Mac OS X - Snow Leopard Available for pre order

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diogen- OK, I understand now. :)

I'm in the middle of doing that MAC OS X install now and the first attempt was a dismal failure.

What I am learning about this MAC approach to OS design is that since they do not permit industry wide hardware support, their driver compliment can me quite simplistic. Therefore the process of simply using the install disk to create a Mac OS on a dell computer may work fine if the hardware in that Dell matches what is in the Mac array of hardware. Windows, by contrast has to be far more understanding of all the variety of hardware. Frankly, going through this process makes me appreciate the technology behind windows more than OS X.
 
I installed Snow Leopard last night, and got to admit I am not really that impressed, there are no new exciting bells and whistles I can see, it looks like this version was basically a service pack.

What am I missing here that should be so cool about Snow Leopard?
 
Don Landis said:
Therefore the process of simply using the install disk to create a Mac OS on a dell computer
may work fine if the hardware in that Dell matches what is in the Mac array of hardware.
Click to expand...
Exactly!
This is why the Dell Mini 9 was such a "Apple success" - every single hardware component had a driver on a OS X disk.
Actually, you don't have to have a driver for every single part of the system (e.g. wireless or sound) to run the OS X install until the end. But some critical parts have to have drivers: storage controller, chipset, video, etc. Missing video driver is the cause of most failed OS X installs on non-Apple hardware. And this is exactly what Apple wants - locking customers into Apple hardware and limiting support calls due to few hardware options available.

Diogen.
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
... there are no new exciting bells and whistles I can see, it looks like this version was basically a service pack.
Click to expand...
I think this was a "clean-up" release by design: moving most of the kernel to 64-bit
and dropping PowerPC support (freeing 7GB of hard drive storage in the process).
The rest of the changes are of a service pack nature, I think.

Diogen.
 
Scott Greczkowski said:
I installed Snow Leopard last night, and got to admit I am not really that impressed, there are no new exciting bells and whistles I can see, it looks like this version was basically a service pack.

What am I missing here that should be so cool about Snow Leopard?
Click to expand...
That is what I said in a early post. It is a service pack. In fact, SP2 for windows had more upgrades than Snow Leopard does for Leopard.
 
DodgerKing said:
That is what I said in a early post. It is a service pack. In fact, SP2 for windows had more upgrades than Snow Leopard does for Leopard.
Click to expand...

The problem is that you don't take away support for items with a support pack. This is most likely the reason they made it its own version.
 
DodgerKing said:
Exactly. Can you imagine what the "Apple Nazis" would have said if Microsoft did the same thing? :p
Click to expand...
If Microsoft stripped out the old, unneeded, legacy code and rewrote almost the entire core thereby reducing the size of Windows to half of what it was "Apple Nazis" and everyone else who knows anything about computers would say, "It's about time!"
 
mperdue said:
... thereby reducing the size of Windows to half of what it was
Click to expand...
Funny that...
Snow Leopard reportedly reduces the OS footprint by 7GB.

A few days ago I did a clean Windows 7 RTM install on a 3 year old Dell laptop (Latitude D520).
The total OS footprint (sans pagefile) with three language packs was under 6GB!
BTW, it also works just fine on a 6 year old Inspiron 300m.

Snow Leopard doesn't work on anything older than 4 years (PPC -> Intel).
And I'm not even talking about hardware support....

Diogen.
 
diogen said:
Funny that...
Snow Leopard reportedly reduces the OS footprint by 7GB.

A few days ago I did a clean Windows 7 RTM install on a 3 year old Dell laptop (Latitude D520).
The total OS footprint (sans pagefile) with three language packs was under 6GB!
BTW, it also works just fine on a 6 year old Inspiron 300m.

Snow Leopard doesn't work on anything older than 4 years (PPC -> Intel).
And I'm not even talking about hardware support....

Diogen.
Click to expand...

Removing legacy support was the whole point. The older hardware works fine with the older OS.

BTW, when you load a full software development system, a music scoring and editing package and all the other "extras" that are included with OS-X tell me how much disc space you use.

I make my money developing in both worlds so I'm not a fanboy for either system. I use both systems daily but have only had the Mac for a couple of months. OS-X blows any version of Windows out of the water when you compare the two objectively. It's also significantly faster on equivalent hardware, it's more reliable and it's more secure.
 
Well, today I decided to venture into the Valley of the shadow of MAC death and try something bold. At least it is for me. :)

I took my MacBook Pro apart and removed the stock 120 Gb hard drive. Apple sure doesn't want you to do that as it took a gazillion screws and three styles of screw drivers, two of which I had to fabricate in the shop! I stripped a 120 Gb WD drive with MHDD utility to factory default condition as it had Windows Vista on it. Stuck it in and put the Mac Book back together.

Next I put the $29 DVD in the drive and let 'er rip. I got the familiar menus to configure it and now have an estimate of 30 minutes to install which seems to be going just fine. When the Utilities bar came up I had to partition the drive and name it. Then I selected the partition for installation.

AS claimed earlier in this thread, the $29 disk will install Leopard Snow from scratch without error screens so far. The only scary thing I've seen is the screen went blank after 2 minutes but that turned out to be the screen saver as a tap on the mouse pad brought the Install screen back up.


I decided to do a clean install for two reasons, one was to prove to myself this was an install, not just an upgrade disk. Second, I have applications on the original dosk that are being purported not to work with Snow. One being Ver 6 of Final Cut. I'd hate to lose that after paying such a high price for it. Parallels is another that I would need to upgrade. So keeping the original hard drive and building a whole new system was the best and safest way for me to try it and then if I like it, I can upgrade those apps as I wish to afford them. The way I calculate, I have about $400 to upgrade stuff to cooperate with Snow.

Don't recall if I said this earlier but Apple wanted me to buy a special version of Snow to do this since my original was Tiger. That cost $169 plus tax and shipping. If I bought Leopard and upgraded then bought Snow and upgraded, I would have spent only $159. They must have hired the pricing guy from Dish Network! :) But in reality, it appears that I will be running with having spent only $29 at Best Buy where no Machead geniuses are there to empty out my wallet of $130 for nothing!

Anyway, I'll post back later how this fresh install ended up. So far it is halfway into it and rolling.
 
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