Mac OS X Snow Leopard screenshots leaked
Mac OS X Snow Leopard will let you return files wrongly placed in Trash to their proper home.
(Credit: World of Apple)A new set of leaked screenshots of Apple's upcoming Mac OS X release, Snow Leopard, appears to confirm that the most sweeping changes to the operating system won't be visible.
World of Apple has screenshots up on its site, along with a video, of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Build 10A261, the latest version released for testing. When Apple announced plans for Snow Leopard in June, it said that Mac OS X 10.6 would focus more on improving the performance and stability of the operating system, rather than adding features.
And that seems to be the case, judging by the minor enhancements shown in the latest build. The Stacks interface will now let you navigate through folders within the Stacks view, rather than opening Finder if you selected a folder from that view. And the Trash window now has a "Put Back" feature for returning inadvertently deleted files to the original folder, apparently bringing back a feature that got left behind with the transition from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X.
More significantly, Apple has reduced the footprint associated with its applications in the early versions of Snow Leopard, which should improve performance. The company is also expected to have come up with new ways to exploit graphics processor technology with the release, although details on that capability were not addressed in the new screenshots.
World of Apple also notes that based on the progress of the build it doesn't think Apple will be able to release Snow Leopard by the end of March, which had been rumored following a presentation by an Apple developer that identified a Q1 release for the operating system. That would have an early release as compared to Apple's official guidance that Snow Leopard would ship "about a year" from last year's early June Worldwide Developers Conference.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 





8 yrs and people are downgrading to it hmm. Thank you for playing
I also have to say this. Running Windows 7 in VMWare and BootCamp I rather like the taskbar. I think the peeking functionality is very useful and something I hope Apple copies in a future update. Spaces is really useful is OS X but with the peeking there is no need for such a program because you can close all your windows by shaking the the active one and just peek at the taskbar and find what you are looking for. Don't deny it Apple fans, you like it and you wish you had, for the first time in a long time.
...come to think of it, OSX has always been available as retail-bought install media.
Suspect what you want, but the only way I can see Snow Leopard not being sold at retail is if it comes as a free download to existing Leopard owners.
I'm also glad to see that they put back the "put back" feature ;-) Now, only if they will put the window buttons in the correct place. CLOSE on left, MINIMIZE and MAXIMIZE on the right. Just like in Mac OS 9 and before.
My question is: how are they trimming the foot print? Are they just getting rid of the PowerPC part of the Universal applications?
Could be, coupled with refactoring and a more aggressive compiler. The kernel could also have gotten a bit of tweaking, which allows more hooks that would reduce the need for replicating functions in an app, or maybe Core Graphics might have taken a good chunk of size out of things...
Not sure, really.
Personally, I think it's great, but I can't see how this is going to bring home the bacon. It pretty much rules out PPC support (Apple may not have made PPC Macs for years, but people don't seem to upgrade Macs as often as people upgrade PCs), and the performance may be great, but I don't know if that's going to be so compelling as people's general impression seems to be that OS X performs very well. So, an excellent idea technically, but as a business decision, I don't know that it will be a big money maker.
You mean like the majority of Windows users being so tired of XP, to the point of ditching vista and installing XP instead?
/P
OTOH, a snappier OS, more stability (OSX is pretty stable now, but more improvement is not unwelcome).
A look at the referenced site and screenies shows some things that will make a decent amount of difference. Smaller apps with the same featureset means that they will run faster, even on top of the 64-bit speed boost. Quicktime Pro comes standard with it now (without having to upgrade), which is nice. And you can apparently stack the crap out of your icons and folders from the dock.
Not a bad deal overall...
/P
Compared to automobiles, it's like having the same body year after year, while cool and sexy when it came out, looking tired and the same now, but with a new engine or transmission option. It's hard to get too excited about that.
Vista had the same problem over XP and people stayed with XP .
I could and am likely wrong though, but nobody will know until after the new OS has been out for six months to a year. Until then, all that anyone c an do is guess.
Quick time is another software that i cant realy find good use of.
Quicktime on macintosh does far more on than on windows. It is actually the entire media engine for macosx. Any improvements to it will help all media based apps.
Also, in response to your auto analogy, I present the "1/4-ton vehicle, General Purpose" - better known as the Jeep. It has been nearly 60 years after its introduction to the civilian world. Yet, it has the same seven grille slots, the same tiny wheelbase, the same fold-down windshield, the same gangly-but-tough bumper sticking out in front and the lack of one in the back, the same spare-tire mount location, and you can instantly recognize one no matter which year it was built. There have been visual variations, but all of them are minor compared to the basic design.
In spite of all that, they still sell quite nicely.
@goodspeed:
Err, no. Quicktime does a lot more than you realize code-wise inside of OSX.
