SnowLeopard
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Join us at 9PM EDT for a TUAW liveblog -- Snow Leopard's first day
By now, if you've been lucky enough to have picked up a copy of Snow Leopard, you've installed it and are beginning to see what the buzz was all about. TUAW would like to invite you to join us a 9 PM EDT for a liveblog about Snow Leopard's first day of life. Did you run into issues? Were all of your installs flawless? We'd like to hear, and so would many other TUAW readers. We'll talk to you soon! <a href="http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=23e45f52d3" >TUAW - Snow Leopard Live!</a>
Win a copy of Snow Leopard from TUAW
Hey, we couldn't very well cover Snow Leopard and not spring for the $29 to give one of you good people a copy, right? As usual, the deal is, you leave a comment, make sure it appears, you are entered. In a few days we'll run the random selection and boom! One of you will get a shiny new copy of OS X version 10.6 to call your own. While you wait, may I suggest our page of comprehensive Snow Leopard coverage? Just tell us the first version of OS X you started using in the comments. It'll be fun. If you started using Apple computers before OS X, that's cool too, but did you use the 10.0 beta? Chime in and (maybe) win! Full rules below. Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia. To enter leave a comment below telling us what version of OS X you first used. The comment must be left before August 31, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. One winner will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: One copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Upgrade (Value: US$29.00) Click Here for complete Official Rules
A roundup of Snow Leopard-related software announcements
As our readers and staff are out buying copies of Mac OS X Snow Leopard today, we thought we'd also start rounding up news about software updates related to the OS update.We're getting a lot of emails today with news about Snow Leopard compatibility updates for applications, so we'll be listing the updates in this post. Be sure to check back from time to time today, as we'll be changing this post frequently. If you're using the new and free TUAW iPhone App [App Store link] to read this, be sure to tap the icon in the upper right corner of the screen to view the entire post.
Two new Snow Leopard titles from Take Control Books -- and a giveaway
Do you have a few hours to kill while you're waiting in line at the Apple Store for your Snow Leopard upgrade? Take Control Books has just the thing to help fill your time and your mind! Two new Snow Leopard titles have been released today in both ebook and print format. The first, "Take Control of Upgrading to Snow Leopard" is author Joe Kissell's take on how to perform a flawless upgrade to Mac OS X 10.6. Kissell, a long-time contributor to TidBITS and Macworld, did many installations of Snow Leopard beta versions to create a process you can follow to insure a flawless upgrade. He describes how to make a bootable duplicate of your existing machine in case the upgrade doesn't work out as planned, and has tips and tricks for optimizing Snow Leopard or troubleshooting issues after the install. This 81-page ebook is available today for US$10 from Take Control Books, or you can order a printed copy for US$19.99.
Snow Leopard: The price is right!
After years of being thrown table scraps in the way of a few bucks off the price of Windows for the "upgrade" versions, I happily paid the $49 for my Family Pack of Snow Leopard earlier this week. Sure, there are a few people that say things like "Why should I have to pay Apple to fix the mistakes they made in Leopard?" On some level, that might be a valid argument, but let's set that aside because there's a better point to be made. The handful of new features in Snow Leopard are well worth the price Apple is asking. Included are most of the QuickTime Pro features, text substitution, more expansive Spotlight integration, Expose in the Dock (sounds like a band name... hehe), and a host of other little improvements. Some of these can be added today via third-party apps, but those apps (*gasp*) cost money. Bundle all of those up, and $30 for the whole slew of apps would be a sweet deal in and of itself. I know I would spend half that just to get the new slider in Finder windows that changes the size of thumbnail previews! Heck, the reported speed improvements make the shipped price of $29 per machine price (which, remember, drops to below $10 with a Family Pack) a bargain. Even if the overall increase turns out to be low, say 5% or so, the price of the OS upgrade turns out to be a good deal. Where else are you going to spend so little money for such a similar boost in speed and snappiness? And remember, that $49 lets me upgrade five Macs, not just the one PC I can update to Windows 7 for over two and half times the price! (Microsoft is asking $129 for the Windows Home Premium Upgrade.) A friend of mine was excited to find out that he only needed to spend $150 to upgrade his three Vista machines to Windows 7, using Microsoft's family pack. I understand his enthusiasm: I'd gladly pay $150 to get rid of Vista, too! Seriously, Apple did a very smart thing when it priced Snow Leopard below the cost of a typical family visit to the movies. If it would have asked the normal going rate of $129, I would probably have still upgraded, but I, along with millions of other users, would not have been happy about it. Keeping the iPhone 3G around at $99, lowering the prices on new Macs, and now the awesome deal on Snow Leopard... I think Apple may, just may, be "getting it" when it comes to pricing lately.
