MAC OS X Snow Leopard 10

8/8/2019 MAC OS X Snow Leopard 10

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MAC OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.2

[SSE2-SSE3] FOR INTEL-AMD

Installation

Installation of Snow Leopard is dead simple and (according to Apple) up to 45 percentfaster than Leopard using a newly designed installer that asks only one question during theprocess. On our test machine, the process took about an hour, including two automaticrestarts. The default setting installs Snow Leopard without tampering with any of yoursaved files, music, photos, or documents. Mostly we had no problems, but on one testmachine we needed to reinstall the OS when it had trouble rebooting. Fortunately the newinstaller is designed for safely reinstalling the OS in the event you encounter any hiccupsduring your initial installation. On our second try, the OS installed perfectly on our testmachine and no files were harmed. PowerPC Macs are no longer supported with SnowLeopard, however; you will need an Intel-based Mac to install the latest Mac OS.

Those who want to do a "Clean Install" (starting fresh by deleting everything for minimalconflicts) still can, but unlike installations in previous versions of previous Mac OS X thatoffered the clean install as a primary option, you'll need to use Disk Utility to first erase thevolume, then run the install. Apple explained to us that not everyone knows what a cleaninstall is and often chose it, not knowing that they would lose their files. We're happy withthat answer, as long as people still get the option in some form.

Apple also claims that Snow Leopard uses 7GB less space than Leopard because of betterfile compression paired with selective driver inclusion. According to Apple, Snow Leopardwill locate any missing drivers on the Web for you. We had no need of any special driversduring our tests.

New technologiesApple says a few new technologies in Snow Leopard make it worthy of the upgrade alone,with several features that Apple says will boost performance. Because all new Macs comewith 64-bit multicore processors, multiple GBs of RAM, and high-powered graphicsprocessing units, all the major applications in Snow Leopard--including the Finder--havebeen rewritten in 64-bit to take full advantage of the hardware. (The 64-bit technologyallows application developers to allocate more memory to complete tasks so that the


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software runs faster and more smoothly.)

Apple has also added what it calls the Grand Central Dispatch that manages data sent tomulticore processors in an effort to maximize performance; Apple says the GCD will speedup any application task, from processing images in Photoshop to playing your favoritegames. The addition of the GCD also takes away the need for software developers to spendas much time managing multicore processors.

Another new technology in Snow Leopard is OpenCL, which allows software developers totap into the power of any onboard video cards (or GPUs, for graphics processing units) forgeneral-purpose computing without the addition of enormous amounts of code. Like theGCD, these are improvements that will mainly affect software developers. But hopefully itwill mean more and better-performing software for users in the future.

To put some of these claims to the test, we decided to pit Mac OS X 10.5.8 Leopard againstMac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to see how these new technologies affected overallperformance.

In our anecdotal tests of performance within the Snow Leopard user interface (UI), theoperating system seems faster and more responsive than with Leopard. Finder, Stacks,Expose, launching apps, and other everyday processes feel snappy. We didn't, however,notice any improvement in application performance.

Overall, we saw only a 2.5 percent slowdown in application performance from Leopard to

Snow Leopard on our more processor-intensive performance tests, including ourmultimedia multitasking test, in which we measure the time for QuickTime to finishconverting a short movie while iTunes is performing its own conversion of MP3 into AACformat in the background simultaneously. As this falls within our typical margin of error(5 percent), we saw no significant difference with application performance when movingfrom Leopard to Snow Leopard

New features

ExposeSnow Leopard includes a number of user UI improvements intended to make working withMac OS X easier and more efficient. Expose, Apple's system for visually finding thewindow you want on a cluttered desktop, used to be relegated to the Function keys on yourkeyboard. Snow Leopard now makes Expose accessible from the Dock; just click and holdon a Dock icon to see thumbnails of all the open windows in that application. Hitting theTab key lets you cycle through the preview thumbnails of each open application. Using


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Expose in the Dock is very natural and elegant, making us wonder why this wasn't alreadya feature in Leopard.

The Dock In addition to using Expose to find the right window, you now also have the ability to dragfiles from one application to another using the Dock. Let's say you want to add an image toan e-mail, but your desktop is full of open windows. In Snow Leopard you can go to theimage, drag it to the Mail icon in the Dock, and your e-mail window will spring-load,allowing you to drop the image into place. Though the ability to drag and drop files in thisfashion is nice, we're not sure it's much easier than attaching an image by browsingthrough your folders. Still, if you know the image is already on your desktop, it's probablythe faster method.

