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Complete List of Mac OS X Snow Leopard Enhancements

65 points| jasongullickson | 17 years ago |apple.com | reply

82 comments

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[+] cake|17 years ago|reply
Things I wish could be fixed with 10.6

- Cut and paste a file (no you can't with the finder)

- Maximize the windows

- This annoying audio "pop" I can hear when my Macbook's line out is connected to a hifi system and no sound is playing.

[+] potatolicious|17 years ago|reply
Add:

- Breadcrumb in Finder Windows. This is uber-annoying.

- Revamped open/save dialogs. What do you mean I can't right click to rename a folder in the save dialog?! What do you mean I can't search for a file in this folder?

Sadly the Finder has nothing on Windows Explorer.

[+] gabrielroth|17 years ago|reply
You might or might not care, but your first two wishes can be achieved with third-party tools. Path Finder has cut-and-paste for files, and MercuryMover can resize windows to full-screen size.

But the lack of development of the Finder is one of the worst things about OS X. It's been rewritten in Cocoa for Snow Leopard but with only a few minor new features. Hopefully the rewrite is a harbinger of bigger improvements in the next version.

I'm just going to plug Path Finder one more time: it's completely replaced the Finder for me. Info at http://cocoatech.com.

[+] jsz0|17 years ago|reply
It's funny you say that because anytime I use Windows or Linux I am wishing for a Zoom button. It's quite rare for me to ever need any window to completely fill my screen. As someone else did mention the biggest issue with OSX's Zoom button is consistency but fundamentally I think it's a far better way to deal with window management. The best solution might be for Apple to simply offer it as an easily accessible configuration option in System Preferences. There's really no wrong or right way -- it's just what you're used to and how willing you are to change habits.
[+] zach|17 years ago|reply
Are the first two items things you miss from Windows? They were for me, but I wouldn't want them added to 10.6...
[+] jasongullickson|17 years ago|reply
I have to say I've used osx for years and I've never noticed the first two (and I use Windows every weekday as well).

The third one sounds like it sucks though.

[+] GHFigs|17 years ago|reply
The first two work as intended. They may not fit your preference, but to "fix" them you would have to convince the authors that they are broken.

The third is not a software problem.

[+] jsonscripter|17 years ago|reply
That's actually eye-opening! I had no idea OS X lacked such basic features (and had such a "pop" bug).
[+] ghshephard|17 years ago|reply
Oh, thank the good lord:

  Date in menu bar.
  The date can appear alongside the time in the menu bar.
Seriously - This missing feature has driving me CRAZY - Windows XP has been able to do it since the beginning of time. Finally I can look at my screen and figure out what the date is without having to Click on the Time (or leave iCal in my Dock)
[+] raganwald|17 years ago|reply
> Restore deleted items to original folders: If you put an item in the Trash, then change your mind, you can restore it to its original location. Just select the item in the Trash folder and choose Put Back from the File menu.

Well lookitthat! They finally got around to making OS X's finder behave like MacOS's finder, bringing it into the 1990s. I think I used this feature twenty years ago.

Apple claim they don't copy Microsoft. Why should they, they are busy copying themselves!

[+] makecheck|17 years ago|reply
Yep. Bertrand Serlet's comments on stage pretty much summed up Apple's attitude: they love the Finder in Leopard. They either don't know or don't care about just how much the Finder has really lost, nor do they focus on major UI issues in the Mac OS X Finder (that have been documented extensively in many blogs and articles), issues that create daily frustration or confusion for many users.

I'd bet that even this Put Back feature will be a poor imitation of the old one, just like everything else. Scrollable stacks that can dive into folders? Please, Mac OS 8.5's pop-up windows were brilliant, scrollable windows that could do everything else that Finder windows could do, and it doesn't even look like Stack pop-ups can be resized.

[+] dreish|17 years ago|reply
It's a pretty big job, trying to reimplement every last little one of Mac OS 9's features on top of Nextstep.
[+] philwelch|17 years ago|reply
It turns out that elegance of design and general usability concerns, combined with the need for new features, were more important than replicating every last feature of Mac OS 9 over the past decade.
[+] DLWormwood|17 years ago|reply
If "Put Back" works on the desktop like "Put Away" used to, then, yes, finally a return to the good ol' days! I used Command-Y a lot back then...
[+] TommyWiseau|17 years ago|reply
Wow, it appears that they finally made an attempt to FTFF.

One feature I really, really, really wish someone would do would be to allow me to explicitly disable my DVD drive until I actually need it. This is partially a Finder problem, no doubt, but I would say that 90 percent of the time it spins up, it is unnecessary. I've looked into fstab alterations, but on Leopard when you open it up, you're greeted with a very ominous and threatening message:

IGNORE THIS FILE. This file does nothing, contains no useful data, and might go away in future releases. Do not depend on this file or its contents.