Several ways to get Snow Leopard for free (plus a Freeway Express giveaway)
Softpress, developer of the popular Freeway Pro and Freeway Express web development applications, wants you to get Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard for free. Now through September 30, 2009, they're offering a free copy of Snow Leopard with every full-priced retail copy of Freeway Pro or Express purchased at the Apple Store, PowerMax, or The Mac Store. If you buy your copy of Freeway at the Apple Store (either the physical or online version), just fill out this online rebate form [link to form] by October 31, 2009 and Softpress will send you Snow Leopard for free. Purchases made through PowerMax or The Mac Store also qualify for the free Snow Leopard disk. For anyone who has been considering purchasing Freeway Pro or Freeway Express, this is a nice incentive to act now. PowerMax sells Freeway Pro for US$215.22 (MSRP US$249.00), so you're not only getting the application for almost US$35 off of the retail price, but also saving an additional US$29 on Snow Leopard. Softpress isn't the only company that wants you to upgrade to Snow Leopard for free. MyService will install a free retail copy of Snow Leopard with any MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air hard drive upgrade. You simply enter a special promo code when ordering your upgrade, and MyService installs Snow Leopard for free, migrates all of your data to the new drive, and sends you the retail copy. Softpress has graciously offered us two licenses for Freeway Express to give away. These licenses do not come with the free Snow Leopard deal, but with the money you save you'll be able to afford to purchase your own copy. Just leave a comment about Snow Leopard, the universe, or anything else (keep it clean...) to enter. Good luck! Here's the obligatory rules review to keep our lawyers happy: Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia, and to legal residents of Canada (excluding Quebec), who are 18 and older. To enter leave a comment below listing your favorite freeway, parkway or other stretch of road. The comment must be left before August 28, 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time. You may enter only once. Two winners will be selected in a random drawing. Prize: License code for one copy of Freeway Express (Value: US$79.00) Click Here for complete Official Rules. Be sure to keep reading TUAW during the Snow Leopard launch, as we're also planning on giving away some more goodies. You may already be a winner!
Snow Leopard performance improvements are there, but small
Snow Leopard is purported to provide many small but much-needed tweaks to its predecessor, Leopard. One oft-touted tweak is a speed boost, but according to tests by Macworld the performance and speed of a few different computers improved only slightly with many native tasks, and some took even longer. Macworld installed Leopard and Snow Leopard on even-sized partitions on the drives of three different configurations: a 20-inch 2.66GHz iMac Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM, a 3GHz Xeon 5300 eight-core Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM from April 2007, and a 15-inch 2.8GHz MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo with 4GB of RAM. They charted simple tasks like start up, shut down, PDF scrolling, and more complicated ones like iMovie import/export and Photoshop CS4 filters. You can see the final results here. The chart is a bit confusing about the actual speed improvement, and it is important to note that a mark of 100% on the chart indicates that the task performed was the same on both operating systems; likewise, a mark of 103% means it the task was 3% faster with Snow Leopard, and so on. The improvements were small on most fronts, and the only significantly improved tasks were shut down, JavaScript, and Time Machine. The MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard inexplicably saw a huge improvement of 42% over Leopard when it imported movies into iMovie, while the the other two computers barely budged. A few of the benchmarks were even slower with Snow Leopard, such as waking the computer up and opening duplicate Finder windows. While the tested computers only represent a small part of the spectrum, it appears that now Leopard's speed improvements for native applications are there, but not mind-blowing.
Getting ready for Snow Leopard: Think about your applications
Ahhhh, there's nothing quite like the feeling of knowing that tomorrow I will be spending much of the day upgrading the Macs in my house to Snow Leopard. I received an email from Apple this morning telling me that Snow Leopard had shipped, so now I just need to be available to sign for the package tomorrow. Regardless of how many Mac OS upgrades I've done over the years, there are always one or two drivers, application enhancers, or full applications that just don't run properly on the newly installed OS. With Snow Leopard, these situations should be rare as many developers have already done compatibility checking and worked out the bugs. Before you slip that Snow Leopard DVD into your Mac tomorrow and start doing the upgrade, there are a few things you may want to consider.
