Snow Leopard already at Best Buy

R

rene mauricio

Gawd
Joined
Jun 27, 2004
Messages
648
Some people are claiming that BB already has shipments, but that they are told not to put them out yet. Could this be true? If so I think I may give my local store a visit and see if I cant persuade someone to go back and look for me. :D
 
Possible but unlikely. Snow Leopard purportedly only went Gold Master a week ago. Apple supplies itself (online and retail) before supplying external vendors like Best Buy, so for Best Buy to supposedly receive shipments this soon is a little hard to believe.

Anyway, the photo in your link is real. That's the Snow Leopard retail box. Its design matches perfectly with the Snow Leopard install icon from the DVD. Catch: it's Portugese.
 
Just installed it on my mbp... its a tad faster but it did give me 10gb of space back.
 
super excited to see Snow Leopard in action.... seemed like it was shaping up to be a fantastic OS.... if it is everything im hoping it is, i may be switching to the mac camp for my mobile computing needs :)
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
super excited to see Snow Leopard in action.... seemed like it was shaping up to be a fantastic OS.... if it is everything im hoping it is, i may be switching to the mac camp for my mobile computing needs :)
Click to expand...

I already swapped, I notice a huge battery life difference between Mac OS X and Windows 7, by 100% that is.
 
as much as I like apple.... a 100% difference in battery life is crazy, wow.... I wonder if there is some funny business going on....

I know anandtech did an article that showed OS X having much better battery life than windows too... but damn... I can't help but wonder if apple is purposefully messing up the windows bootcamp drivers to show OS X in a better light...

the differences between the 2 OSes in batt life are just too large to believe...
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
as much as I like apple.... a 100% difference in battery life is crazy, wow.... I wonder if there is some funny business going on....

I know anandtech did an article that showed OS X having much better battery life than windows too... but damn... I can't help but wonder if apple is purposefully messing up the windows bootcamp drivers to show OS X in a better light...

the differences between the 2 OSes in batt life are just too large to believe...
Click to expand...

I completely agree and I know from past experience that such a thing is entirely possible by Apple...
 
Joe Average said:
I completely agree and I know from past experience that such a thing is entirely possible by Apple...
Click to expand...

possibly, never thought of that. But I wouldn't know for sure because I can't install OS X on my HP laptop to compare. Right now as it stand I get 3:40 mins on normal batt settings using OS X, but 1:40 using the power saver settings on W7 using my MBP. What can apple do to cause such a difference IDK.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
I can't help but wonder if apple is purposefully messing up the windows bootcamp drivers to show OS X in a better light...
Click to expand...

TechBoy didn't mention Boot Camp at all. Where'd you get that from?

Either way, I would imagine that Apple's drivers for Windows 7 aren't exactly complete (they've been focusing on their own OS) and battery life will probably improve in later iterations of Boot Camp.

One thing you have to understand about Apple's driver policies, whether it's in Boot Camp or on the iPhone, is that they implement just enough features and optimizations to get the thing running reliably prior to the product's release, then they gradually optimize. They aren't as devoted to it as, say, ATi is to monthly Catalyst releases, simply because they don't need to be. It's a little infuriating to their third parties, but things do seem to be slowly changing.
 
Terpfen said:
TechBoy didn't mention Boot Camp at all. Where'd you get that from?

Either way, I would imagine that Apple's drivers for Windows 7 aren't exactly complete (they've been focusing on their own OS) and battery life will probably improve in later iterations of Boot Camp.

One thing you have to understand about Apple's driver policies, whether it's in Boot Camp or on the iPhone, is that they implement just enough features and optimizations to get the thing running reliably prior to the product's release, then they gradually optimize. They aren't as devoted to it as, say, ATi is to monthly Catalyst releases, simply because they don't need to be. It's a little infuriating to their third parties, but things do seem to be slowly changing.
Click to expand...
Apple's drivers for the new MacBooks are terrible. Low audio (with a jack that doesn't work properly), terrible graphics drivers, and the backlit keyboard doesn't turn off properly. Not to mention the battery life is horrible (as mentioned above).

