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Snow Leopard Bringing Substantial Package of Enhancements and Refinements

Doctor Q said:
But there's certainly a contrast in the way Apple has described Snow Leopard vs. the huge feature lists of past releases.
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I couldnt agree more. I have placed my order yet, it feels like something that I could live without. The way Apple approaches the new improvements seems to leave me with wondering, "Why do I need that?"

The lacking of new visuals and the 'under the hood' improvements are two very different improvements. The new visuals we can see and enjoy the instant gratification of our purchase yet the under the hood is left for us to experience. I'm all for faster speed and the the Grand Central Dispatch but would a new polished look really be that hard to upgrade?
 
VTECaddict said:
NOOOOO!! :(

Wait, so does that mean if I'm using the 9600 I won't get the hardware video decoding from the 9400M?
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Ditto. That sucks. I'm pretty sure when the MBP came out that the whole logging out to switch was promised to be an interim thing which would be unnecessary when SL came out. And what ever happened to the Safari site specific browser feature? That seems to have fallen off the radar too.
 
buckyballs said:
As much as I think that Apple needs to move on past old tech, this is ridiculous. They could easily add support for the other NVIDIA GPUs that can do hardware h264 decoding, but they've decided not to. I can't see any good reason why they shouldn't support the 8600M or 8800 GT.
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I too have the 8600M. Are we sure it isn't supported for graphics acceleration?

More importantly - I would like OpenCL to work, so that encoding Quicktime movies in iMovie will work faster.... I really need a speed boost!

swissmann said:
Sadly I do not just an ATI 4870 which should be capable but is apparently not as supported as I had hoped.
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So... is there a list of supported hardware... or are we assuming JUST the 9400?

wizard said:
I believe the implication here that only 9400M based systems get it is wrong. This will be figured out of course after the OS debuts but it would be a big black mark on Apples future to not support other shipping GPU's and a few formally shipped GPU's.
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Hope so!
Do we really have no idea? Surely there is information, leaks from beta testers etc...
 
tekio said:
The linux driver does support pinch gestures & they work on older macbooks.
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This is true. The linux driver allows full multitouch gestures like pinch. The guy who worked on this is now working on the full OSX version. Don't let people tell you its all down to a chip....cause its really not.
 
Hmmmm.... looks like I'm in luck for OpenCL
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html

QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration requires a Mac with an NVIDIA 9400M graphics processor.

OpenCL requires one of the following graphics cards or graphics processors:
NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600
ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870

Given that QuicktimeX doesn't list other cards.... I assume the video decoding doesn't use OpenCL (which makes sense). Now have to wonder if QuicktimeX uses OpenCL to encode.
 
buckyballs said:
As much as I think that Apple needs to move on past old tech, this is ridiculous. They could easily add support for the other NVIDIA GPUs that can do hardware h264 decoding, but they've decided not to. I can't see any good reason why they shouldn't support the 8600M or 8800 GT.
Click to expand...

I hope this isn't like the Mac OS X 10.4 thing with 802.11n thing where you had to pay extra for it to use the n, & not stick at g speeds.
 
illuminous said:
This is true. The linux driver allows full multitouch gestures like pinch. The guy who worked on this is now working on the full OSX version. Don't let people tell you its all down to a chip....cause its really not.
Click to expand...

Exactly. When the unibodies debuted in October, EVERYONE said that the Early 2008 MBPs couldn't have 4-finger gestures cause it was a "hardware issue".

There was a 300+ post thread about this and about 200 of said Early 2008 MBPs would never have 4-finger gestures cause the hardware wasn't compatible. I'm not saying that MBPs and MB pre-2008 are able to have multi-touch gestures but I'm sure as hell not gonna act like I know what I'm talking about and say they can't like all the other noobs.
 
tyrrell said:
I have a unibody MBP with both the 9400 and 9600 graphics chips. So does SL allow you to switch between them without logging out? Or does it allow anything cool like using both at the same time?
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Doesn't Sony hold a patent for on the fly switching between integrated and dedicated graphics cards? I know that their Z series uses it.
 
Lacking Jails

Mac OS X is lacking a very important security and resource management feature.

OS level virtualization/Jails

Jails allow OS level virtualization, so that applications can be sandboxed and isolated from each other, resources efficiently managed etc... Jails have VERY low CPU overhead running compared to full virtual machines they run on one kernel vs multiple OS kernels and use less resources: http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/02/0043258

FreeBSD has Jails (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/jails-intro.html)

Linux has OpenVZ, and V-Server to name a few.

