Snow Leopard Overview

a little listener mail. This listener mail comes to us from Ian and Ian says, hey, I was wondering if you could do a podcast about the new Mac operating system Mac OS ten snow Leopard. Also, I was wondering about the iPhone on Verizon. I read some places that Verizon will carry the iPhone coming December two thousand nine, but I'm not sure, but thanks and I love your podcast so clearly you can tell already. Ian wrote us some time ago this would be back in November of

two thousand nine. It is now two ten and the iPhone is not on Verizon yet yet there's still rumors about it. Um As of the recording of this podcast, no official announcement, but we all suspect that that's where it's headed. Yeah. Actually, on the day they released the iPad, a lot of people have expected an announcement that Apple would have finally decided to open the iPhone up to a number of UH cell phone providers, but that hasn't happened. Yeah.

Imagine that there's a big breast release for one thing that Apple is doing, and people expect Apple to say something else. Now, in this case, I'm actually defending Apple, and I'm saying, shame on you Apple fanboys. If Apple is going to explain something to you and and unveil something to you, don't just sit there and get upset if it doesn't also tack on some other announcement that you're eager to hear. Well, you see that happen over

and over. I criticize Apple a lot. I won't lie, but I feel for them when they them out and do a press event and and if everyone's like, oh, you know, it was awesome that you unveiled that totally new device that no one has ever seen before, but what about this Verizon iPhone thing? Well, there's a that's pretty much fans of every tech when they release something they really want to see I think it's the discretion of the income that makes the Apple ones even worse.

I don't know. You can write me at tech stuffs at how stuff works dot com, yeah, and they will. I know. Um, I own Apple products, so I know about this. Yes, yes, and I admit that. You know, I'm like many eager to see what they're going to release, but you know, then there's no surprises if they do it all on one day. So I kind of don't mind so much if they because it's kind of like

spreading the holidays out throughout the year. But anyway, but as far as snow Leopard goes, let's let's talk about that because we haven't talked about it yet on the podcast, and uh, we thought we'd do a little bit of an overview on the operating system. Now. I'm glad. I'm glad that we actually waited to do this, and uh, you know and Windows seven you know, we're doing these together, um, because it's it's kind of nice to see how consumers

have accepted, or in some cases not accepted, um. These newer versions of the operating systems for their respective machines. Now also gives us a chance to play with them a little bit so that you know, we actually can talk about it. Right. A lot of times when people write in, they don't they don't understand that most of the most the new stuff you see in various blogs and on the news and things, we don't get that in advance. That's because we don't do We don't do

reviews it how stuff works. Traditionally we talk about the technology underlying whatever it is that we're talking about, right, So we don't right right, Manufacturers don't necessarily want to send us stuff because we're not going to be doing a review. So therefore it doesn't make a lot of sense on their end to send us advanced copies of things. We do occasionally get them anyway, which is great because

we get to test it out. You know. If if we know that we don't have to return it, we can even take it apart, which, by the way, taking it apart pretty much means it's done. There's this is like when when the two year old takes a part of Watch to see how it works. That's kind of how we are. Uh, there's no guaranteed that's going to come back together ever again, Yes, that poor Plio still

can hear the screaming. Yeah. So in the case of in the case of snow Leopard, UM, this is the the latest version ten point six to come out of Apple. After this gates back to the early two thousand's UM. The Apple OS ten is UH the result of UM, the deal when Apple reacquired UM Steve Jobs, I mean, they acquired the Next Computer System UM, which was actually heralded as a very high tech UH competitor back in

the ES. UM Steve Jobs started the company after leaving Apple, and UH, you know the machines that ran it, the operating system known as Next Step, we're UM or really kind of for tech heads because it ran on a on a different kernel. It ran on on BSD, which is what UM, which is what OS ten runs on, deep deep inside the operating system. I know, we took it apart and can't get it back together again. UM. But so this is OS ten has been evolving and this is the sixth formal version of it major formal

version of it. UM. It's actually been updated a couple of times since last fall when it was released. UM. But unlike previous versions that we were talking about the the Apple press conferences when everybody goes nuts about the

latest and greatest thing, UM snow Leopard. It's sort of a different sort of operating system because the update was released with no new features, sort of because everybody expects the new you know, little programlet that they put in there which allows you to do some great thing you know, or widgets or you know, some other thing. I want to play with this gizmo that they've thrown into the

