Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6)

Well, even if this is a late review, I haven’t seen one on this website, so here goes!

The Snow Leopard may not have been as anticipated as the Windows 7 release; however, it may just have brought some features to us power users that are just as great as what Windows 7 brought to others. I’d like to point out that the overall design of the operating system is almost exactly the same as it’s predecessor, OS X Leopard. However, under the hood, there is a lot more to be quite happy about.

QuickTime X:

Not too many people knew about the QuickTime X release when they heard about Snow Leopard, however, it’s a huge deal to almost everyone now that it has been released to the public. It now has a cleaner interface than QuickTime 8, which came before QuickTime X. It also includes recording tools. You can record just an audio file, just a video files with your built in webcam, or both audio and video, however, it doesn't not support the option to record your computer screen, which would be nice.

Mail:

There isn't much to say here. The only difference is that it now support Microsoft Exchange, which I have no use for, but is a huge deal for business owners and workers!

Address Book/iCal:

Again, the only difference is the Microsoft Exchange support.

Over All Overhaul:

The Vanilla Kernel did go through a complete redo. The whole operating system kernel now supports the x64 Bit architecture, which is now widely used in almost all laptops and tower computers. It does bother quite a few users that the only way to boot into the x64 Bit kernel is to hold the keys '6' and '4' on the keyboard while booting up, or doing a few PLIST (Property List) file edits to make the boot priority for the x64 Bit kernel a must.
Dock Expose is another great feature that was long awaited, and again, Apple was a little late with this one, seeing as this feature was given in Windows XP. With Dock Expose, you can click and hold on an open application that's in your dock to view all of the open windows linked to that application. You can also drag a file over that icon/file and it will bring the window that you want to drag the icon/file into the front view. It was a very tedious task to drag and drop files in the older versions of OS X.

Back to the x64 Bit architecture; almost all of the native applications in OS X (iCal, Address Book, Mail, Safari, Finder, etc) have been completely re-programmed to run on the x64 Bit side of the kernel, therefore making almost every task faster. If you have a Macintosh computer with more than 4GB of RAM and anything faster than a 2 GHz processor, you will notice a difference in speed.
Apple also has redone the Stacks feature.

Overall, the new operating system that Apple managed to create is pretty well done, even though a new design would be welcome. However, I don't think I'm entitled to complain when they're selling this update for only $30, and only $20 for people who bought Mac computer after June 17th (which I'd be one of them)! So, Snow Leopard has brought some promising things, however, I'd like to call this more of a "service pack" than an operating system. It just doesn't carry enough to make it a full operating system update from OS X Leopard.