Mac OS X - Snow Leopard Available for pre order

A lot of the new features in Snow Leopard might be of little use or interest to the typical home user. The support for MS Exchange servers in the mail, calendar, and contact apps is a big deal to Mac users where I work. GCD and OpenCL are big deals to developers. But non-technical end users - they probably see little new value.
 
mperdue-

You said- "It's also significantly faster on equivalent hardware"

I beg to differ with you in this way. It depends on the application, I suppose. I'll just use video editing.

The system is a MacBook Pro running Tiger and FCP ver 6 vs.
Dell VPS 1210 that sports the same intel processor and speed. Both were equipped with 2 gb of ram and identical hard drives.

The difference was the application- I built the exact same simple video in FCP as I did in Vegas on the Dell-
Then I rendered it. The Vegas on the Dell rendered the video in 22 minutes while the Mac with FCP took 260 minutes. Then I put the same video on the Mac parallels in win XP and it took 66 minutes.

What this tells me is that FCP is a slow renderer but the XP running under OS X slows an XP app like Vegas too. It's not a perfect test, I admit, but a practical one given the hardware and software. Then again making a blanket statement that OS X is faster on similar hardware is not accurate, IMO. I will agree that OS X is faster to use for those who don't intend to customize the system or intend to venture outside the Mac world environment. An example of this is try to edit video with avi clips mixed with QT mov clips. It will bring the FCP to its knees. Do the same thing on a windows based editor and it clicks right along just like it was with all avi or all MOV in the timeline. Again, it'a all about the applications, not about the OS alone!
 
OK, it looks like success on the Leopard Snow install. It took a total of 2 hrs 20 minutes to clean a used hard drive and install in the MacBook Pro, then install, configure and update Leopard Snow. I don't think I could have done this fast with windows, any version, mperdue. When it comes to just OS, you win. :) It's pretty fast and easy, compared to windows install.
 
The Vegas on the Dell rendered the video in 22 minutes while the Mac with FCP took 260 minutes. Then I put the same video on the Mac parallels in win XP and it took 66 minutes.
Video hardware assistance is nonexistant on Macs atm, I believe. Professional applications like Vegas use it heavily.
Heck, the free WMV9 encoder in 2003 could use that but almost none was offered.

It will come when Apple announces hidef/bluray support. Should happen within a year.

Diogen.
 
It's also significantly faster on equivalent hardware

What exactly is the "it" that you are comparing. If you're comparing Finder vs. Windows Explorer, well, that's not an apples to apples comparison.

Linux and Mac OS are always at a disadvantage to Windows on equivalent hardware, if you are just comparing speed of execution of identical code. This is because ELF and Mach-O shared libraries are required to be position-independent code, so the libraries can load anywhere in the virtual address space of a process with no fixups at run-time. Windows DLLs on the other hand are not required to be PIC, but when address collisions occur, the addresses have to be fixed up at run-time (can be avoided by rebasing your DLLs). PIC vs. non-PIC on a modern x86 implementation costs about 12-15%. This is the reason why vendors used to like to compile static binaries when benchmarking. There are many other factors, even when comparing programs built from identical source code, like development tools, OS memory management, thread scheduling/synchronization, etc, but even if you factor all of those things out, Windows gets a built-in advantage because of not having to run PIC code.
 
I got that.
My point was that just the legacy support in OS X was bigger than total Win7 without legacy support removed. Got it?

That is true but the big difference in the size of the legacy support is because it is a totally different processor. Windows 7 only had to worry about the x86 class hardware where Apple had PPC and Intel to have. There is really nothing that had to be done to support old AMD and Intel chips within the Win 7 code.
 
-snip- Again, it'a all about the applications, not about the OS alone!
Don, you are correct - the application also has a lot to do with it. In my development work the Mac system is significantly faster when compiling identical generic code. My photo editing tools are also faster on identical photos. Starting apps in OS-X also seems to be quicker than starting equivalent apps in Windows. I don't use the machine for much beyond that so I can't really say what other apps are faster or slower. YMMV.

Mario
 
That is true but the big difference in the size of the legacy support is because it is a totally different processor.
That's what I read.
But what does the PPC code do on Intel hardware after install?
I understand having both on the OS X install disk - but why on the x86 hard drive?

