Mac OS X Lion

Mac OS X Lion (version 10.7; marketed as OS X Lion) is the eighth and current major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers.

A preview of Lion was publicly unveiled at Apple's "Back to the Mac" event on October 20, 2010. It brings many developments made in Apple's iOS, such as an easily navigable display of installed applications, to the Mac, and includes support for the Mac App Store, as introduced in Mac OS X Snow Leopard version 10.6.6. On February 24, 2011, the first developer's preview of Lion (11A390) was released to subscribers of Apple's developers program. Other developer previews were subsequently released, with Lion Preview 4 (11A480b) being released at WWDC 2011.

Lion achieved golden master status on July 1, 2011, followed by its final release via the Mac App Store on July 20, 2011. Apple reported over 1 million Lion sales on the first day of its release. As of October 2011, Mac OS X Lion has sold over 6 million copies worldwide.

Release and distribution

On June 6, 2011, at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, it was announced that the official release for Lion would be in July 2011. The specific release date of July 20 was not confirmed until the day before, July 19, by Apple CFO, Peter Oppenheimer, as part of Apple's 2011 third-quarter earnings announcement.

Apple did not initially announce any physical media distribution for Lion, such as a set of CD-ROMs or a DVD-ROM as used for past releases. Instead, the operating system was said to be available exclusively as a download from the Mac App Store for US$29.99. The only prior version of OS X that supports the Mac App Store is Snow Leopard, which implied that any machines that support Lion currently running Tiger or Leopard would first have to be upgraded to Snow Leopard, as opposed to allowing a direct upgrade to Lion.

Apple later announced two alternative distribution mechanisms for the benefit of users without broadband Internet access: in-store downloads at retail Apple Stores, and a USB flash drive containing the OS, priced at US$69, available through the online Apple Store beginning in August. It is not clear whether the USB distribution will support a direct upgrade to Lion from OS X versions prior to Snow Leopard. On August 4 2011, Apple started to take orders for Mac OS X Lion's USB installation flash drives for $69.99.

The Server portion of Lion is available as a separate download from the Mac App Store for US$49.99, which is in addition to the purchase price of Lion itself.

Hardware support

The first developer preview of Lion added TRIM support for SSDs shipped with Macs, which is also included in the latest version of Snow Leopard (10.6.8) shipping with current MacBook Pros before July 20, 2011. As of yet, there is no TRIM support for other SSDs.

Some Macs (e.g. MacBook Pro 15", Early 2011) upgraded from earlier versions of Mac OS X receive firmware updates which render them thereafter incapable of running OS X 10.6.8 and earlier; per Apple technical support, Apple provides no method for reversing the firmware update.

System requirements

▪                x86-64 CPU (Macs with an Intel Core 2 Duo, Intel Core i3, Intel Core i5, Intel Core i7, or Xeon processor.)

▪                At least 2GB of RAM

▪                Mac OS X 10.6.6 or later (Mac OS X 10.6.8 is recommended)

▪                At least 7 GB of free hard drive space

▪                AirDrop is supported on the following Mac models: MacBook Pro (late 2008 or newer), MacBook Air (late 2010 or newer), MacBook (late 2008 or newer), iMac (early 2009 or newer), Mac mini (mid 2010 or newer), Mac Pro (early 2009 with AirPort Extreme card and mid 2010 or newer).

New or changed features

Some new features were announced at the "Back to the Mac" keynote in October 2010, and the Apple website was updated in February 2011 with more details.Other features were announced at the WWDC 2011 keynote or on Apple's Mac OS X Lion Web site after the keynote. Apple states that there are over 250 new or changed features in Lion, including:

▪                Address Book now uses an iPad-like user interface. It also includes improved Yahoo support and FaceTime calling.

▪                AirDrop – Lion-to-Lion direct file sharing via Wi-Fi Direct. No wireless access point required.

▪                Address space layout randomization – Address space layout randomization (ASLR), a security technique that puts important data in unpredictable locations, making it harder to target known weaknesses, is available for 32-bit applications, and "has been improved for all applications", in Lion.

