Mehmet Alpsoy

Today I installed Mac OS X Snow Leopard to my iMac and my girlfriends Macbook Pro. It is obvious that MAC OS X is still the best OS on earth.

You can find my opinions about the new features below.

Configurations are

iMac 20″  2.4 Ghz Intel 2 Core-duo - 4 GB RAM

Macbook Pro 15.4″ 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo – 2 GB RAM

First of all Snow Leopard is really fast.

Expose & Stacks : I always use Expose, and frequently use Stacks. New ordering view of Expose is very nice and works faster and reliable than Leopard’s.

Also new looks of these features are really nice. I think I will be using Stacks more frequently.

Time Machine : Time Machine is backing up my iMac, and backing up is faster now.

Shut Down Time : Tested on Macbook Pro, you see the desktop for a second, and the blue screen for another second and just a black screen. It is shut down

Quicktime : The new Qicktime X looks really nice, it is important that it includes all the features of former Quicktime Pro. Especially screen capturing feature works like a charm on a 1680 * 1050 resolution.

The most important new feature of Quicktime X for me is, it is able to play FLV and F4V files by default. So you do not need a Flash Video Player.

I haven’t tested iChat, and some other new features like Exchange Support as I work at home nowadays.

Last of all new battery life checking option on MacbookPro is nice (you have to Option + Click on the battery status to see it).

Both of the Mac’s have 32-bit processors so I can’t mention anything about 64-bit support, besides most of my applications are Adobe applications.

I think you don’t  have to have any concerns about switching to Snow Leopard if you are already using Leopard, it is not scary like switching from Tiger.

But remember to update your applications, especially like VLC (as former VLC versions on Leopard looks for Lucinda font, but Lucinda on Snow Leopard has an extension like *.ttc, and VLC is not able to find the font for subtitles and so it cannot  display subtitles. Just upgrade your VLC or change the default subtitle font from VLC Preferences).

But it was disappointing to hear my favorite text editor Smultron has only a BETA for Snow Leopard, and there will be no more new versions of the application. Smultron for Leopard works on Snow Leopard too, but I have to find a new Text Editor, and it will be difficult as I never liked the UI of BBEdit.

That is all for now about MAC OS X Snow Leopard features.

Finally, the price for the Snow Leopard is really affordable (29€ + TAX) for a new Operating System.