Apple Changes Leopard’s Spots
August 26, 2009
by Walter S. Mossberg
For a company known for breakthrough products with cool features, Apple this week is doing something unusual: It is introducing a key product with very few new features that are visible to its users. This new release, the latest major version of the Macintosh operating system, looks and works almost exactly the same as its predecessor, but has been heavily re-engineered under the covers for greater speed and efficiency, and to add future-oriented core technologies.
The new software, called Snow Leopard, succeeds Apple’s 2007-vintage Leopard, which I regard as the best computer operating system out there, and markedly superior to its main rival, Microsoft’s Windows Vista. Snow Leopard goes on sale Friday, Aug. 28, and will be pre-installed on all new Macintosh computers.
The company, which often proclaims its new releases as revolutionary, has been very low key about Snow Leopard. For many months, Apple (AAPL) has made it clear the new OS wouldn’t sport new eye-popping features, but would instead be focused on what it calls “refinements” and “fine-tuning.” Perhaps its biggest new feature is something only a minority of Mac owners will ever use: built-in compatibility with Microsoft’s Exchange corporate email, calendar and contacts service.
Snow Leopard is priced accordingly, at just $29 for people upgrading from Leopard. That’s $100 less than what Leopard cost. And it’s $90 less than what Microsoft plans to charge upgraders for the main consumer version of its next version of Windows, called Windows 7, which is due out Oct. 22. Windows 7 is also an iteration on its predecessor, rather than a revolutionary new product, though it has some nice tweaks and will be a more dramatic improvement due to Vista’s failings. I’ll have a full review of it closer to its release.
I’ve been testing Snow Leopard on three Macs—an older desktop and a laptop of my own that I upgraded from Leopard, and a new MacBook Pro laptop Apple lent me for testing with Snow Leopard pre-installed. I found Snow Leopard easy to install, faster than Leopard, compatible with my most commonly used software and peripherals, and filled with a number of small, useful refinements and additions.
One delightful change: Snow Leopard takes up less than half the room on a hard disk that Leopard did, and Apple says the average user who upgrades will free up about 7 gigabytes of space. On my 2008-vintage MacBook Pro, I gained back a whopping 14 gigabytes.
But I also encountered a number of bugs and glitches, and a few incompatibilities, including a wildly wrong guess by Snow Leopard about which driver to use for an older, lightly used printer on one of my upgraded Macs. (It did fine with my main printer.)
Overall, I believe Snow Leopard will help keep the Mac an appealing choice for computer buyers, and I can recommend it to existing Mac owners seeking more speed and disk space, or wanting to more easily use Exchange. But I don’t consider Snow Leopard a must-have upgrade for average consumers. It’s more of a nice-to-have upgrade. If you’re happy with Leopard, there’s no reason to rush out and get Snow Leopard.
For some current Mac owners, Snow Leopard isn’t an option. About 20% of them are still using older models that aren’t powered by the Intel (INTC) processors Apple currently uses. Snow Leopard simply won’t work on these machines, including models designated as G4 or G5 and sold as recently as 2006.
And, for owners of Intel-based Macs who are still using the older Tiger version of the Mac OS, Apple is officially making Snow Leopard available only in a “boxed set” that includes other software and costs $169. The reasoning is that these folks never paid the $129 back in 2007 to upgrade to Leopard. But here’s a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.
Here’s a quick rundown of what I found in testing Snow Leopard:
Installation
Snow Leopard comes in one version, rather than the multiple operating system versions favored by Microsoft (MSFT). And that single version handles hardware and software based on both a standard computer technology, called 32-bit, and a newer one, called 64-bit, which can use much more memory and is faster.
Both my desktop and laptop Macs converted to Snow Leopard quickly and smoothly, in about 45 minutes each. Unlike the upgrade process Microsoft is requiring to get to Windows 7 from Windows XP, the Snow Leopard upgrade preserves all your files, settings and programs where they previously existed, right down to your desktop icons and wallpaper. No disk wiping, file moving, or program re-installation is required. And, as noted above, you actually gain disk space, because Apple has slimmed down the OS and also automatically removes or compresses old system files (not your personal data) that are no longer needed or used often.
