Snow Leopard First Impressions

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ryken

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Have you installed it yet? How did it go? Any problems? Did you clean install or just update? Any faster than 10.5? Also, what machine did you put it on? Any progrmas not working? Any programs specifically better?

Let a brother know! My copy is supposed to get here Wednesday, provided the mailman decides he wants to give me my mail on time.
 
install went fine, took about 25 minutes (upgrade install), seems a bit faster than 10.5. i am using a mac mini, core 2 duo 1.83, 2gb ram, intel gma950 praphics. haven't had trouble with any programs not working yet. i did gain about 7.5gb of hdd space after install. still checking it out at the moment.
 
Install went fine, no problems, I did the upgrade, 2009 Unibody MB pro (13.3) inch, 2.26ghz, 4gb ram, took about 45 minutes. Mail is def. better, the expose in the bottom bar is a nice feature as well, its a lot like whats on windows 7 if you mouse over something. I can not really tell yet if it is any faster, it was never very slow to me, and I have only been using it for about an hour, browsing the web most of that time as well. Safari 4 might load up a little faster, and go to thumbnail view of your favorites faster.

I also gained back a little over 7gb in HDD space
 
I gained 12 gigs of space which was amazing to me. Like WRX I too have a 13.3" uMBP only with 2 gigs of RAM.

Although I did have an interesting issue where the backlight on the monitor did not stay on and then would not come back after it had shut off. But other than that the install went off without a hitch.

And now I love all the new features however small they maybe...


And the free space. (Of course). :p
 
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got a 2.16ghz 2gb ram gma950 macbook and when i did the install, all it did was upgrade which took about 45 minutes also. Mmm... i can't tell if its much faster or anything but we'll see.

on a 5400rpm HD i used to boot up in around 40 seconds and now its roughly 30 seconds
 
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Question: how are the multitouch gestures on the older (non-unibody) macbooks? Any issues? This is the biggest 'upgrade' for the older macbooks in the house.
 
DamienThorn said:
Question: how are the multitouch gestures on the older (non-unibody) macbooks? Any issues? This is the biggest 'upgrade' for the older macbooks in the house.
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no issues so far. what do you mean biggest upgrade? nothing really has changed to me
 
13" Late 08 uMB. 4GB, 2GHz.

Definitely seems faster to me. I had read that the new Quicktime lacked a lot of features, and that 7 was gone, but thats not really true. Quicktime 7 is installed in /Applications/Utilities for me and was one of the customization options during install.

Did the upgrade, took about 45 minutes, only one problem. It tried to push an incompatible mode to my secondary display so I had to swap resolutions to get it to play nice again, but no big deal.

Gained 17GB back. Woah. Coworker got 18GB. So far, it definitely seems to be worth the $30.
 
tnt3k said:
no issues so far. what do you mean biggest upgrade? nothing really has changed to me
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I'm in your boat. It's all meh for me right now. It DOES feel a tad snappier though, I'll give it that.
 
somewhat disappointed. upgrade didn't go so smooth so i had to do a clean install. meh

the only thing that's promising is mail.

waiting on updated versions/drivers of very useful programs (quicksilver, istat menu, etc...even the beta/SL versions aren't working well for me) and drivers for logitech mouse.

should've waited until greater support for SL :rolleyes:
 
bloo said:
waiting on updated versions/drivers of very useful programs (quicksilver, istat menu, etc...even the beta/SL versions aren't working well for me) and drivers for logitech mouse.
Click to expand...

Quicksilver already works, grab b56a7 here. iStats Menus is coming.

Use this site to find updated versions of any other software you're using.
 
bloo said:
somewhat disappointed. upgrade didn't go so smooth so i had to do a clean install. meh

the only thing that's promising is mail.

waiting on updated versions/drivers of very useful programs (quicksilver, istat menu, etc...even the beta/SL versions aren't working well for me) and drivers for logitech mouse.

should've waited until greater support for SL :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

just recently gotten a mx revolution mouse and driver works fine right now. all programs up and running fine too

CORRECTION: expose, spaces, desktop shortcut key doesn't work. seems like everything else works perfectly tho. Logitech might have to release something new sometime soon
 
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It definitely feels faster. Coverflow/icons load instantly now. The new Expose is great. It is infinitely easier to drag and drop to a specific window. The slight changes to iCal are welcome. Stacks are useable now since they essentially act as little finder windows. Apple-supplied, downloadable printer drivers is a huge feature.