Some people have mentioned that the gold master of Snow Leopard has a few bugs in the installer, and that iTunes and QuickTime have crashed. I haven't installed it, so I can't comment, but I think I'll install it for a while after it is released, then go back to Leopard if the bugs haven't been ironed out.
 
B. W. said:
Apple's drivers for the new MacBooks are terrible. Low audio (with a jack that doesn't work properly), terrible graphics drivers, and the backlit keyboard doesn't turn off properly. Not to mention the battery life is horrible (as mentioned above).
Click to expand...

This is why I just use WIndows Update drivers and have never had a problem. Obviously you forgo niceties like the keyboard backlight but I'll gladly take stability and performance over being able to see my keyboard from a mile away.

On the topic of Snow Leopard, I no longer run an OS X machine of my own fulltime (my iMac is Win 7 24/7), I can't wait to do a clean install on my father and sisters Macbook's. They are in dire need of it.
 
Terpfen said:
TechBoy didn't mention Boot Camp at all. Where'd you get that from?
Click to expand...

how else would be be comparing os x and windows battery life?


your point about windows 7 drivers being unfinished is moot anyway.... vista had similar battery performance problems (anandtech did a great article on it), and windows vista and windows 7 use the exact same drivers anyway....
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
how else would be be comparing os x and windows battery life?
Click to expand...

It could be anything from personal experience in Boot Camp to repeating anecdotal evidence.

windows vista and windows 7 use the exact same drivers anyway....
Click to expand...

The question is whether they use the same Apple-authored Boot Camp drivers. Apple HAS updated Boot Camp for the Windows 7 beta/RC period, so it stands to reason they had to alter something.

B. W. said:
Apple's drivers for the new MacBooks are terrible. Low audio (with a jack that doesn't work properly), terrible graphics drivers, and the backlit keyboard doesn't turn off properly. Not to mention the battery life is horrible (as mentioned above).
Click to expand...

Like I said, Apple advances the drivers far enough to get things working, and then goes off onto the next project. It infuriates iPhone developers in particular, because when they try to write certain applications like games, it's a crapshoot as to which OGL extensions Apple bothered to implement.

Driver quality and extension support is one area where Apple's really lagging.

Some people have mentioned that the gold master of Snow Leopard has a few bugs in the installer, and that iTunes and QuickTime have crashed.
Click to expand...

There are no bugs in the installer. People expected the installer to be the same as Leopard's installer. It isn't. Apple made changes. Also, I've experienced no iTunes or Quicktime crashes, and yes, I'm on 10A432. The only crashes I've ever had related to Safari, and I've yet to have one while trying out 10A432.

I've only observed two issues with 10A432. One: when using Preview to view large resolution images, there is visible stuttering and jittering when scrolling the view area, as if Preview hasn't fully loaded the image, or only renders the visible area. This isn't exactly a showstopper. Two: a lot of apps have yet to update to include 64-bit/SL support, like iStats Menus. This isn't Apple's fault, nor is it a problem with Snow Leopard itself, but it's literally the only other inconvenience I've encountered while using this build.

The only vague issue with iTunes might be that it isn't 64-bit yet, but that's because iTunes' development schedule is in no way related to OS X's development schedule. iTunes 9 will probably add 64-bit support.
 
Terpfen said:
It could be anything from personal experience in Boot Camp to repeating anecdotal evidence.
Click to expand...


wait, what? read his post again... its pretty obvious that he is talking about his own experience....

how do you get "repeating anecdotal evidence" from:
"I already swapped, I notice a huge battery life difference between Mac OS X and Windows 7, by 100% that is. "
 
Snow Leopard ain't gonna double the battery life for an OSX-based laptop, that's absolute lunacy (unless the OS keeps the laptop off half the time, I suppose). bruce's comparison - as I understood it - was talking about that AnandTech comparison months ago that made Windows 7 look pretty lame compared to OSX in terms of battery life on the same MacBook during testing.

