Mac Os X 10.6 Snow Leopard Download Online Free Updated

Mac Os X 10.6 Snow Leopard Download Online Free

Sneaking in a few days before its promised September release, the tune-up for Mac OS Ten Leopard costs $29 for current Leopard users, and packs just enough punch to exist worth your money. Apple is conscientious to point out that Snow Leopard isn't a consummate organization overhaul, only rather a collection of hundreds of smaller refinements to make Leopard run more gracefully. Hidden among smaller tweaks are some technical improvements that result in a smoother, easier-to-use Leopard with plenty for Mac fans to be excited about. The user interface and everyday tasks feel faster in general, although we didn't notice a substantive improvement in application performance.

Fifty-fifty if yous're non a electric current Leopard user, the $169 packet that includes Snow Leopard, iLife, and iWork is a steal for the organization upgrade and two of Apple's major software suites, not to mention the long-pined-after inclusion of Microsoft Exchange compatibility. Finally you will be able to connect with Exchange Servers (without using Microsoft'southward Entourage), but merely if your company is using Microsoft Commutation 2007; many withal aren't. Snow Leopard is offered on a single install disk--there are no separate, tiered pricing structures to worry about--and you're getting every feature and technical enhancement available in a single install. Unfortunately, for those on PowerPC systems, Snow Leopard but works with Intel Macs.

Installation
Installation of Snow Leopard is dead simple and (co-ordinate to Apple) up to 45 percent faster than Leopard using a newly designed installer that asks but i question during the procedure. On our exam car, the process took almost an hour, including two automatic restarts. The default setting installs Snow Leopard without tampering with any of your saved files, music, photos, or documents. Mostly nosotros had no issues, just on one examination machine we needed to reinstall the OS when it had trouble rebooting. Fortunately the new installer is designed for safely reinstalling the OS in the event you lot run into any hiccups during your initial installation. On our second try, the Bone installed perfectly on our examination machine and no files were harmed. PowerPC Macs are no longer supported with Snow Leopard, withal; yous volition demand an Intel-based Mac to install the latest Mac OS.

Those who want to do a "Clean Install" (starting fresh by deleting everything for minimal conflicts) all the same can, simply unlike installations in previous versions of previous Mac Bone X that offered the clean install as a primary option, yous'll need to use Disk Utility to offset erase the volume, then run the install. Apple explained to us that not anybody knows what a make clean install is and often chose information technology, not knowing that they would lose their files. We're happy with that answer, every bit long equally people still get the selection in some form.

Apple too claims that Snow Leopard uses 7GB less space than Leopard because of better file compression paired with selective driver inclusion. According to Apple, Snowfall Leopard volition locate whatsoever missing drivers on the Web for y'all. We had no need of whatsoever special drivers during our tests.

New technologies
Apple says a few new technologies in Snowfall Leopard make it worthy of the upgrade solitary, with several features that Apple says will boost performance. Because all new Macs come with 64-bit multicore processors, multiple GBs of RAM, and high-powered graphics processing units, all the major applications in Snowfall Leopard--including the Finder--take been rewritten in 64-bit to take total advantage of the hardware. (The 64-bit applied science allows application developers to allocate more than memory to complete tasks and then that the software runs faster and more smoothly.)

Apple has also added what it calls the Grand Primal Acceleration that manages information sent to multicore processors in an attempt to maximize performance; Apple says the GCD will speed upwardly any application chore, from processing images in Photoshop to playing your favorite games. The add-on of the GCD also takes away the need for software developers to spend equally much fourth dimension managing multicore processors.

Another new technology in Snowfall Leopard is OpenCL, which allows software developers to tap into the ability of whatever onboard video cards (or GPUs, for graphics processing units) for general-purpose computing without the addition of enormous amounts of lawmaking. Like the GCD, these are improvements that will mainly affect software developers. Just hopefully it volition hateful more and better-performing software for users in the future.

To put some of these claims to the test, we decided to pit Mac Bone Ten 10.5.viii Leopard confronting Mac Os X 10.vi Snow Leopard to see how these new technologies afflicted overall performance.

In our anecdotal tests of performance within the Snow Leopard user interface (UI), the operating system seems faster and more responsive than with Leopard. Finder, Stacks, Expose, launching apps, and other everyday processes feel snappy. We didn't, yet, notice any improvement in application performance.

Overall, we saw only a two.5 percent slowdown in awarding performance from Leopard to Snow Leopard on our more processor-intensive functioning tests, including our multimedia multitasking exam, in which we measure out the time for QuickTime to terminate converting a brusk motion picture while iTunes is performing its own conversion of MP3 into AAC format in the background simultaneously. As this falls within our typical margin of mistake (5 percent), we saw no meaning difference with application performance when moving from Leopard to Snow Leopard. (Run into the bottom of this review for operation charts.)

