
Snow Leopard: It's Built for the Future. - gthank
http://www.delicious-monster.com/blog/2009/08/snow-leopard-it-built-for-future.html
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scottdw2
Some of the points he makes are not really accurate.

For example, he states:

"as machines get 4 cores (processors) and then 8 and then 16, apps written for
Snow Leopard and beyond will continue to be faster and faster, with no
changes, while Windows programmers are going to be struggling to make their
apps work at all"

This statement isn't true.

Windows, more specifically the .NET framework (and the associated compilers),
has had support for thread pools, and cross-thread dispatch since 2003, and
support for closures since 2008. Those features are, effectively, equivalent
to grand central dispatch on the mac.

The Apple non-developer docs do indicate that there may be some scheduling
improvements that might make GCD more efficient, but without any actual
benchmarks between the two technologies, that claim doesn't have any basis in
fact.

I'm not trying to be a shill here, but its important to point out that not
everything he claims is true.

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hypermatt
I think this less akin to thread pools, but closer to .net parallel
extensions. A simple thread pool is still rather difficult to deal with, this
also more fine grain work.

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pxlpshr
I'm all for modernism but their font-size is too damn small. One of the very,
very few times I've ever had to use font zoom.

Anyhow, after a few hiccups installing SL on my Mac Pro today (MacBook was
flawless) — I can definitely notice some amazing improvements under the hood.
It's really shaping up to be a pretty stellar OS.

~~~
j2d2
Consider trying readability :: <http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/>

~~~
teej
Didn't work for me on this article, it only pulled in one bullet point from
the interview.

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j2d2
Amazing! This is the first article I've had an issue with when using
Readability. Dang.

It's great everywhere _else_. :)

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donw
I just finished upgrading my desktop and laptop, and I have to admit Apple
wasn't kidding about this being a snappier release -- almost feels like I'm
working on a Linux box again, in terms of snappiness.

I'll be interesting to see how the underlaying changes impact me, though, as
everything I'm doing right now is on the JVM...

~~~
masklinn
> I have to admit Apple wasn't kidding about this being a snappier release

So you recommend the switch? (I was going to grab a copy tomorrow anyway, but
it's always nice to get actual experience by actual users)

~~~
donw
Overall, yes. You'll need to re-install MacPorts (just download the DMG from
their site) and XCode (from the CD) afterwards, but other than that,
everything (for me) works. Although the Java 6 JVM that comes with Snow
Leopard seems to be quite a bit slower -- not sure why, yet.

One caveat -- as I've heard, CS3/CS4 has some problems.

~~~
masklinn
> You'll need to re-install MacPorts (just download the DMG from their site)
> and XCode (from the CD) afterwards

I was intending a complete reinstall anyway, so I'm cool with that.

> One caveat -- as I've heard, CS3/CS4 has some problems.

I've heard CS3 has issues as well, but given I don't use it…

The reports that Cyberduck doesn't work correctly annoys me more.

~~~
ubernostrum
"The reports that Cyberduck doesn't work correctly annoys me more."

You want lftp. As far as I'm concerned, it's the One True file-transfer
program. And of course it's available in MacPorts (and even if it wasn't, it
builds cleanly from source on OS X anyway).

~~~
derefr
Transmit is my personal favorite, especially in a workflow with Textmate.

~~~
masklinn
Yeah but transmit isn't free, and I don't use FTPs enough to pay for it
(though I paid for flashfxp on windows a few years ago)

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olliesaunders
Author claims you get unlimited memory addressing on 64-bit, is that right? I
thought it was just really big.

~~~
Psyonic
Technically, yes, but in this case really big is REALLY BIG. I don't want to
be the next 640k is enough for anybody guy, but a 64-bit address space is
enough for anybody.

~~~
ncarlson
Don't worry, you won't be that 64k guy. 64 bit gives the possibility of 2^64
bytes of addressable memory. That's over 18 exabytes. The entire digital
content of the web is only estimated at about 90 petabytes.

If we go to 2^128 or 2^256, we start moving into numbers really large numbers.
I and I _really_ large. The number of atoms in our galaxy in near 2^220.

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slig
Anyone here migrated from tiger to snow leopard? Was it smooth?

~~~
pie
I just upgraded this afternoon. The install process knocked my laptop out of
commission for a full hour, but it worked exactly as advertised. I haven't run
across any compatibility issues, however, because I tend to do server-type
work in a VM. Things seem about the same with a bit more visual/timing polish
and "solid" feel.

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stuff4ben
Did you buy the box set or the leopard upgrade? I've heard the upgrade will
work as a full-install for tiger users.

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pie
I used the $29 upgrade from Leopard - not sure whether it would function as a
full installer.

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zain
It does work, but it violates the EULA (and is practically piracy), if that
sort of stuff matters to you.

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teppefall
Most Tiger users are probably on PPC, a CPU that is not supported by Snow
Leopard. And please remember that Windows XP has a huge botnet problem.

