Apple's Snow Leopard pounces

MANILA, Philippines - Promising faster and more efficient performance on its Macintosh computers, Apple last week introduced Snow Leopard, the latest upgrade to its Mac OS X operating system.

“We did a clean sweep of the entire code base for Mac OS X and refined 90 percent of the code,” said Darren Sng, senior manager for software product marketing at Apple Asia-Pacific, in a product briefing.

Many of the changes are not immediately apparent because they were done under the hood to improve performance, Sng said.

The Mac’s file manager, Finder, for example, looks no different than it did under Leopard, but it performs common tasks like rendering icon previews, emptying the trash or canceling an operation faster.

Snow Leopard is twice as fast at displaying a JPG preview, and 1.5 times faster at showing a PDF file, Sng said.

The built-in Mail program also moves messages 2.3 times faster, performs searches 1.9 times faster, and launches 1.9 times faster than Leopard, he added.

Quicktime, Apple’s multimedia player, was also enhanced to provide faster playback and to enable users to quickly trim and share videos.

Mac users who upgrade from Leopard will also notice that they will regain about 7 gigabytes of hard disk space because the code is more efficient, Sng said, adding, “That’s enough space for about 2,000 more songs.”

Corporate customers will appreciate the support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, which is now built into Snow Leopard, Sng said. This will enable Mac users to seamlessly access Exchange Server files from their corporate networks through Apple’s Mail, Contact and Calendar programs.

“We are the first operating system to support Exchange Server out of the box,” Sng said. “Not even Windows does that.”

Three new technologies built into the new operating system will enable program developers to take advantage of new hardware.

Snow Leopard now supports 64-bit computing so that Macs can go beyond the 4GB limit on system memory and run 64-bit applications. Sng said many of the programs that come with Snow Leopard have been rewritten to run as faster 64-bit applications.

Grand Central Dispatch, on the other hand, helps software developers make full use of today’s multi-processor systems by making it easier to manage program threads that run simultaneously.

Lastly, Sng said, OpenCL is a protocol developed by Apple to help developers write applications that fully exploit the capabilities of the newest graphics processors, many of which have the computing power of a supercomputer.

To upgrade to Snow Leopard from Leopard, a user simply needs to run the installer from the installation CD, a process far different from the typical experience of Windows users who upgrade their PCs, Sng said.

“We’ve redesigned the installer, which performs a compatibility check and has a safe redo feature so that you don’t lose anything if a power outage interrupts the installation,” Sng said.

In contrast, Windows users typically must back up their data and reformat their hard disks, install the new operating system, then rebuild their applications and data.

Also unlike Windows, which has multiple versions that can be confusing, there is only one version of the Mac operating system, Sng said.

“This is the Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate all rolled into one,” he said, using Microsoft marketing labels to make his point.

Mac users will be able to upgrade their Leopard systems for $29, which is much lower than the $220 it will cost Windows users to upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate when it is launched, Sng said, turning the tables on a Microsoft campaign to depict Macs as being more expensive than Windows PCs.

Snow Leopard is available from authorized Apple dealers for P1,690. A single-household pack of five licenses costs P2,790.