Apple Snow Leopard

• Download Os X Snow Leopard
• Download Snow Leopard 10.6 Free

Apple delivered the final security update for Snow Leopard in September 2013. Traditionally, Apple has patched only the OS X editions designated as 'n' and 'n-1' - where 'n' is the newest -. Now that it seems Apple's finally ended support for Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6, its fourth-oldest operating system, it's time for users to upgrade. Using an unsupported operating system means that. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is not a complete system overhaul and is instead a refinement of the current Leopard OS-some have gone so far as to call it a 'service pack.' We think the interface. Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 dmg for Mac download free offline setup. A smooth and very interactive operating system with numerous features. We are providing the facility to install the standalone setup of Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 full version with a direct link.

Tips on 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard(last compatible operating system for G4 867 and above, and G5s), 10.6 Snow Leopard (end of the line for PowerPC applications), 10.7 Lion, 10.8 Mountain Lion, 10.9 Mavericks,

10.10 Yosemite, and 10.11 El Capitan to 10.14 Mojave.

Mac OS X Sierra was released on September 20, 2016. A few Macs which came with 10.6 can install Sierra.

Note this tip, and the series of tips from 10.2 (10.2, and 10.3 not mentioned in above links as people must have 10.4.4 or later on an Intel Mac to get to 10.6) to 10.11 I've written here all refer to Mac OS X Client. Server versions of Mac OS X may have different limitations, and the people visiting the appropriate Server forum may be able to answer your questions better about Mac OS X Server.

When determining your Mac model, see this tip to find its age:

I would not downgrade to Leopard without erasing your data first.

Be sure to backup your data first at least twice before installing any operating system. Shut down, and disconnect any peripherals before continuing with the installation. Read the info below to ensure you are compatible. Finally, you may need to use the Startup Manager to boot the operating system when the 'C' key doesn't work in order to get the installer to work or repair the disk before installation if the initial attempt to install fails. To determine if that repair is necessary, post to the forum, and someone will be able to help you to find out which repairs might be necessary.

Java is outdated in terms of security in Mac OS X 10.6. Backup your data and at least update to 10.6.8 if your Mac says it is Intel in Apple menu -> About this Mac. Read about updating to 10.7, and this tip about how to optimize your Java in 10.6 if you are stuck with 10.6.

10.6 retail is available from the Apple Store on http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC573/mac-os-x-106-snow-leopard (the /us/ in the link may be changed for the standard two letter country code matching the store link). Note: Macs newer than April 1, 2010 but older than July 20, 2011 must use the original 10.6 installer disc that shipped with them to boot 10.6 from CD. AppleCare may have those discs if you lost or misplaced it. To determine the age of a Mac, plug it in the support status search engine, and use the serial number lookup. Using the model name, find the release date of that model on Wikipedia or Everymac.com, and the followup date.

Leopard (10.5) is not to be confused with Snow Leopard (10.6) which are different paid operating systems.

If you are interested in upgrading to Lion you can read this tip, and Mountain Lion or Mavericks, this tip. Note: Mavericks you can update to

for free, whereas both Lion and Mountain Lionyou can not. Lion requires a minimum of 10.6.6 already be installed, unless you have the USB Flash drive for it, and Mountain Lion and Mavericks requires a minimum of 10.6.8. Lion and Mountain Lion have different hardware requirements, but the Apple hardware requirements for Mavericks are the same Mountain Lion.

If you got a machine that came with Lion or Mountain Lion and wonder if you can install Snow Leopard on it, read the bottom of this tip first.

Snow leopard is available free for a limited time from this link if you have Mobileme and need an upgrade path to Lion that doesn't require erasing your hard drive.

Flashback malware has a patch on 10.6.8. Users of 10.6.7 and earlier are recommended to disable Java. For more info read this tip.

Macs that were released new as of July 20, 2011 (the MacBook Pro for instance had no new release until October 24, 2011, and that model's earlier sold models all work with Snow Leopard) or later, will generally not run Snow Leopard unless you follow this tip for Snow Leopard Server virtualization. Other than that, the following statements are true:

All Mac Pros will work with Snow Leopard (10.6.x), and they look like:

T software download.

The PowerMac G5 towers which look like:

will not work with Snow Leopard. Neither will the ones that are beige, blue, or graphite colored with plastic cases.