Stacks

Stacks got a much-needed upgrade as well. In Leopard, Stacks only listed a certain numberof files and applications requiring you to go to a Finder window if your app wasn't listed.Similarly, if you tried to open a folder in Stacks, you were sent to the Finder. In SnowLeopard, Stacks comes with a scroll bar so icons are still easy to read and anything can belaunched out of the Dock. Folders are now accessible within Stacks as well, so you'll be ableto navigate to files within folders all without leaving the Stacks Window. These changesmake Stacks much more useful than before and probably should have been available whenStacks was introduced.

The Finder

While the Finder itself saw little in the way of interface tweaks, the way files behave in theFinder makes it easier to use. A zoom slider has been added to the lower right of Finderwindows so you can zoom in on icons. An enhanced icon view has been added, letting youpreview multipage documents and even play QuickTime movies without ever leaving theFinder window.

Preview now lets you preview almost any file, even if it was created with software you don'thave on your hard drive. This means common file types from Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint,and even PDF files can all be previewed without owning the programs they were created in.As an added bonus, Preview in Snow Leopard provides accurate text selection tomulticolumn PDF files using artificial intelligence to infer the layout of each page. Thismeans that Preview recognizes that there are multiple columns in your document so youcan select the text you want from any column.

Safari 4Safari 4 has been widely available for some time, but it offers a couple of new featureswhen running in Snow Leopard. Safari 4 already includes Top Sites for viewing all your


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favorite sites as thumbnails for easy access and full history search, which lets you view yourhistory in a Cover Flow-like interface. But in Snow Leopard, Safari is now crash resistant.This means that if a plug-in crashes, it won't crash the whole browser. Simply refresh thepage to try to load the plug-in again. Also, Safari checks to see if a site you are visiting isknown to be fraudulent, is distributing malware, or is known to be a phishing site, and thenwarns you if it is

QuickTime XQuickTime X, Apple's media player, got some major tweaks in Snow Leopard. Now, whenyou play a movie and move your mouse outside the window, the interface fades awayquickly to give you a more immersive video-viewing experience. When watching a movie,you can click the new Share button to convert your movie for iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV,and QuickTime converts the video to work best on your chosen device. You also can now

record video from your Webcam, audio, or just the action on your screen with a few clicks.Those with the iPhone 3GS will recognize the new trimming feature in QuickTime X,letting you grab just the video content you want.

QuickTime X probably received the most interface tweaks in the Snow Leopard update.The cleaned-up interface and autofade features look great (like most things Apple), but it'smore of an aesthetic improvement than anything else. The recording features for video,audio, and screencast capturing are the big wins here and used to be offered only inQuickTime Pro. It's good to see these features will be able to be used by a wider audiencein Snow Leopard.

Trim your videos easily by clicking and dragging start and end points of the clip.

Exchange supportOne of the main roadblocks for Mac users in a primarily Windows workplace was theinability to connect with Microsoft Exchange servers. Most Mac users used MicrosoftEntourage or available open-source options as a work-around, but it was never as smoothas connecting from a Windows machine with Microsoft Office. Snow Leopard nowsupports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 out of the box so you can easily connect usingApple's Mail app, grab global address lists in the Address Book, and create meetings withcontacts using iCal.

Apple did more than simply give you the ability to connect, however. Common tasks likecreating meetings, for example, are incredibly easy with intuitive controls. iCal lets youview work events and personal activities all in the same window (with easy controls toinclude or not include the information you want). The Apple Address Book works


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seamlessly across Mail and iCal so you can quickly bring up global address lists, addpeople to a meeting (including predesigned groups), and invitations will automatically besent to each attendee. As an added bonus, if some attendees have scheduling conflicts withyour proposed meeting time, iCal will automatically figure out the earliest available timethat everyone is free. These are features already available in Microsoft's Outlook forWindows, but in Snow Leopard the process feels much more intuitive.