The $29 Snow Leopard upgrade: usable for 10.4 Intel Macs as well?
Walt Mossberg has answered a Snow Leopard upgrade question that has been on just about everyone's mind. Do you need the full $169 box set if you are upgrading from Tiger? The answer is apparently no, not exactly, although that is what's required by Apple's EULA. You will be able to install the $29 individual upgrade or $49 family upgrade on any Intel Mac regardless of whether it's already running Leopard. According to Uncle Walt, as posted on the All Things Digital site: "Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140." What's not 100% clear from this report is whether the Snow Leopard install would work as an upgrade, or only as a clean install (on a newly formatted drive), as Lifehacker suggests. Since some experienced Mac users prefer to do a clean install with every major OS upgrade -- either reinstalling apps and files from backup, or using Migration Assistant to pull over from the old configuration -- this may not be a drawback for everyone. Wired's preview of Snow Leopard (based on a pre-release version of the OS) suggests that they were able to do an upgrade install from 10.4 straight to 10.6 using the conventional SL disc, but your mileage may vary. So there you have it. If you have Leopard running on your Intel machine, you will be fine with the $29 single or $49 family versions on sale Friday morning. If you're willing to wipe down your Tiger install and start fresh, the $29 installer will probably work for you too -- but you'll be in violation of Apple's licensing agreement, making you an OS pirate. Just so you know.
Getting Ready for Snow Leopard: Installation Options, Backups, and What To Buy
We're mere hours away from Snow Leopard's arrival tomorrow. As an upgrade for Leopard users, there have been many questions about how it can be installed. How will Apple enforce this "Leopard users only" requirement? Will they ask you to insert your Leopard DVD, or just check for a Leopard installation on your current hard drive? [There's a hint from Walt Mossberg that this Leopard requirement may be a little bit lax.] Users who have installed beta versions report that they have been able to do an "Erase and Install" of Snow Leopard, meaning that you can erase your old installation of Mac OS X if you wish to start "fresh" with Snow Leopard. The biggest question is this: what happens in, say, six months, when you decide that you'd like to reinstall Snow Leopard, or install it onto a newly formatted drive? Will you have to install Leopard and then install Snow Leopard over it? We certainly hope not, and have heard some reports that suggest you won't have to do this, but nothing will be official until we can test Snow Leopard for ourselves. What are your installation options? The cheapest is obviously the $29.00 upgrade version, but there's also the $49 "Family Pack" for the multi-Mac homes. There is also the Mac Box Set which was recently introduced. If you want to upgrade from Tiger <del>(or earlier)</del> to Snow Leopard, this is your "official" upgrade path. For $169 you get 10.6, iLife '09, and iWork '09. This is also the best option if you want to absolutely guarantee that you can install Snow Leopard on a new drive without Leopard already installed. Several users I spoke with this week indicated they either have othered the Mac Box Set or plan to do so to make sure they have a "full install" Snow Leopard DVD. It's a great deal considering the "sticker price" of each, plus it's only $40 more than what Leopard originally cost. Correction: Ryan Trevisol correctly points out in the comments that all Intel Macs shipped with Tiger, so there is no "or earlier" regarding Snow Leopard upgrading.
Ask TUAW: Syncing notes, iLife '09, iTunes downloads, keychains and more
Welcome back to Ask TUAW, our weekly Mac troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we've got questions about syncing notes, iLife '09, iTunes downloads, the importance of keychains and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Questions for next week should be left in the comments. When asking a question please include which machine you're running and which version of Mac OS X (we'll assume you're running Leopard on an Intel Mac if you don't specify). And now, on to the questions.Scott asksWhen I sync my iphone (3.0.1) with my Mac (10.5.8) and have "sync notes" checked in iTunes, I cannot find my notes synced anywhere in Mail.app - including under "Notes"...what am I missing?To sync 'Notes' first make sure you have your iPhone connected to your Mac with iTunes open. Then, be sure to have "sync notes" checked in iTunes. Also, be sure to check "Sync Notes" in the MobleMe Sync options in System Preferences. Then, sync your iPhone as normal. After that, check in Apple's Mail program under "Reminders" to see if the notes appear. You need to click on the little triangle to show the contents of Reminders. If they don't appear, close Mail and open it again. Also, restart your iPhone completely before trying another sync. Also, keep in mind Notes sync works only via USB and not over the air. If you are not seeing notes appear, be sure you sync your iPhone via USB with your Mac or they won't appear at all. If the notes still don't appear in Apple Mail, it might be time to give a call to Apple tech support because at that point the problem may be something larger than the scope of what this column can answer.Evan asksI bought a new MacBook Pro last month, which came installed with Leopard and iLife '09. My purchase was within Apple's "Up-to-Date" program timeline, so I was able to order a copy of Snow Leopard for $9.95. I know Snow Leopard doesn't come with iLife '09 but considering my new computer already comes with iLife '09, I'm not going to have to re-buy iLife, am I?