However, I did run into a couple of minor problems: on one of my Macs, a screen saver displaying certain of my photos didn’t work after the switch. Other photos did work. Apple says this is a bug it will fix.
Speed
After changing to Snow Leopard, my Macs worked faster. I already considered them pretty speedy, so the overall effect wasn’t mind-blowing. But Snow Leopard’s built-in programs, like Mail, the Safari browser, and the Finder—Apple’s equivalent of the Windows Explorer—have all been rewritten behind the scenes, so these and other specific features are now a lot quicker. I found that email folders stuffed with thousands of messages opened almost instantly, and copying files was noticeably faster, even when the destination was on the Internet or a network. The Safari 4 browser, already very fast with Leopard, is even speedier under Snow Leopard, especially on more complex Web sites that use a popular technology called Javascript.
New Features
True to its word, Apple has built few new features into Snow Leopard, and, except for Exchange (explained below), these are small. One touted feature is called Dock Expose, which allows you to see small versions of all the open windows in any running program by clicking on its icon in the Dock at the bottom of the screen. But this is mostly a reworking of a feature that already has been on the Mac.
Apple’s QuickTime video player has been upgraded, with a clean new interface for playback, and the new ability to record and trim videos. Icons can be more easily enlarged, and you can preview the files they represent, even playing videos in miniature or paging through multipage PDF or PowerPoint files.
My three favorite tweaks, barely mentioned by Apple:
- “Substitutions,” which is like the auto-correct feature in Microsoft Word, but extends the concept to Apple’s email and other programs;
- the ability for Snow Leopard to automatically reset the time zone on the Mac’s clock based on your location while traveling;
- and a new built-in function in QuickTime that allows you to record videos of actions you take on the Mac’s screen.
Exchange
Although Exchange is a widely used Microsoft server product, employed by many, many companies to manage employees’ email, calendars, and contacts, it isn’t built into Windows. To use Exchange, you have to buy add-on software, usually Microsoft’s Outlook for Windows PCs. It also hasn’t been built into the Mac OS, and usually required Mac owners to buy Microsoft’s Entourage program. But, with Snow Leopard, Apple is building Exchange right into the operating system, so it works with Apple’s free, built-in email, calendar and contact programs.
With the generous help of my company’s IT folks, I tested this feature, and it worked very well. All my corporate information flowed into Apple’s programs, very quickly, and I could search the company directory, check the calendars of people with whom I wished to schedule meetings, and more.
However, Apple makes setting up this new feature look simpler than it is. In most cases, I believe, it will require the time and cooperation of corporate IT personnel, who will need time to learn it—especially since, at many companies, relatively few of these folks are Mac experts. In my case, an Apple employee had to help my IT colleagues and me to get it going. But you likely won’t have that aid.
Compatibility and Glitches
Commonly used third-party programs, like the Mac versions of Microsoft Office, the Firefox browser, and Adobe Reader, all worked fine in my tests after the upgrade. But a few things didn’t. Apple admitted I had found a few bugs and said that some software makers will have to upgrade their software because the programs rely on under-the-hood components that have changed in Snow Leopard.
VMware’s Fusion program for running Windows simultaneously with the Mac operating system worked, and I was able to use Windows. But it was a bit glitchy. VMware (VMW) provided me with a forthcoming new version tailored for Snow Leopard’s changed underlying architecture, which worked perfectly.
A Cisco (CSCO) program used to connect to corporate virtual private networks caused one of my test machines to completely crash, a rarity on Macs. But Snow Leopard now contains the same Cisco VPN connector as a built-in feature, and that worked perfectly.