Of course that was with pre-production code (Windows 7) and obviously pre-production drivers for that code/OS, so, really it was a bullshit comparison to begin with.

If I read it wrong then silly me, but that's how I've understood it so far. To think an OS update will double battery life on the same hardware... that's sheer insanity. But then again, "The Reality Distortion Field" has some awesome powers... ;)
 
criccio said:
This is why I just use WIndows Update drivers and have never had a problem. Obviously you forgo niceties like the keyboard backlight but I'll gladly take stability and performance over being able to see my keyboard from a mile away.

On the topic of Snow Leopard, I no longer run an OS X machine of my own fulltime (my iMac is Win 7 24/7), I can't wait to do a clean install on my father and sisters Macbook's. They are in dire need of it.
Click to expand...

how exactly do you do that? I could care less about having my keyboard backlight, really want to be able to disable it fully, and I also wouldn't mind being able to hear something while watching videos online.
 
Kelv said:
how exactly do you do that? I could care less about having my keyboard backlight, really want to be able to disable it fully, and I also wouldn't mind being able to hear something while watching videos online.
Click to expand...

Run Windows Update...? :p
 
It definitely wasn't Windows 7 that was compared....

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3435&p=13

and anand has a newer comparison, with vista, and windows 7...

http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=3582


so "incomplete windows 7 drivers" isn't the reason, at all

i'd be interested to see if hackintoshes get much lower battery life....

*or*.... i'd be very, very interested to see if a regular macbook with generic, non-bootcamp drivers (chipset/video drivers from intel/nvidia) gets different results than one with bootcamp drivers.... *that* would be very interesting to see....

damn i wish i had a macbook to test that with...
 
criccio said:
Run Windows Update...? :p
Click to expand...
Never liked windows update but here it goes.

No important updates available, 34 optional updates are available (im assuming its an optional update).

Select the updates you want to install:
Test update for windows 7
Update for IE 8 Compatibility
Update for IE 8 Windows 7 RC
and then A-U of language packs.

Now just to make sure I didn't already have it installed I checked my update history to find only one optional update (im still assuming its an optional update) and the only one I find is:
Microsoft Other Hardware Microsoft Mouse and Keyboard Detection Driver.

Summary: I'm still as clueless as I started and my opinion of windows updates hasn't changed (I will admin I think windows update in windows 7 is better than xp)
 
Whoa what? You don't like Windows Update...? I think you need to get out the XP days...

WU has been amazingly simple and painless since Vista (which i'm assuming you never used).

Make sure you uninstall all the bootcamp drivers.

And again, that "not liking WU" idea needs to be kicked. We aren't in the XP days anymore.
 
xsoulbrothax said:
I've been playing with Mini 9s for a while, and they tend to get nearly the exact same battery life - maybe slightly worse when compared to XP.
Click to expand...

thanks for the info.... i guess that eliminates one avenue of investigation.... i think so anyway....



i guess the only thing to really do now is see how a macbook's battery life would be if no bootcamp drivers were loaded...

if OS X can still claim significantly longer battery live than vista/7 with just generic intel chipset/video drivers loaded.... then i guess it really would be hats off to apple for tweaking their hardware/software in such a way that allows them to offer so much more batt life...
 
Sweet, now it'll be time to pickup a bigger drive for my MacBook Pro and do a fresh install.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
as much as I like apple.... a 100% difference in battery life is crazy, wow.... I wonder if there is some funny business going on....

I know anandtech did an article that showed OS X having much better battery life than windows too... but damn... I can't help but wonder if apple is purposefully messing up the windows bootcamp drivers to show OS X in a better light...

the differences between the 2 OSes in batt life are just too large to believe...
Click to expand...