Quicktime Pro, not Quicktime.
I'll assume that that means all the simple video editing tools of QuickTime Pro will now be free, which is really cool. It annoyed me that they stuck those features in the menus with a "Pro" icon next to them. They were mocking me.
As for eye candy, I used to really like all the pretty things to look at in each new update of OS X, but now I'm starting to appreciate a good-looking, yet visually simplistic look. You can easily go overboard with GUIs; at some point, adding eye candy together doesn't equate to better-looking visuals.
They are mainly stream lining the coding of things to chop out stuff that accumulated over versions. i think international support will be more a 'as user installs', same goes for drivers, which on other sites has been mentioned to use the software update service to fetch drivers. i have also read that they will be dumping bitmaps more and moving to a more complete vector based UI, which it partially is now.
Hopefully they rewrite itunes too !
the current itunes is a resource hog beyond words
wonder how moving to 64 bit will affect file transfers and finder functions !
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87149586@N00/3306147082/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/87149586@N00/3305317575/
People on this thread complaining about cosmetics just don't get it. You're just a bunch of whiners and trolls wanting new stuff only to be bored after five minutes. Get over yourself.
I look forward to leaner and meaner tweaks. I'm not looking for any eye-opening features. If they're included, great. If not, no love lost. I'm happy with the slow and methodical changes Apple is making.
To the children on this forum complaining, go back down to your parents' basement and lock the door. No one will miss you.
THAT'S IT I AM DROPPING $3,000 TO GET THIS ****
If you appleheads had seen a MS guy post something like sflocal just did people would be all over it but no one is screaming at this guy.
...now what if you could run time-intensive apps twice as fast?
As someone who dings around with 3D/CG apps, cutting render times in half (or close to that) is damned sure worth the dough.
"How I learned to stop worrying and love Apple" will be the title of my new book.
As someone who dings around with 3D/CG apps, cutting render times in half (or close to that) is damned sure worth the dough. "
If you want to do that kind of stuff buy a Silicon Graphics not a Mac. Why buy a lower quality system if your going to spend the dough?
And really, what makes you think this will cut your rendering times in half? That seems highly optimistic.
So in other words you've just amplified my argument. In a still image, let's say that the render takes 5 minutes for the frame in Linux. with Vista's hit, you can in most cases increase that to 5:30 minutes. Doesn't sound too awful bad now, does it? 30 seconds? Why so impatient?
Well... let's say you want to render a 30-minute animation (exact 30:00 time) @ 24 frames per second with the same settings as the still frame we just mentioned earlier. That performance hit in Vista only compounds itself with each frame. Using the same numbers (call it 5 minutes per frame in Linux vs. 5.5 on Vista), you have (give or take) 43,200 frames to render. Instead of 216,000 aggregate minutes on Linux time (spread over the farm, naturally), you now have to pay for 237,600 minutes of aggregate render time to do it in Vista. That's a diff of 360 hours, or 15 days' difference. 'course, unless you're a movie studio you're obviously not going to pack in enough scene complexity, though for 1080p resolution with heavily involved scenes and pure CGI that looks about right for an average with a moderately industrial render engine.
Render farms are good for animations, but unless you own one, you get to pay for time on an existing one. A 15-day aggregate diff would mean a mofo of a difference to your budget... even if you were building your own farm.
/P
These same people are claiming Windows 7 is merely Vista SP2 despite having significant changes under the hood and a completely redesigned user interface.
If Snow Leopard is qualified as being a full release then Windows 7 sure as hell qualifies as being a full release even more so. If anything is a mere update it is most definitely snow leopard.
I'm the happiest that I could assign files in the garbage colors. I guess most Apple people want to color code their trash.
it's a great time saver ! and it's not just for trash but for the entire file system !
The way it is intuitive because the gear in every application means operations. However you can always do the same by right clicking.
I said it's for the entire file system not trash
In any event color coding is a pretty mediocre way of managing a project. It's fine if you're working at two or three projects at once, but what if it's 20? Let's see, project red, green, aquamarine, cyan, navy blue. How about if you have one file that's applicable to two projects...color it purple if it applies to projects red and blue? This doesn't scale for anything other than a home-office artist studio type of environment. That's where OS X is going to stay...
oh please ! A windows user talking about only relevant options in the UI ? lol !
Color coding the trash may help some people out . who knows ?
You and I won't be using it, but others might !
MAC OSX is known for consistency of interface across the board !
So that could also be the reason also
"In any event color coding is a pretty mediocre way of managing a project. It's fine if you're working at two or three projects at once, but what if it's 20? Let's see, project red, green, aquamarine, cyan, navy blue. "
Well atleast OSX is giving you a option,
BTW you can add more colors but it requires a bit of hacking !