All Apple notebooks labelled MacBook with at least 1 GB of RAM, MacBook Pro, and MacBook Air below the screen or will work with Snow Leopard.

Apple notebooks labeled iBook, and Powerbook beneath the screen will not work with Snow Leopard. Note, many of the newer MacBook Airs and MacBook Pro no longer have the label on the bottom of the screen frame, and you have to shut down the Mac, and look under the Mac for its label. Those may only be able to use the aforementioned virtualized Snow Leopard Server.

Mac minis with at least 1 GB of RAM and 4 and 5 USB ports on the rear as shown in the image below:

Apple mouse near me.

will work with Snow Leopard.
Those with less than four USB ports will not work with Snow Leopard. https://truehload687.weebly.com/textual-7-0-7-lightweight-irc-clients.html.

All iMacs that look like:

Will work with Snow Leopard.

Download Os X Snow Leopard

From the iMacs which look like:

If they are iMac Intelthey can upgraded to Snow Leopard. To tell if they are Intel, they will have an EMC# on the base which is enumerated 2104, 2105, 2110, 2114, 2118, 2111, 2133, or 2134. All others were iMac G5 and can only be upgraded to 10.5.8. Another distinction is that iMac G5's had mini-VGA ports that looked like:

Whereas White iMac Intels had mini-DVI which looked like:

You can also tell if it is an iMac Intel by selecting Apple menu -> About This Mac. Core Duo and Core2Duo are Intel, whereas the G5 are not.

Notes: G5 refers to the CPU made by IBM for Apple before the migration to Intel CPU in 2006. It was found on iMacs, and PowerMacs. Powerbooks and iBooks maxed out using the Motorola G4 CPU, only to be replaced by MacBook Pros and MacBooks in 2006. Intel made the CPU found in 2006 and newer Macs, and these are referred to as CoreSolo, CoreDuo, Core2Duo, i3, i5, i7, and Xeon. Don't confuse a G5 for an Intel CPU Mac. They are not the same except in exterior design when it comes to the iMac, and the means to tell them apart is stated above. In 2006, the Mac Mini changed from G4 to Intel CoreSolo CPU. In 2006 the iMac changed from G5 to Intel CoreDuo CPU.

All Intel Macs with sufficient RAM older than March 29, 2010 can take the retail 10.6.3 installer disc. All Intel Macs with sufficient RAM older than August 28, 2009 can take the 10.6.0 retail installer disc. This disc must look like and can't say Upgrade, Dropin, or OEM on it.

It is recommended those upgrading from PowerPC follow this tip:

It is recommended you backup your data at least twice before upgrading any software.

It is recommended you check these listings for compatible 10.6 software from:
C!Net, Snow Leopard Wiki,Macintouch, and Apple's listing of compatible printers and scanners

and Apple supplied updates for printers and scanners:

HP, Ricoh,Canon, Epson, Brother,Lexmark, Samsung, and Fuji/Xerox

Additionally, some Ricoh printers that do not have official drivers have been found to have the resolution documented by this thread:

And Apple's phone support with iSync:

For digital cameras, these RAW formats are supported on 10.6. Note the most recent Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pros

have SD card slots for reading camera media. For all other camera media, Express/34 on 17' MacBook Pro and pre-June 8 2009 MacBook Pros, PCI for Mac Pro, USB, and Firewire card readers exist for all Intel Mac models. Additionally, many multifunction printers have card readers that will work on the Mac. JPEG, TIFF, PNG

are all common formats supported by cameras outside of RAW, though RAW enables you to post process many more features of digital images than the other formats.

To be compatible with the Mac App Store, the Lion updater from the USB Flash drive or App Store, and the Facetime video software in Standard Definition minimum, you'll need the 10.6.6 combo, 10.6.7 combo, 10.6.7 combo with the font update, or the 10.6.8 combo followed by the Thunderbolt update if applicable.

10.6.8 has the following security updates: 10.6.8 2013 Security Update 004, 2013-005 Java update (note Java is not current until Mac OS X 10.7.3 from Java.com)

Sometimes when 10.6 is installed, Rosetta, the application that allows PowerPC programs to run will not automatically install. In those situations, you can manually install Rosetta from the 10.6 installer disc. The following quote explains how to install it manually:

Insert the Mac OS 10.6 installation DVD When the DVD is mounted, select 'Optional Installs' then 'Optional Installs.mpkg'

Follow the onscreen instructions for agreeing to the software license and selecting the hard drive for installation.