▪                Apple Push Notification Service – Send over-the-air alerts, such as news updates or social networking status changes, using Apple's Push Notification service to applications that support APNS. APNS allows Mac OS X Lion and iOS clients to receive push changes to items such as mail, calendar and contacts from a configured OS X Lion Server.

▪                Auto-correction now behaves much like on iOS devices, displaying an iOS-like popup box.

▪                Auto Save – As in iOS, documents in applications written to use Auto Save will be saved automatically so users don't have to worry about manually managing their documents.

▪                Emoji support – Apple has added a new Emoji font commonly used in chat to express ideograms.

▪                Exposé in the Dock, a way of activating Exposé for a single application from the Dock, a feature added in Mac OS X 10.6,[26] is altered. One must now double-tap with two fingers on a dock icon to initiate single application exposé, or simply right-click or control-click and select Show All Windows.

▪                FaceTime comes bundled with Lion.

▪                FileVault now offers full disk encryption and added security with XTS-AES 128 data encryption. Support for FileVault on external hard drives has also been added.

▪                Finder improvements – Finder search allows multiple search criteria to be specified without creating a smart folder, Finder search offers suggestions, files can be grouped by various attributes, and one can now merge files under two folders with the same name – a prompt will appear asking whether one wants to replace or keep both files.

▪                Font Book 3—Font Book 3 now provides more flexible displays of character glyphs supplied by a particular font face. Duplicate font files are now flagged with a warning icon, and can be fixed automatically or resolved manually.

▪                Full-screen apps – Native, system-wide support for full-screen applications running in their own space. Supporting applications display a new button at the top right of application window, this button opens applications in full-screen mode.

▪                High-quality multilingual speech voices – users can download new high-quality voices in more than forty languages and dialects.

▪                iCal has an updated user interface, an annual view, and support for a full-screen view.

▪                iChat now has support for logging into Yahoo! Messenger. Users can audio- and video-chat with other iChat users using their Yahoo! accounts.

▪                Languages/Localization – Arabic, Czech, Turkish and Hungarian are added as full system languages, to make the total number of twenty-two languages available in Mac OS X.

▪                Launchpad – An application launcher that displays an iOS-like icon grid of installed applications. It features the ability to make multiple pages and group apps into folders that function the same as folders in iOS.

▪                Mac App Store – An application store built in the image of the iOS App Store. Like in iOS, it will provide ways for shoppers to discover apps, one-click installation of apps, and one-click updates of all or selected installed applications. Despite being announced as a future feature of Lion, the Mac App Store was released for Mac OS X Snow Leopard on January 6, 2011 as it was bundled with the Mac OS X 10.6.6 update.

▪                Mail 5 – Uses an iPad-like user interface, has a fullscreen-optimized view, uses chronological "Conversations" to organize messages, and supports Exchange 2010 (but not through the Exchange ActiveSync protocol, as iOS).

▪                Mission Control replaces the "All windows" Exposé feature. It gives an overview of all running applications just like "All windows" but groups windows from the same application. At the top of the screen it gives quick access to the Dashboard, Spaces, and running full screen applications.

▪                Multi-touch gestures – Similar to iOS, additional gestures performed using a multi-touch input device (e.g. Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad) will allow the user to scroll, swipe to different pages, and enter Mission Control. While this is not the first official multi-touch support for Mac OS X, it has been expanded; other frameworks, such as Lux, have already created multi-touch support.

▪                Multi-User Screen Sharing—The built-in Screen Sharing feature now allows remote users to log into a separate user account from the one that is currently logged in. That means that while one user is logged into a machine, a second user can login to the same machine remotely, seeing their own desktop and user environment.

▪                Preview gains several features, including full-screen support and the ability to sign a document just by holding a signed piece of paper up to the camera.

▪                QuickTime re-incorporates some features from QuickTime Pro. New features cited include Copy/Paste, Insert Clip, Crop Video, Rotate Video, Resize, Trim, and more Export options.

