Apple Snow Leopard Mac OS X 10.6 Review

The new release of Snow Leopard, an operating system upgrade for Intel Macs is being touted by Apple and MacWorld as the underpinnings of the future of Macintosh.  The only problem with that is that we're still in the present.  It's far faster to use, on start and shutdown, there are eleven new features, but it is a radical change from the past.  A great many important functions and applications (printers, Norton Antivirus, Internet Cleanup, TechTool Pro 5 and Deluxe, which Apple itself gives all who sign up for AppleCare support and other repair tools) are not compatible.  Many, if not all, third-party apps to tweak menubar or finder or mouse) either don't work or require a relaunch of the System Preferences panel in 32-bit mode before they are usable because everything but the underlying kernel (forgive me, i'm not all that sure what this means either, but...) is changed to 64-bit and the kernel wasn't or nothing at all that was last year's purchase would run.

For those who remember or owned (or still own) a PPC Mac without an Intel chip, Apple has not made this operating system for you.  But the plain fact is that most Aplle users still have some PPC or Universal (both PPC and Intel) applications, so Snow Leopard does have an optional install of Rosetta that will allow them to run on it.  Optional.  Easy to overlook that one.  And most current printers won't run without Rosetta.  If you don't check the box for the optional install, bye-bye printer.  Apple has said that Snow Leopard won't care, since it will install software drivers for your specific printer(s) and it will download the needed drivers if it doesn't find them.  The only trouble with that is the printers were working fine before.  Fail to install Rosetta with Snow Leopard and they won't work at all.

For those who do install Rosetta, their printer will probably work, but its utility (where you look to check and clean nozzles and ink levels) has been co-optedby the 64-bit System Preference "Print & Fax".  And when it tries to communicate with your printer to show ink levels, you're told, "No Information Available".  And meanwhile, the installer has erased your old printer utility.  So a trip to your manufacturer's website becomes mandatory and Snow Leopard doesn't know to download any new software or reinstall the older software because it's not that simple.  At least, not yet.

On the plus side, there are new features that work well.  The Dock, Expose and most Other Apple-designed features have been nicely tweaked.  Everything is really faster (all applications, shutdowns and startups).  But oddly, the current Quicktime 7.5 is offered as an optional install (like Rosetta) and moved to the Utilities folder to make room for the new Quicktime X.  It also has a new interface that takes it out of a window and places the controls floating over the video upon mouseover.  When not in full screen mode, this can be very frustrating (and can happen by accident).  But it does look pretty.

Overall, I like it and it was worth the $29.95 price, but it almost seems that, in planning for the future, Apple has inadvertently screwed the present by trying to cut ties with its past.  And I've been following the tech pages and a whole lotta users are having a whole lotta issues with it.

Note:  At the bottom of this window, I will be asked if I would recommend this product to a friend.  A yes or no isn't quite accurate.  Yes, but not quite yet.