Snow Leopard review
Snow Leopard. Even the name seems to underpromise -- it's the first "big cat" OS X codename to reference the previous version of the OS, and the list of big-ticket new features is seemingly pretty short for a version-number jump. Maybe that's why Apple's priced the 10.6 upgrade disc at just $29 -- appearances and expectations matter, and there's simply not enough glitz on this kitty to warrant the usual $129. But underneath the customary OS X fit and finish there's a lot of new plumbing at work here. The entire OS is now 64-bit, meaning apps can address massive amounts of RAM and other tasks go much faster. The Finder has been entirely re-written in Cocoa, which Mac fans have been clamoring for since 10.0. There's a new version of QuickTime, which affects media playback on almost every level of the system. And on top of all that, there's now Exchange support in Mail, iCal, and Address Book, making OS X finally play nice with corporate networks out of the box. So you won't notice much new when you first restart into 10.6 -- apart from some minor visual tweaks here and there there's just not that much that stands out. But in a way that means the pressure's on even more: Apple took the unusual and somewhat daring step of slowing feature creep in a major OS to focus on speed, reliability, and stability, and if Snow Leopard doesn't deliver on those fronts, it's not worth $30... it's not worth anything. So did Apple pull it off? Read on to find out!
Entelligence: Will Snow Leopard's Exchange support earn Apple a new entourage?
Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Apple, Microsoft and the Mac have an interesting history: Microsoft was among the first developers for Macintosh, yet not long after, Apple would sue Microsoft for copying the look and feel of Mac OS in Windows. By the late 90s, Microsoft made a huge splash at Macworld with an announced 150 million dollar investment in Apple and promises of further development of Office and Internet Explorer for Macintosh. Office in particular was a major issue as it was a key requirement for business users. Early on, Office applications for Mac were far more advanced than their Windows counterparts. Excel was actually introduced for Mac users before Windows users could get their hands on it. But by the mid 90s, all that changed, the Mac versions of Office lagged behind Windows in terms of features and performance. It took forever to get things such as a common set of file formats, so that users of Office on the two different platforms could exchange documents with ease (it seems like something we take for granted but having managed and supported PC and Mac users in mixed shops, it was a nightmare to deal with). The latest version of Office for Mac, Office 2008 showed that Microsoft could produce top quality Macintosh software. I personally, think Office 2008 for Mac is the best version of the software that Microsoft has ever done (far better than Office 2007 for Windows, as it preserved the core part of the Mac UI while co-existing nicely with the ribbon UI). Obviously, however, a situation with such broad inconsistency is untenable.
Malware detection coming in Snow Leopard?
We usually look at news updates and blog posts from antivirus vendor Intego with a bit of a gimlet eye, since the company has been known to spread a little bit of that good old FUD when it comes to the everyday risk of malware faced by most Mac users (that is to say, pretty much none). Today, however, the Intego blog pointed out an unheralded feature of the forthcoming Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard update: some basic malware checking built into the operating system, reported by users of the beta version. As the post notes (and sites such as The Register and ZDnet corroborate), when a problematic DMG is downloaded or mounted -- containing one of two known malware components -- the Finder throws the alert pictured above, warning the user not to install the software in question and to throw away the disk image. While this is a nice touch for the two security risks in question, The Register notes that the filter appears to only catch files downloaded through some of the more common apps (Mail.app, Entourage, Safari, Firefox and iChat among them) but not files copied over from removable media. It doesn't cover the wider gamut of threats out there, nor would it detect or block Windows malware that a Mac user could unwittingly transmit; for all of those scenarios, a true AV app (paid or free) is what the doctor ordered. You can keep up with all the latest Snow Leopard news via our category page.
Snow Leopard packing antivirus software?
