We haven't seen too many
Snow Leopard screenshots leak out, but it looks like a few more have finally surfaced, and they seem to show some interesting -- if minor -- interface enhancements. Most notably, Stacks now allows nested browsing, so if you click on a folder in the stack view, the old stack drops back and you can navigate the folder contents -- the old way just opened a Finder window. Other improvements include a Put Back menu item for accidentally-trashed items, a redesigned Keyboard Shortcuts prefpane that might encourage people to actually use it, and what looks like a welcome new installer option to only install printer drivers for printers that have been used with your machine. That alone should cut down on Snow Leopard's install size -- now if Apple would just figure out that we don't need 200 language packs by default, we'd be really getting somewhere. All the images in the gallery, and video of the new Stacks behavior after the break.
Update: Flickr user
Stellarolla pinged us to share one more shot showing some preset HDTV modes, check it after the break!
[Via
AppleInsider]
posted February 25th 2009 5:55PM
Agreed, doesn't look anywhere near as slick as Windows 7's implementation of Aero.
Apple used the brushed metal look interface up till OS Tiger, then transitioned into the matte metal look when Leopard came out around October, 2007.
OS X's interface is handled by Quartz, the graphics compositing engine that was introduced with the debut of OS X in 2001. It creates the user interface, including on-the-fly rendering and anti-aliasing and can render text with sub-pixel precision. MS finally caught up in 2007 with Aero. Unfortunately, Aero is a resource hog and weak PCs are unable to run it and is nowhere as capable or efficient as Quartz.
Aero isn't a resource hog you troll.
There is one screenshot where configuring Exchange Server also handles iCal and Address Book to support Exchange Server. That is the one crucial function for me and will gladly upgrade to Snow Leopard when it becomes available.
See, I'm temporarily not using an Exchange Server for mail, and am for the first time trying to use the Mail.app (I was using Entourage before, and have only been in my PC/Mac switch for about a year). I"m still not impressed with Mail app, and prefer Entourage. I'm still trying to give it a few more months (as I try to drink the Apple kool-aid), and Growl and other things have improved the experience, but I'm still not impressed.
(And thus if I was using an Exchange Server right now, I'd be switching back to Entourage)
I have to admit the grey 3d bar under the stack look quite fugly 2006.
Time to make something new Apple!
Having skip Vista, Win 7 will be my new OS when its out no doubt. (even on my mac!)
Hmm, if they're going to charge for this at least add some more improvements. Windows builds over Vista and people call it a Service Pack.
Well wtf is this? They barely changed sht, this is a SERVICE PACK that you have to pay for lmao.
Just saying.
Well, you see, all the changes are happening under the hood, in OS X's architecture, frameworks, streamlining processes, etc etc. There will be very little that we'll be able to see in pictures, videos.
What technological enhancements/innovations will W7 bring?
@Fox - you are kidding me right? Even if you haven't used it i am sure you have heard of the countless enhancements - right?
Come on...
What's with all the haters and misinformation?
First off, I don't see much this far between Leopard and Snow Leopard. That's a little dissapointing.
But here's the real deal. Snow Leopard is a true next generation OS. It's to offer GPU acceleration which the current version doesn't. It fixes the current RAM limits which The Mac Pro is close to bumping in to. There are plenty of other features I don't not recall at the moment. But everything under the hood is getting redesigned. Isn't SL going to a much more secure file system format? Isn't the OS going to be threaded too? This new OS is finally going to put these extra cores, GPU's and mounds of RAM to good use.
Sure, right now it sounds like Snow Leopard is a complete redo of the current OS. But how is that any different then W7 replacing Vista? And I don't see M$ charging as little as $129 for even the bottom of the line version of W7.
I can't wait for SL. It should finally get my Mac Pro screaming.
So what you're saying is that it might actually catch up with Vista's capabilities (not to mention Win 7's) in terms of hardware usage and (im guessing here) all the while joining with the Vista haters, having not used it or tried to understand its usefulness?