Snow Leopard didn’t properly recognize my older-model Verizon (VZ) cellular modem card, though I was still able to use the card by digging into Apple’s network preferences screen. Apple says this is a bug it will fix.
As noted above, Snow Leopard didn’t work at first with an older networked printer on one of my test Macs, and thought it was a laser printer instead of an inkjet. I did get it working, by manually selecting a different printer driver, but Apple admits this is a bug it will have to fix.
Finally, the Time Machine backup file on one of my Macs stopped working. With my permission, Apple examined the file using a diagnostic tool and claimed it had become corrupted a couple of months ago, before the upgrade, and that Snow Leopard merely exposed the problem. I have no way of knowing if this is true, but Time Machine did work perfectly on the two other test Macs.
Underlying Technologies
In addition to greater 64-bit capability, Snow Leopard has two other big under-the-hood additions. One, called Grand Central Dispatch, makes it easier for developers to write programs that make better use of the multiple “cores,” or processing units, in modern processors. The other, called OpenCL, makes it easier for developers to offload some non-graphics tasks to today’s potent graphics chips. These are very important, especially for power-hungry tasks like video production and high-end gaming, but Microsoft is building similar capabilities into Windows 7, and they won’t really matter on either platform until third-party developers make use of them, which will take time.
Bottom Line
Apple already had the best computer operating system in Leopard, and Snow Leopard makes it a little better. But it isn’t a big breakthrough for average users, and, even at $29, it isn’t a typical Apple lust-provoking product.
Find Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.
Comments
Walter,
Some people don’t think so: http://www.winsupersite.com/alt/snowleopard.asp
“Snow Leopard is sort of a letdown. There’s just not much going on from an end-user perspective.” and “I’m not sure Snow Leopard justifies even its vastly reduced price.”
,dave
P.S. I am looking forward to the Paul vs. Walter “throwdown”.
Posted by Dave Barnes at August 26th, 2009 at 9:00 pmHey Walter,
My money is on Snow Leopard having some unannounced functionality that is important to the Tablet and/or new ways that Apple will better bridge the distinctions between MacOS and iPhoneOS computing models
The assumption here is that Apple wants/hopes/needs everyone to upgrade to take advantage of something unannounced, and are pricing the upgrade accordingly.
Here’s a post on my analysis:
Analysis: Apple June Quarter Earnings Call
http://bit.ly/vbi9q
Check it out if interested.
Mark
Posted by Mark Sigal at August 27th, 2009 at 2:05 amGreat article Walt! Thank you very much for all the info.
Quick question:
What happens to Boot Camp partitions when performing the Snow Leopard upgrade? Do they need to be reinstalled – or worse – deleted?
Posted by Kieran Navickas at August 27th, 2009 at 9:08 am“Unlike the upgrade process Microsoft is requiring to get to Windows 7 from Windows XP, the Snow Leopard upgrade preserves all your files, settings and programs where they previously existed, right down to your desktop icons and wallpaper. No disk wiping, file moving, or program re-installation is required. And, as noted above, you actually gain disk space, because Apple has slimmed down the OS and also automatically removes or compresses old system files (not your personal data) that are no longer needed or used often.”
This is one of the most misleading statements I’ve ever seen you write, Mr. Mossberg. How can you directly compare the upgrade processes from a 2.5-year-old OS to an upgrade from an 8-year old OS? Why are you constantly bringing up how “terrible” the XP–>Win7 upgrade process is when Apple doesn’t even *OFFER* an upgrade from their 8-year-old OS?
Heck, Snow Leopard can’t even be installed on certain Macs that are as new as 2.5 years old. Windows 7 can be installed even on computers that were brand new maybe even as long as 7-8 years ago, run decently, and you spin that as if it’s a bad thing, since you can’t do a direct upgrade.
At the same time, you continue to pretend like Apple somehow achieved a magical feat by cutting down the install footprint.
1) That footprint is practically irrelevant in this day and age, with hard drive space decreasing in cost exponentially every year, and
2) That extra hard drive space comes at the cost of the exact legacy hardware support you’re berating Microsoft for continuing to include in its operating system.