It's worth the money.
 
I feel dead inside without my iStat. Other then that SL is pretty solid. Spaces is crazy good for productivity. I actually feel like I can finally code on my MBP now.
 
Took about 50 mins. I got back just under 4 GB. :( Wondering if I should go through the trouble to do a full install.
 
installed on 2.0ghz gma950 macbook and smooth sailing. In terms of feel there is not much difference. But the again it is only $30 bucks.
 
Installed, happy about the speed increase in Safari but don't see much else different.
 
I'm under the impression all the guys saying they got 16 and 20gb or whatever are just straight wrong, and that it's just the base10 numbering confusing them, but whatever.

It is indeed *very* much faster than Leopard, at least a lot faster than I expected it to be, and so far any app that didn't work, has had an update that AppUpdate widget showed me right away upon entering SL, these guys were ready so yeah.

I took care to uninstall NTFS-3G and iStat and Growl and iWoW and other menu bar and preference pane objects I wasn't sure would play nice, and it seems to have paid off, I have none of the glitches people have attributed to these programs because I simply don't have them haha.

I do miss iStat and Growl though, NTFS-3G was just sorta a moot point for me, I rarely write to NTFS drives from my MBP so whatever. iWow though, I think I got it in some weird MacUpdate promo and just put it in to try it, and haven't bothered to use it since, cause I use headphones mostly and I don't care for artificial sound 'enhancement' software.

I feel like I own exactly the machine Apple coded SL for, being that is has all the requirements down for everything, so that's really cool that I'll get to use all the new features.

What I do miss not getting is having to swap between the 9400M and 9600M GT manually *still* instead of it being automatic or incorporating a Hybrid-SLI mode as had been discussed a long while back. I haven't tested it, but I'm not sure the QtX h264 enhancements for the 9400M apply while the 9600M GT is the active GPU, I'll check it out later.
 
0ptional said:
I'm under the impression all the guys saying they got 16 and 20gb or whatever are just straight wrong, and that it's just the base10 numbering confusing them, but whatever.
Click to expand...

People are reporting the difference between the free space reported in Leopard and the free space reported in Snow Leopard. The change to base 10 counting plays a big part, but not the full or sole reason.

I do miss iStat and Growl though
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iStats Menus should have its 2.0 SL-compatible release out soon. Growl works in Snow Leopard, albeit in 32-bit mode.
 
Terpfen said:
People are reporting the difference between the free space reported in Leopard and the free space reported in Snow Leopard. The change to base 10 counting plays a big part, but not the full or sole reason.



iStats Menus should have its 2.0 SL-compatible release out soon. Growl works in Snow Leopard, albeit in 32-bit mode.
Click to expand...

Yeah, considering 32-bit kernel is default for every machine except X-serve, and until these apps are fully x64 compatible, I'll just be sticking with what was intended instead of forcing x64 kernel to load.

Also, I really don't care about the menus as much as I do the widget, which is for me much more useful, and that *does* work.

I just went through the wikidot page to link to the apps I have that I wanted updates for and found many now have betas that are SL compatible so I'll be loading those up of course.
 
0ptional said:
Yeah, considering 32-bit kernel is default for every machine except X-serve, and until these apps are fully x64 compatible, I'll just be sticking with what was intended instead of forcing x64 kernel to load.
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Who said anything about forcing the 64-bit kernel? Snow Leopard is 64-bit despite the 32-bit kernel. Growl only works in 32-bit mode. Ergo: Snow Leopard will run Growl, it's just that Growl has to relaunch in 32-bit mode.

Growl 1.1.6 is working right now on my installation of Snow Leopard, 32-bit kernel and all.
 
