Snow Leopard's Best Improvement?

[Velin]

Did a HD erase and clean install. Snow Leopard has been great thus far.

As a power user with hundreds of gigs of files, the Finder improvements are a godsend. This alone makes it worth the upgrade. Much faster file access, review, coverflow. Spotlight is now superior, better than any other OS search feature I've used thus far.

Overall speed improvements are noticeable. CS4 is noticeably quicker across all applications. Even MS Office -- and I generally dislike MS products -- opens up in a few seconds and I'm seeing less stutter with long documents having hundreds of footnotes, tables and images.

If you use Safari, you'll see the difference, it opens in a flash.

As I use more apps and get into the terminal a bit, I'm seeing more and more "under the hood" tweaks that simply make OS X better. Best $30 I've ever spent on a piece of software.

Two hiccups thus far: no driver available for Logitech VX revolution mouse, and not sure about driver compatability with Scansnap S510M duplex scanner.

Main specs if interested: Mac Pro, Nvidia 8800 graphics card, four hard drives (WD 10k Velociraptor boot drive).

 

[5DollaFootlong]

i'm waiting to get my drive shipped back from western digital so i can backup, then upgrade to snow leopard. sorry to sorta hijack this thread, but if i do an erase and install without unregistering my adobe cs4 design premium suite, will i lose that license, just wondering?

 

[integrat.ethis]

Speed, without a doubt. Everything just blazes.

For a test, as soon as the Dock has loaded, load Safari, Mail, and iTunes at the same time.

Under Leopard, this would take ages as the icons bounced along happily, finally loading a couple of slow, unresponsive windows. iTunes showed up whenever it felt like it. In Snow Leopard, they just open nearly instantaneously (except for iTunes of course, which still has no sense of honor). The request to open multiple programs doesn't seem to phase it.

 

[dukebound85]

Speed, without a doubt. Everything just blazes.

For a test, as soon as the Dock has loaded, load Safari, Mail, and iTunes at the same time.

Under Leopard, this would take ages as the icons bounced along happily, finally loading a couple of slow, unresponsive windows. iTunes showed up whenever it felt like it. In Snow Leopard, they just open nearly instantaneously (except for iTunes of course, which still has no sense of honor). The request to open multiple programs doesn't seem to phase it.

Funny, I notice NO difference in speed compared to leopard lol

 

[integrat.ethis]

Funny, I notice NO difference in speed compared to leopard lol

Weird, what kind of computer do you have? And did you do a fresh install?

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

Funny, I notice NO difference in speed compared to leopard lol

Only speed differences I've noticed is native Apple programs seem to launch faster and Finder moves much more smoothly.

For what it's worth, I did an upgrade style installation.

 

[PaperMacWriter]

Obvious ones, and the really little ones

For me, the best stuff is as follows:
BIG THINGS:
Speed!!!
Smaller/Lighter
QuickTime X

LITTLE THINGS:
You can finally close a window while minimized in the dock(FINALLY!!!)
Stacks II (Stacks leaves its not-totaly-useable "beta")
Dock Expose
Services
Improved System Preferences
New & Improved Disk Eject
512x512 icons
UI Tweaks

Thats all I've tested so far, and it does almost all I was hoping for with snow leopard(apart from bugs, but that was expected), and I'm a happy camper. Smooth install, just the trackpad and QTX bugs. When can we expect 10.6.1?

SG

EDIT: Aperently, I was wrong: You STILL cant close windows in the dock(unless its iTunes). I'm irked.

 

[Cinder6]

I don't notice huge speed differences, but CS4 and the Dashboard are definitely a lot quicker (load time, in the case of the latter). I like the grid-based Expose, which I hadn't expected to (except that it doesn't start up with a focused window, so you have to move the mouse before you can click anything), and I really like the new Xcode.

Though I have to say some of the API changes are a bit annoying, like NSTableView's selectRow:byExtendingSelection: now being deprecated, requiring you to use selectRowIndexes:byExtendingSelection:. If I don't need to select multiple rows, creating an NSIndexSet is just more typing and more object allocation. It's a bit of a puzzling move.

 

[ChrisN]

I really like the overall speed and the new expose.

 

[creon]

Been enjoying the added speed. Feels snappy and crisp.

Got a question: How do you know if you are taking advantage of the 64 bit upgrade?

 

[benlee]

I like the speed that I have imagined based on the placebo effect. We have all been duped by a sugar disc.