In the 'Installation Type' step, select the box next to Rosetta from the list of applications presented. Continue the installation process.

After successful installation, a confirmation message will appear.

These instructions appeared on http://forums.printable.com/showthread.php?t=1110 .

As 10.6 is the last operating system that shipped on prebundled discs that come with Macs, it also is the last one that shipped with a prebundled set of iLife applications. To learn which version of iLife may have come on your computer, see this tip. 10.7 and later prebundled Macs did not ship with iDVD, but will have shipped with iPhoto, iTunes, Garageband, and iMovie. If you still desire iDVD, consult with AppleCare.

10.6 has these updates available depending on what you have on your Mac (Combo updates can be applied to any of the preceding versions, where Delta can only be applied to the immediately preceding version):

Which Macs can have Snow Leopard installed, and which can only have Lion installed based on Machine ID (also known as Model Identifier)?

You can find out which gray installer disc came with Macs that can install Snow Leopard newer than March 15, 2010 by reading: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1159. Machine ID is in Apple menu -> About This Mac -> More info (on 10.7 and later the About Window has System Information instead of More info to access the System Profiler) under the hardware section. The 'x' value below can be any number. Older Macs indicated below can use the 10.6.3 retail installer, if not the 10.6 retail installer, if they are older than August 28, 2009. Together with partitioning, the Core2Duo (not CoreDuo, not CoreSolo), Xeon, Core i3, i5, i7 Macs which are Snow Leopard compatible can run both Snow Leopard and Lion, provided they have at least 2 GB of RAM. Partitioning requires an erase of the hard drive. A second internal or external hard drive can boot into a separate operating system on the same Macs. The Macs below which can only run Lion and later, are also known as Lion prebundled Macs. Lion prebundled Macs thankfully can run Windows in virtualization, which would allow them to use the Windows version of software that may only run in Snow Leopard and earlier on Mac OS X. The Macs listed here that won't run Snow Leopard also are not able to use the retail Lion installer USB Flash drive, and must use the instructions onMacworld to create a specialty Flash drive or be cloned onto another hard drive before their prebundled hard drive dies, to be able to restore Lion. Macs below that can't install Snow Leopard directly may be able to do so via virtualization, as described by this tip.

Mac Mini 5,x and later only run Lion and later. Pamper casino sign up. Mac Mini 4,x and earlier can run Snow Leopard with at least 1 GB of RAM (that's greater than 768MB of RAM).

MacBook Pro 8,x with EMC#s 2355, 2563, 2564 can only run 10.7 or later, all other 8,x EMC#s can run 10.6.3 or later, and all 7,x can.

MacBook Pro 9,x and higher can only run 10.7 and later.

Download Snow Leopard 10.6 Free

Mac Pro 5,1 that are not EMC 2629 and earlier can run Snow Leopard. EMC 2629, and Mac Pro 6,x and later can only 10.7 and later.

The 10.6.3 retail installer will only work on Mac Pro 4,x and earlier.

Video file editing software. MacBook with no Air and no Pro on the screen as of 11/30/2011 can all run Snow Leopard with at least 1 GB of RAM.

MacBook Air 4,x and later can't run Snow Leopard, while 3,x and earlier with at least 1 GB of RAM can run Snow Leopard.

iMac 12,1 i3 (EMC 2496 on foot, MC978LL/A) can't run Snow Leopard, while the 12,x i5 and i7 can run Snow Leopard, and the iMac 1,1 through 11,x can run Snow Leopard with at least 1 GB of RAM. iMac 13,1 and later can't run Snow Leopard natively.

Lastly, here the Macs that are compatible with 10.6.3 retail avialable from the Apple Store based on Model Identifier:

iMac 11,1 and older

Mac Mini 3,x and older

MacBook 6,1 and older

MacBook Pro 5,x and older

MacPro 4,x and older

MacBook Air 2,x and older

Macs that fall between those criteria must use the 10.6 installer that shipped with them to install 10.6.

