Snow Leopard Developer Preview – First Impressions

I attempted to install the Developer Preview under VMware, but Apple’s EULA doesn’t allow a client to run on a client. I was contemplating installing the Server Preview, but decided against that on this 17″ MBP. (This is a late 2008 unit.)

I did a full backup of 10.5.7 last night. This morning, I started the install. I decided to “risk it” and didn’t do a clean, full install. Essentially I did the ‘upgrade’ since I didn’t want to lose what I have on this laptop. In my opinion, while this may not be the best approach, it is a real test. I would think most people would want to preserve their environment and simply “upgrade” the OS. We’ll see if in the end this was the best decision considering a pre-release operating system.

About This Mac - 10.6

The install process was painless. I then went through three rounds of updates, the last being the 10A411 release, at a bit less than 750MB. (The 10A402 update was 1.31GB!)

My absolute first impression… Wow! Not for the new features, but for speed. The speed increase over my previous 10.5.7 install was more than just noticeable. Apps load faster, Expose is faster, the machine is just more responsive and ‘snappier!’ I don’t know if this is because the PPC code is not included (older Macs are not supported; this OS requires an Intel processor.) In any event, the footprint is about 6GB smaller than before. That is significant, especially on a laptop. Hats off to Apple in any event.

I have found a few quirks in this pre-release OS. I do use this machine everyday, and rely on it. The caveat when you install a developer or pre-release (beta) version is that if you can’t live without it, don’t install on that machine. The same holds true here… So I can’t complain if something doesn’t work quite right.

I’ve stumbled upon three apps that aren’t supported. Apple’s Remote Desktop is only supported to 3.2.2… Snow Leopard requires 3.3 or later. (Screen Sharing with my Leopard Server and 2.5 G5 Desktop still works fine.) Apple Server Admin doesn’t work. I assume, without question, they will update when 10.6 is released to the public.

I also noticed an anomaly with Quicktime Pro. The latest Leopard version is 7.6.2, but Snow Leopard includes version 10 (build 47) in this release. My plugin to allow viewing WMV (I know, the horror!!!) doesn’t work quite right. However, I found that the old M$ Windows Media Player still works just fine in a pinch.

So, all in all… SPEED! Lean and mean… That is the key. Will continue to explore, but the major apps don’t seem to have any problems. That includes Microsoft Office 2008, Adobe CS4 Creative Suite apps, SnapzPro, and many others. I will run through the list of installed apps on this machine, and will see if there are any other issues. Remember however, this is a beta release, and all apps are not necessarily compiled to run on this version.

First impression… two thumbs up!

Two Thumbs Up for Snow Leopard

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