Snow Leopard after 1 Day

[FSMBP]

For all those speculating on buying Snow Leopard:

So I installed Snow Leopard on my two year old MacBook Pro (which was previously running Tiger than Leopard) and this was THE BEST UPGRADE EVER.

1. Apps are literally opening 2-4 times faster and respond a lot quicker (on Startup in Leopard, Safari took 5 bounces to open and literally 6-8 additional seconds to open my homepage, Google.com). In Snow, it takes Safari two bounces, and opens my homepage instantly.

2. Animations, dock magnification and minimizing, were choppy in Leopard (they were smooth in Tiger). Now, animations are smooth as they should be (there is a thread about this).

3. I have an Exchange account, all I did in Mail was type my Email address/password and clicked "Continue" - 5 seconds later, it recognized my account as Exchange, and set everything up. IF YOU HAVE AN EXCHANGE ACCOUNT, SNOW LEOPARD IS WORTH $30 ALONE Apple really does make everything idiot proof.


In sum, the speed performance in apps is significantly noticeable in Snow Leopard (I thought it wouldn't be, but it is). Minor new features are a nice icing on the cake and Exchange support is great (no need for any slow MS Products). If you were on the edge on spending $30 for an upgrade, I'd say go for it if you use your Mac a lot (using it more than 1-2 hours a day).

If there is another thread like this, please delete this.

 

[GoCubsGo]

It's nice to see that there are speed benefits on a 2 year old machine. My question really is not the speed in which an app opens but how the app performs when it is open. You sort of said that the speed performance in apps is significantly noticeable, but I am not sure if you were speaking to the speed of launch or the performance of the app itself.

Also, can you list what benefits you have on your machine that the OS is supposed to bring? We know on a new machine everything SL does should be available providing the machine meets those specs, but not everyone gets a new machine every 6-12 months. So if you can compare what SL is supposed to do and what you can do that would be awesome.

 

[knightlie]

My '06 Core Duo iMac feels much more responsive. I wasn't expecting much of an improvement on it, but window animations are much smoother, Finder is faster and looks a lot better than before, and Safari is blazingly fast - pages are loading at least 50% faster. It's like getting a new machine as well as a new OS!

 

[Hellhammer]

My list:

1. Expose and Spaces

- Smoother
- Faster
- Better organized

2. Overall speed

- Everything seems a bit faster than in Leopard
- Zero crashes or bugs so far

3. iChat

- Better video and audio quality
- Less bandwitch needed

4. Quicktime X

- Screen capture; great extra
- Overall look, closer to QT Pro

 

[FSMBP]

1. Well, speed performances on a launch of an app is very very noticeable - as mentioned, 99% of Apple's apps open within bounce (they NEVER did that before on Leopard).

Also, app responsiveness is noticeable (not extremely significant, but you'll notice your favorite app responds faster). For example, iCal instantly opens on one bounce WITH my events loaded. In Leopard, it usually took 3 bounces and events would come 2-3 seconds later.

In Preview, in Leopard, I would open a 8MP image from my Canon - that would usually take 2-3 seconds and if I wanted to crop it, that would take 2-3 seconds. Now, the same picture opens in 1 second, and crops instantly.

2. As for the features Snow is supposed to bring, ex. higher-res iChat chatting, I have yet to test it (will do so later). System-wide automatic spelling/data detectors works well (although, you have to enable it in certain apps). It works best in Text Edit (for some reason, Text Edit has better preferences for this).

Startup/Shutdown/Sleep times are all a lot faster. Leopard's startup on a fresh install took 45 seconds, Snow takes 38 seconds. Shutdown on Leopard took me 4-5 seconds on average, Snow Leopard's is 3 seconds. And Sleep/Wake is a little bit faster (2 seconds vs. 1.5-2 seconds).

3. Installation size on my 120GB harddrive wasn't too different though. On Leopard, I always did a custom install that didn't include printer drivers (saved a couple gigs there). On Snow Leopard, I saved only about 3 gigs.

4. I thought I should mention these two things, Quicktime X's interface is not to my liking. The title bar from the window is gone (which is just inconsistent from the rest of the OS and annoying). But screen recording is nice except it doesn't record the system sounds (ex. Like if I play a song in Garageband, it won't record the audio.)

Also, Icon Preview is annoying/useless. I have often went to select several files and accidentally activated Icon Preview (my icons are a decent size too, their not small). I always liked Quicklook and wonder why they needed to add Icon Preview.
If anyone wants to know anymore specifics, let me know!