* The release names Early and Late can be gotten by plugging the serial number of the machine in

System Requirements for Snow Leopard vs Leopard

• Snow Leopard (Mac OS X v10.6) only runs on Intel-based computers and not the older PowerPC chips.
• An upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard frees up about 7GB of hard disk space. This has more to do with removing redundant components like printer drivers (which are downloaded on demand in Snow Leopard) than removing code specific to PowerPC.

Speed and Performance in Snow Leopard

Apple has made operating system components faster with Snow Leopard. Performance improvements include

• Faster startup, shutdown, installation, Time Machine backup and connection establishment.
• Faster PDF and JPEG icon refreshes.
• Improved performance of Finder, which has been rewritten in 64-bit Cocoa

Refinements to the user interface in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

There was no major overhaul of the existing Leopard interface when Apple introduced Snow Leopard. Minor UI refinements include:

• Stacks in Snow Leopard allow viewing a subfolder without launching Finder. Stacks have also been modified to include scroll-bars for folders with many files.
• Contextual menus which come out of Dock icons have more options and have a new look, with a semi-transparent charcoal background and white type.
• Exposé can display all windows for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock.
• Selection of columned text in PDF documents by analyzing the page layout.
• Prefixes for bytes are now used in strictly decimal meaning when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1,000,000 bytes.
• There's now a Put Back command in the Trash, just as in Windows' Recycle Bin.
• You can page through a PDF document or watch a movie right on a file's icon.
• When you click a folder icon on the Dock, you can scroll through the pop-up window of its contents.
• Buggy plug-ins (Flash and so on) no longer crash the Safari Web browser; you just get an empty rectangle where they would have appeared.
• Snow Leopard also has an impressive trove of tools for blind Mac users, including one that turns a Mac laptop's trackpad into a touchable map of the screen; the Mac speaks each onscreen element as you touch it.
• When you rename an icon on an alphabetically sorted desktop, it visibly slides into its new alphabetic position so you can see where it went.

New Features in Snow Leopard vs OS X Leopard

• WiFi signal strength: AirPort in OS X Snow Leopard displays the signal strength for all available WiFi networks so you can choose the strongest possible connection.
• Sortable search results: Snow Leopard adds the ability to sort Spotlight search results by name, date modified, date created, size, type of file, or label.
• Annotations in Preview: New annotation tools in Preview allow users to annotate and markup PDF files, including comments, links, highlighting, strikethrough text, shapes, text, and arrows.
• Cisco VPN support: Snow Leopard has built-in support for Cisco VPN connectivity. This allows users to connect securely with corporate networks (if the network uses Cisco VPN) without needing any additional software.
• Automatic update for printer drivers: When connecting to a printer, Snow Leopard downloads the most current device driver for the printer from the Internet. The new OS X also periodically checks for updates to the printer driver via Software Update.
• Nearby printers: When printing Snow Leopard displays the printers that are detected nearby, enabling you to identify and configure the best available device for printing your document.
• HFS+ read in Boot Camp: When using Windows (via Boot Camp) users can now access (read-only) files on the 'Mac side' without rebooting.

Support for Microsoft Exchange

Mac OS X Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for connecting to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers for access through Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Neither Microsoft Windows nor older versions of Mac OS X included this feature.

64-bit addressing

Mac OS X Snow Leopard and most Mac OS 10.6 built-in applications have been rebuilt to leverage the 64-bit addressing space (excluding iTunes, Front Row, Grapher and DVD Player applications), since Apple has started shipping each Mac as a 64-bit system. Snow Leopard supports up to 16 terabytes of RAM.

Grand Central Dispatch in OS X v10.6

Grand Central Dispatch utilizes multiple processor cores for more efficient performance. Due to the technical difficulties involved in making multi-core-optimized applications, the majority of applications do not effectively utilize multiple processor cores. As a result, processing power often goes unused. Grand Central Dispatch includes APIs to help programmers efficiently use these cores for parallel programming.

OpenCL

Introduced in Snow Leopard, OpenCL (Open Computing Language) addresses the power of graphics processing units to leverage them in any application, and not just for graphics-intensive applications like 3D games. OpenCL automatically optimizes for the kind of graphics processor in the Mac, adjusting itself to the available processing power.

QuickTime X

In Mac OS X v10.6, Apple has redesigned the QuickTime user interface to resemble the existing QuickTime full-screen view, where the entire window plays only the video and all controls including the title bar fade in and out as needed.