:sigh:
I swear they need to start "AA" groups for Apple marketing Addicts......
Sorry phenoum,
Neither vista nor windows 7 have the ability to utilize multi-cores as well as snow leopard will nor can they utilize the video card for extra processing power in non graphic intensive tasks. The one thing that windows has had over mac was a 64 bit kernel. OSX has supported 64 bit applications for quite some time, but the kernel is only being changed over now. This was done to avoid all the driver issues that x64 windows operating systems have faced.
For mac users, the upgrade is only worth it if you have a (intel) 64 bit multicore processor, and a video card. As I only have a core duo cpu (32 bit) in my laptop, this upgrade is of little value to me.
The video looks like it's showing stacks being really fluid and snappy. The nested stacks feature is all nice and fine but the major underlining advancement in this is how all those under-the-hood enhancements are benefiting the Mac --even something as little as using stacks is looking solid.
@ Phenoum
I took it upon myself to do what you couldn't. I put down my porn for 10 minutes this morning and did a little research. And what do you know....
According to four sources I found, W7 is going to be the first OS with threaded capabilities. I even read a few comments from PC users that say XP does a better job with multi-core processors than Vista does. I didn't find a lick of information that said Vista or W7 was going to use GPU's for non-graphics acceleration. I only found the mention of putting in support for the daisy chaining of video cards for graphics acceleration in W7. That feature is of no use to Mac users. Not because we don't game but because Macs use Intel chipsets. And we all know how Intel put a stop to that using their chipsets.
Before you start accusing people of being Apple sympathizers, gather a little information before you start guessing.
@ Bryan
Fair enough.....
I still want a option to log the other user out while I do a quick user switch and an option to make certain folders invisible and visible (like XP where you could see invisible files, but only if you want to.
Oh god! I had a horrible flashback when I saw that green thing on the dock. I thought it looked like Tinkle for a second. I about freaked! Why did Nintendo have to add him to Zelda?
I totally upranked you for not engaging yourself in this silly Mac vs. PC battle in just about every other comment on this post.
Those "200 language packs" are there as a retail selling point. I have a Mac mini and love it -- so don't get me wrong here -- but I can't tell you how many Apple Retail employees "you'll love a Mac" speeches I've ruined:
"And look, on a Mac, you can switch from English to any other language, instantly! Windows can't do that!"
"Awesome. Now when am I going to want to compute in my non-native language?"
"... -__-;;"
Seems like many of you guys are confused at seeing these Snow Leopard screenshots + video and not seeing much of a difference with Leopard. Rightly so. Here is why.
Ever since it announced over a year ago, Apple has said that Snow Leopard will deliver technology enhancements throughout OS X's architectural foundations without focusing on the customer-facing marketing features that typically sell a new operating system.
"Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality."
http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/
Here are a few of Snow Leopard's system enhancements:
1) Full 64-bit Snow Leopad down to the Kernel while still maintaining 100% compatibility with 32-bit apps (no special 32-bit mode) by spawning 64-bit background processes. Single version of OS X instead of 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Apple will be supplying the majority of kernel-level drivers for Snow Leopard.
2) Skips TLB (translation lookaside buffer) problem in Windows. Snow Leopard's 64-bit kernel won't have to share any address space, even when running 32-bit apps. Apps occupy high address spaces while the kernel uses its own low addresses without any shared address overlapping. With 64-bit apps, Leopard offers better performance with virtually unlimited addressing.
3) Full transition into 64-bit platform. All Apple's Macs are now 64-bit and have been since 2007. There is no 32-bit Leopard and Snow Leopard will complete the transition from the software side and will bring the entire application install base environment to 64-bit with it.
4) Move to Cocoa 64-bit framewok. Apple can now devote its resources into a single set of APIs for developing graphical apps. Apps can make use of standardized interface controls rather than building their own, thus reducing bugs and increasing optimization. Apple can address user interface problems that in turn impact all apps.