I have absolutely no qualm with your opinion of Snow Leopard itself. But the specific comparisons with Windows you chose to make here are completely unfounded, and totally out of place.
Posted by Joe Cobern at August 27th, 2009 at 9:37 am@Joe Cobern: “How the heck can you directly compare the upgrade processes from a 2.5-year-old OS to an upgrade from an 8-year old OS? Why are you constantly bringing up how “terrible” the XP–>Win7 upgrade process is when Apple doesn’t even *OFFER* an upgrade from their 8-year-old OS?”
Actually Snow Leopard from Tiger (Apple’s 4.5 year old next previous major OS version) works just fine. Yes XP is older, but it isn’t Apple’s fault that Microsoft last released a working OS 8 years ago, and most Windows users are still running it. Nobody remembers, let alone uses, Cheetah (Mac OS X 10.0) which Apple released 8 years ago.
Bottom line: Walt Mossberg has every reason to compare Snow Leopard upgrades to WInXP -> Win 7 upgrades.
Posted by Ted Todorov at August 27th, 2009 at 10:01 amJoe, even though “hard drive space [is] decreasing in cost exponentially every year” the footprint of the OS is still very important. I have many terabytes of portable drives, backup drives, etc. (all which seem relatively cheap). But, I still only have 120 GB on my 3 year old MacBook which I hope to not have to replace for another 3 years.
I have off loaded most of my photos and home videos that I do not need/want on a daily basis, yet I still only have 7 GB free on the system.
The reduced footprint of the new OS will be very relevant to me.
Posted by Joshua Weinberg at August 27th, 2009 at 10:40 am@Joe Cobern:
Mac users don’t have to worry about upgrading an 8-year-old version of OS X because Apple would never dream of leaving their users high and dry for eight years between OS upgrades! Personally, I’d say that Walt Mossberg was very restrained in his criticism of the horrendous mess that is Microsoft Windows (any flavor).
Posted by Alan Sanders at August 27th, 2009 at 11:14 amI’m not really surprised that the Vista perception in the comments section of an OS X review buy into the standard practice of unrestrained hatred. I and millions of others are perfectly happy with how Vista has run for the last couple of years. It runs everything I do well, including games, and I formed my opinions based on my own personal experiences, rather than advertisements and what people said that other people said that other people said.
The Windows Vista to Windows 7 upgrade process is absolutely the only legitimate comparison to make when talking about how it stacks up to the Leopard to Snow Leopard upgrade process. Having the ability to use an upgrade version to also move from XP to Windows 7 is a *BENEFIT* that Apple doesn’t even offer for OS X pre-Leopard OSs, and it’s a complete misrepresentation of the truth to try to directly compare an XP->Win7 upgrade with a Leopard to Snow Leopard upgrade.
Also, @Ted Todorov, two things:
1) Upgrading from Tiger is an unsupported, and in fact *ILLEGAL* process that breaks the terms set out in the EULA:
http://bit.ly/tt924
If you’re going to offer a Tiger->Snow Leopard upgrade as a counter-argument here, you may as well just suggest all-out piracy, since both are just as illegal in terms of what Apple is explicitly allowing you to do.
2) You’re conveniently forgetting about Puma, Jaguar, and Panther – 3 more OS X releases that have come out since Cheetah, but that Apple does not support you upgrading from.
Posted by Joe Cobern at August 27th, 2009 at 1:34 pm@Joe Cobern
> 1) That footprint is practically irrelevant in this day and age, with hard drive space decreasing in cost exponentially every year
With the advent of quite expensive (per byte) but quite good and affordable (compared to a few months ago) SSDs, this is actually less true than a year or two ago. Saving 7GB can give you quite a lot of breathing room on your SSD, or even allow you to get a smaller (and cheaper) model.