If they are iMac Intelthey can upgraded to Snow Leopard. To tell if they are Intel, they will have an EMC# on the base which is enumerated 2104, 2105, 2110, 2114, 2118, 2111, 2133, or 2134. All others were iMac G5 and can only be upgraded to 10.5.8. Another distinction is that iMac G5's had mini-VGA ports that looked like:

Whereas White iMac Intels had mini-DVI which looked like:

You can also tell if it is an iMac Intel by selecting Apple menu -> About This Mac. Core Duo and Core2Duo are Intel, whereas the G5 are not.

Notes: G5 refers to the CPU made by IBM for Apple before the migration to Intel CPU in 2006. It was found on iMacs, and PowerMacs. Powerbooks and iBooks maxed out using the Motorola G4 CPU, only to be replaced by MacBook Pros and MacBooks in 2006. Intel made the CPU found in 2006 and newer Macs, and these are referred to as CoreSolo, CoreDuo, Core2Duo, i3, i5, i7, and Xeon. Don't confuse a G5 for an Intel CPU Mac. They are not the same except in exterior design when it comes to the iMac, and the means to tell them apart is stated above. In 2006, the Mac Mini changed from G4 to Intel CoreSolo CPU. In 2006 the iMac changed from G5 to Intel CoreDuo CPU.

All Intel Macs with sufficient RAM older than March 29, 2010 can take the retail 10.6.3 installer disc. All Intel Macs with sufficient RAM older than August 28, 2009 can take the 10.6.0 retail installer disc. This disc must look like and can't say Upgrade, Dropin, or OEM on it.

It is recommended those upgrading from PowerPC follow this tip:

It is recommended you backup your data at least twice before upgrading any software.

It is recommended you check these listings for compatible 10.6 software from:
C!Net, Snow Leopard Wiki,Macintouch, and Apple's listing of compatible printers and scanners

and Apple supplied updates for printers and scanners:

HP, Ricoh,Canon, Epson, Brother,Lexmark, Samsung, and Fuji/Xerox

Additionally, some Ricoh printers that do not have official drivers have been found to have the resolution documented by this thread:

And Apple's phone support with iSync:

For digital cameras, these RAW formats are supported on 10.6. Note the most recent Mac Mini, iMac, and MacBook Pros

have SD card slots for reading camera media. For all other camera media, Express/34 on 17' MacBook Pro and pre-June 8 2009 MacBook Pros, PCI for Mac Pro, USB, and Firewire card readers exist for all Intel Mac models. Additionally, many multifunction printers have card readers that will work on the Mac. JPEG, TIFF, PNG

are all common formats supported by cameras outside of RAW, though RAW enables you to post process many more features of digital images than the other formats.

To be compatible with the Mac App Store, the Lion updater from the USB Flash drive or App Store, and the Facetime video software in Standard Definition minimum, you'll need the 10.6.6 combo, 10.6.7 combo, 10.6.7 combo with the font update, or the 10.6.8 combo followed by the Thunderbolt update if applicable.

10.6.8 has the following security updates: 10.6.8 2013 Security Update 004, 2013-005 Java update (note Java is not current until Mac OS X 10.7.3 from Java.com)

Sometimes when 10.6 is installed, Rosetta, the application that allows PowerPC programs to run will not automatically install. In those situations, you can manually install Rosetta from the 10.6 installer disc. The following quote explains how to install it manually:

Insert the Mac OS 10.6 installation DVD When the DVD is mounted, select 'Optional Installs' then 'Optional Installs.mpkg'

Follow the onscreen instructions for agreeing to the software license and selecting the hard drive for installation.

In the 'Installation Type' step, select the box next to Rosetta from the list of applications presented. Continue the installation process.

After successful installation, a confirmation message will appear.

These instructions appeared on http://forums.printable.com/showthread.php?t=1110 .

As 10.6 is the last operating system that shipped on prebundled discs that come with Macs, it also is the last one that shipped with a prebundled set of iLife applications. To learn which version of iLife may have come on your computer, see this tip. 10.7 and later prebundled Macs did not ship with iDVD, but will have shipped with iPhoto, iTunes, Garageband, and iMovie. If you still desire iDVD, consult with AppleCare.

