the performance gains and general speed of the OS like snow leopard has been on my most recent uni macbook pro.

 

[avidmacuser]

I haven't seen any evidence that they have or will support it. Has anyone seen a build that does? I hope I'm wrong. There will be a few techie whiners like me who will complain that their 2007 Macbook core2duo (only TWO YEARS old, Apple!) won't be supported to run a 64-bit OS that's "64 bit to the kernel".

If you think thats bad, I was really hoping that my less than 1 year old 24" iMac would be able to make use of OpenCL with Radeon HD 2600 Pro, so far I have only been informed that it would not be. Wondering if this is due to hardware incompatibility?!? Anyone know if the Radeon HD 2600 Pro is supported for OpenCL in other OS's? If so, and it is simply not supported by apple code, then I have a pretty good idea as to the only reason that its left out...poor ethics in marketing! Would not give me a warm fuzzy feeling inside to know that a 10 month old machine is not 'fully' supported in an OS I'd pay some more dollars for.

Perhaps someone with the GM build could positively surprise me.

 

[avidmacuser]

I agree - Intel for low end, low powered laptops like the MacBook where high performance isn't a priority, and ATI for the iMac's, Mac Pro and MacBook Pro.

I've got an iMac 20inch with an ATI graphics card - I deliberately avoided the 24 inch because of it having Nvidia graphics.

I ended up returning my 20" iMac because of the great color shift at different vertical viewing angles, opted for the 24" with ATI Radeon HD 2600 in it and keeping my fingers crossed the GPU will be supported for OpenCL somewhere down the line but not having my hopes up too high.

 

[iSamurai]

9.95 USD? that's just under 12 AUD! they charge $15 here down under. Oh well, they sucked $3 from me. I guess $3 would've gotten me 2 sausage sizzles

 

[Chundles]

Not even sure where to begin here, but my opinion is 180 degrees in the other direction. The speed is off the hook for me. As a said in another post, simply doing a dvd5 conversion to 1gb h.264 w/ac3 passthrough conversion took nearly 2hrs with leopard and win7 rtm. With SL running full 64bit I did the same conversion in 1hr 1min..... literally cutting the time in half. The performance gains are simply astonishing. If you think you can't see the difference try going back to a Leopard rig (which I do every day for work). My Leopard rig at work has much faster proc than my MBP running Snow Leopard and it still feels slower in almost every respect.

Anyway, not even going to go into all the fine details, but my take on SL is that it absolutely rocks the house.

Encode times went down by 50%?! Serious?! That's amazing.

What was the machine again?

 

[surroundfan]

9.95 USD? that's just under 12 AUD! they charge $15 here down under. Oh well, they sucked $3 from me. I guess $3 would've gotten me 2 sausage sizzles

Australian prices include GST. US ones don't (because there are sales taxes instead).

Since the AUD has jumped in recent weeks, I reckon we could see an Australian RRP of $39. Not too shabby...

 

[andy721]

Sorry

to burst your bubbles but wait wow I can't believe I said that too lazy to backspace but yet still typing anywho, 10A432 is not GM.

 

[matticus008]

For those in the know, how long does it typically take from Gold Master to enough DVDs pressed and boxed for distribution?

It takes as long as they want it to take. A press house can have millions of discs produced, packaged, and drop-shipped in less than a week.

If you think thats bad, I was really hoping that my less than 1 year old 24" iMac would be able to make use of OpenCL with Radeon HD 2600 Pro, so far I have only been informed that it would not be.

No. OpenCL is only supported on a limited range of relatively modern GPUs.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

The Radeon HD 2600, an R600-based product [2007], doesn't qualify. The ATI models that are supported are R700-based [2008-2009]. As implemented, nVidia products have compatible GPUs that are far older (ATI at the time was working on similar but incompatible GPGPU technologies). nVidia hardware from both the 8 and 9 series is supported, stretching back to the 2007 MacBook Pros.

Wondering if this is due to hardware incompatibility?!?

Yes.

Anyone know if the Radeon HD 2600 Pro is supported for OpenCL in other OS's?

No. All of AMD's OpenCL demos have been on R700 hardware or better. There is no indication at present that anyone is working on R600 compatibility at all.

 

[avidmacuser]

There is no indication at present that anyone is working on R600 compatibility at all.

Meaning that someone 'could' work on R600 compatibility? If so this work would be a driver update perhaps by either ATI / Apple or both?

Thanks for the earlier reply by the way.

 

[bolen]

here's the thing: would apple really put two high profile events in three weeks? i think ipod and itunes will wait until late october, perhaps to steal the spotlight on windows 7. that's just me though, that and plus, you don't have to deal with the mess of the upgrading of tons of computers in a few weeks.

on sl, i only see two dates, 9/18 and 9/25 for release.

With the Zune HD being released in September my guess is that Apple wants to show off some cool new iPod updates and music related stuffs - even tho the zune isn't much of a threat.. it will please the stock holders.

I don't see a event just for the SL release. A event may be more suited later for a iMac update or a tablet/netbook-thingy.

But.. only time will tell.

 

[Chundles]

With the Zune HD being released in September my guess is that Apple wants to show off some cool new iPod updates and music related stuffs - even tho the zune isn't much of a threat.. it will please the stock holders.

I don't see a event just for the SL release. A event may be more suited later for a iMac update or a tablet/netbook-thingy.

But.. only time will tell.

Agreed. No event for Snow Leopard, just a 6pm Friday 25th release.

Apple will schedule their iPod+iTunes event for the 15th then to steal the thunder totally from Microsoft. What press in their right mind would turn down an Apple Special Event invitation for one from Microsoft for a product that's been in the tech public's eye for months now? None of them...

If Apple are good at one thing it's stealing thunder.

 

[Cabbit]

Wow, that is weird; so Apple has a 64bit driver for 950 with Snow Leopard but no X3100? The last time I had a look, there are three components to a driver, one of them was 64bit, and the other 2 were 32bit. It seems strange they would make one part 64bit and leave the rest 32bit.

As i said i only know that the GMA 950 has a 64Bit driver as that is what the machine i was using for testing has.

 

[Jasoco]

I will have an issue with Adobe if they won't update CS3 to be SL compatible

CS3 already works on Snow Leopard. With no problems at all.

 

[lxngtnguy]

If you're running Leopard: Here's an idiotic usability bug that I filed on 10.5.1. It was quickly flagged as a duplicate. 7 Updates later, nothing has changed...

Try opening a multi-page PDF file and then press Shift-Command-F (for a full-screen slideshow). Now click on the arrow pointing to the right and see if you advance to the next page .

Hint: Now press play, wait till it automatically advances to the next page and then go back. Suddenly the rightward-arrow works.


Gives you real confidence in Apple's ability to catch up with reported bugs. Admittedly this one only limits usability and probably never manages to get high up in Apple's bug priority queue, but still, it makes you wonder...

I can tell you that this is not an issue as of 10A421....the advance arrow works just as it should.