I got my hands on the 10A380 developer build of OS X 10.6 (like many other people by now) and decided to install it and give it a whirl.
The installation is a breeze, as usual, fast too.
I still find the ‘Welcome in 300 languages’ animation once you’ve installed OS X extremely annoying especially since you can’t bypass it. Once one has completed the Setup Assistant you get to see your shiny new desktop.
The first thing: the new desktop background… I love it, it’s beautiful and shiny.
Esthetically nothing much has changed on the desktop except for the Airport and Time Machines icons which are now a soft grey when they’re inactive / unused. Dock looks the same except we now have the Applications stack and the Quicktime icon hasn’t changed to the shiny new one Apple had during the keynote and Dock Exposé is missing altogether.
Finder wise I haven’t found anything new other than that what was demoed during the keynote. Same goes for the new System Preferences, nothing shocking there either.
So I decided to go along and install some of my favorite applications such as Growl and Perian, then, it happend! OS X 10.6 has some new requirements to how PrefPanes behave hence nuking both the Growl and the Perian PrefPane which means you can’t tweak Growl or install the Perian codecs… at least, not without a terminal 
.
Basically, whenever you click on a third-party PrefPane in 10.6 you’ll get something like this:
To get the Perian Codecs to work in QuickTime X just download and install Perian as you always would, then open a Terminal and paste these commands:
cd /Library/PreferencePanes/Perian.prefPane/Contents/Resources/Components
cp Perian.zip ~/Downloads
cp CoreAudio/A52Codec.zip ~/Downloads
cp QuickTime/AC3MovieImport.zip ~/Downloads
cd ~/Downloads
unzip AC3MovieImport.zip
unzip A52Codec.zip
unzip Perian.zip
sudo mv Perian.component/ /Library/QuickTime/
sudo mv AC3MovieImport.component/ /Library/QuickTime/
sudo mv A52Codec.component/ /Library/Audio/Plug-Ins/Components/
Jobs done, the codecs are now working again.
Growl is another story and a more complicated at that. Though Growl installs and starts fine Growl does not enable by default the ‘Start Growl at Login’ option which I do want but again, can’t set it through the PrefPane. The fix is easy:
Open System Preferences > Acoounts > <select your account> > Login Items
Hit the + to add a new application and when you get the browser hit Apple/Command + Shift + g and paste into that box the following path: /Library/PreferencePanes/Growl.prefPane/Contents/Resources/
Now select the GrowlHelperApp and click the Add button, jobs done 
.
You still can’t customize your Growl settings but at least you’ll have Growl.
Another application that breaks entirely is CoverSutra. Just disable it, there’s no way to work with it decently.
Besides those minor annoyances which I am fully confident the developers will fix by the time 10.6 is officially launched I love Snow Leopard. It is extremely speedy on my unibody MacBook Pro, especially thanks to the 64bit applications throughout the system and all that legacy powerpc code that is now gone.
I still decided to use XSlimmer to trim my applications just a bit further, I now have a Mail.app of 5.1MB which runs only in Intel 64bit modus and has only the English language files (localizations and Help files), just the way I like it .
The biggest improvement for the end-user though would have to be QuickTime. I’ve been a Mac user for quite a while and I always loathed QuickTime (remember back in the days when Full Screen was a Pro feature?). QuickTime as known since 10.1 was the most loathsome piece of software Apple created and not only on the Mac but now everything has changed.
All those stupid Pro-featues and limitations are gone and it now has an extremely simple and minimalistic UI which is just fabulous. The QuickTime guide doesn’t pop-up every time you open QuickTime, even better, when you launch QuickTime, not even a playback window is opened! Besides that QuickTime has lost every single annoyance it used to have, combined with the Perian codecs it can do about anything. Ohw and the trim and share feature? It bloody hell works! It wasn’t some keynote only magical illusion, it works as advertised and well too.
So Apple, for this, I will thank you as you have finally listened to Mac users and fixed one of the greatest annoyances on the Mac platform.