Joe Average said:
I completely agree and I know from past experience that such a thing is entirely possible by Apple...
Click to expand...

Anandtech did the same comparison between two notebooks that used identical CPUs, GPUs, etc, a Macbook Air and a Lenovo x300. There was a similar delta in battery life between the MBA and the Lenovo, which tells me that there are no shenanigans going on in terms of deliberately harming battery life on Mac notebooks.

Ditto the battery life results from this Dell review that they did: http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=3540&p=10

Laptops are Apple's bread and butter so it makes sense that they have good battery life, not just for running time but also to reduce the size of the power cells. Its the only way they can get good battery life without adding any additional size and weight to the machine.

The ball is squarely in Microsoft's court, they need to improve battery life over what Vista and Windows 7 has to offer. I haven't seen results from RC1 but the Win 7 beta had marginally less battery life than Vista. Let's hope that this is seriously improved.
 
Good stuff, Serpico.

For those of you upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard, you might want to poke around this site. It's a nice long list of popular apps and their current Snow Leopard compatibility status. Very handy.

Also keep in mind that Rosetta is not installed by default on Snow Leopard. So if you're using an old application that has yet to be compiled into a universal binary, you'll have to install Rosetta separately off the Snow Leopard DVD. SL will also prompt you to install Rosetta if necessary on application runtime.
 
Is it still counting in base 10 instead of base 2?
 
It's $10 for an upgrade DVD if you recently got a Mac laptop! They're being generous and saying since June.
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
as much as I like apple.... a 100% difference in battery life is crazy, wow.... I wonder if there is some funny business going on....

I know anandtech did an article that showed OS X having much better battery life than windows too... but damn... I can't help but wonder if apple is purposefully messing up the windows bootcamp drivers to show OS X in a better light...

the differences between the 2 OSes in batt life are just too large to believe...
Click to expand...

I don't think it has anything to do with bootcamp drivers or anything else. OS X just has better power management, period. I know it's frowned upon to discuss Hackintoshes on [H], but this is (excuse the pun) an apples to apples comparison.

Dell Mini 9 w/ OS X 10.5.6 (stock battery) - 4hrs battery life
Dell Mini 9 w/ Windows 7 (stock battery) - 3hrs battery life

(native Win 7 install, not bootcamp)
 
coolie_d said:
I don't think it has anything to do with bootcamp drivers or anything else. OS X just has better power management, period. I know it's frowned upon to discuss Hackintoshes on [H], but this is (excuse the pun) an apples to apples comparison.

Dell Mini 9 w/ OS X 10.5.6 (stock battery) - 4hrs battery life
Dell Mini 9 w/ Windows 7 (stock battery) - 3hrs battery life

(native Win 7 install, not bootcamp)
Click to expand...

thats actually exactly the kind of information ive been looking for in this thread.... so thanks

the difference in battery life is just.... interesting to me.... what can I say... i just didn't expect apple to be so far ahead of microsoft in terms of power management...
 
brucedeluxe169 said:
thats actually exactly the kind of information ive been looking for in this thread.... so thanks

the difference in battery life is just.... interesting to me.... what can I say... i just didn't expect apple to be so far ahead of microsoft in terms of power management...
Click to expand...

I think it's OSX is just slightly more lightweight in the first place, which accounts for the differences on the hackintoshes (mine's a retail disc!) that don't have any special optimization.

RE: the differences on the same hardware, or Macbook vs Bootcamp'd XP/Vista/7 - I'm suspecting it's that Apple has a fairly small choice of hardware and drivers (generally their own) to deal with, so they've also been able to specifically optimize around it to maximize the battery life. It would help to explain the less-massive differences on hardware they've never released on. Given that Vista's a bit more heavyweight than XP or 7, it would also fit with the results there, along with that Vista has had more specific driver support than 7 so far.
 
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