OS this time, UM. Which is good for marketing too, because you know, it helps them go, hey, well, you know if you buy it this way, UM snow Leopard, which you know they've been using these cat names. The one two times before it was Tiger, but the one previous ten point five was leopard, so this is a different kind of leopard. Snow was kind of an indication that this was this was a refinement of the previous version and not not like a huge jump ahead and

and that and that really was what it was. It's a it's an incremental step ahead. UM. The big big difference again, this is not exciting in a lot of ways, you know, especially if you're looking for some flashy new bell or whistle that you can show off to your friends. The biggest difference is now the kernel, which is a very very basic part of the operating system, is a sixty four bit kernel UM, which means that it takes advantage of a lot more processing power than other previous

versions of the operating system UM. This is good because they're incrementally moving up bit by bit sorry for the pun UM to be able to take advantage of more advanced microprocessors. UM and a lot of the refinements and snow Leopard are like that too, like things like Grand Central Dispatch, which UM essentially manages processing threads so that they are run by your processor more efficiently. UH and open c L, which is a technology that uses your

graphics processor. It's not doing something like say, for example, you are running UM editing a video, You're gonna need your graphics processor chip to do a lot of that uh,

to do a lot of that work. But if you're working on something else that doesn't require a lot of graphics processing, open cl will basically say, you know, commonteer, your your graphics process or chip, which is you know a different kind of microprocessor dedicated to graphics UM, and we'll co opt that and say come here, I need you to do these other things until you're busy with something else. And and basically the the operating system is

handling processing threads more efficiently than it was before. But that's not really all that sexy, right, And and there's not that much to show for it. You know, you can't go, hey, look at this thing, because really it's

the same, looks almost exactly like the thing it was before. Um. Yeah, some people have actually gone so far as to criticize Apple and call snow Leopard a service pack to Leopard, and that it could have it could have just been released as an upgrade to Leopard without having justifying you know, its own name, and and uh. But then other reviewers are a little more kind toward Apple, and and I think justifiably so. I think there is enough there to

justify a separate purchase price for snow Leopard. It's not like the changes are also subtle that you wouldn't even you would never notice them. They did tweak several of the applications within snow Leopard so that they run a little better. They have a few more features. Again, nothing as revolutionary as a brand new feature that is going to blow everyone's socks off, But um, applications that can

do more than they did in the previous versions. So things like stacks or or or even the male and the ICL features had more functionality than they did in previous versions, and enough of it so that, um, if you were upgrading from Leopard to snow Leopard, the price was not prohibitively prohibitively expensive, not by a long shot. Now we're talking unlike the previous upgrades to the operating system, which cost a hundred and twenty UH, Snow Leopard is

now statically. That's for people who have Leopard. If you have Tiger or a previous version, UM, you're supposed to be paying the full price. But if you go into an Apple store and say I'm upgrading from Leopard to snow Leopard, it's not like they're going to ask you to bring your machine sen and and prove it. As it turns out, from now I was, I upgraded my machine from Leopard to snow Leopard, so I didn't have

to worry about that. Um. But as it turns out, apparently you can even format a drive with one of the twenty nine dollar discs. Uh. It doesn't ask you if you have Leopard, or automatically detect whether you have

Leopard on your operating system. Now, before any of you rush out there to upgrade your your old, old old Mac Into two snow Leopard, there's something very important you need to know about this operating system, especially if you're running a power PC based Specifically, what you need to know if you are running a power PC based Mac which is uh uh, there's the older chips, the microprocessors

from Motorola and IBM. If you're if you're running one of those, UM, snow Leopard will not work on your machine. It is not designed for that processor, and you won't be able to run it. Even if you were to uh go out there and and fool Apple and pay the twenty nine x for it, it would just be a useless piece of software to you. Now. UM, In general benchmarking tests UM have shown that all these processor

improvements may not necessarily be all that improved. In fact, some of them may some For some processes, snow Leopard may actually perform uh slower, more poorly. I guess you could say, or UM or if you prefer, Leopard is more efficient than snow Leopard for some processes. At least it's faster. I think there are a number of reasons

for this. UH. One is that a lot of Apple UM software for let's say this, a lot of software for macOS ten UM is running in thirty two bit mode, and your snow Leopard installation will too, unless you specifically tell it you want to just start up in sixty

four bit mode. At this point, UH, if you boot up your Mac running snow Leopard, it will boot in a thirty two bit mode unless you hold down the six and the four key at the same time as you are booting it up, and you have to hold it down until it boots, and then it is running sixty four bit mode. And it doesn't actually tell you this because I tried it and I'm going, okay, did you show UM. However, some of the older programs UM

maybe running thirty two bit. They may not necessarily take advantage of the multiprocessor UH functionality that you can use in snow Leopard, and they may be running UM. You know, for a while now, they've been running universal code, which means it can run on a power PC chip or an Intel chip, and if it's running in with those, you know, that's basically going to slow down the piece of software. It's not optimized to work with that machine.

