Forum Moderators: travelin cat
Apple® today announced that Mac OS® X v10.6 Snow Leopard™ will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple’s online store is now accepting pre-orders
US Price: $29
Up-to-date, Family Packs and box sets will also be available.
This one must sting in Redmond:
Snow Leopard is the only desktop operating system with built in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and it allows you to use Mac OS X Mail, Address Book and iCal to send and receive email, create and respond to meeting invitations, and search and manage contacts with global address lists. Exchange information works seamlessly within Snow Leopard so users can also take advantage of OS X only features such as fast Spotlight® searches and Quick Look previews.
Spotlight® searches
Spotlight has made me look like I have my life together. I can find every email, any pic, and all documents in a blink. Filing? Organizing? Ha, filing is for the little, common people.
1) Order by Wednesday.
2) Get in mail and install on Friday.
3) Report back here on Saturday.
BTW...This is not MY schedule. This is YOUR schedule. Remember, I went first last time.
Unfortunaely I don;t have the time to pick it up nor play with it.
If it does, you will no longer be able to buy a new Apple OS that is compatible with PowerPC machines - a right pain if you're on 10.3 or earlier, and want to run current version software.
(unless someone bought a load of them, and was sitting on them in preparation of the shortage, when they will jack the price up... :) )
What I mean be real competition is that for many years Mac OS really sucked and Windows kept getting worse with every release other than NT, 2000, and XP but I think finally we'll have good operating systems from all major vendors and now it'll really come down to which one works best for you as opposed to technical limitations. Of course Mac and Linux still have software compatibility issues but Mac should have this less and less as it grows and the Intel chips have also helped force compatible code.
Moreover a niche player can't have much influence at all on a de-facto monopoly anyway, nor offer any real competition as long as people flock to the monopolist.
Having used 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 and soon 10.6: they are incremental releases which add a truckload of subtle improvements. One hardly notices the individual improvements, but wait till you go back and loose one of those you've grown used to: it's an outright nightmare.
Of course Mac and Linux still have software compatibility issues ...
I take it you say that Linux and Mac have trouble running software made to run on Windows only ?
As far as I know even windows has trouble to run software designed to run on windows only ... esp. if you do not log in with "local administrator" rights.
As far as Macs go they have a tremendously great backward compatibility sitting under the radar: e.g. when they switched from a PowerPC CPU to an Intel one they added "rosetta" to allow transparent use of software compiled for the PowerPC CPU and still run it on the completely different Intel CPU. Few non-technical users would know they even were using it (except it's a bit slow -it has to emulate the CPU-) But e.g. I've used Office 2004 (which is compiled to run on PowerPC only) on an Intel mac till they finally released Office 2008. It's slow, but workable as far as Office goes.
Office 2008 is another example: while it's compiled to run on Intel CPUs, the libraries it uses are long obsolete ones, meaning it has trouble with the newer GUI and OS features limiting Office from fully integrating. But it remains usable as quite a few use it ... . Limitations are e.g.: internationalization doesn't support all settings, no proper support for spaces, ...
The CPU architecture has nothing to do with this kind of compatibility at all.
Compiling your C or C++ code or any other non-assembler code doesn't depend on the CPU if it's even slightly properly coded. It depends far more on how your code interacts with the rest of the system (the libraries used e.g.).
Companies such as Adobe (CS suite), Microsoft (Office for Mac), are among the biggest offenders in not updating those parts and still get to have a working result despite it all.
Now if you want to run a binary compiled for windows, you'll have to somehow create a substitute environment: either make a virtual machine with windows running in it (parallels, vmware, ...) , or emulate the environment itself without using windows (wine).
But the whole purpose of not having a windows box is to not have windows ... so why would you want the applications that are windows only ?
Seriously, I've not used a wintel box in many years for any reason. And the only thing I ever use my multiple windows images in VMware is to use the differnt versions of IE to check my own websites ... . If it were not for IE being popular, I'd not have them at all, as I've no other need for anything "windows" or "windows only".
The mac does have things like photoshop, word etc. natively available, and that's the big plus it has over any other unix(-like) system out there today.
I don't ever think of compatibility with other software of my macs as needing to run windows software. I might think of it as being able to compile some unix tool, but they get ported to the mac quite fast, removing the need for any difficult work from my part.
Snow leopard will have no effect on anything Microsoft will do with windows 7 when it is released to the public as windows 7 is long since ready and finalized.
