Ah the good ol’ days, when they had enough faith in their work that they dared present live!
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Mac OS X Snow Leopard Launched 15 Years Ago Today With '0 New Features'
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For end users MacOS is already far less intrusive than Windows with updates.
I wish we went back to system of non-yearly updates. Some of the new features seems so superficial. Also, there is no need for constantly updating the system.
On the flip side, I feel the OS is more stable since I guess there are more people working towards MacOS than before. Also, this (2006-2011) was the era of iPhone so Apple was focused more on building the momentum on iPhone and iOS side.
On the flip side, I feel the OS is more stable since I guess there are more people working towards MacOS than before. Also, this (2006-2011) was the era of iPhone so Apple was focused more on building the momentum on iPhone and iOS side.
Snow Leopard is the best operating system that Apple ever made, because as this article states, there were zero new features. Apple focused all of its energies on making the system work better, and they succeeded! Snow Leopard also only ran on Intel-based Macs, which meant that Apple was able to remove the PowerPC code, and shrink the system to half its size.
Today marks the 15th anniversary of Apple releasing Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which became available to purchase for $29 on August 28, 2009.
After advertising Mac OS X Leopard as having "over 300 new features" in 2007, Apple previewed Snow Leopard at WWDC 2008. Notably, during that year's "State of the Union" session, Apple showed a presentation slide that said the update had "0 new features," as Apple opted to focus on under-the-hood performance and stability improvements.
"We've built on the success of Leopard and created an even better experience for our users from installation to shutdown," said Apple's former software engineering chief Bertrand Serlet. "Apple engineers have made hundreds of improvements so with Snow Leopard your system is going to feel faster, more responsive and even more reliable than before."
With Snow Leopard, Apple said it refined 90% of the foundational "projects" that were built into Mac OS X. Apple pitched the update as offering a more responsive Finder app, an improved Mail app that loads emails up to twice as fast as before, up to 80% faster Time Machine backups, and a 64-bit version of Safari that was up to 50% faster than the previous version. Snow Leopard also took up around half as much disk space as Leopard.
You can watch Serlet speak more about Snow Leopard at WWDC 2009 below.
Article Link: Mac OS X Snow Leopard Launched 15 Years Ago Today With '0 New Features'
Bertrand Serlet was one of the executives that came to Apple with Steve Jobs, following the company's acquisition of NeXT.
This is a case study in good product management and quality control. Apple should go back to fine-tuning its systems to make them faster, more responsive, and smaller.
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Snow Leopard Server was the only OS X version which legally allowed you to run it as a virtual machine, and was also the last version of OS X which could run the original version of Rosetta, which emulated PowerPC chips on Intel Macs. So, running a Virtual Snow Leopard Server machine on my Apple Silicon machine, I can still run my favorite but long unsupported PowerPC app. How I wish somebody would rewrite Bryce as an iOS app. It seems like such a natural fit.
You can still run MacOS in a virtual machine without violating the TOS, but it has to be done on Apple hardware.
When Vista came out and I had to put it on the bench at work to see if it was worthwhile for an upgrade, I silently at home said goodbye to all my PCs that I built and knowing Intel and BSD were in the mix for Mac, bought an early model Mac Pro. This was one of the best experiences I had and to this day, remain with Macs. Only two times before had I felt such a good feeling - my very first PC (clone) and when there was a push for OS/2 operating system.
Can‘t watch it because the internet is too slow. I’m in the middle of the strip in Las Vegas. Work on making that better Apple. I might as well be using Snow Leopard.
It has nothing to do with nostalgia, unless you mean nostalgia for better software. I've used every macOS version since 10.6 on a variety of machines over the years, and been more annoyed with each passing year.
I understand not everything that annoys me would necessarily bug anyone else and that some of it is subjective regarding design preferences, but every macOS revision just brings more headaches than the last. I had no real qualms with 10.6-10.8, and would have been just fine (unrealistic, I know, but I'm just making a point) retaining any of those with newer hardware and underlying technologies slapped on as time passed. My main machine until last week was running 10.9, now 14.x and there isn't enough time in a day for me to rant about all of the stupid impediments to just getting things the way I want them or dumb design decisions I now have to tolerate. I could start up any of these systems five times and each one of them experience a completely different collection of bugs or interruptions. Every time I'm just waiting to see what's going to get in the way this time. And all in the name of more features I don't want, didn't ask for, and can't get rid of, while they continue whittling away at those I actually do want. By the time we find out the breadth of even some of the issues afflicting one version, Apple's on to the next to break something else. That's what I mean by 'fallen.' Fallen from a system that just works and makes sense to something that I have to constantly deal with in one way or another – I've watched it happen.
Snow Leopard was so impressive that it became the primary reason I recommended switching to Mac to all my friends and family. After that, I kept finding myself saying, "Well, the Mac is great, but not as great as it used to be." I still today say it's never been as good as it was during Snow Leopard.
They need to do this every other year. 0 new features = 0 new bugs. As it stands, we have 6 months fixing bugs and as soon as it’s stable they announce the next version of macOS Novelty.
And now Apple kind of looks like Microsoft. iCal vs Window Calendar is the perfect example. The Apple of that time had cool names for everything while Microsoft was more corporate and boring with stuff like windows calendar being the competitor of iCal. I hate the new names for Apple products like Apple Watch, Apple Music, Apple TV, etc. vs iPhone, iTunes, Safari, etc. Imagine if the iPhone was invented today, it’d be called the Apple phone. Kind of reflects how passionate and innovative Apple was vs how corporate it is today.
But in windows, well, certain editions at least, I can configure updates to never happen by itself. Been doing that in my windows 10 PC and imo makes it far less intrusive than macOS and iOS.
You can also disable automatic updates in iOS and macOS, this is what I have done and always update manually. It’s literally a one-toggle operation in iOS (Settings > General > Software Updates > Automatic Updates > NO).
I like this video. Not for what is indented, but for what it actually shows.
Apple already had quite a bit of hubris back then, but one could argue it was still a little bit justified.
But it's interesting to see for example how they made fun of User Account Control in Windows Vista, just to do the same thing really themselves. Or how they made fun of Windows 7 and Vista still fundamentally being Windows. While they now have an operating system that is still fundamentally OPENSTEP (both of which are not bad things in my book, I'm talking about they way it is presented).
I think it really marks a bit of an inflection point, probably also coinciding with the success of the iPhone.
Fun fact: Bertrand Serlet was working for Microsoft for a while in 2023 after a company he co-founded got bought by them. He probably hated that
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I really hope that the bloating and bugginess of macOS doesn't get out of hand. Efficient hardware is nice but worth nothing if the software is inefficient.