I think in time you'll find that. I mean, this is just based on my own experience and what I happen to know. Um. I think in time, more programs that are written to take advantage of these things in snow Leopard will. Uh. You know, when you benchmark those against earlier versions of the software, you're going to see that these programs do better. But I think when they first did those benchmarking tests there were probably some some

issues with that. Sure, sure, I'm I'm just guessing here. Well, I mean, you know, I know that those things like universal binaries, fat binaries, there's the programs that have code in them to run on more than one processor chip. I know for a fact that those are in general slower, right, and and some of the applications that like the quick Time application UM felt a lot different than the earlier

ones for things like Leopard and UM. The user interface on snow Leopard is is kind of a little more snazzy and and has a bit more sex appealed to it. I guess you could say, um, so, I mean there are some cosmetic differences as well. It's not it's not at all just under the hood. And UH, if that matters to you, then of course that that becomes the

selling point. UM. If you're like me and you've gotten to the point where you don't really care what your computer looks like as long as stuff works the way it's supposed to. UM. And in fact, actually I'll go even further. If you end up doing a dance of joy because your computer actually did something that you told it to do, then the how good it looks may not really matter to you very much, but it matters

a lot during press conferences. Yep, that's true. Now. UM. You know, if you uh, there are other things that you are probably gonna be interested in. If you're still considering upgrading to snow Leopard. UM. You know, if you do have uh an Intel machine, generally anything in the last four years is until based machine. UM. You know, it's there are some some things that that you'll enjoy. There's a new version of quick Time that comes that came with it. It does it's very nice. I really

enjoy that. UM And UH it tends to update things like networking. UM automatically detects whether or not they're new drivers for your printer, which is nice. UM it can even identify which printers are closer to you. If you are working in an office that has mac Um, it might be able to tell, uh, the laser printer around the corner versus the one down the hall um, which is kind of neat. Again, these are just a little incremental improvements that I think would be nice if every

operating system had them. So it's but nice to have attempt to install Safari on your computer, no matter how many times you scream, I don't want that operating Are that web browser? Oh yeah, there's a new version of Safari that came with Snail. Of course, that's pretty much true, I think. For I know, I know there are a lot of people out there who really do like the Safari web browser, and they've they're accustomed to its user interface. Uh. And I know I joke about how much I hate

the Safari uh web browser. So I just want to be serious here for a minute. I really hate Safari browser. But you know, hey, if you like it, that's cool. I'll no, I'm not gonna I'm just gonna keep using my little Firefox over here until they get Chrome to the point where it actually is good on the Mac. That's a that's a a jab at Google. Actually, uh uh, I used Chrome on my Mac at home running snow Leopard in it's a it's a very I'm running it on Tiger and it's not. Yeah, it works very nicely

on snow Leopard. I'll have to go and lie to Apple. Dang, I should not have recorded this podcast. Um, well, here's something that we need to mention. I can't believe we've gone this long without mentioning it. Or maybe you did and I just zoned out. Exchange support yes built in Yes to snow Leopard, which you know that's a big deal because Exchange is one of those major, major UM platforms that lots of corporations use for things like email. Well, it's funny because I'm not to take a swipe it

Microsoft at all. Um. Because then in a lot of ways, I like Entourage, which is the mail program that comes with Office for Mac. UM. The new version of Officer Mac will actually come with Outlook, which is good because Entourage, Uh well entourages UM support for the Exchange server is

if you're not actually okay, here's the thing. If you're not actually on the network, Um, it doesn't really do all that much supporting, whereas with mail, which is mail dot app is the Mac email program that comes with the os UM, you can actually put in your exchange server information basically like your email address and and uh, you know, some simple user information and automatically detects um the exchange server and goes ahead and download your information.

Now I think this is being done. Uh, you know, and there has to be some cooperation on the part of the exchange server for this to work. But it does work, and it does work automatically, which is nice. Um, you know, I've had the same experience on Evolution Mail for Linux, which is pretty cool because you're going, Okay, well, how come some of Microsoft Done products don't interface the exchange server as well as these others do. But but

it is nice to have. Yeah, and uh, before we, I guess move into the final section here, there were some problems with snow Leopard when it launched. There were some applications that were compatible with the predecessor with Leopard that no longer worked properly or in some cases did not work at all in snow Leopard. Yeah, but this this could be said, I should you know, with the

grain salt, this actually could be said of virtually any os. Yeah, pretty much, time you're gonna have anything beyond a minor patch, you run the risk of of changing the operating system enough so that applications that were built on the old set of parameters will no longer work properly. Um, that's just you can't really blame Apple for that. You can't.