New features

Expose
Snowfall Leopard includes a number of user UI improvements intended to make working with Mac Os X easier and more efficient. Expose, Apple's system for visually finding the window you want on a cluttered desktop, used to exist relegated to the Function keys on your keyboard. Snow Leopard now makes Expose accessible from the Dock; merely click and agree on a Dock icon to see thumbnails of all the open windows in that awarding. Hitting the Tab key lets you bike through the preview thumbnails of each open application. Using Betrayal in the Dock is very natural and elegant, making us wonder why this wasn't already a characteristic in Leopard.

Click and agree on an application icon in the Dock to bring upwardly total thumbnails of open up windows in an awarding.

The Dock
In addition to using Expose to notice the right window, yous now also take the ability to drag files from i application to another using the Dock. Let's say yous want to add together an image to an east-mail, merely your desktop is full of open windows. In Snow Leopard you can become to the image, drag it to the Postal service icon in the Dock, and your due east-mail service window will bound-load, allowing you to drop the epitome into place. Though the ability to drag and driblet files in this fashion is nice, we're not sure it's much easier than attaching an image by browsing through your folders. Still, if yous know the paradigm is already on your desktop, it's probably the faster method.

Stacks
Stacks got a much-needed upgrade too. In Leopard, Stacks only listed a certain number of files and applications requiring you to go to a Finder window if your app wasn't listed. Similarly, if you tried to open a folder in Stacks, you were sent to the Finder. In Snow Leopard, Stacks comes with a scroll bar so icons are all the same easy to read and anything can be launched out of the Dock. Folders are at present attainable within Stacks too, so you lot'll be able to navigate to files inside folders all without leaving the Stacks Window. These changes make Stacks much more useful than before and probably should have been available when Stacks was introduced.

Now you can scroll through your applications and documents (and fifty-fifty open folders in Stacks) without being sent to the Finder.

The Finder
While the Finder itself saw little in the way of interface tweaks, the mode files behave in the Finder makes it easier to utilise. A zoom slider has been added to the lower correct of Finder windows so you can zoom in on icons. An enhanced icon view has been added, letting you preview multipage documents and fifty-fifty play QuickTime movies without ever leaving the Finder window.

Preview now lets you preview near whatever file, even if it was created with software you lot don't have on your hard bulldoze. This means common file types from Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and even PDF files tin can all be previewed without owning the programs they were created in. As an added bonus, Preview in Snow Leopard provides authentic text pick to multicolumn PDF files using artificial intelligence to infer the layout of each page. This means that Preview recognizes that there are multiple columns in your document so you can select the text you want from whatsoever column.

You can now flip through the pages of multipage PDF documents using the arrows that appear over PDF docs when you mouse over.

Safari 4
Safari 4 has been widely available for some time, but it offers a couple of new features when running in Snowfall Leopard. Safari 4 already includes Top Sites for viewing all your favorite sites as thumbnails for piece of cake access and full history search, which lets yous view your history in a Cover Period-like interface. Merely in Snowfall Leopard, Safari is now crash resistant. This ways that if a plug-in crashes, it won't crash the whole browser. Only refresh the page to endeavor to load the plug-in once more. Also, Safari checks to see if a site you are visiting is known to be fraudulent, is distributing malware, or is known to be a phishing site, so warns you if information technology is.

Peak Sites, which was already available in Safari iv, lets you lot navigate to your almost viewed Web sites quickly.

QuickTime Ten
QuickTime X, Apple'south media histrion, got some major tweaks in Snow Leopard. At present, when you play a movie and move your mouse outside the window, the interface fades away quickly to give yous a more immersive video-viewing feel. When watching a motion picture, you tin can click the new Share push to catechumen your movie for iPod, iPhone, or Apple tree Television receiver, and QuickTime converts the video to work best on your called device. You besides tin at present record video from your Webcam, audio, or just the activity on your screen with a few clicks. Those with the iPhone 3GS will recognize the new trimming feature in QuickTime Ten, letting yous take hold of just the video content you want.

QuickTime X probably received the most interface tweaks in the Snow Leopard update. The cleaned-up interface and autofade features look great (like about things Apple), but it's more of an aesthetic improvement than anything else. The recording features for video, sound, and screencast capturing are the big wins here and used to be offered only in QuickTime Pro. Information technology's good to see these features volition exist able to be used past a wider audience in Snowfall Leopard.

Trim your videos easily by clicking and dragging get-go and end points of the prune.

Exchange support
Ane of the main roadblocks for Mac users in a primarily Windows workplace was the disability to connect with Microsoft Exchange servers. Most Mac users used Microsoft Entourage or bachelor open-source options equally a work-around, but it was never every bit smooth equally connecting from a Windows machine with Microsoft Office. Snowfall Leopard now supports Microsoft Commutation Server 2007 out of the box so you can easily connect using Apple's Post app, grab global address lists in the Address Book, and create meetings with contacts using iCal.

