The cat is out of the bag

[HueyNRolf]

Seems the rumors were right... Snow Leopard will release this week (28th)

http://www.apple.com/

It's an attractive deal, alright. Will it live up? We shall see.

[rkelleyrtp]

Do we expect FCE or FCP to get better performance from Snow Leopard? I have an MBP and a Mac Pro (tower with 8 cores - 16GB RAM), and I notice FCE leaves a lot of CPU power on the floor when crunching thru effects. For example, on my Mac Pro I see only 2-3 cores getting used when doing effects in FCE.

[HueyNRolf]

Do we expect FCE or FCP to get better performance from Snow Leopard? I have an MBP and a Mac Pro (tower with 8 cores - 16GB RAM), and I notice FCE leaves a lot of CPU power on the floor when crunching thru effects. For example, on my Mac Pro I see only 2-3 cores getting used when doing effects in FCE.

My thoughts exactly.... but for the price, I'm going to bag one. We shall see.

[iThinkergoiMac]

For the price you can't possibly go wrong. It'll be faster overall since the whole system will speed up. However, it won't cause FCE to use more cores when going through effects. That has to do with how FCE is written. Since it's not designed to be a pro app, Apple probably wrote it to take advantage of two cores, the way all their consumer Macs are. Until Apple updates that code, FCE will act the same regardless of what OS you're using.

[Seo]

Now that is wonderful! Thanks for letting us know!

I'll probably buy the upgrade when most of the compatibility issues are resolved. Hope that's soon!

[iThinkergoiMac]

Glad I could be of help!

[rkelleyrtp]

Per Apple's Website:



Introducing Grand Central Dispatch.

Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) in Mac OS X Snow Leopard addresses this pressing need. It’s a set of first-of-their-kind technologies that makes it much easier for developers to squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems. With GCD, threads are handled by the operating system, not by individual applications. GCD-enabled programs can automatically distribute their work across all available cores, resulting in the best possible performance whether they’re running on a dual-core Mac mini, an 8-core Mac Pro, or anything in between. Once developers start using GCD for their applications, you’ll start noticing significant improvements in performance.


Notice the last statement - "once developers start using GCD...". I wonder when products from Apple (iMovie, FCE, FCP, iWorks, etc) will start using GCD. Regardless, it looks like a very promising upgrade. I will definitely pay $29...

[HueyNRolf]

I've just installed Snow Leopard :hv20-smilie77:

It took about 40 minutes and everything seems a bit snappier now.

By default, it will keep QT 7 and puts it in your utilities folder. You'd probably want to keep it for exporting files.

[Ace]

$25 here...(just pad your order by 1 cent to get free shipping:

Amazon.com: Mac OS X version 10.6 Snow Leopard: Software

or here with free shipping as well:

http://www.clubmac.com/clubmac/shop/detail.asp?Redir=1&description=Apple+Software-Mac+OS+X+v10.6+Snow+Leopard+-+Single+User-Operating+Systems&dpno=7876355&adcampaign=external,cwb03489&wt.mc_id=cwb03489&source=cwb03489

[dearcatastrophe]

i'm ready to get mine up and running, see how well it works on my mac pro.

[HueyNRolf]

WOW!
I was satisfied with the performance of Safari.... but now it's SMOKING :hv20-smilie77:

[cgbier]

Cool! Gonna order mine next week.

Is the installation really smaller than Leopard?

[Seo]

Cool! Gonna order mine next week.

Is the installation really smaller than Leopard?

By a whole 4 GB! Leopard is 9 GB and Snow Leopard is 5 GB.

[HueyNRolf]

Just checked, my system folder is 4.45 GB

[cgbier]

Cool! Thanks!

[rkelleyrtp]

[jealous...]

My copy should be arriving today. Gonna do some seat-of-the-pants testing on my Mac Pro with FCE and iMovie. Will let you guys know what I find...

[iThinkergoiMac]

Also, it's been found out that Snow Leopard will install on an Intel machine that meets the requirements regardless of what OS you are running on it. Tiger users rejoice!

[Seo]

Also, it's been found out that Snow Leopard will install on an Intel machine that meets the requirements regardless of what OS you are running on it. Tiger users rejoice!

Install or upgrade?

[dearcatastrophe]

i think the 29$ one will do both.

[Dana Love]

I understand (from the NYTimes blog on Apple) that the OS upgrade gets a little flaky with Adobe CS3 apps like After Effects and Photoshop. Have any of you worked with those apps in Snow Leopard yet?

They're so integral to our workflow that we're waiting on upgrade until we can get to a genius. Given that, I'm also waiting on my personal system...but I figure if you lot have good luck, I'll take the plunge on my personal MBP.

[rkelleyrtp]

It appears Snow Leopard boots (by default) the 32-bit kernel!

