This is just a short blog to let you all know that Snow Leopard, the new operating system created by Apple for their Mac’s has been given a set release date of August 28th. I know that only 1 or 2 other readers here have a Mac so it isn’t all that exciting for the majority of you. I’ve just pre-ordered my copy and if you have a Mac you can pre-order it on their website. Click here!
P.S I’d also like to apologise for the lack of posts and interesting posts at that, I think I may be going down to 4 Posts a Week, simply because I’d prefer to post better quality thing blogs rather than just half assed things for the sake of posting. But I still also want to post little news updates of thing’s I find, so you may find a bunch of updates one day and none the next two… Who knows what I’m likely to do!
What’s the coolest new feature to Leopard?
I haven’t actually used it yet so I wouldn’t know but from looking at the website it seems like its mainly Speed and Space. Which are two of the major things really.
According to graphs, its 2 times faster to wake up from sleeping and 1.8 times faster to shut down. 50% faster installation time and the OS itself takes up 7Gigs less space than the current ones which means more of the 250GIG hardrive for me and not the OS X
Apparantly the backup is 80% Faster (not that I use it) and the finder, which is kind of like the windows start menu, but in folder format is supposed to be quicker, more responsive and just a whole lot snappier. They are also changing from 32Bit Base technology to 64 bit which means that the Mac computers can go up to 32GB of Ram, instead of the common 4GB of 32 Bit systems. Although I cant see any of the Macbooks fitting them any time soon. LOL
You do have Leopard though? Right? Because the $29 (or whatever applicable currency) if for an Upgrade from Leopard… all other users need to buy the Mac Box Set… for $169 (or etc.)
And no 32-bit operating system can access 4GB of RAM, the limit is about 3.25GB. Leopard was 64-bit in areas, running off a 32-bit kernel, but was still able to access 4GB of RAM. (The 32-bit kernel didn’t affect as Mac Pros before even Leopard (but affter the PPC switch) could handle up to 32GBs of RAM) Snow Leopard is giving (certain) Macs the ability to boot a 64-bit kernel. The 64-bit transition in Snow Leopard is two a few things, first off all the system apps (Finder and the like) are 64-bit, and not 32 allowing them to access above 4GB of memory and its providing a speed boost. Macs after Snow Leopard would be able to address a theoretical 16 exabytes (thats 16 billion GB), much more than the 32GB current Macs can address.
Yeah I have Leopard.
Are you sure about the 32-Bit only getting like 3.25GB, I know my Vista PC could only access 3.5 or something, but when I installed SP1 or what ever it was, It showed the full 4GB
Yes. A limitation of 32-bit is only being about to access 3.25 (or there abouts, I forget the actual number) GB of RAM. 64-bit can access over that, and thats one of the pluses of having a 64-bit capable processor (Core 2 Duo and up). Also I should not, that only the more recent Macs (Unibody MacBook Pros, iMacs and Mac Pros) will be the only Macs capable of booting the 64-bit kernel, and only the most recent version of the Xserve will even be able to boot it by default.
Here’s a good explanation of it in simpler terms:
http://www.computing.net/howtos/show/4gb-memory-with-32bit-os/62.html
Also, it looks like, accoring to a Microsoft KN article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946003/
That Vista SP1 will report installed memory accurately, and not how much memory is available to the OS. Seems to be a reporting change only on 32-bit systems. So the 4GB you see on you VistaSP1 based PC is exactly what you have installed, but not the amount you have available to use. Which is more, or less accurate, depening on how you want to look at it.