So, by now you should know that Apple released Snow Leopard today. Here’s my review.
Enhancements
First off, I’ll start with enhancements. Like it says on Apple’s website, “Refined, not Reinvented”. Snow Leopard’s major purpose was to boost speed, performance, and set a some-what standard structure for future OS’s. Snow Leopard really pulled through with this well, in my opinion. Finder, especially, has had an amazing upgrade. Finder is now faster, smoother, and nicer to use. Quick Look also helped make finder much much better. Quick Look got a big speed increase for pretty much everything, and it’s quite noticeable. Time Machine backups where also noticeably faster, and when going into Time Machine for restoring a file, it seemed a lot more smooth and responsive. Wake & Shut Down times varied; I have to say that my MacBook didn’t always shut down faster than 10.5 Leopard. But the wake up times where faster, which I like. Apple also mentioned how Mail doesn’t use as much processor or RAM when you don’t have it active. Let me tell you that this is very nice, and it also makes Mail more responsive & fast.
Quicktime X
With Snow Leopard, Apple introduced the next version of Quicktime, Quicktime X. In my point of view, Apple pretty much re-designed Quicktime with this release. Everything has a new fell and look; even when you view media files in a web browser. A couple cool features that Apple added where the ability to send it to iTunes, YouTube, or MobileMe. You can also now “trim” your video, just like on the iPhone 3GS. I also like how when you move your mouse off of the video, the top bar will disappear. It makes the video nicer to view.
New Technologies
Snow Leopard has really come through with some great new technologies, including the new, Grand Central Dispatch. Grand Central really lets you take full potential of those quad- or eight-core processors in the Mac Pro by spreading the tasks to all the processors. This means you could have a lower speed 8 core but still run the final speed of a higher dual-core. Mac OS X 10.6 also is fully 64-bit. A 64-bit OS means applications can handle more Memory (RAM) at a time; 16GB. This also means the system is even more secure against attacks. OpenCL also unleashes the power of the graphics processor. It makes the system capable of using bits of the GPU to make it run better; and believe me, it’s nice. The new technologies in Snow Leopard also have set a building block for future Mac Operating Systems.
Universal Access & Exchange Suppport
Universal Access in Snow Leopard has made Accessibility even better. A couple new refinements/features include faster keyboard navigation, more braile support, custom labels, the rotator, and more. Universal Access now has a brand new VoiceOver quick-start tutorial that will help you get set up with everything. Apple has also put Microsoft Exchange support into their applications. You can now use Mail, Address Book, and iCal with Exchange.
Overall
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has really come through to be a great upgrade. Apple has really worked on the speed side of things, along with some great fixes & additions. If you’re thinking of getting it, I would go ahead and do it. Snow Leopard makes the “Mac Experience”, and your life, a lot better, smoother, and responsive.
Snow Leopard is $29 (single license) or $59 (family pack). The Mac Box Set, which comes with Snow Leopard, iWork, and iLife, is $169 (single) or $229 (family).
I also posted some screenshots HERE & some short video clips HERE.
So, as usual, they go into Best Buy. They are looking for a laptop with Speed, Portability, and Battery life for under $1700. Then there’s the normal “You find it, you keep it”. Lauren says she is going into law-school and needs a laptop that is portable. The look at some PC’s, starting with a Dell. Then they go and look at the MacBook Pros. She says “This one only has a 250 GB hard drive” “It seems like your paying a lot for the brand”. She loves speed and loves running programs. They end up going BACK to the first Dell they looked at and bought that one. The employee says “There’s only one left”. The total price was 971.99. “A lot less than my goal of $1700″ “Yaaaa.”