From your statements
it appears that you haven't really used a MAC before
Try using one before whining and complaining !
How dense are you? Seriously. Someone deletes their the color-coded files, and your first thought is, "What a dolt! They color coded the files in their trash!"
It's one feature, among tons more, most of which are invisible.
sanenazok: don't judge a book by its cover, or, in your case, by the 3rd letter in the 2nd word in the author's name...
Engage brain before sniping next time.
u people need to use Macs instead of basing your opinion on the news articles and comments !
it has a small learning curve but once mastered it's way easier to work with than windows will ever be !
Open think that looks like a trash can (Recycle Bin) right click restore....
Yupp thats soo hard
ONE TINY FEATURE DOES NOT DEFINE AN ENTIRE OS!
I like that Apple is giving users Quicktime Pro.
"All features are now enabled in QuickTime by default. No longer requires a QuickTime Pro upgrade"
- by ferretboy88 February 23, 2009 9:19 PM PST
- Can't we get a new look? Not very stylish Steve. Silver is boring it is so 2001.
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- by cdwilliams1 February 24, 2009 6:33 AM PST
- I'm not sure why there are so many people wanting a "new look" to the interface. "Classic" MacOS from 1-9 all had basically the same interface. I DON"T WANT to learn a new interface with every release. I want to get work done. I want to be efficient. I want to get right down to business. Consistency between releases (and between apps for that matter) is huge. In the PC world, every release (2k, XP, Vista, 7) I have to mess around to set it back to the Windows 98 theme so I can start working with it right away rather than having to relearn everything. Why would I want to waste a few hours to re-learn how to set my IP address and add a printer? The eye candy and special effects (ZOMG Ponies! Animated shrinking windows!!) do nothing to enhance productivity and generally just eat resources. I'd rather have a stable and zippy workhorse.
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- by homercles82 February 24, 2009 7:09 AM PST
- CDWilliams
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- by seven7dust February 24, 2009 2:57 PM PST
- "If it took you a few hours to set your IP address and add a printer you must be using a non-MS or Apple OS because both are easy to do such things in."
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- by CrashPad63 February 25, 2009 7:46 AM PST
- Seven What the hell you talking about? Vista and 7 both installed my printer and networked printers without any dance. You wouldnt be trying to spread lies would you?
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- by Warhaven February 25, 2009 10:53 AM PST
- @CrashPad63
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- by DrtyDogg February 25, 2009 1:50 PM PST
- @Warhaven
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- by omnicronx February 26, 2009 12:37 PM PST
- I've never had problems adding a network printer in windows dating back all the way to XP. As for driver issues, most of this spawned from users trying to use their XP printer drivers on Vista. You can't really blame Microsoft for the manufacturer not updating their drivers(not only that but a windows update often downloads the drivers for you). In fact many printers are specifically designed for windows domain usage, and should be easy as pie. I have heard of Mac horror stories when trying to connect to network printers, although I do admit a local printer can be easier to install on OSX, it all depends on the situation.
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- by kcotham February 26, 2009 4:22 PM PST
- Thank you cdwilliams1. All these new converts from the world of Microshaft have gotten used to learning a new interface at every new release. Consistency is a GOOD thing people!
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Showing 1 of 2 pages (120 Comments)Appleheads constantly brag about how good their stuff looks.
You idiots can't get on the same page. In one article the comments are "**** IT LOOKS SO PRETTY" then in the next it's "It doesn't need to look good just work lol M$ nubs."
If it took you a few hours to set your IP address and add a printer you must be using a non-MS or Apple OS because both are easy to do such things in.
adding a printer in a Windows PC is the most painful thing to do
it takes patience and effort, and even with the driver CD it takes about 5-10 minutes
in MACs it's just plug n play, plug it in and start printing away
even if you're network is connected to a printer you can inststanly
start using it ,with zero config !
Plzz try doing some research before whinning/complaining
or you'll end up looking ignorant
What I think seven7dust means is that when plug & play doesn't work, adding a printer can be very much a pain in the ass. For example, if you have an TCP/IP printer on your network, one would -think- you'd add it via Network Printers in the print wizard. Nope. You have to select local printer (you know, like a USB printer) for your network printer, then create a custom TCP/IP port, and then punch in the info as per usual. But wait, it gets better. If you have more than one TCP/IP printer, you have to do it all over again for every single printer; with every single printer getting it's very own custom port -- populating your list of ports when adding other print devices with a bazillion different ports you'll never use again because those ports are tied to each individual printer's IP address.
EZ as pie, right?
Your information is dated, as it works now you just tell the wizard you are installing a network printer, give it the i.p. address or hostname and it will find it and install the appropriate driver. So yes it is easier than pie.