I suspect this has more to do with 32- and 64-bit support on application level. What Windows calls WoW.

Diogen.
 
pro96-What source file did you use to do the Dell mini 10 install?

FWIW- I used a downloaded version that failed to work but most likely I didn't set the attributes correctly. I will be trying that again. Supposedly, others got an XPS m1210 to work but there is little info on how they did it with those files. I recall there are three flavors of Hackindos but I could only find one of them available to download. What I got was an install all the way to reboot and then it would just loop and never get to the registration screen.

I tried my $29 disk but it failed to recognize it was a bootable disk in the Dell.
 


No, I'd bet it is more like Macheads who believe they are a genius because they wear the T- Shirt, Bricked their Macs with Snow Leopard. Heck if a dummy like me can install it not knowing diddly squat about how OS X works, These bricktards (not to say they are retards) must actually be retards.
I'm so clueless with a Mac I still click on the right upper corner to exit the window. Am I allowed to call it a window on a Mac? :D Obviously Apple way overestimated the IQ of their customer base.
 
pro96-What source file did you use to do the Dell mini 10 install?

FWIW- I used a downloaded version that failed to work but most likely I didn't set the attributes correctly. I will be trying that again. Supposedly, others got an XPS m1210 to work but there is little info on how they did it with those files. I recall there are three flavors of Hackindos but I could only find one of them available to download. What I got was an install all the way to reboot and then it would just loop and never get to the registration screen.

I tried my $29 disk but it failed to recognize it was a bootable disk in the Dell.


Iatkos v7 10.5.7 (then did software update to 10.5.8) once 10.5.7 was installed

BTW: On older models like M1210. M1330 and one of my fav of all time 710m work fine with 10.5.1/10.5.2. Newer versions might install 100% but wont boot correctly even with "f8" then -v or -s
 
I tried Idneb 10.5.6 and that was my observation. It installed but could not boot. I tried to download the torrent of Iatkos 10.5.7 and there were no seeds so it failed.
Thanks for your answer.
 
Let me make sure I understand this: posts regarding stealing satellite programming are not allowed here, but posts about stealing software are allowed. Is that correct?
 
Kind of a matter of interpretation but the simple explanation is you are correct. The way I look at it, The BOSS set the rules when he allowed discussions about hacking the iphone with jail breaking, what Apple clearly stated was a violation of their terms. Without getting into long never ending debate on it, the easy solution is if YOU feel uncomfortable with any thread here you don't have to participate. If The BOSS jumps in and says specifically, hacking the iphone is OK but hacking other Apple products is not, then we are obligated to follow his site rules. This is my personal view and not necessarily what's the site rules. I would agree it is a dark gray area just as is jailbreaking.
 
Kind of a matter of interpretation but the simple explanation is you are correct. The way I look at it, The BOSS set the rules when he allowed discussions about hacking the iphone with jail breaking, what Apple clearly stated was a violation of their terms. Without getting into long never ending debate on it, the easy solution is if YOU feel uncomfortable with any thread here you don't have to participate. If The BOSS jumps in and says specifically, hacking the iphone is OK but hacking other Apple products is not, then we are obligated to follow his site rules. This is my personal view and not necessarily what's the site rules. I would agree it is a dark gray area just as is jailbreaking.

yup I feel the exact same way. Plus I have 3 "real" macs at the office and all have legit OSX on them.
 
The only observation I will make regarding the $169 for the Mac Box Set: The previous "upgrade" from Tiger to Leopard had an MSRP of $129. To take it to the next level is $29. The Box Set costs $11 more and includes the latest version of iLife and iWork, both priced at $79. So, I don't think Apple is really overcharging Tiger users.

Walt Mossberg over at WSJ made the same observation as Don reported on, the fact that you can boot from the $29 "upgrade" disk and do a full install of Snow Leopard. Likewise, I'm sure there is no physical difference between the Single User and the Family Pack DVDs, just the License Terms and the paperwork that comes in the package.

Amazon has the box set for $149, BTW. I'm getting that for my Mac Pro that's still running Tiger. I wanted the iLife '09 update anyway, but this way it comes along for the price.

Edit: Here's a link to an article over at TUAW discussing this exact issue.
 
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