TheQuantumByte

Developers were seeded an update last week to the developers’ preview of Apple’s upcoming operating system, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. The update weighed in heavy with bug fixes and security updates, making the beta software that much more stable to use, so much so that it can now, in my opinion, be used as a primary OS. The 10A394 build of Snow Leopard also enabled the hyped Dock Expose, which was curiously absent from the build handed out too developers at WWDC.

I installed my copy of Snow Leopard late last week and was provided the 10A394 update, which I am very happy with. As we developers are under an NDA, I cannot go into much detail. However, here are my first impressions.

Installation Process

Part of Apple’s promise was to shave off the disk space needed by the installation, and I did see some, but not much, shaving done here so far. My installation came in at 8.46GB and took just 13 minutes. That was quick.

Finder

The finder was completely rewritten and is now fully 64-bit and simply blazes on my MacBook Pro 2.53GHz. I love the slider bar at the bottom right and of course, the super-eye-candy that the super-large icons provide. Another big thing in Snow Leopard is that the system now calculates file sizes in base 10 and not base 2, and hence my 250GB hard drive now shows as 250GB, and not 238.4GB (see explanation here).

Another change to the UI involved in handling files is that a lot of things now fade. For example, deleting a file from the desktop, the icon now fades away. Cool, Apple.

Stacks

Stacks is one of the ‘enhanced’ features of Snow Leopard, and is among one of the few changes to the user interface. You can now scroll through a stack in grid view and drill into and back out of containing folders.

QuickTime X

Another rewrite in Snow Leopard is QuickTime, now up to version X (“10″). The new UI features a black window toolbar and minimal controls. When you move the mouse cursor off the window of the video, the controls and toolbar fade away to give a clean space to watch the video in. Also included in QuickTime X are screen-recording capabilities.

Dock Expose

One of the new features demoed to the public is the fusion of Exposé into the Dock. Clicking and holding on a dock icon springs up all open windows of that application, and you are able to preview each window (sounds like Windows 7!) before opening it. Window titles in Exposé have also been moved to the bottom of each window, and there seems to be more of a grid formation in the way Exposé tiles windows now.

Final Comments

Applications run well, the system is stable, and animations, as always, are nice. I’m glad to be a developer to be able to play with this nice new OS, and i hope this first impressions review has been helpful! Well, I know for most of you the screenshots themselves are all you need to feast your eyes on. Snow Leopard is due for release in September for just $29 for existing Leopard owners, and $49 for the Family Pack of Leopard owners.