10.6 has these updates available depending on what you have on your Mac (Combo updates can be applied to any of the preceding versions, where Delta can only be applied to the immediately preceding version):

Which Macs can have Snow Leopard installed, and which can only have Lion installed based on Machine ID (also known as Model Identifier)?

You can find out which gray installer disc came with Macs that can install Snow Leopard newer than March 15, 2010 by reading: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1159. Machine ID is in Apple menu -> About This Mac -> More info (on 10.7 and later the About Window has System Information instead of More info to access the System Profiler) under the hardware section. The 'x' value below can be any number. Older Macs indicated below can use the 10.6.3 retail installer, if not the 10.6 retail installer, if they are older than August 28, 2009. Together with partitioning, the Core2Duo (not CoreDuo, not CoreSolo), Xeon, Core i3, i5, i7 Macs which are Snow Leopard compatible can run both Snow Leopard and Lion, provided they have at least 2 GB of RAM. Partitioning requires an erase of the hard drive. A second internal or external hard drive can boot into a separate operating system on the same Macs. The Macs below which can only run Lion and later, are also known as Lion prebundled Macs. Lion prebundled Macs thankfully can run Windows in virtualization, which would allow them to use the Windows version of software that may only run in Snow Leopard and earlier on Mac OS X. The Macs listed here that won't run Snow Leopard also are not able to use the retail Lion installer USB Flash drive, and must use the instructions onMacworld to create a specialty Flash drive or be cloned onto another hard drive before their prebundled hard drive dies, to be able to restore Lion. Macs below that can't install Snow Leopard directly may be able to do so via virtualization, as described by this tip.

Mac Mini 5,x and later only run Lion and later. Pamper casino sign up. Mac Mini 4,x and earlier can run Snow Leopard with at least 1 GB of RAM (that's greater than 768MB of RAM).

MacBook Pro 8,x with EMC#s 2355, 2563, 2564 can only run 10.7 or later, all other 8,x EMC#s can run 10.6.3 or later, and all 7,x can.

MacBook Pro 9,x and higher can only run 10.7 and later.

Download Snow Leopard 10.6 Free

Mac Pro 5,1 that are not EMC 2629 and earlier can run Snow Leopard. EMC 2629, and Mac Pro 6,x and later can only 10.7 and later.

The 10.6.3 retail installer will only work on Mac Pro 4,x and earlier.

Video file editing software. MacBook with no Air and no Pro on the screen as of 11/30/2011 can all run Snow Leopard with at least 1 GB of RAM.

MacBook Air 4,x and later can't run Snow Leopard, while 3,x and earlier with at least 1 GB of RAM can run Snow Leopard.

iMac 12,1 i3 (EMC 2496 on foot, MC978LL/A) can't run Snow Leopard, while the 12,x i5 and i7 can run Snow Leopard, and the iMac 1,1 through 11,x can run Snow Leopard with at least 1 GB of RAM. iMac 13,1 and later can't run Snow Leopard natively.

Lastly, here the Macs that are compatible with 10.6.3 retail avialable from the Apple Store based on Model Identifier:

iMac 11,1 and older

Mac Mini 3,x and older

MacBook 6,1 and older

MacBook Pro 5,x and older

MacPro 4,x and older

MacBook Air 2,x and older

Macs that fall between those criteria must use the 10.6 installer that shipped with them to install 10.6.

* The release names Early and Late can be gotten by plugging the serial number of the machine in

System Requirements for Snow Leopard vs Leopard

• Snow Leopard (Mac OS X v10.6) only runs on Intel-based computers and not the older PowerPC chips.
• An upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard frees up about 7GB of hard disk space. This has more to do with removing redundant components like printer drivers (which are downloaded on demand in Snow Leopard) than removing code specific to PowerPC.