Solaris has Zones (http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/zones/index.jsp)

Windows even has similar functionality with sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com/) , or featherweight virtual machine (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fvm-rni/) via 3rd parties

This is a very important feature from a security perspective, help make Mac OS X truly the "Worlds most Advanced Operating System"

Send Apple Feedback so they can port over FreeBSD Jails!
www.apple.com/feedback
 
I wonder if it's possible to notice much difference from the lack of hardware video decoding on my 8800 GS iMac, probably not..

Looking forward to it on the MBP though. Looking forward to SL in general. I hope some of the glitches I've seen arent in the final version. :eek:
 
buckyballs said:
As much as I think that Apple needs to move on past old tech, this is ridiculous. They could easily add support for the other NVIDIA GPUs that can do hardware h264 decoding, but they've decided not to. I can't see any good reason why they shouldn't support the 8600M or 8800 GT.
Click to expand...

I agree completely! It's like Apple is trying to push people away.

Check out this Snow Leopard 'feature' listed on the new features page:

Date in menu bar.

The date can appear alongside the time in the menu bar.
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You have to be kidding. This took some engineer all of 5 minutes to add, and is something that should have been there since the beginning.
 
backdraft said:
Mac OS X is lacking a very important security and resource management feature.

OS level virtualization/Jails

Jails allow OS level virtualization, so that applications can be sandboxed and isolated from each other, resources efficiently managed etc... Jails have VERY low CPU overhead running compared to full virtual machines they run on one kernel vs multiple OS kernels and use less resources: http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/06/02/0043258

FreeBSD has Jails (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/jails-intro.html)

Linux has OpenVZ, and V-Server to name a few.

Solaris has Zones (http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/zones/index.jsp)

Windows even has similar functionality with sandboxie (http://www.sandboxie.com/) , or featherweight virtual machine (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fvm-rni/) via 3rd parties

This is a very important feature from a security perspective, help make Mac OS X truly the "Worlds most Advanced OS"

Send Apple Feedback so they can port over FreeBSD Jails!
www.apple.com/feedback
Click to expand...

So are you trolling or did you just fail to notice the rather noticeable mention of sandboxed apps? Snow Leopard includes the very feature you're acting like it's so important to have (even though it's not really a critical feature, just a tiny bit extra security onto of a really impressive level already).

jW
 
mikeppc225 said:
What is the difference between "Put Away" and simply "Undo"? Whenever I've accidently dropped something in the trash, "Undo" puts it right back.

I used Mac OS 9 back in the day, and don't remember that feature being any different - just a different name.
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Undo, if immediately chosen, (sometimes) resets the last function.

As I recall from the Mac OS 9 days, it was possible to highlight files/folders in the Trash before selecting Put Away and they would be returned to their prior place -- hours or days later.
 
ValSalva said:
The list of compatible apps is growing. :D No doubt developers are working double-time to get their apps ready for SL. I'll bet they have very mixed feelings about the early release of SL.
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I think i would wait for a couple of days to let things settle down a bit. I definitely need Evernote, Dropbox, Forklift and Onyx at least before making the switch...
 
Matthew Yohe said:
This is incorrect.



The MacBook Air (1st gen) and then beginning in the MacBook Pro (early 2008), and on. The White/Black MacBooks never contained the multi-touch hardware.

This update only adds gestures that didn't exist when these multi-touch MacBook Pros (and 1st gen Air) came to the market. (4 fingered gestures).



No.

In the end, if you can currently open up an image in Preview, and rotate your fingers to rotate the image, then you will get the 4 fingered gestures. Older MacBooks that cannot rotate images in preview, will gain none of these features.
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WHat the Apple chat told me:
You are chatting with Coreen N, an Apple Expert
Hi, my name is Coreen N. Welcome to Apple!
Good evening.
How may I help you?
will snow leopard give multitouch and 4 finger gestures to laptops capable of two finger scrolling? ME
just to clarify i mean like the white macbook and ones capable of ONLY 2 finger scrolling ME
Which operating system are you currently using?
obviously mac os X leopard... ME
No, if your Mac doesn't offer this feature, the software upgrade will not.
this is not exactly what it refers to then? "All Mac notebooks with Multi-Touch trackpads now support three- and four-finger gestures." ME
from enhancments and refinements ME
Just one moment.
No rush :) just make sure its its correct i have heard many conflicts on this ME
Sure.
I have researched this.....
Yes, it will support three and four finger gestures.
Obviously the ME denotes things I said.
 
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