MY Opinion:
Okay, my stuff here might be a little bit scrambled, but I’ll try to keep it as organized as possible. First off, when they gave the specs she wanted, I thought the MacBook Pros where just fine for her. Then they go look at stuff. When she said “This one ONLY has a 250 GB hard drive” I was like WHAT???? Are you serious? You said you where going into law-school. Why would you need something bigger than that?! “It seems like your paying a lot for the brand”. I will have to agree with this a little bit. But then again, I don’t agree with her that much. When you are a law student, especially, you want a computer that IS fast and will work when you want it to and the way you want it to. A Mac would give you awesome speed, portability, and functionality. Plus you wouldn’t have to worry about viruses or installing tons of stuff in order to run something.
For Lauren, I would suggest either the higher-end MacBook Pro 13″ or the low end 15″. They both have a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM, a pretty good graphics card, 250GB hard drive, and a 7 hour battery. If she wanted portability, I would go with the 13″. If not, I would choose the 15″.
Today I am here to review an app from the App store. This app is called “myHomework”. It is quite a simple yet useful app for anyone who needs a better way to write down their homework (or unless you don’t even write it down!). myHomework allows you to create classes, set the start and end time, set the days of the week, and more. Everything is put into a simple layout that makes it look like your typing on a notepad! Also, on the icon in your iPod/iPhone’s home screen, it will show any upcoming or late assignments. You can change the icon shows in and more in the preferences. On the bottom of the screen, there are three sticky notes. One for the homework list, one for classes, and one for preferences. Each has simple interface and is easy to read.
myHomework is a GREAT app. Especially if you are a person who writes down homework but doesn’t read it. The best part is, it’s FREE!
myHomework is avalable on the app store, free, here
If you haven’t heard of Tweetie, it is a Twitter app for the iPhone/iPod touch. Today, April 20th, Atebits released the Mac version.
Just like all good Mac apps, Tweetie is easy to use. There is a sidebar on the left. On the top of the sidebar there is your account picture. When you have that account selected, it will show four buttons under it. One for the timeline, one for mentions (replies), one for direct messages, and one for search. On the top there is a navigation bar that tells you where you are in the application (for instance, if your looking at a reply from someone, it would say “Mentions > Conversation”. A cool feature about Tweetie is the direct messages. When you go to the DM’s section, it will show all the people you have sent/received messages from. When you click on that person, it will come up in an iChat-like chat. There is also a “Reply…” button up at the top if you want to send a message to that person. Another cool feature is the user info. When you click on a person’s profile picture, it will show their name, username, & their tweets. There are also four buttons under their name: tweets, people replying to that person, starred, and their profile info. You can also add the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar which will pull up a tweet message with that page’s URL.
Tweetie for Mac costs $19.95 or $14.95 if you buy it before May 4th. There is a free version with ads, also.
No, i’m not talking about what time it is. Times is a neat little RSS application for the Mac operating system made by Acrylic. Except this isn’t your ordinary RSS reader.
Times turns everything into a newspaper-like layout, making it easy to find and read anything you want to. You can add different pages/sections of your “newspaper”, each with its own title or category. You can then add feeds to the different spots on that page. Times comes with 25 different pre-entered feeds that you can use or delete. Adding different ones is a charm. Just click on the plus icon and you can type in the URL and Times will pick up the name of the feed (which you can edit if you like). If you have a URL pasted to your clipboard, then it will automatically show up in the URL spot. One cool feature in Times is the shelf. Simply drag the article you want to the shelf, and you can save it for later reading- without worrying about you loosing it between all the other ones. If you want to inform the world with what you’re reading, just enter your login information (for sites like Digg and Twitter).
Today I am here to review an app from the App store. This app is called “myHomework”. It is quite a simple yet useful app for anyone who needs a better way to write down their homework (or unless you don’t even write it down!). myHomework allows you to create classes, set the start and end time, set the days of the week, and more. Everything is put into a simple layout that makes it look like your typing on a notepad! Also, on the icon in your iPod/iPhone’s home screen, it will show any upcoming or late assignments. You can change the icon shows in and more in the preferences. On the bottom of the screen, there are three sticky notes. One for the homework list, one for classes, and one for preferences. Each has simple interface and is easy to read.