Speed and Performance in Snow Leopard

Apple has made operating system components faster with Snow Leopard. Performance improvements include

• Faster startup, shutdown, installation, Time Machine backup and connection establishment.
• Faster PDF and JPEG icon refreshes.
• Improved performance of Finder, which has been rewritten in 64-bit Cocoa

Refinements to the user interface in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

There was no major overhaul of the existing Leopard interface when Apple introduced Snow Leopard. Minor UI refinements include:

• Stacks in Snow Leopard allow viewing a subfolder without launching Finder. Stacks have also been modified to include scroll-bars for folders with many files.
• Contextual menus which come out of Dock icons have more options and have a new look, with a semi-transparent charcoal background and white type.
• Exposé can display all windows for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock.
• Selection of columned text in PDF documents by analyzing the page layout.
• Prefixes for bytes are now used in strictly decimal meaning when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1,000,000 bytes.
• There's now a Put Back command in the Trash, just as in Windows' Recycle Bin.
• You can page through a PDF document or watch a movie right on a file's icon.
• When you click a folder icon on the Dock, you can scroll through the pop-up window of its contents.
• Buggy plug-ins (Flash and so on) no longer crash the Safari Web browser; you just get an empty rectangle where they would have appeared.
• Snow Leopard also has an impressive trove of tools for blind Mac users, including one that turns a Mac laptop's trackpad into a touchable map of the screen; the Mac speaks each onscreen element as you touch it.
• When you rename an icon on an alphabetically sorted desktop, it visibly slides into its new alphabetic position so you can see where it went.

New Features in Snow Leopard vs OS X Leopard

• WiFi signal strength: AirPort in OS X Snow Leopard displays the signal strength for all available WiFi networks so you can choose the strongest possible connection.
• Sortable search results: Snow Leopard adds the ability to sort Spotlight search results by name, date modified, date created, size, type of file, or label.
• Annotations in Preview: New annotation tools in Preview allow users to annotate and markup PDF files, including comments, links, highlighting, strikethrough text, shapes, text, and arrows.
• Cisco VPN support: Snow Leopard has built-in support for Cisco VPN connectivity. This allows users to connect securely with corporate networks (if the network uses Cisco VPN) without needing any additional software.
• Automatic update for printer drivers: When connecting to a printer, Snow Leopard downloads the most current device driver for the printer from the Internet. The new OS X also periodically checks for updates to the printer driver via Software Update.
• Nearby printers: When printing Snow Leopard displays the printers that are detected nearby, enabling you to identify and configure the best available device for printing your document.
• HFS+ read in Boot Camp: When using Windows (via Boot Camp) users can now access (read-only) files on the 'Mac side' without rebooting.

Support for Microsoft Exchange

Mac OS X Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for connecting to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers for access through Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Neither Microsoft Windows nor older versions of Mac OS X included this feature.

64-bit addressing

Mac OS X Snow Leopard and most Mac OS 10.6 built-in applications have been rebuilt to leverage the 64-bit addressing space (excluding iTunes, Front Row, Grapher and DVD Player applications), since Apple has started shipping each Mac as a 64-bit system. Snow Leopard supports up to 16 terabytes of RAM.

Grand Central Dispatch in OS X v10.6

Grand Central Dispatch utilizes multiple processor cores for more efficient performance. Due to the technical difficulties involved in making multi-core-optimized applications, the majority of applications do not effectively utilize multiple processor cores. As a result, processing power often goes unused. Grand Central Dispatch includes APIs to help programmers efficiently use these cores for parallel programming.

OpenCL

Introduced in Snow Leopard, OpenCL (Open Computing Language) addresses the power of graphics processing units to leverage them in any application, and not just for graphics-intensive applications like 3D games. OpenCL automatically optimizes for the kind of graphics processor in the Mac, adjusting itself to the available processing power.

QuickTime X

In Mac OS X v10.6, Apple has redesigned the QuickTime user interface to resemble the existing QuickTime full-screen view, where the entire window plays only the video and all controls including the title bar fade in and out as needed.

QuickTime X supports HTTP live streaming. Thus, QuickTime X streams audio and video using any web server instead of a special streaming server, and it works reliably with common firewall and wireless router settings.

QuickTime X uses Mac OS X technologies such as Cocoa, Grand Central Dispatch, and 64-bit computing to deliver higher performance and enables QuickTime Player to launch up to 2.8x faster than QuickTime. QuickTime X also takes advantage of ColorSync to provide high-quality color reproduction.

There is a 'Send to YouTube' command built in when you play movies. Users can also record their screen activity as a movie.

CUPS

CUPS (the printing system in Mac OS X and Linux) has been updated to version 1.4 which provides improved driver, networking, and Kerberos support along with many performance improvements. CUPS 1.4 is also the first implementation of the Internet Printing Protocol version 2.1.

References