If the online chatter is to be believed, Apple's very soon to be released Snow Leopard has in its code new protection for fighting malware. According to the picture above corroborated by other online reports, a DMG downloaded by Safari was checked by the OS and found to contain the "RSPlug.A" Trojan. The system promptly suggests you eject the disk image to avoid damage. Should Apple really be treading down this path, it begs the question of how often and how comprehensive / aggressive the company will be updating its antivirus logs. If nothing else, it's a certainly a notable symbolic gesture that the one-time underdog might be gaining enough market share to catch the attention of the darker side of the internet -- and all of a sudden, David Puddy isn't looking nearly as bad. [Thanks, David]
Snow Leopard takes a bite out of support for legacy Palm OS devices
Still rocking that Palm Zire with your new Intel-based Mac? Then you might just want to reconsider that upgrade to Snow Leopard, as Apple has apparently decided to ditch its support for legacy Palm OS devices in the latest incarnation of iSync. That, as you may be aware, had previously acted as a conduit for Palm's aging but still available Palm Desktop software, and let folks easily sync up their contacts and other data from their Centro, Treo, Zire, Tungsten, or even a venerable old PalmPilot. Of course, that doesn't quite rise to the same level of controversy as the whole Pre / iTunes situation, especially considering that Palm itself has mostly moved on from said devices, and there are still some third-party sync solutions available for folks that want to keep the Palm OS dream alive.
What Snow Leopard feature are you anticipating the most?
Now that we have the actual ship date for Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (August 28th for those who haven't yet had a cup of coffee to wake them up), it's time to start thinking about what benefits you can gain from the newest member of Apple's cat family.Apple has told us from the start that Snow Leopard is predominantly about streamlining both the size and speed of the operating system. Installing Snow Leopard should take about half the time of performing a Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard install, and it's expected that you'll gain about 7 GB of space back on your hard disk.Snow Leopard is also bringing some new features to the table, including 64-bit support, Grand Central Dispatch's multicore support, and OpenCL, all of which can provide better performance for applications. There are amazing improvements to the Mac OS X Universal Access features, particularly for the vision-impaired. For those who use their Macs in a predominantly Windows office environment, the full built-in support for Exchange should make life much simpler. TUAW would like to know what Snow Leopard feature you're anticipating the most, so we've come up with a short list for you to choose from in a poll. We'll use these results to provide you with detailed coverage about those features. If your favorite improvement or feature isn't on the list, leave a comment and tell us what you're excited about.%Poll-33656%
Snow Leopard set for release on August 28th
Amid the leaks and speculation, the online Apple Store went down this morning, only to return with Snow Leopard release information -- August 28th. It also turns out that the box photo that was leaked last weekend was legit, showing the Snow Leopard on the front. The pricing remains at $29US for a single user upgrade, or $49 for a Family Pack upgrade. You can only install the upgrade edition if you're using Leopard. If you're not, you'll need to buy the Mac Box Set, available for $169 for a single user or $229 for a Family Pack.Before you install, check out our upgrade guide. Also, note that If you purchased a qualifying Mac on or after June 8, 2009, that does not include Mac OS X Snow Leopard, you can upgrade for $9.95.Thanks to everyone who sent this in!
Snow Leopard shipping August 28th for $29, order now
Well, it's not September, but we're not going to hold an early launch of its performance-focused Snow Leopard OS against Apple. The Apple store has come back online bearing an order page for OS X version 10.6 in Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Pro... oh wait, it's just $29 as an upgrade from 10.5. August 28th, that's when, now go 'n get it.While you wait for that order to ship, Apple wants you to know that Snow Leopard's Finder is more responsive, Mail loads messages twice as fast, Time Machine will complete initial backups 80 percent faster, and a 64-bit version of Safari 4 is 50 percent faster than its predecessors. There's even QuickTime X with a redesigned player that lets users view, record, trim and share video. Of course, this release also includes Grand Central Dispatch, a new way for devs to take advantage of multi-core processors as well as OpenCL support to accelerate apps with the help of that idling graphics processor. Oh, and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange too. All in all, a worthy update, especially for the price.P.S. Requires Intel-based Mac.
Apple stores down globally: Snow Leopard possible
Unless you're crazy enough to believe that Apple would announce its tablet computer or iPods with cameras without a press conference, you shouldn't expect anything too big when Apple's online store (down globally) comes back up later today. Odds-on favorite would be a page for Snow Leopard orders when Apple comes back up at the usual 830 time slot ET. That would give the elves in Cupertino plenty of time to ship discs by August 28th. Then again, it could just be maintenance -- it's not Tuesday for crissake.