Sure it will, I can see the headlines now.
"environmentalist and zoological based companies sue Microsoft with copyright claims over Snow Leopard name, windows 7 users worried" Cha-ching, more stale lawsuits turned into cheap advertising for Microsoft.
Followed by "Environmentalists blame snow leopard extinction on microsoft, say people confused Mac computer names with animals leading to lack of interest."
Wait for it...
I'd hit up a "burning phoenix" though, since animal names are next.
[edited by: JS_Harris at 12:25 am (utc) on Aug. 27, 2009]
[nytimes.com...]
I experienced frustrating glitches in various programs, including Microsoft Word, Flip4Mac, Photoshop CS3, CyberDuck and TextExpander, an abbreviation expander. (Interestingly, Snow Leopard offers its own typing-expander feature, but it works primarily in Apple programs, like TextEdit, Mail, Safari and iChat.) The compatibility list at snowleopard.wikidot.com lists other programs that may have trouble.Most of these hiccups will go away when software companies update their wares (although Adobe says, “Just upgrade to Photoshop CS4”). Let’s hope that Apple hurries up with its inevitable 10.6.0.1 update, too, to address the occasional Safari crash and cosmetic glitch I experienced, too.
Finally.
Go to System Preferences -> Formats ->
Next to "Dates", click the "Customize" button. Arrange your date in the format you want.
Now copy the entire format to your clipboard (Cmd-A, Cmd-C) and hit OK.
Click the "Customize" button next to "Times"
Make sure to choose "Medium" format.
Now Paste in to the time format and hit OK.
And, for owners of Intel-based Macs who are still using the older Tiger version of the Mac OS, Apple is officially making Snow Leopard available only in a "boxed set" that includes other software and costs $169. [...] But here's a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.
Good news for me - I have a Tiger Mac Mini as my home theater PC!
For some current Mac owners, Snow Leopard isn't an option. About 20% of them are still using older models that aren't powered by the Intel processors Apple currently uses. Snow Leopard simply won't work on these machines, including models designated as G4 or G5 and sold as recently as 2006.
[online.wsj.com...]
Gee, stajer, you got me all excited...for about a half-second.
Those with a PowerPC machine on Tiger (10.4) can they still legally obtain Leopard once Snow Leopard is in the stores ?
Adobe on Tuesday confirmed that its Creative Suite 4 (CS4) line of products is compatible with Snow Leopard, except for Adobe Drive/Version Cue. It also acknowledged that its older CS3 software has not been tested with Apple's forthcoming operating system.......(Adobe) stopped short however of declaring that CS3 will be fully functional under Snow Leopard, leaving Adobe users who haven't upgraded to CS4 wondering, like Microsoft Office 2004 users, whether any show-stopping glitches await.
[informationweek.com...]
This report goes on to say there are some clowns trying to get people to install malware saying they are offering updates to software to handle Snow Leopard.
For example:
Foxit Corporation, which makes the PDF reading program Foxit for Windows, Linux and various mobile platforms, on Tuesday warned that hackers are distributing software that purports to be Foxit Reader for Mac, a product that hasn't been released yet.
Those with a PowerPC machine on Tiger (10.4) can they still legally obtain Leopard once Snow Leopard is in the stores ?
Doesn't look like it. I can't find it for sale on Apple's website anymore. Two big UK computer distributors have pulled the product completely. dabs.com (big UK computer reseller) have stock but have raised their price about £10.
In a year or so copies of Leopard will be as eagerly sought as copies of Tiger are now by people who don't meet the minimum requirements for Leopard.
I really can't afford any down time and I don't want to go to CS4 as there currently is no reason for me to do so.
[support.apple.com...]
Thanks! ;)
MS says Office 2008 has been tested with Snow Leopard. It is declared ready.
[officeformac.com...]
"...the bulk of the Word 2008 Spaces issues have been fixed..."
"The bulk of...?"
You'll let us know, Remove?
I take it you say that Linux and Mac have trouble running software made to run on Windows only ?"
~ SWA66
I think it's just me but I found that too funny! Anyways, going out to buy it today and reformatting computer so it starts fresh with it, let's see how it works.
ps. This is a nice article to look at for newer OSX users and he has some unofficial ideas, so I wouldn't trust him to be 100% accurate, but a nice read just incase you forget some stuff.
