

Apple's sleek upgrade - dzlobin
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/technology/personaltech/27pogue.html?_r=1&ref=technology

======
wheels
_> 64-bit software, a geeky term that, for now, pretty much means “faster.”_

Ouch.

In general there's way too much fanboyishness in this article. I mean,
seriously, it closes on a note of, "You can't see any improvements so _JUST
IMAGINE_ how much they've done under the hood!"

~~~
bbb
x86_64 == more registers available than on i386

more registers == fewer spills

For the average compiled program, fewer spills == faster.

=> Average programs run faster under x86_64.

~~~
axod
And use about twice as much Ram. Personally I think 8 bytes for _every_
_single_ _pointer_ seems wasteful for most programs.

~~~
jrockway
4 extra bytes for a pointer is wasteful, but having an entire separate vector
CPU just to make the windows transparent isn't?

~~~
axod
Depends on what your bottleneck is. For me, it's usually been memory rather
than CPU. I was using 64bit, then switched to 32bit and saw a gigantic
improvement in mem usage. (See slicehost vs linode comparisons etc)

~~~
chancho
Your argument refutes itself handedly because 32bit processes are limited to
4GB of address space. You've maxed out 1Gb now, how long before you max out
4Gb? Memory concerns are clearly the reason to go 64bit, the stuff about
registers is icing on the cake.

Look at the big picture, whether it be pointers or integers into an array: the
size of the index grows with the log of the number of things being indexed.
You can't avoid this growth, but it matters less and less as you grow.

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dcheong
For non-subscribers:

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~~~
windsurfer
Thank you!

------
jsz0
One of the neatest features of SL I've found so far is the changes to the
Services menu. It's now context sensitive so it will only show the services
that are applicable to the data you have selected. Select text and you get
text services. One of these text services is the ability to select any text
and export it to iTunes as a spoken word track using the OSX speech
synthesizer. I've been using it to select long articles, export them to
iTunes, and sync them with my iPhone to listen to in my car. The OSX speech
synth is good enough that it's a fairly pleasant experience.

------
dkokelley
Off topic, but:

 _There are hundreds more little tweaks. In all, Apple says that more than 90
percent of Leopard’s 1,000 software chunks were revised or polished. Many are
listed at bit.ly/U1DzS_

bit.ly/U1DzS > [http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-
refinem...](http://www.apple.com/macosx/refinements/enhancements-
refinements.html)

That's a NYTimes fail, in my book.

~~~
dzlobin
I'm sorry, am I not seeing it? Where's the fail

~~~
dkokelley
The fail is the fact that they used a link-obscurer/shortener for no benefit
to me. Even the text around it doesn't give me any hint that I will be going
to apple.com. The location isn't extraordinarily long, so it wouldn't have
necessarily damaged the page layout, and they could have easily coded the link
inside the text 'Apple's website', which would have given me a lot more
information, and helped me in my decision to explore that link.

Finally, the link isn't even clickable to me. I had to copy it into the
address bar.

I don't believe link-shorteners are inherently evil or destroying the
internet, but seriously, why use them in an article like this? How does it
help anyone (me, specifically)?

~~~
csallen
I'm glad I'm not the only one who caught this. Who puts a shortened,
unclickable link in a news article?

~~~
alaskamiller
When the online version is a copy of the print version.

~~~
ramy_d
that's not even a reason, did they write it on a type writer?!

------
taitems
"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."

Yeah they nailed this one...

It's a good article, Leopard seems pretty impressive (half the size, twice the
speed etc) but the author is very easily impressed.

~~~
mcav
I will be thrilled if Flash stopped causing Safari to crash.

I'd be even more thrilled if Flash didn't make the CPU fans roar like a jet
engine.

~~~
timdorr
I'd be thrilled if Flash played back video without jumping and jittering.

~~~
ramy_d
id be thrilled if flash died as the defacto video player and made way for html
5's feature.

~~~
taitems
Which appears to be browser dependent and potentially horrible?

~~~
jrockway
xulrunner 1.9.1 displays <video> video much nicer than any Flash solution, in
my experience. The controls are better looking and more fluid, and the video
itself plays back more smoothly. (It also works with ALSA properly :P)

------
gcv
MacPorts Snow Leopard compatibility list:
<http://trac.macports.org/wiki/snc/snowleopard>

I'm pleasantly surprised that, of all the things I care about, only ghc is
broken.

------
johnfn
Is it just me, or does this come off as an advertisement more than an article?

~~~
GHFigs
It reads like any other newspaper technology column I've ever read.

------
dzlobin
I've read about snow leopard but this is a fairly clear representation of just
how much faster and smaller OS X should be with snow leopard

~~~
cakesy
Looks nice, but I have CS3, and i am not going to pay for CS4. So looks like I
am going to skip this one.

~~~
cake
Same here, there is no stable version of 1Password yet for Snow Leopard.

It's the first time I don't feel in a hurry to upgrade, I mean snapiness is
great but if it's in the same range as the 10.5.x upgrades, it can wait.

I havn't heard anyone saying he was really really impressed by how faster Snow
Leopard is.

~~~
chrisbolt
1Password works fine in Snow Leopard with some small tweaks:
[http://www.switchersblog.com/2009/06/getting-1password-to-
wo...](http://www.switchersblog.com/2009/06/getting-1password-to-work-on-snow-
leopard.html)

------
Tichy
"The menu bar can now show the date, not just the day of the week."

Oh joy, oh joy!!!! Maybe I am going to upgrade after all (this really bothered
me).