You definitely can't blame the developers because it's not like they can see in the future and see exactly what Apple is going to build into the next generation of the operating system. Um. It's just it's one of those things that upon the release of any operating system, new operating system, you're gonna see some instances of that. And uh, really, you've got a couple of options. One is you just wait to adopt a new operating system until most of

those bugs get ironed out. You know a lot of times they say to uh, to wait for a dot release, which is in this case ten dot six, dot one right where they've they've addressed some of those problems. Or um, it may even be where you end up having to download a patch for the particular application as opposed to the operating system. It all depends on on who gets

there first. Really. But the other option is you go ahead and you adopt the new operating system, and you just cope with the fact that you're not going to have access to some of the applications, UM that you might otherwise expect because they were running fine on your machine before. These weren't necessarily major applications that were they

got a lot of use from your average user. But uh, but power users, people who had very specific UM reasons for using a Mac might have encountered that with various programs. That's true. Yeah, I had some I had some hiccups when I first switched over. UM. One thing that I can recommend to you if you're gonna switch your computer from one operating system of any kind to the other. Again,

this is you know, true for pretty much everything. Back up your computer first, UM, even even doing an incremental release moving from Leopard to snow Leopard, or you know, if you're upgrading from this at a window seven, Um, you can't count on it always being a smooth installation. UM. You know, even I heard some complaints of people who moved from a bunch of nine point oh ford to

nine point one zero. You just you know, you never know when they're your driver is gonna go away or you know some only something's gonna go awry and you can't access a certain kind of file or um heaven forbid. Uh you know, ah, your hard drive gets completely uh smashed, not literally, but you know it completely obliterates the information your high drive, which has happened in some instances. So

always good to back up your data. And here's here's something that's also kind of an interesting comparison between the mac os and it's chief competitor, which being Microsoft's Windows product. Unlike the Microsoft machines, when you go and buy a new Mac and I'm talking about a new one, not a not a refurbished one or used when not buying it off Craigslist, you're going into the Apple store and

you're buying it. Uh, whatever Mac machine you're picking up, you're gonna be getting the latest version of that software, right, that's what that's because they're gonna upgrade everything. So the day that the snow Leopard operating system was went gold on the shelves, it was also what was available as soon as you walk into the store to buy a new Mac or at least they give you a copy of it, right, Yeah, if it wasn't already pre installed in the machine, they would give you a copy and

you could you could upgrade it. But on a Windows machine you could go into a storm. Because this is all from various manufacturers, not not a single manufacturer like it is from Apple. Uh. You could find machines that might be running Windows seven or Vista or even XP UM and in some cases they would just give you the option of do you want this machine on XP

or Vista? Back back before Windows seven came out, you would even there were some that the machines came standard with Vista, but you could actually choose to downgrade the machine to XP, which a lot of people did. UM. But yeah, you can still find machines and stores that are running various versions of Windows because it's not a unified front like it is with Apple. Also, of course, as we pointed out in our Windows seven podcasts, which may or may not have have published before this one,

it was recorded before this one, but we don't. We never know which one is publishing next. Uh. Because Apple controls this process from beginning to end, there's usually a UM. It's usually a more stable release than and opering system like Windows is because Apple knows all the different players in this game. They know what the video cards are going to be, they know what the sound cards are going to be, they know what the resolution of the

screen is going to be. UH. They know every aspect that's going to go into the hardware that's going to

handle this operating system. Assuming you're not using a Hackintosh, right, Assuming you're using an Apple approved machine to run this operating system, UH, which means that it's gonna run the way it's supposed to run unless something is fundamentally flawed with the actual operating system UM Windows Microsoft they don't have that luxury because Microsoft creates an operating system that can run on essentially any sort of machine that meets a basic set of of stats, like a basic you know,

a bare minimum process or an a bare minimum amount of memory, that kind of stuff. Once it hits that, then theoretically the Microsoft product should be able to run on it. But as we all know, depending on what elements you have in your computer, it may or may not run properly because Microsoft can't predict what video cards gonna be in there, what sound card. Sometimes video cards and sound cards will have uh incompatibilities with each other or with a certain kind of processor, and Microsoft has

no control over any of those elements. That's all a manufacturer kind of thing. So. Um, so the experience of purchasing a Mac computer is is different from Windows. That's why you often will hear Apple customers say, you know why I want to Mac because it just works, and it's because Apple has controlled that whole process. Um, it's still a matter of debate whether or not the Mac OS is superior to a Windows OS. That's really kind of a personal taste thing, I think. Um, it's hard