Using the most recent MSRPs post X-25 G2 releases, those 7GB save $19.60 on a 80GB X-25M and $20.80 on a 64GB OCZ Vertex (if you go for bigger sizes, you “only” save $19.25 on a 160GB X-25 and $15.90 on a 128GB Vertex, savings given using Anantech’s cost per GB based on current target MSRPs).
If you’re planning on buying a quality SSD to go with your cat, those 7GB saved pay for half to two thirds of Snow Leopard… that’s pretty significant.
> 2) That extra hard drive space comes at the cost of the exact legacy hardware support you’re berating Microsoft for continuing to include in its operating system.
That’s not completely true actually. A huge part of the savings come from the printer drivers now being installed on-demand rather than being all loaded on the OS at installation (on my Leopard machine, /Library/Printers weights a cool 3.2GB… even though I only use a single printer).
> Having the ability to use an upgrade version to also move from XP to Windows 7 is a *BENEFIT*
It’s an imperative: given the majority of Microsoft’s customers are still using Windows XP and they want those to finally migrate to 7, they can’t exactly afford to prevent them from migrating.
> Upgrading from Tiger is an unsupported, and in fact *ILLEGAL*
No it isn’t illegal. It is unsupported and it breaks the EULA, but last time I checked EULAs were not laws. Most of them probably aren’t even enforceable, and a number of them are actually illegal (and unenforceable) in many jurisdictions.
> You’re conveniently forgetting about Puma, Jaguar, and Panther – 3 more OS X releases that have come out since Cheetah, but that Apple does not support you upgrading from.
Which have what? A fraction of a percent of the OSX market? And can’t be Intel machines anyway which means you cannot run SL on them in the first place (note that it’s not there’s no support, it’s flat-out impossible).
Posted by Xavier Morel at August 27th, 2009 at 3:03 pm@Joe Cobern The upgrade from Tiger to Snow Leopard is most certainly supported – Apple says so: http://store.apple.com/us/product/MAC_OS_X_SNGL
“…upgrade your Mac experience, especially if you’re still using Mac OS X Tiger.”
The fact remains that 1) Most Windows users are still running XP 2) The upgrade from XP to Win 7 is utterly broken.
You can jump up and down and scream ILLEGAL all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that Microsoft has yet another disaster on it hands with the Win 7 upgrade process.
Posted by Ted Todorov at August 27th, 2009 at 3:32 pmIs apple about to sell their ServicePack as an upgrade and make people pay for it?
Booooooooooo
Posted by Iqbal Shahid at August 27th, 2009 at 4:56 pmMr. Mossberg:
I don’t doubt your numbers but I am curious how you determined there is only a 20% PowerPC Mac base in the wild? I would have thought it much higher, although I did have to buy my 16 year old daughter a new 17″ MacBook Pro just so I could get her hand-me-down 17″ iMac Intel on which to load Snow Leopard. (Still haven’t figured that one out yet.)
On my 20″ G5 iMac PowerPC, I do agree Leopard has been an outstanding operating system. It better be ’cause I ain’t gettin’ no damn upgrade path.
Posted by Mark Weist at August 27th, 2009 at 5:03 pmMr. Mossberg,
a couple of comments:
1. There is a caveat that is worth mentioning about the Microsoft Exchange built-in support. It only supports the latest version of Exchange (Exchange 2007). Many companies are still using Exchange 2003, and the full Exchange support will not work with that.
Apple has been very transparent about this, but I think it’s important to note.
2. You mention that you got back “a whopping 14 gigabytes” of space on your disk. I think this number compounds the space that you actually gained back with the subtle change in how memory (disk space) is expressed in Snow Leopard. Apple modified their convention to match the one that all disk drives manufacturers are using and advertising, to reduce user confusion. So in Snow Leopard 1 gigabyte = 1000 megabytes, at least for end-user UI considerations. That will count in the number of gigabytes that you see as still available on your disk.