File QuarantineAccording to Apple, File Quarantine has also been refined in Snow Leopard. Firstintroduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, File Quarantine checks for known malware signatures,and in Snow Leopard, will now display an alert dialog if it finds a known offender. Thedialog will tell users to move the offending file to the Trash. For example, a bogus versionof iWork circulated on the Web a few months ago that contained malware. That particularmalware is now automatically detected by File Quarantine in Snow Leopard.

Apple says that File Quarantine will be automatically updated via Mac OS X's softwareupdate as new malware signatures are found in the wild. We had no way to test thesefeatures, but we are happy to see that Apple is taking strides to defend against malware asmore people switch to Macs and the danger of new malware becomes more prevalent.

Universal accessBeginning with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Apple included VoiceOver to help people who areblind or with impaired vision to better understand and interact with what is happeningonscreen. Apple continues to help visually impaired users in Snow Leopard by adding

gesture support on multitouch trackpads with easy-to-learn gestures to perform specificfunctions. We had mixed results with these features depending on the Web page we visited,but mostly we found the features to be useful. The trackpad acts as the viewable area onthe current window so you can tap to have Window elements explained to you or swipe tomove on to the next item in the window, for example. New features in Snow Leopard areparticularly helpful when Web browsing, with options like Web page summaries to explainthe various elements on a Web page you haven't visited before, making it easier to get theinformation you want.

More than 40 different Braille displays (including wireless Bluetooth displays) aresupported in Snow Leopard right out of the box, allowing visually impaired users to plug inand start computing immediately.

Other refinementsSome of the smaller refinements in Snow Leopard are worthy of note, affecting many of Apple's core apps. iChat is now compatible with more routers, making video chataccessible to a wider range of users, and iChat Theater now offers 640x480 resolution,


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BCM 5755M EthernetD-Link DWL G520Legacy Yukon 2Marvel-Yukon 88E8056Skge

Laptop:AppleACPIBatteryManagerFunctionFlip - Bightness controlMACamVoodooBatteryVoodooMonitorVoodooPowerVoodooPowerMiniVoodooPS2Trackpad

System Support:AHCI SATA Fix Extra / ExtensionsLegacy SATA FixAppleRTCLegacyAppleRTCElliotForceLegacyRTCAppleUpstreamUserClientDisablerFramebufferDisablerJMicronATA InjectorLegacyAppleIntelPIIXATA FixedIOATAFamily FixIOATAFamily SATA Fix Extra / ExtensionsSMBIOSResolverUUIDDsmosFakesmc 1.0

AMDAdditionalFontsX11RosettaQuickTime 7

The list of utilities included in the standard installationAppCleanerBetterZipColloquyDisk OrderEFIStudioIORegistryExplorer


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Kext UtilityOSX86ToolsPacifistPPFMasterProperty List Editor

SmultronStuffIt ExpanderuTorrent

List of cakes included in the standard installationAHCIPortInjectorAppleACPIPS2NubAppleATIATAAppleIntelGMA950 FixedAppleIntelGMAX3100FB FixedAppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer Fixed

AppleIntelPIIXATAAppleNForceATAApplePS2ControllerAppleVIAATAATAPortInjectorAttansicL1eEthernetDisablerEvOrebootFakesmcIntel82566MMIOAHCIBlockStorageInjectorIOATAFamily FixedIOPCIFamily FixedJMicronATA FixedLegacyJMB36xSATAnForceLANNullCPUPowerManagementOpenHaltRestartPlatformUUIDRealtekR1000SLSleepenablerSuperNForceATASuperVIAATAVoodooHDA

Extras. information (Read all!)1) The Snow Leopard can be loaded by default in 64-bit mode. Who can not boot into 64-bit mode or wants ispolzvat 32-bit, prescribes the menu boot-v arch = i386 or arch = i3862) AMD user - right after installation go to folder "Programs", we find there a utilityMarvin's AMD Utility, open, select the very last option (Patch all binaries), select the folder


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/ System and click Run. Without this step will not work with the program to bind CPU ID(eg iTunes).3) If for some reason the image does not install from the disk (eg Still waiting for rootdevice), you can try to install from the Leopard desktop is installed on a separate hard(section), or stick.

For those who installed from beneath ANOTHER LEOPARD! If you mount an image youwill have an orange box and it is empty. You need to unhide these files (you can use a tool)to see the contents. Then go to System / Installation / Packages and run OSInstall.mpkgand follow the instructions of the installer.

Documents

MAC OS X Snow Leopard 10