Other great news, the Exchange support truly does work…. well…. kinda…… As Apple said, it requires Exchange 2k7 and yes indeed it does. I’ve tried to no avail to get it working with 2k3, it’s just no go. So, for most business users, the Exchange support Apple is providing in OS X 10.6 will be less than useless. There aren’t many companies running on Exchange 2k7, partially due to its ridiculous hardware requirements, partially due to the fact that most of the enterprise world has just recently switched to Exchange 2k3 to begin with. So Exchange support? Yay, but not for at least another year at a company near you.
One neat little trick is, similarly to Rosetta, you can force an application to run in 32bits mode which can be extremely useful if an application is acting up. Just select the application, hit Apple/Command + i and tick the ‘Open in 32-bit mode’ box.
So yeah, a few things aren’t finished yet and the Exchange support is more of a marketing thing than anything useful right now but overall the build is stable, works as expected, has a decent QuickTime and is fast to the point I’ve never experienced anything like it with OS X (I’ve actually reboot 9 times today, just for the fun of it).
By the time Snow Leopard is officially released I’ll actually be buying it, legally because $29 is a ridiculous low price for the enhancements and speed you get in return.
Update 1:
Besides PrefPanes Mail Bundles are broken too so keep that in mind if you decide to upgrade.
Thanks for your review! A few questions…
How stable is it with other software? Do you run any Adobe software or video apps, how well do these perform? How well does iLife 09 perform?
Do you know anything about the upgrade process for when the official version comes out? Will I be able to upgrade or do I need to do a fresh install?
Any idea how to install istat menus or menumeters?
thanks!!!!
No I don’t I’m afraid. MenuMeters seems from ancient times so I doubt that will work, iStat Menu’s has the same problem Growl and Perian have, their installation / configuration is dependent on their PrefPane which doesn’t function on 10.6 and I haven’t found a way around that.
iLife ‘09 performs as expected over here, nothing out of the ordinary. Pixelmator and a few other apps for graphics haven’t shown any glitches over here either and the NoLimits simulator seems to be fine over here too.
I don’t run any Adobe-ware so I can’t give you an educated opinion on that but generally Adobe software doesn’t perform all too well on a platform it hasn’t been engineered for or at least received and update for so I’d say tread with caution.
As far as I’ve experienced with the dev builds of Leopard and Snow Leopard you can just pop-in the DVD and upgrade.
The Adobe software that I’ve tested so far works great. Photoshop actually starts up a little faster than it did under Leopard. It did crash once over the course of a whole work day when trying to save a file as jpeg but I am not so sure it has anything to do with the new OS. All the web authoring tools works as well. No crashes there.
Exchange 2k7 not adopted? I work in IT , and 9/10 companies I work for use E2k7, and from an IT Standpoint besides the slow console it is a much better product than E2k3.
Then you’re a luckier guy than I am. Both the university here as the majority of the companies I’ve worked for this year are running on 2k3 or have only recently switched to 2k3, 2k7 is not even on the drawing boards yet.
I do agree that 2k7 for what I’ve seen of it is indeed a much better product than 2k3 and has a decent web interface for non-ActiveX capable browsers but I doubt I’ll be able to use 10.6’s Exchange functionality in the near future.
What troubles me most though is to why it is only Exchange 2k7? I understand setting it up with 2k7 is easier with the auto-discovery feature but if provided with the correct information and as to where to find a 2k3 server I really think it ought to work.Scratch that. Apparently 10.6 doesn’t use MAPI but the Exchange webservices protocol. Apparently Apple is following Microsoft’s directive in their choice not tu use MAPI; Microsoft, says “MAPI is de-emphasized in Exchange 2007″ and that it “has been replaced by Exchange Web Services.” Microsoft further advises developers (including Apple) that “new applications should use Exchange Web Services, and developers should migrate applications to Exchange Web Services whenever feasible.”
is there any program that is similar to istats menu?
tried youcontrol and is terrible
i found a standalone for network throughput (net monitor) and is nice
smth to monitor cpu usage in percentage?
thanks
Well there’s one way but that uses the Dock instead of the Menubar.
Open /Applicaiotns/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app select View > Dock Icon > Show CPU Usage and then just close the window. Set the update frequency to 0.5-1sec. It’s not perfect but it just might help you out.
