Snow Leopard’s First Day
Tom on August 28, 2009
It happened just by chance, rather than by careful prior planning. It turned out I was in the city, near to the CBD Apple Store as it was today, so I thought I would swing by and find myself a copy of Snow Leopard, merely coincidentally on its first day of availability.
The excitement at the Store was a bizarre mix of opposites: there was just one poster advertising Snow Leopard in the form of “upgrade your Mac”; but, the amount of Mac users who were clutching their copies made it evident that I was not the only one there who knew / cared it was something to buy it on the first day.
Coming back to the now, though; Snow Leopard has been freshly installed on my ‘new’ MacBook. When I say ‘freshly installed’, I really mean ‘upgrade installed’. I’m leaving for the U.S. tomorrow on a jet plane, and I don’t have the time to sort and resort for a fresh install…. But I will do it when I get home.
I suppose carelessly I left the install running while I did other things; therefore, I can’t really gauge how long it took to install, but about one hour, I estimate. The bizarre thing was that when I returned to my computer, and instinctively tapped my (Bluetooth) keyboard, everything looked exactly the same…
That was because I did the upgrade install, my background, dock items, everything – had been replaced as it was. Bizarre, since the lack of aesthetic upgrade for Snow Leopard made it look pretty much like nothing had happened. Lo and behold though, holding down an icon produced application-specific Éxpose, so something had gone on.
After using Snow Leopard for a few hours, in its first release (10.6.) it seems great. Everything is a little quicker and a little snappier. Feature-wise, nothing is different, but just easier – i.e., thumbing through PDFs in icon view.
What is so beneficial is the quicker boot-up and shut down time, and the quicker start-from-sleep time.
So, after all, nothing to be too excited about. Merely refinements and improvements – but well worth the A$39.
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