Apple did more than than simply give you the power to connect, yet. Common tasks similar creating meetings, for case, are incredibly like shooting fish in a barrel with intuitive controls. iCal lets you view work events and personal activities all in the same window (with easy controls to include or not include the information you want). The Apple Address Book works seamlessly beyond Mail and iCal so you tin quickly bring upwards global address lists, add people to a meeting (including predesigned groups), and invitations volition automatically be sent to each attendee. As an added bonus, if some attendees have scheduling conflicts with your proposed coming together fourth dimension, iCal will automatically figure out the earliest bachelor time that everyone is costless. These are features already available in Microsoft'due south Outlook for Windows, but in Snow Leopard the process feels much more intuitive.

File Quarantine
Co-ordinate to Apple, File Quarantine has likewise been refined in Snow Leopard. Commencement introduced in Mac Bone X 10.four Tiger, File Quarantine checks for known malware signatures, and in Snow Leopard, will now brandish an alarm dialog if it finds a known offender. The dialog volition tell users to move the offending file to the Trash. For example, a bogus version of iWork circulated on the Spider web a few months agone that contained malware. That item malware is now automatically detected by File Quarantine in Snowfall Leopard.

Apple says that File Quarantine volition be automatically updated via Mac OS 10's software update equally new malware signatures are found in the wild. We had no manner to test these features, merely nosotros are happy to see that Apple tree is taking strides to defend against malware equally more people switch to Macs and the danger of new malware becomes more prevalent.

Universal access
Beginning with Mac Bone X 10.4 Tiger, Apple included VoiceOver to help people who are blind or with impaired vision to amend understand and collaborate with what is happening onscreen. Apple tree continues to help visually impaired users in Snow Leopard by adding gesture support on multitouch trackpads with piece of cake-to-learn gestures to perform specific functions. Nosotros had mixed results with these features depending on the Web page we visited, merely generally we found the features to be useful. The trackpad acts equally the viewable expanse on the current window and then you tin tap to have Window elements explained to you or swipe to movement on to the next item in the window, for example. New features in Snow Leopard are particularly helpful when Web browsing, with options similar Spider web page summaries to explain the various elements on a Spider web page you haven't visited earlier, making it easier to become the information you want.

More 40 unlike Braille displays (including wireless Bluetooth displays) are supported in Snow Leopard right out of the box, assuasive visually impaired users to plug in and start calculating immediately.

Other refinements
Some of the smaller refinements in Snow Leopard are worthy of note, affecting many of Apple'south core apps. iChat is now uniform with more routers, making video conversation accessible to a wider range of users, and iChat Theater now offers 640x480 resolution, using only 1-third the bandwidth it used before. New Chinese grapheme input via the trackpad predicts which characters you're creating and offers probable subsequent characters to speed upwardly the process. A new text substitution feature in applications like iChat, Mail, and TextEdit lets you create shortcuts for phrases you lot apply frequently. The Services menu in Snow Leopard has been rewritten to include simply the services relevant to the application or content you lot're viewing. Core Location technology locates nearby Wi-Fi hot spots to find your location and automatically resets your time zone so wherever you are in the world, your Mac will be set to the correct time. While all of these are pocket-size refinements, each make your Mac easier to use with smart features not found in other operating systems.

Conclusions
Mac Os X 10.6 Snow Leopard is not a complete organization overhaul and is instead a refinement of the current Leopard Bone--some accept gone and then far as to telephone call it a "service pack." Nosotros recall the interface tweaks to Expose, Stacks, the Finder, Mail, and iCal make Snowfall Leopard more than than just a service pack and worthy of the $29 upgrade price. Nosotros don't like that PowerPC users are unable to utilise Snow Leopard, but nosotros sympathize that after three years with Intel, Apple is making a decision to continue moving forward with this technology.

The largest of the feature enhancements are probably reason enough for Intel Mac users to spend the money on Snow Leopard. Added enhancements such as video, sound, and screen recording in QuickTime 10 were once only available to those who purchased QuickTime Pro (which was most $30--the same equally this system upgrade). Simply the killer feature improver for Snow Leopard might be Exchange support out of the box--not even Windows seven comes with Microsoft Commutation support without ownership Microsoft Office.

Overall, we recollect that Snow Leopard did about everything Apple tree says it fix out to do: it refined and enhanced Leopard to get in easier to use. Though the system performs well in everyday utilise, many of our tests betoken information technology is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive awarding processes. Nonetheless, nosotros highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Substitution support.

iTunes encoding (in seconds)
(Shorter bars point better operation)

Photoshop (in seconds)
(Shorter bars betoken better performance)

QuickTime multimedia multitasking test (QT7 on x.5.8 and QTX on 10.6) (in seconds)
(Shorter bars betoken better performance)

iTunes multimedia multitasking test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Cinebench
(Longer bars indicate amend performance)

System configurations:

Unibody Apple Macbook Pro / Core two Duo 15.4-inch
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53GHz; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT; 320GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

Apple MacBook Pro / Core Duo xv.4-inch
Intel Core Duo 2.0GHz; 2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB ATI Radion 1600, 100GB Toshiba 5,400rpm