Terpfen said:
Who said anything about forcing the 64-bit kernel?
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I did, it's something I'm interested in trying out, and would even leave enabled if I noticed no difference, but who knows, 10.6.1 might bring the x64 kernel to more machines, mine is fully capable of running it and all the kexts are x64 for my machine, so I feel like I should.

Snow Leopard is 64-bit despite the 32-bit kernel.
Click to expand...

Fully aware, I would like to use the 64-bit kexts and 64-bit kernel extensions though, I get that the kernel doesn't change the 64-bit interoperability on the user end, but I would love to toy with it all, that's just the kind of person I am.

Growl only works in 32-bit mode. Ergo: Snow Leopard will run Growl, it's just that Growl has to relaunch in 32-bit mode.

Growl 1.1.6 is working right now on my installation of Snow Leopard, 32-bit kernel and all.
Click to expand...

Oh, the 32-bit mentioning threw me off, as there are apps out there that will not work with the x64 kernel loaded, so that's what I thought you meant. I'm waiting for an update to VMWare Fusion that'll support the x64 kernel, not that I use it that much, but I have it, and I'd like it to work should I choose to use the x64 kernel.
 
tnt3k said:
no issues so far. what do you mean biggest upgrade? nothing really has changed to me
Click to expand...

I'm using one of the new aluminum mbps, and the rest of the family is itching to get Snow Leopard for the gesture support. Beyond that, SL doesn't bring anything that they are all that interested in - hence gestures are the 'biggest part' of the SL upgrade for them.
 
I literally gained ~20GB upon installation. It was something I looked closely for. I have a Corsair P256 256GB SSD in my 3.06ghz 2009 MBP and I went from 220GB free (relatively new leopard install with a few apps like MS Office) to 240 GB free after the SL upgrade install. Nothing to confuse the free space with, 220 GB before 240 GB after, just looking at "more info" on the macintosh HD volume on my desktop. Even with some sort of counting difference, that should be a substantial bump in free space.

Other than that, while I notice some speed increases here and there, my system was already ridiculously fast to begin with, I'll need more time with this OS to say one way or the other.
 
GnomeCop said:
I literally gained ~20GB upon installation. It was something I looked closely for. I have a Corsair P256 256GB SSD in my 3.06ghz 2009 MBP and I went from 220GB free (relatively new leopard install with a few apps like MS Office) to 240 GB free after the SL upgrade install. Nothing to confuse the free space with, 220 GB before 240 GB after, just looking at "more info" on the macintosh HD volume on my desktop. Even with some sort of counting difference, that should be a substantial bump in free space.

Other than that, while I notice some speed increases here and there, my system was already ridiculously fast to begin with, I'll need more time with this OS to say one way or the other.
Click to expand...

i'll bet you boot and shut down super fast. Wish i had $$ for a SSD
 
DamienThorn said:
I'm using one of the new aluminum mbps, and the rest of the family is itching to get Snow Leopard for the gesture support. Beyond that, SL doesn't bring anything that they are all that interested in - hence gestures are the 'biggest part' of the SL upgrade for them.
Click to expand...

Remember, they only get the multitouch gestures if their trackpads are capable of the technology.
 
so after installing snow leopard does this mean i can upgrade from 2gb to 4gb of ram? will it make a difference when running apps?
 
I'm really enjoying it. Nothing to large, but it's the little things that really make it. The speed increase, the visuals when using expose and where the windows are placed, the icons... It's just a very smooth experience. I'm very happy with it, but I can see why they only charged 29 bucks.
 
tnt3k said:
so after installing snow leopard does this mean i can upgrade from 2gb to 4gb of ram? will it make a difference when running apps?
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You could anyway. I upgraded in my MBP just because it's so cheap, can't say I noticed a big difference though. Nice for virtual machines though.
 
Hey guys, I'd like to do a clean install, but I don't want to lose music and pictures. Does Snow Leopard allow you to install from a Leopard Time Machine backup? That'd be really great... I'd rather not manually copy apps and files over.

Also, would a clean install screw with my Windows 7 Boot Camp install? Thanks.
 
0ptional said:
I'm under the impression all the guys saying they got 16 and 20gb or whatever are just straight wrong, and that it's just the base10 numbering confusing them, but whatever.