Yes i know i already tried that but having a graph is terrible
why they dont just use % for cpu i dont get it
anyway..
a million thanks
Perian doesn’t work for me when I used that script from termina, i tried to even place them manually * the files * when I try opening a mkv file, it says it doesn’t recognize the file.
That’s not really surprising to me, Perian has never been capable of handling .mkv’s in my experience. Grab MPlayer OSX Extended, it works on 10.6 and handles .mkv just fine.
Daenney, have you been able to get SIMBL working on this build of Snow Leopard? I can’t get it to work, and was wondering if you had any suggestions for getting it up and running. I really want Saft!
Thanks.
Weird, Perian works fine for me on 10A380. When you click on the system prefs icon it just reopens a 32-bit system prefs and has no issues as far as I can tell
Oh well duh… I see were I went wrong. I stripped most of the 32bit code from OS X with XSlimmer, assuming System Preferences would’ve been excluded automatically but it has not.
So in my situation, System Preferences can’t fall back to 32bit even when I tick the ‘Open in 32bit mode’ because that part of the code has been stripped out of the binary.
Thanks for the heads-up, I’ll restore that one from my backups, that’ll make it so much more pleasant to work with.
I made the stupid itchy leap to go 64 bit with my new 17″ MBP. It is certainly much snappier in many areas. I run lots of apps and windows, including the CS4 suite. I am getting repeat crashes with Acrobat, but CS4 is solid. My biggest problem is that my new wifi Canon all-in-one MX860 doesn’t work over wifi. I tried to re-install the drivers etc and “no dice”. I think I may have to go back to 10.5 if I can’t figure out this issue. This printer/fax/scanner DOES work over USB perfectly. When I try to print to the wifi version of the printer it reports that “a software component may be missing” in the print queue. I cannot run the Canon MP Navigator EX, which is required to scan over wifi from the scanner to the computer. This must also have something to do with printing via wifi as well. Any hackers out there have a clue what might help me get this working?
Anyone use MacFusion/macfuse? I can’t seem to make it work in this new build…
> That’s not really surprising to me, Perian has never been capable of handling .mkv’s in my experience. Grab MPlayer OSX Extended, it works on 10.6 and handles .mkv just fine.
There is something wrong with your experience, I’m afraid. And try logging out and back in.
Also, never run an architecture-removal program; this will break code signing and some programs will stop working. (for instance, anything that uses QuickTime)
Thanks a lot Daenney for sharing your solution to Perian.
I applied the same principle for other QuickTime components, like Flip4Mac. For some reason I had assumed that QuickTime wouldn’t load any current non-64 bit third-party plugins, so I hadn’t bothered to install them separately and discard the PrefPanes. Now I can play anything, including mkv. I had tried to build Perian from their xcode source, but to no avail.
Tell me, do you start in 64 bit mode on your machine? If I look in Activitiy Monitor, I can see that kernel_task (and usbmuxd) is 32 bit, this is confirmed in System Profiler which shows that 64 bit kernel and extensions are not loaded. The command ‘arch’ in Terminal also gives 32 bit. The trick to press keys 6 and 4 at boot does not work for me on my MacMini.
I concur the acrobat issue. Tried to reinstall and install again, it won’t help.
However, I am quite surprised this happened after I used it for several weeks. I am just wondering if this is caused by any updates from Adobe.
Debating if I should just go back to Leopard…hmmm…
SIMBL no… I personally don’t use SIMBL or plugins based on it, they break far to often and to easily. Seeing as InputManager seem to have been further restricted in Snow Leopard I’m not even sure if SIMBL will work in its current state to begin with, that might require some rewrite or a total revisit of the code.
arch gives me i386 too, I had noticed the kernel_task in 32bit indeed but haven’t looked into it any further. I’m guessing there’s a good reason why it’s not enabled by default right now.
Now that exams are finished though and I can finally rest and enjoy my holidays I might just take a closer look at the whole thing.
The million dollar question . . . does the $29 10.6 version being offered on Amazon.com REQUIRE previous version 10.5 Leopard to be installed? I am coming from 10.2.8…