5) OpenCL: The cross platform API Apple developed for Snow Leopard to create a vendor neutral, open specification for parallel programming across any compliant GPU. OpenCL is designed to allow developers to spin processor intensive tasks to the often idle GPU to take advantage of all that latent processing power. Additionally, OpenCL works with Snow Leopard's Grand Central scheduling technology to support multiple core architectures to do as much as possible in parallel across both the CPU and any available GPUs.
6) Snow Leopard’s new Grand Central Dispatch is used to aggressively and efficiently schedule processes across all available processor cores in parallel.
7) Full support for Sun's 128-bit ZFS file system: This FS goes well beyond the capabilities of NTFS enabling mainstream Mac users to start taking advantage of its storage pooling, data redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and snapshot features.http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/whatis/
8) Snow Leopard to replace GNU C compiler with the open source LLVM compiler. This will result in major new code optimizations, but the explicit optimizations for parallel execution it supports will also help Snow Leopard apps take full advantage of Grand Central dispatching across multiple cores.
And a whole bunch more such as migration to open source Dovecot for email services, switch to Open LDAP 2.4.11, SproutCore javascript framework, etc, etc, etc.
There are a few minor visual enhancements coming as the video above shows but by far, the changes like the ones I listed, will happen under the hood. That's stuff you can't photograph nor video record.
Still no Cut function for files! WTF
I think there are bigger fish to fry for the time being.
Btw, what technological enhancements/innovations will W7 bring?
Just the devil is in the details :) I expect Apple to add some little functionalities
And W7 have to bring stability in first place, and then everything else.
Imma go dual boot to Win 3.11
Looks like an Alt+Tab ripoff.
Boooo
As much as pre-release screenshots are exciting, given the brief for the new OS, when are we going to see some benchmarks? I am honestly not interested in screenshots when the whole objective for the next version of the OS is supposed to be speed, stability and security. As best as I can tell none of these objectives have been measured and therefore we have no idea whether the OS is achieving what it is supposed to do. The only interesting bit of these screenshots is further evidence of Exchange connectivity but nothing beyond the fact that it is an option - we have no idea how well it works yet.
well, check out my post above too (the big one). Apple is upgrading a boatload of new technologies.
But you're right too, it'll be interesting to see benchmarks.
Monolingual gets rid of any unwanted languages.
Shaved 1.6GB off a clean install of Leopard for me.
So removing 3GB of printer driver bloat as well as the 1.6GB language files sure add up.
Not to mention that native applications are weighing far less compared to Leopard.
kccboy2004, get real.
Not only do you fail at math, but your logic is stupid.
There is no reason to not want a company to maintain and update their software on a regular basis. It's not unusual of Apple to update the OS every two years. It's actually quite typical of software. Nobody is making people upgrade. But it gives the new hardware something better to use.
And $1,000 for all the OS X upgrades to date? Please. There have only been 4 releases upgrades to date since it launch ~8 years ago that you've had to pay for (10.1 was free).
4 x $129 = $516 (but hey, that's *almost* $1K)
And good luck finding many people running the current OS, without having skipped a version on a machine from 8 years ago.
Oh, and good luck with your $115 OEM copy (that's pretty cheap, even for OEM) that will require reactivation when you upgrade your RAM. I'll enjoy my single copy of Snow Leopard for $129 that will upgrade all 3 of my macs without a serial number.
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All this bitching back and forth about iPhone vs Pre isn't going to go anywhere. I think the reality is that, assuming the Pre becomes a success, the iPhone will not lose at all. It is WinMo who will suffer the most and go down in lame flames. If I was going to rank all the large mobile platforms, WinMo would come last.
And so we are witnessing the emergence of the next OS battles, now shifted to the world of handsets. When Web OS and Symbian jumps in the fray the competition cauldron is going to get ubber hot. MS has proved time and again that they can't compete so they are the most likely to get screwed in this rat race. In no particular order:
Nokia: Symbian
Apple: iPhone OS X
Palm: Web OS
Google: Android
MS: WinMo 6.5? WinMo 7?
There are more OSs like that Open Moco thing, but who cares about them.
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