It is indeed *very* much faster than Leopard, at least a lot faster than I expected it to be, and so far any app that didn't work, has had an update that AppUpdate widget showed me right away upon entering SL, these guys were ready so yeah.

I took care to uninstall NTFS-3G and iStat and Growl and iWoW and other menu bar and preference pane objects I wasn't sure would play nice, and it seems to have paid off, I have none of the glitches people have attributed to these programs because I simply don't have them haha.

I do miss iStat and Growl though, NTFS-3G was just sorta a moot point for me, I rarely write to NTFS drives from my MBP so whatever. iWow though, I think I got it in some weird MacUpdate promo and just put it in to try it, and haven't bothered to use it since, cause I use headphones mostly and I don't care for artificial sound 'enhancement' software.

I feel like I own exactly the machine Apple coded SL for, being that is has all the requirements down for everything, so that's really cool that I'll get to use all the new features.

What I do miss not getting is having to swap between the 9400M and 9600M GT manually *still* instead of it being automatic or incorporating a Hybrid-SLI mode as had been discussed a long while back. I haven't tested it, but I'm not sure the QtX h264 enhancements for the 9400M apply while the 9600M GT is the active GPU, I'll check it out later.
Click to expand...

I got a lot of space back---16gb on my iMac and 23gb on my Macbook Pro. I mean, I am just telling you what my computer says.
 
RLich8 said:
I got a lot of space back---16gb on my iMac and 23gb on my Macbook Pro. I mean, I am just telling you what my computer says.
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Problem with that is you can't compare the two reported free space or taken space numbers in Leopard or Snow Leopard.

Leopard counted in base 2, as 1024 bytes to a kb and kb to an mb and mb to a gb, etc..

Snow Leopard counts in base 10, as 1000 bytes to a kb and kb to mb and mb to gb, etc..

So in order to compared the spaces represented you'd have to multiply either the SL number by 1000, 3 times to get bytes, then divide by 1024, 3 times, in order to get bytes as 1024/per, to compare the number.

ex: 100GB in Snow Leopard was 93.13~GB in Leopard, because of how it is counting the data.

So your 16GB in SL was 14.9~GB in Leopard, which is still a lot, but it's not what you thought it was, at least in that sense it's comparable.
 
LithiumRage158 said:
Hey guys, I'd like to do a clean install, but I don't want to lose music and pictures. Does Snow Leopard allow you to install from a Leopard Time Machine backup? That'd be really great... I'd rather not manually copy apps and files over.

Also, would a clean install screw with my Windows 7 Boot Camp install? Thanks.
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Then what would be the point of a clean install if everything would still be there? I don't know if it is possible but from what you have said it just sounds like a complete waste of time.

I am also pretty sure that it wouldnt screw with the windows 7 boot camp because that is just a partition, and OS X just sees it as another drive, just remember to hold down the option key at boot if you have it auto-booting into windows because your settings will be default after a clean install so you have to hold down option key to boot into windows because it would default boot to snow leopard. If that made sense, its late and I am tired :p.
 
tnt3k said:
so after installing snow leopard does this mean i can upgrade from 2gb to 4gb of ram? will it make a difference when running apps?
Click to expand...

No, your 2.16GHz MacBook maxes out at 3GB of RAM.
 
prodigee said:
Then what would be the point of a clean install if everything would still be there? I don't know if it is possible but from what you have said it just sounds like a complete waste of time.

I am also pretty sure that it wouldnt screw with the windows 7 boot camp because that is just a partition, and OS X just sees it as another drive, just remember to hold down the option key at boot if you have it auto-booting into windows because your settings will be default after a clean install so you have to hold down option key to boot into windows because it would default boot to snow leopard. If that made sense, its late and I am tired :p.
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I've never really been a fan of upgrade installs for some reason. From my understanding, Time Machine also restores system files, and I didn't know if that would affect my install. I'm still not quite in the swing of all things Mac, I'm still stuck on my old Windows habits (don't shoot me for saying that). I'm getting there though, I promise.
 
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