The New York Times Review of Apple's Snow Leopard
As I previously mentioned, Apple released its newest operating system, Snow Leopard, last Friday. The New York Times published its review, which included the following quotes:
- Apple’s release strategy is highly unorthodox: “Leopard, a k a Mac OS X 10.5, was already a great OS-virus-free, nag-free and not copy-protected. So instead of adding features for their own sake, let’s just make what we’ve got smaller, faster and more refined.”
- Snow Leopard truly is an optimized version of Leopard. It starts up faster (72 seconds on a MacBook Air, versus 100 seconds in Leopard). It opens programs faster (Web browser, 3 seconds; calendar, 5 seconds; iTunes, 7 seconds), and the second time you open the same program, the time is halved.
- “Optimized” doesn’t just mean faster; it also means smaller. Incredibly, Snow Leopard is only half the size of its predecessor; following the speedy installation (15 minutes), you wind up with 7 gigabytes more free space on your hard drive. That, ladies and gents, is a first.
You can read the whole review by clicking here.
Source: "State of the Art: Apple's Sleek Upgrade" by David Pogue, published in The New York Times.
There's also a very detailed review at ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars
And Apple's list of refinements: http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-refinements.html
I agree that snow shutdown more quickly.. but I haven't seen any difference in time to mount/unmount.. and files copy... I honestly had to go come here read your review so I can spot what have been changed lol..