See these links:
Netkas.org (http://netkas.org/?p=127)
OSNews (http://www.osnews.com/story/22009/Snow_Leopard_Seeds_Use_32bit_Kernel_Drivers_by_Def ault)
ZDNet (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=4712)


The good news is you can force a 64-bit kernel on most platforms by

Holding down the "6" and "4" keys during boot
-or-
Editing the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist file and adding the arch=x86_64" string to the Kernel Flags section


Since I don't have my copy of Snow Leopard yet, I can't try any of these. Can someone please try and report back?

[dearcatastrophe]

do you need the 64bit kernel? the only use i could see for the 64bit kernel is if you have more then 32gb of ram.

[methane]

Anyone know if iMovie 06 works on Snow Leopard? I don't mind losing it so much but I'd like to keep it if I can. I won't be upgrading it to 09.

[dearcatastrophe]

you don't like imovie 09? man, i love some of the new features.

[Seo]

i think the 29$ one will do both.

Now THAT is great!


you don't like imovie 09? man, i love some of the new features.

Heh, yeah. Had some fun playing around with the green screen and new animations. Pretty cool.

[rkelleyrtp]

do you need the 64bit kernel? the only use i could see for the 64bit kernel is if you have more then 32gb of ram.

Good question. I just read a lengthy article/discussion thread about this here (http://www.osnews.com/comments/22009). The guy who wrote the article "Thom Holwerda" seems to take a pretty good beating by "Hakime" questioning the necessity of a pure 64-bit OS. Although the comment section gets pretty heated, I think the core questions/answers are these:



Why do you need the kernel in 64bit?

1) Can you address more than 4GB of installed memory within Mac OS X? yes.

2) Can you run 64bit binaries on a 32bit kernel? yes.

3) Can those 64bit binaries address more than 4GB of memory? yes.

4) Does Mac OS X and 64bit binaries take advantage of the extra registers? yes.

5) Do those 64bit binaries come with the extra security promoted so heavily by Apple? yes.

The whole 64bit vs 32bit kernel is much ado about nothing - you're not losing out by Apple keeping the kernel 32bit.



From my point of view, getting a full 64bit O/S is not as important as the other underlying technologies in 10.6 (Grand Central Station, ability to use the GPU for "other" stuff, Exchange Support, included VPN support, etc). In addition, I expect Apple to ship their software (FCE, FCP, etc) with full 64-bit support and the ability to use more than 2 CPUs for effects...


My $0.02

[methane]

you don't like imovie 09? man, i love some of the new features.
I don't actually know I never upgraded from 06. I'm planning on buying FCS3 at some point in the near future so it's not actually worth upgrading iLife for $79 as I don't use anything other than iMovie and I'll occasionally play with Garage Band when I'm bored. I don't need them, but it would be nice to keep them if I can.

[iThinkergoiMac]

Install or upgrade?

From what I've read, doing the upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard directly may or may not work, but doing an erase and install *will* work.

[dearcatastrophe]

i just got fed ex and am installing on my mac pro right now.

i was worried because the power department came down to trim trees around the transformer and shut my power off for a while. i was hoping they'd get done soon so i could whip in that install and check it out.

almost as good as christmas morning.

[dearcatastrophe]

okay, mac pro is done. now installing on my macbook pro.

if you are gonna say how can you, when you might need either, well, i'm on vacation until october, this is my big camping, fishing, atv and offroad time of the year.

so i'll worry about it later. :)

[rkelleyrtp]

Just installed it on my MacBook Pro - very, very snappy! Not sure if the fresh install or the new OS made the speed improvement, but it is much snappier than before. So far, happy camper.

[dearcatastrophe]

just wrapped up on my macbook pro.

so now i can go clean dishes, house, and figure out whats for dinner.

then i get to play and see how i like it.

[Seo]

just wrapped up on my macbook pro.

so now i can go clean dishes, house, and figure out whats for dinner.

then i get to play and see how i like it.

Cool! Hope to hear if you have any problems at all, cause like, you pretty much have every software in existence.

[HueyNRolf]

Good news!
PluralEyes works in Snow Leopard:hv20-smilie77:

http://www.singularsoftware.com/autosync/

[zephyrnoid]

Humn... $29.00 and it occupies half the drive space that it's predecessor does. Applications run faster in it than on the predecessor? Folks. That means this Snow Leopard is the FINAL release of a 'beta' called Leopard ;) I couldn't resist....

[Dana Love]

It's funny you say that. I've been reading in the NYTimes, Forbes, and a slew of software tech blogs that the new trend is toward amplification of good ideas in previous software versions, and that the "huge new version" concept is falling out of favor.

This would be deeply concerning if I were primarily a software vendor, since my revenue cycle is built around the model of large version / large price releases. It may explain Microsoft's work at product and channel diversification, represented by their significant forays into search and retail.

Sociologically, this idea may be potentially disruptive. There's a lot of noise about "the new way" -- from increased savings to decreased expectations of improving our standard of living in the US -- which may be best represented by the Harvard Business Review's entire edition on sustainability, which began with an article on how we should not expect growth to be eternal.

Capitalism dies not with a bang, but with a Bing, it seems.