Apple unveils Snow Leopard with all its guts and glory
Always mindful of its competition, Apple comes right out of the gate saying that Windows 7 is just Microsoft’s tool to get them out of a hole — that it’s nothing more than just a new version of Vista. Ouch. Pot shots aside, Snow Leopard is on today’s menu and it doesn’t look to disappoint. For starters, Exchange support can now be found in Mail, iCal and Address Book. The indispensable Finder is still the same, but with slight tweaks for speed and more seamless navigation. Expose is now built right into the dock to help keep you organized and all your windows can be viewed through that single icon on the dock making viewing and navigation a little simpler than before. Application installations are also 45% faster than before — not too shabby for those of us with little to no patience. Snow Leopard will also feature handwriting recognition for the trackpad, which is pretty intense. Hit the jump for more.
Safari 4 is getting a lot of attention is this new OS X build, and Apple claims it’s now 7.8x faster than IE8. The major change comes along with 64-bit JavaScript performance which is 50 percent faster than before. It’s also crash resistant! Apple says that crashes are caused mainly by plugins, but now if a plugin should crash, all your windows remain in tact; all you have to do is refresh the page and all is saved. One of the biggest updates to Safari is history search: If you click on the lower right corner, your entire history is shown as a cover flow of web pages instead of just a boring list. On the Quicktime front, along with a new logo it’s getting an aesthetic upgrade along with a new technology called HTTP streaming.
So how much to upgrade from Leopard? $29 once it becomes available in September. Awesome. There will also a family pack available for $49.
pretty cheap upgrade price but no need to disparage windows 7 so quickly if mac is darn good.
This was the worst Apple Keynote ever.
“Application installations are also 45% faster than before — not too shabby for those of us with little to no patience.”
LOL – I think this comment goes for every common computer user these days.
Apple is really starting to become a player. As its newest tactics is to bash their competitors. Shame Apple you used to be so classy.
Seems like Apple has taken a marketing approach similar to their fanboys.
Knock on competitors products. Lame.
will it run Zork faster?
Apple got the pricing right with this one. Can’t say the same for the iPhone3.5
Funny how Apple is so quick to bash MS when I just now didn’t read anything all that innovative or ground breaking on this new OS.
Yawn……
7.8 times faster in the “new” OS than IE8? And that’s 7.8 times faster at … what operations? Everything? Got any independent testing to verify that? I come from the bad old days when Apple used to lie through their teeth with cherry-picked “trials” showing the wheezing Motorola chip to be superior to the Intel chip.
And they must be worried about win7- to single it out in your own product launch … someone’s getting concerned in Cupertino.
And, as an aside, I’m sorry not to see Steve Jobs at the conference … I hope he is ok.
I need Exchange support like yesterday…
this is good for people who want to upgrade to snow leopard for $29.
INNOVATION! Introducing 64-BIT! WOW! No one has EVER done that before! 16 BILLION GIGABYTES! ALL NEW TO MAC OS!
Oh, wait, what about Windows 7 64-bit, or before that Vista 64-bit, or even before THAT Windows XP 64-bit. A little late to the game, Apple?
EXCHANGE SUPPORT!
$29 upgrade! w00t! w00t!
Bash Windows 7 all you want apple, your OS X is never gonna catch up with it though.. it’s not even going to get better than Vista
i admit that apple has come a long way, and has a recent history of highlighting their innovations, but im sorry im not gonna pay top dollar for a mac-chine when i can have the same internals for half the price.
also i love how apple just throws “facts” out there without any pretense, as in “apple’s new safari now runs 7.8x faster than IE8 [because the the IE8 we used was on a pc with 80gb hard drive, AMD athalon processor, and 512 MB of ram, so when compared to a mac running an intel duo core, with 2GB of ram, and a 240 GB hard drive, yea of course the mac is 7.8x faster
all i want is some background info, especiially when clocking the performance of a comepetitors internet explorer…
then i’ll say yea mac u have the better product..
@yeah dude don’t hate everyone said that about the last one calm down @ the rest I have both vista 64bit and mac osx and I will tell you mac is way more stable than 64bit half the stuff you want to do on 64bit don’t work. Just don’t hate on it like what u like and that’s it
Apple may be late to the game on many of the details, but all I know if I’m sitting with my macbook across the table from my g/f with a Vista Vaio, and while I love mine, she just literally threw her computer towards the fireplace in hopes of breaking it. So while Windows has capabilities further advanced than Apple, MS can’t pull off what most consumers really want. Stability, Security, Ease of Use.
Welcome to the show Apple…introducing new products already existing and acting like you revolutionized or even invented it…I think you tried that with the iphone 3Gs lol.
Sarav: you’re right, OS X will not “get better” than Vista. . . It always has been. This is why MS doesn’t even MENTION Vista anymore. Cheers.
Lots of fanboys on this one. Might as well join in.
Go Apple Go
Haven’t they ignored the lame “It’s a PC” ads long enough? Just throwing a little dirt back in the lowest common denominator. Microsoft is the king of introducing “new” technology after Apple and other companies five years later. Microsoft doesn’t exploit their 64 bit technology. Why have it if your making no effort to use it.
catch up? New to Vista was old news in Tiger. What are you the one Vista fan ever?
29 bucks for Snow…yahhhhhh…
oh…osx wont ever be windows…but…i seem to have a little button that i click on that looks just like windows…oh wait…it does…i seem to have windows running on my mac too…weird
“One of the biggest updates to Safari is history search: If you click on the lower right corner, your entire history is shown as a cover flow of web pages instead of just a boring list”
Wow, that’s pretty sad. One of the biggest updates simply changes a history search from text to pictures… I’m so jealous of you guys now…
If MS were such hot shit, you wouldn’t have just about every major IT shop in the nation/world fighting to keep XP on their workstations and outright refusing to install anything but XP, and still running Office 2000.
IT shops rarely install ANY MS product until the 1st or 2nd Service Pack for whatever they are using. That’s confidence for you!