While Snow Leopard, the latest version of Apple OS X, is being marketed as an update with no new features, there are actually a number of small improvements included that are going to translate to better performance and an overall improved experience for users. Let's take a look at what's new and better about Apple's Snow Leopard.
Multi-Touch Framework
All notebook systems from Apple are due to ship with track pads that have multi-touch technology enabled, once the summer's design overhauls are finished. Snow Leopard is slated to ship with a complete multi-touch framework including functions and code libraries that developers can use to enhance their own application with the same multi-touch capability available currently in applications like iPhoto and Safari.
Battery Notifications
Notebooks are also going to be notifying their owners when batteries near the end of their lifespan. We've been able to get the current charge available for years, but knowing when your laptop is about to die is another thing entirely. Now, when you click on the battery icon on Snow Leopard's menu bar, you'll receive a battery condition summary in addition to the current power source and available charge.
When the battery has been overused and is losing capacity, this icon has an exclamation mark overlaid and the condition will be listed as poor. That means you'll need to replace your battery soon. This application will replace more detailed third party utilities, and may be related to the company's decision to seal in most notebook batteries.
Applications Get Slimmer
Another one of Snow Leopard's goals is reducing OS X's overall footprint, allowing it to be scaled for use in the growing array of mobile devices which use lower capacity flash RAM drives. This includes the soon to be released Apple Newton Web tablet. This means that applications for Snow Leopard have been reduced in size, dropping the usual Utility folder for Mac OS X from more than four hundred Mb to just over a hundred.
Mail has been shaved down by two thirds, and iChat is half its previous size. iCal has seen similar reductions. Technologies that seem to be helping the downsizing of these applications include Resolution Independence, a method of substituting raster graphics with vector files, and Localization, which installs localized language files in a centralized location that each application accesses.
While you might not see a lot of difference in the way Snow Leopard performs, you're almost certain to feel it. Applications will perform nearly three times faster, making the whole computer a lot more responsive. Even installation speed is expected to be boosted by over forty percent, meaning the time to an update is much less than before.
Safari 4
This version of Apple's browser has already been released for other versions of Mac OS X, but there are some improvements that are only going to be available via Snow Leopard. These include the fact that plugins have been sandboxed into separate process, since plugins are considered the biggest cause of crashes in OS X. If plugins crash in Safari 4 while running Snow Leopard, the browser doesn't crash - the plugin is simply rendered as a rectangle with an icon of a broken plugin. JavaScript is expected to have a fifty percent speed increase, just like most other applications, and will also have full 64 bit performance.
Text Processing
Snow Leopard is also going to be making use of some text processing fixtures that Microsoft originally conceived as features for Microsoft Word, some of which are already included in OS X (such as red underlining for spelling errors and green underlining for grammar problems). New features that are likely to be added as part of Snow Leopard include smart dash insertion, auto correction of misspelled words and text replacement features.
ZFS Support
Snow Leopard was going to be the first version of Mac OS X that includes full support for Sun Microsystems ZFS file system. ZFS offers advantages including automatic error correction, storage pooling, snapshots, dynamic volume expansion and other benefits that are best used by high end workstations with many disk drives and by servers. While read only ZFS features were present in Leopard, Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server were going to include read and write support for this 128 bit system. ZFS wasn't supposed expected to replace HFS entirely in this new version, however it seems that in the latest builds ZFS is no longer present.
Automatic Activation
Apple is also going to be expanding its Data Detector technology with Snow Leopard. Currently, this technology extracts events and contacts from Mail, but it is likely to be used to expand on Font Book, allowing full Auto Application of fonts requested by any application. Spotlight will be used to track them down.
Microsoft Exchange Support
Another feature of Snow Leopard is that full Microsoft Exchange support will be built into iCal, Address Book and Mail. Exchange compatibility has been licensed directly from Microsoft, meaning that integration with Exchange Server 2007 or newer versions is extremely easy. Mail now includes server auto-discovery support, iCal includes an integrated view of Exchange as well as personal calendars, and support for accepting invitations, scheduling meetings and drag and drop contact integration. In corporate environments, Snow Leopard will be easier to use.
Faster Shutdown And Wakeup
Apple says that Snow Leopard is expected to be as much as seventy-five percent faster than OS X Leopard when shutting down and waking up from sleep mode. Screen locking is enabled, and you should be able to say goodby to having a groggy computer!
Disable And Enable Services
If you don't use a service often, or if you never use it, Snow Leopard will allow you to easily disable or enable it without creating screen clutter. Better services integration also means that you don't have to look at inappropriate options. The only services you'll see on your screen at one time are the ones that are compatible with the program you're currently using.
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