Best Improvements:

Finder speed and overall speed in Apple Apps. Icon size and previews. minor interface tweaks are nice. I'm really looking forward to using the waking from sleep feature.

 

[dccorona]

For those of you that have already installed Snow Leopard and have been using it; in your opinion, what is the best new feature / Improvement over Leopard?

the 7gb of disk space I have back now

All you fancy young folk with your new-fangled 64-bit processors!

Back in my day,.... well...

I have a Core Duo. 32-bit dual core Macbook Pro.

I'm pretty sure all the Core Duo's are 64 bit
the default boot for SL right now is in 32 bit, but it still runs all 64 bit apps in 64 bit mode. To boot in true 64 bit (from what I've read...maybe this is all fake), hold down the 6 and 4 keys while booting. But the only reason to boot in 64 bit mode is if your using more than 32 gb of RAM (the true 64 bit can theoretically handle EXOBYTES of RAM. Now we just gotta wait for the hardware to be able to handle it too. And those million dollar paychecks to cover all that memory)

 

[Obsidian6]

For me the very noticeable speed increase on my now aging Macbook Pro was a very welcome addition. I also greatly appreciated the 12GB of space that it magically freed up.

Honestly it has made me very happy with my old computer now and I feel more confident that it will last me at least another year or until Applecare runs out

 

[NT1440]

Everyone who is surprised because they got a lot more disk space freed up than expecting...

Keep in mind that Leopard switched to base 10 counting:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/721173/

So...if I understand the technical part well enough, you're in theory receiving an additional 24 MB for each GB in your drive. Not literally getting the space, but it's just because of the counting method.

That's why I think many of you are surprised, especially if you have a large hard drive...the gains are more.

Sorry to burst any bubbles.

Oh yea that 24 MB per GB really adds up quick don't it?

Think of the math man.

 

[MrM]

I did a clean install this morning, and I have to say the best thing is how fast it is. I'm literally on the internet in 40 seconds from when I press the power button.

 

[dccorona]

Oh yea that 24 MB per GB really adds up quick don't it?

Think of the math man.

you mean you don't have a 100 terabyte hard drive? I got 10 gigs back on mine!
/sarcasm

 

[dL.]

I am very impressed with the shutdown speed, boot up time, and wake up. It's extremely fast.

dL

 

[elgrecomac]

Well...

I like the improvement to stack and Quicktime. It feels a bit faster but I, for one saw no great disk space free-up. Looks like the same as with 10.5.8. Startup and shut down are faster...but I use those once a day so no big deal for me.

Safari opens faster...nice

I think I got what I paid for.. all $29 dollars worth.

 

[Cinder6]

Oh yea that 24 MB per GB really adds up quick don't it?

Think of the math man.

Newspeak 320GB is really 298GB, so yeah, it does add up.

 

[Chundles]

the 7gb of disk space I have back now



I'm pretty sure all the Core Duo's are 64 bit
the default boot for SL right now is in 32 bit, but it still runs all 64 bit apps in 64 bit mode. To boot in true 64 bit (from what I've read...maybe this is all fake), hold down the 6 and 4 keys while booting. But the only reason to boot in 64 bit mode is if your using more than 32 gb of RAM (the true 64 bit can theoretically handle EXOBYTES of RAM. Now we just gotta wait for the hardware to be able to handle it too. And those million dollar paychecks to cover all that memory)

Core Duos are 32 bit. Core 2 Duos and Xeons are 64 bit.

 

[MrM]

Core Duos are 32 bit. Core 2 Duos and Xeons are 64 bit.

I don't know that that is 100% true. I'm still trying to grasp the whole 64 vs 32 bit stuff, but take a look at the attachments.

Edit- I think I might have misread what you were trying to say. Did you mean that Core 2 Duos can boot in 64 bit? Or that they can run the applications in 64 bit?

 

[Michael CM1]

I have a unibody macbook 2.0. Is it a 64 bit machine?

Also...is the upgrade pretty self explanatory?


Thanks.

All Core2Duo processors are 64-bit, which is what most Intel-based Macs have. Anything sold in the past 2 years has had a C2D.

I would check out the articles Macworld has on understanding 64-bit. I honestly don't get it all because I don't write software. I get the benefit of being able to use more memory, but most machines can't do it physically yet. That's kind of a future-proofing deal. Your MacBook may be able to take advantage of OpenGL if it has the Nvidia 9400 GPU. I can't recall what the unibody MacBooks had.

Best thing to do is check out those Macworld articles. I learned a bunch from them, but I'm still waiting on the upgrade.