Great review overall. Personally I think all the refinements (there are many) are well worth the $29 just by themselves. So after adding the brand new foundational technologies, it is a steal.
Cheers,
Posted by Hugues de Saint Salvy at August 27th, 2009 at 5:47 pmHugo
I am disappointed with your conclusion about upgrading to Snow Leopard: “But I don’t consider Snow Leopard a must-have upgrade for average consumers. It’s more of a nice-to-have upgrade. If you’re happy with Leopard, there’s no reason to rush out and get Snow Leopard.” I think you have missed an important issue. I agree that the most sweeping improvements are under-the-hood. However, these improvements are aimed at software developers. OS X 10.6 will be fully 64-bit, will provide powerful support for the writing of multithreaded apps and, through Open GPL, will make the GPU available to developers for whatever software that could take advantageous use of it. Snow Leopard is a springboard for developers into a future of more powerful and faster apps. This is the reason for the low price. Mac users have a big stake in this as they will be the beneficiaries – provided that most of them upgrade promptly. Otherwise some developers will lack the financial motivation to re-write existing apps or create new ones with these tools. Your conclusions are short-sighted. Please change them.
Posted by Alfred Bowman at August 27th, 2009 at 7:58 pmI’ve never read your column before and with your short sited comments about Snow Leopard I won’t bother to again.
Posted by Kirk Candlish at August 27th, 2009 at 11:26 pmYou have missed the point of Snow Leopard, Walt… development and the future. All the *major* changes are under the hood. SL is more of a stepping stone to a bigger 10.7 Sure, it doesn’t have that “shinny” thing to impress the average user, but that’s not the point.
Apple made it dirt cheap for a reason (and the disks have no DRM – so it’s REALLY cheap); they want everyone on Snow Leopard, except for PPC chips (G5, G4, G3) users. Apple is sending them a very clear message, “Upgrade your hardware or be left behind”. Now that does piss me off a bit.
But, Snow Leopard is a stunning upgrade. Well worth the price. And once you see what us developers do with it, you’ll get why.
Posted by Stephen Cox at August 28th, 2009 at 10:51 pmMy experience with Snow Leopard has been quite good and I disagree with Walt about it not being a must-have upgrade.
For details see the column below.
5 Reasons Why I Love Mac OS X Snow Leopard!
Posted by Jim Lynch at August 29th, 2009 at 10:03 amhttp://jimlynch.com/index.php/.....w-leopard/
No mention of QuicktimeX’s neutering of features? No mention of all the finder window bugs, and how you can’t have different views for different windows? No mention of how you can no longer change the icons of Apple programs like iTunes?
Posted by Paul Ryan at August 29th, 2009 at 10:46 amMr. Mossberg,
I believe that Snow Leopard is simply quiet preparation for a bigger things to come. If the GDC would live to its announced capabilities, the ability to create true 64-bit application is one big leap from the current development environment.
One thing though you have not mentioned as an issue… the application to empty the trash bin is extremely slow… worst than the MS Vista similar function. My previous Leopard was the extreme opposite… extremely quick. I have reported twice this issue to Apple as it was causing me so much pain waiting for more than an hour to delete simply 5gb folder. Have you got similar experience with the application to empty the trash bin?
Posted by Henry Mabuti at August 30th, 2009 at 5:40 pmI’ve only been “playing” with Snow Leopard for a few days now, but I like some of the new features. The only issue I’ve found so far is that Flip4Mac no longer works for my .wmv files. Other than that I am happy.
Posted by John Repp at September 2nd, 2009 at 10:27 amWalt Mossberg makes no comment on the legality of 10.4 Tiger users upgrading to 10.6 Snow Leopard using the $29 package.
That is for a very good reason – it is *legal* under the EULA.
The $29 package gives a Single Use license that makes no requirement that 10.5 be pre-installed.
See the 10.6 wikipedia article (license section) for details and evidence.
Posted by Tim Mitchell at September 4th, 2009 at 3:44 am