to be super objective about. I mean, you could you could argue based on how well they perform similar tasks. You could do a benchmark test that way, but they both have such a unique user interface to to their own experience that um, I think it does come down to a matter of personal tastes. Also, if you're a video gamer or not because you're a gamer, it's still a PC world. There are a lot of great games out there for the Mac, but it's just a subset really of some of the games that you'll find for

the PC. Well, uh snow Leopard does include support for boot camp, or rather to allow you to boot into Windows, or for that matter, of Linux. UM, so you know you can install Windows alongside you are a Mac OS ten. Yeah, especially it's yeah, you can. You can boot into Windows instead of the mac os on your Mac and then run various uh Windows oriented software. Earlier, earlier, I misspoke a little it, I think, UM, when I said rather boldly that I know for a fact that binary applications

are slower to run. UM. That's not necessarily true. Well, some of them are, UM, but the chances are uh, chances are pretty good that they're going to run about the same on UM power PC and Intel chips. However, the programs themselves are going to be bigger because they have more code in them, essentially, you know, because they have to have code that takes advantage of either processor. UM. And you know, some of the files they create may or may not be a little larger as a result.

But uh, suffice it to say that a program written for just one processor type of processor is going to be more efficient. Uh, you know, it'll be smaller, it'll be uh, you know, lets there's less code in there, sort of like less moving parts. The chances are are good that it's going to be make your computer more efficient on the on the long run, and I think that's uh the benefit there. But yeah, I probably shouldn't have said that. They all forever and ever are larger.

But it's a good point for technology, just in technology

in general. As technology advances and we and we move into more advanced forms of processors, like you go from thirty two bit to sixty four bit to bit, and the every person, every person, every company, organization or developer has to face a question, which is do I develop this application or this operating system even that so that it will work on multiple kinds of processors, or do I just make the choice to abandon the older processors and say, if you're not running this kind of machine,

this this application is off limits to you. Um. It's a tough choice to make, because you know, you limit your audience if you decide to to cut out a portion of the customer base that happens to be running older machines. On the other hand, it makes the development process much easier and it also keeps your code to a more manageable level. The more you have to support

various kinds of of hardware, whether it's different processors or whatever. Uh, the harder and more complex, your development process is going to be just in general rule of thumb, yeah, it makes sense. I even saying that, I think most people would be like, well yeah, but I mean it's worth saying yeah, yeah, and it's um, I think to uh, thinking back on it, I've seen you know, we need to wrap up, but uh, it's um. I've seen generally

positive reviews, especially once the the initial dust up over. Well, hey, this thing doesn't work with snow Leppard past, you know, once they had some some incremental releases. I know I've had a smoother experience in the last few months, and I did when I first switched over, because I did have a couple of applications that needed to be updated so that they would work properly. Um. But you know,

people don't really talk about snow Leppard. That's one of the downsides of having this very you know, in general positive uh incremental release. But you know, Windows seven has generated a lot of buzz, rapidly shot up to ten percent of the market share, and snow Leopard there's just not a lot to generate buzz around. Well, it's also just that the user base for max Is is smaller

that it's not that they are any less passionate. In fact, I would argue that that real Mac fans tend to be some of the most passionate UH electronics consumers out there. But um, but there aren't as many of them. So I think that's part of it. Um, Like you said, Uh, part of it was also that it wasn't a huge leap forward, although it was a lot of improvements. But everything I've seen has essentially said it's worth the thirty bucks. Yeah it is. It's a you know, it's a it's

a good release, a's stable. It's if you're considering upgrading and your computer is capable of it at this point, Um, you know, it's an affordable upgrade and won't get you ready for the sorry if the Apple pun next step? All right, we're gonna wrap this up now actually because of that pun, and also because we are reaching the amount of time we spent on Window seven, and this

way we can avoid accusations of favoritism. Okay, So if you want to write us any comments or questions, or you just want to yell at me because I don't know enough about Apple, uh, send that email tech stuff at how stuff works dot com. I read every single one of them, and yes, you do hurt my feelings when you call me names. If you would like, check out our blogs. They are very informative. We have a live show every Tuesday one pm Eastern and go to

the website how stupp works dot com. Check it out. Take some of the quizzes. There are actually a lot of fun. I've been doing them recently. I got tin out of the tin on the kissing quiz. Okay, I'm not going in here. Well, I wasn't asking you to at any rate. You guys take care and uh that's for all of you out there. We'll talk to you again soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works doot um and be sure to check out the new tech stuff blog now on

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