[+] snprbob86|17 years ago|reply
I am absolutely amazed that my brain was able to parse "FTFF" as "fix the fucking finder". A cursory Google search for it doesn't show any places I think I have ever been, but it actually was on Urban Dictionary. Wow... the internet has clearly affected me...
[+] barrybe|17 years ago|reply
LOL at this paragraph:

"Boot Camp now includes HFS+ read support that enables you to access the files on your Mac OS X partition from Windows. It’s read-only to prevent PC viruses from affecting Mac OS X,"

[+] carterschonwald|17 years ago|reply
these caught my eye:

Multi-Touch gestures in older Mac models.

Static analysis. (for Xcode)

[+] jasongullickson|17 years ago|reply
Agreed, I'm definitely looking forward to the updates to xcode. I'm even more excited about OpenCL...
[+] arthurk|17 years ago|reply
> Gamma 2.2. > The default gamma has been changed from 1.8 to 2.2

I've heard designers getting angry about this. Is there really such a big difference?

[+] DLWormwood|17 years ago|reply
Enough to mess up color calibration for WYSIWYG workflows. (Though using ColorSync profiles is supposed to make this moot, not enough files contain such profiles, especially if they are Windows originated or unedited after camera capture.)

This seems to be a concession to web browsing. When visiting web pages, many Mac users complain about images showing up as too dark, when they appear "just fine" on Windows browsers. Safari was supposed to fix this, but third-party browsers like FireFox and Camino never bothered to deal with color correction, so this default is a work around, since so much work is done on the Web anymore. /-: (Funny how Windows users never complain about images appearing too bright or washed out. I guess Windows are used to problems dealing that OS. (-: )

(Not that this should 'ffect me much, I'm using a ColorSync profile on my home machine that changes the white point to a grey tinge to match the lighting in my apartment anyways.)

[+] jcromartie|17 years ago|reply
Customizable Services menu and Service authoring from Automator is just awesome... but it's a long time coming! Most people don't even realize the menu is there.
[+] makecheck|17 years ago|reply
Agreed. In the NeXT days, Services was a top-level menu that couldn't be missed. I always found it silly that they buried it in Mac OS X, especially considering that far less useful menus were not buried (such as Help).
[+] makecheck|17 years ago|reply
It's funny to see them market the fact that Mac OS X takes up less disk space. While this is true, I'm sure the only reason is because all bundled apps and frameworks no longer contain PowerPC chunks in their universal binaries.
[+] dchest|17 years ago|reply
Bertrand Serlet said something about compression in the keynote.

Also note that the largest part of application size is not in binary, but in resources (images, nibs, etc.)

Edit: also, all major apps are compiled with 64-bit support (and should run on 32-bit systems), thus it's minus ppc, but plus x86_64, which has a larger code size.

[+] GHFigs|17 years ago|reply
HFS+ in Snow Leopard has transparent compression for read-only files. I think that probably counts for more than stripping binaries.
[+] Oompa|17 years ago|reply
Split View Terminal Windows. Awesome.
[+] makecheck|17 years ago|reply
It was a feature of older Mac OS X versions, but mysteriously disappeared.
[+] limmeau|17 years ago|reply
With all the 64-bit happiness: does anyone know whether the first Intel Core Duo (Yonah)-based MacBooks are still supported?
[+] kylec|17 years ago|reply
Phil Schiller said all Intel Macs, past and present, so I would say it's most likely that the 32-bit Macs are supported.
[+] Rob15283|17 years ago|reply
How about allowing us to set windows for when Time Capsule backs up files? I don't need to have backups run every fifteen minutes through the night.

Also, I'm never going to use Safari unless they make a bookmarks pane on the left as FF and IE do. Message to Apple: don't put being different ahead of being useful.

[+] sant0sk1|17 years ago|reply
They mentioned during the keynote that the Snow Leopard family pack is only $49. Does anybody know if that is just for upgrades from Leopard? I have 3 Macs: 2 are running Tiger and 1 is running Leopard.
[+] grinich|17 years ago|reply
$29 for a single license of SL. $49 for the family license.

Also, it's important to note that Snow Leopard will only run on Intel Macs.

[+] ROFISH|17 years ago|reply
Previous OS X release discs allow you to do a clean install from a wiped hard drive, although they all were much higher priced ($129).
[+] jamesbritt|17 years ago|reply
But no Java 6 as a default Java, and on 32-bit machines.
[+] c00p3r|17 years ago|reply
That is where PR people from FreeBSD or Linux should learn how to write. Not just "we were upgraded gcc to 4.3 and now we have x86_64 builds".