Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Pros

Better read. Long list.

Get It Try It

Apple's Snow Leopard update to Mac OS X is due in September. This is a list of possible reasons to finally make the move and get it. It's a much longer list than the other one.

Details of the coming 10.6 version of Apple's operating system are still under NDA and so cannot be discussed directly. But enough can already be said about existing editions and what Apple have previously promised with 'Snow Leopard'.

Here at any rate are possible reasons you'd want to get with the programme.

'Snow Leopard' is the latest in a series of 'big cat' releases of Mac OS X that has been going on since the New Millennium. The first breakthrough release of Mac OS X came with 'Jaguar' (10.2) on 24 August 2002, followed by 'Panther' (10.3) in October 2003, 'Tiger' on 29 April 2005, and 'Leopard' in October 2007.

Snow Leopard is slated as a 'maintenance release' and will cost only $29 to upgrade from Leopard. (Full price is $129.)

Mac OS X is based on NeXT's NeXTSTEP and later OPENSTEP, the only truly object-oriented system in use today. NeXTSTEP first appeared in the late 1980s (over twenty years ago).

Contrary to how things work with other systems, it's been consistently evolving ever since, not in the least in its visual appearance. Technically it's still ahead of what the competition are likely to ever come up with.

The underbody of NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP/Mac OS X is FreeBSD Unix, one of the most secure systems in use today. Mac OS X also sports a MACH microkernel to increase system stability. The Mac OS X system itself almost never crashes or hangs.

A great many components of Mac OS X come from the open source community, meaning they're thoroughly vetted for performance and security.

Anyway: here it comes. Settle back - it's a good list but it's long.

1. The 'OOTB' experience.

'OOTB' stands for 'out of the box'. No matter who you are you can't help being moved by the way Apple package their goods - opening them is like unwrapping presents under the Xmas tree. Apple put a lot of energy into making sure their products look good, are well organised, and basically blow you away.

2. 'It just works'.

It's often been said - and occasionally maligned - but you can't get away from it: it just works. You might at a later point in time encounter something that doesn't just work or something that doesn't work as you like but on that first encounter when the box is right out of the box so to speak - no. This time it's painless and seamless.

And think of the differences: if you were to encounter any difficulties you could return the product immediately and complain. Doing this with Windows and a Wintel PC is impossible - Microsoft don't and won't guarantee your hardware.

3. Dazzling graphics.

Mac OS X is a system that's been evolving for over 20 years. It hasn't been stagnant - it's been truly evolving.

Already 20 years ago when Susan Kare hired Keith Ohlfs to design the NeXT visual interface things were really looking good. NeXTSTEP had 'near photographic quality' graphics back then with 48x48 icons in 4,096 colours. [Five years later Windows had 32x32 icons in 16 colours. No match.]

Today Mac OS X sports 'millions of colours', meaning true 24-bit graphics. But it's actually more still. For colours don't only contain red/green/blue components: they also contain an alpha component for transparency/opacity. Apple pixels are namely shared - transparency is an integral part of the system.

But there's more still. For whilst 'old Windows' was using 16-bit integer-based APIs and NT later used 32-bit integer-based APIs Apple's Mac OS X uses floating point APIs - today at double precision to boot. This means that the precision of the code will always be greater than the hardware and as the hardware improves the quality of the graphics onscreen will automatically improve as well.

But there's more still. For Apple graphics aren't that 'mealy' looking type found on Windows and other systems - they're vector-based. This means a Mac OS X screen isn't particularly concerned about pixels but very concerned about lines.

NeXTSTEP's rendering engine was based on Adobe's Electronic Postscript (EPS) and the Mac OS X rendering engine is based on Adobe's update to EPS - PDF. You get screen effects you can't get anywhere else.

Sum it up: vector-based graphics with 32-bit (now on Snow Leopard: 64-bit) colours with transparency expressed in double precision floating point - what are you going to have to do to beat that? An Apple Mac OS X screen is simply dazzling.

4. Ease of use.

You might be a little bewildered when first working with Mac OS X as you've never encountered a true object-oriented working environment before but when you get used to it you'll never consider going back. Never. Instead you'll wonder how your friends get by on their clumsy platforms.

Aren't menus supposed to be on the application windows? No they're not. What happens if you have multiple document windows open at the same time? Can't do that on Windows, you say? Precisely. Microsoft have made any number of clumsy attempts to bridge the gap but they can't really do it. Their system doesn't admit of true object orientation. All you get is the typical Microsoft third rate product.

This object orientation helps both developer and user. It makes application development up to five times as fast and effective and it makes application use a lot more efficient. So many things are suddenly possible where a Windows user wouldn't dream of it.

5. Security.

Yes security. You may have heard that Apple aren't as secure as 'open source', you may have heard about Apple systems getting hacked at conferences, but no matter the shortcomings you have to remember this is an extremely far cry from what you've experienced on Windows.

You. Don't. Need. Antivirus.

Period. And this because of the underbody - FreeBSD Unix. You simply can't hack a Unix system the way you can hack Windows. Windows has no inner barriers - Unix has them all over the place.



The file system gives you the equivalent of mandatory access control: there's no way you can create a file without assigning an owner and a group to it and there's no way you can create a file without assigning access rights to it either.

Very importantly: you're not root. There are areas of your file system where even you cannot go. You can't - as on Windows - assume ownership of anything and run with no one to stop you. If you can't be stopped then malware that gets in your system can't be stopped either.

Try to get at system files on Mac OS X - just give it a try. It can't be done. You'll find no software that gets you through the gate.

Mac OS X doesn't have that cursed Windows Registry either - and that registry on Windows is about as well protected as anything else on a Windows system. When Microsoft try to install new modules to fight the malware then the malware simply goes into the Windows Registry and turns the modules off. It's ludicrous actually. That can't happen on Mac OS X.

There's a lot to be said about the 'quality of life' where you're not constantly worried you're infected again, you lost your identity again, your bank account's been hacked again, you have to update your antivirus software again, and so forth.

And you won't have to reboot your system all the time and it won't be crashing or hanging all the time. It'll work the way computer systems are meant to work. The way computer systems have always worked. Except for Microsoft Windows.

The way out is through the door. Take that first step.

See Also
Apple: Mac OS X Snow Leopard
Industry Watch: Mac OS X: The Cons