Snow Leopard: First Impressions

looper35uk · 29-08-2009, 13:33

Received my copy of SL this morning, so I popped it into the disk drive, it loaded, pressed install and away it went. Install took around 50 minutes on my white Macbook. A bit quicker than some reviews I've read, but that might be down to the preparation I did last night.

I didn't really notice any speed difference on boot up or shut down, but It's noticeably quicker than Leopard when opening apps, especially the mail app, lightening fast. I particularly like the new Expose feature within the dock, I've always used expose and i'll find this new feature very useful. Quick Time X has had a major overall it looks and feels very light, is this Apple showing us a glimpse into the future?.

I've only one problem with computability with other apps, NeoOffice would not open, but a download patch from NeoOffice website cured this. I would recommend downloading AppFresh and running it before installing SL. It surprised me how many apps have recently had an upgrades, obviously due to the imminent launch of SL.

Overall your not going to see a lot of difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard, apart from the speed.

haydnwalker · 29-08-2009, 14:30

Thanks for that Looper!

What prep did you do before the install (apart from AppFresh)? I'm awaiting my copy and just sorting out space on my USB HDD for a full backup

looper35uk · 29-08-2009, 17:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by haydnwalker

Thanks for that Looper!

What prep did you do before the install (apart from AppFresh)? I'm awaiting my copy and just sorting out space on my USB HDD for a full backup

1: I got rid of all the apps a dont use any more.
2: I put my harddisc on a forced diet and removed a majority of the files (30Gig) onto another hard drive (back up, just in case).
3:Ran verify and repair permissions + ran verify and repair disk permissions with the disk utility app.

The more you use it the more you'll like it.
Just tried Photo Booth, That a cool enhancement.

haydnwalker · 29-08-2009, 20:10

I have photo booth on my Leopard install (came as part of the package in June 09 - thought it was part of iLife 09).

I havent got THAT much on the MacBook just yet, but I will do a Verify And Repair Permissions before I upgrade

Thanks for the info!

Toto · 30-08-2009, 15:06

Just waiting for my disk to arrive.

Question - I have filevault enabled, but not a great deal of personal files, does the upgrade affect Filevault?

**Damien** · 01-09-2009, 13:23

Mail seems a lot snapper, smoother, I like the new way of displaying menus when you right click on the dock and the New Quicktime is cool

Bob · 03-09-2009, 21:49

Thanks looper35uk for the steps you took before upgrading

Finally got it after giving up on my local PC World having it in stock...

It does in general seem much snappier when doing most tasks. QT loads so much faster and like how you can play videos in their thumbnails.

Out of curiosity, what enhancement has there been to PhotoBooth?

Stuart · 03-09-2009, 22:41

I've been playing around with it for the past week. Here are my first impressions.

I've installed it twice (first time an upgrade over leopard, with a lot of software installed, second time was a reformat/install as the mac needed cleaning up). Both times, it installed in about 30-40 minutes.

Not really a lot of new features to play with, but what there is is well implemented and a big improvement.

Quicktime 10 loads up a lot quicker, and it's interface is nice (although it's interface is strangely reminiscent of Niceplayer but is basically the iphone quicktime interface. Sadly (because I have a lot of wmvs), flip4mac doesn't seem to work reliably. Perian works nicely for other formats though.

Finder has been rewritten and feels a lot faster than it did before. I haven't got around to installing any of the software I need on it (haven't had time), so can't vouch for for how the software works.

One thing that suprises me. Bootcamp for Windows has acquired quite a nifty new feature. It includes a driver that enables Windows to read the Mac formatted hard drive. I haven't done extensive testing of it, but it doesn't seem to respect the security of the drive. It seems to allow the windows user access to all the files on the Mac HDD. As I said, I haven't done extensive testing on this, but it's something I'm going to have to look at when I am getting the Macs at work ready form the 2010/2011 academic year (so I still have a year). For security reasons, we can't allow the students access to all the files on the hard drive (even read only).

RealDiamond · 04-09-2009, 00:34

Flip4mac SL version is a free beta for download from their site.
Most third party apps may need updates as they were using PPC libraries that were still in OSX, which went in the trash with Snow leapord.

Stuart · 04-09-2009, 09:20

True, and I had forgotten I installed the flip4mac beta..

**Chris** · 04-09-2009, 11:30

Stu, could you let me know if/when you resolve your F4M issues? I have a purchased copy of it as I need to do some limited exporting to WMV from iMovie and I don't want it to get b0rked when I eventually upgrade to Snow Leopard ...

Stuart · 04-09-2009, 11:54

Well, the beta does work, but I was using the free version so cannot test the exporting. I would be surprised if it doesn't work.

downquark1 · 04-09-2009, 13:30

Well my mum put it on her laptop and complained it crashed this morning. I tried to save a BLANK document in MS word and got the spinning beachball of death.

Will fiddle more with it later.

haydnwalker · 04-09-2009, 15:41

Could be that MS need to send an office update out though for Snow Leopard compatibility

- I'd check the MS website

ShadowTD · 04-09-2009, 16:56

I also had a goodly degree of frigging to get wmv's working happily, but it's all gravy now. New expose is superb - love it.