▪                Recovery Partition – Apple has introduced a recovery partition that includes utilities generally found on the OS X discs. This partition will allow the user to restore their computer to its original factory state. It also allows for a new copy of OS X Lion to be installed over the internet.

▪                Resume – Applications resume in the same state when re-opened as already seen in iOS.

▪                Safari – With full-screen mode and the new WebKit2 layout engine.

▪                System Information – This feature is a re-design of System Profiler, which has been completely altered with new views which display graphical information on displays, storage devices, memory usage along with other hardware information. The previous layout remains available by clicking "System Report". Early builds of Lion also used System Information as a replacement for "About This Mac", although the final release reinstated the version of this dialog box found in Snow Leopard.

▪                Terminal has extra features, including full screen mode.

▪                TextEdit gains a new graphical toolbar with font selection and text highlighting. The new TextEdit also supports Apple's new automatic file saving and versions technologies.

▪                Versions – Time Machine-like saving and browsing of past versions of documents for applications written to use Versions.

▪                Vertical text – Lion supports vertical layouts for East Asian languages.

The complete list from Apple can be found on Apple's website.

Server features

▪                Wiki Server 3 – Making it easier to collaborate, share, and exchange information. Users can quickly switch between a server's home page, My Page, Updates, Wikis, People, and Podcasts. File sharing is simpler, and a new Page Editor is added for easy customization.

▪                WebDAV File Sharing – Lion Server delivers wireless file sharing for clients that support WebDAV. Enabling WebDAV in Lion Server gives iOS users the ability to access, copy, and share documents on the server from applications such as Keynote, Numbers, and Pages.

▪                Profile Manager – Profile Manager delivers simple, profile-based setup and management for Mac OS X Lion, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices. It also integrates with existing directory services and delivers automatic over-the-air profile updates using the Apple Push Notification service.

User interface changes

▪                Redesigned Aqua user interface elements, including buttons and progress bars. The red, yellow and green buttons in the window decorations have also been made smaller.

▪                Flexible window resizing from any corner or edge of the window, similar to window resizing in Microsoft Windows and many window managers for X11.

▪                The metal finish has also been slightly altered. It is now a lighter shade of grey than before and features a speckled texture.

▪                On demand scroll bars now disappear by default when they are not being used, similar to iOS.

▪                Scrolling is reversed by default, to act more like a touch screen computer, so that content moves in the direction of finger movement on touch-pad or mouse, rather than the scrollbar moving in the direction of finger movement. Also, like in iOS, scrolling "bounces" when the scroll bar hits the top or bottom of the window.

▪                When resizing a window by clicking on the green button (left-top), a transform-effect animates the enlargement.

▪                New windows fly to the front (like opening an app in iOS).

▪                The dashboard is now its own space in Mission Control, rather than in previous versions of OS X where the widgets simply flew in and the background dimmed. The "ripple effect" that was seen previously when adding widgets is no longer there due to this change. Users have the option to return to the old dashboard configuration in System Preferences.

▪                Tabs, when selected, now appear as being pushed in and darkened as opposed to previous versions where selected tabs were highlighted in aqua blue.

Dropped features

▪                Save As – replaced by Duplicate and Revert functions due to the introduction of Auto Save and Versions (only applies to applications modified to support Auto Save, such as TextEdit; applications not modified to support Auto Save, such as Microsoft Word, retain this functionality).

▪                Front Row, a media center application. The application has been copied into Lion by third-party users, however its incompatibility with iTunes 10.4 renders some features useless.

▪                Rosetta, software which makes possible the execution of PowerPC software on x86 hardware, is no longer available. This disables some programs that ran on previous versions of Mac OS X. Programs requiring Rosetta to operate are not allowed to be distributed via the Mac App Store.

▪                Adobe Flash Player and Apple's Java Runtime Environment (JRE) are not included in new installations of Lion, but both can still be downloaded and installed manually. Apple will no longer be actively maintaining its JRE, but Software Update will offer to download Snow Leopard's JRE if a user tries to run a Java program without there being a JRE installed. Programs using Java are not allowed to be distributed via the Mac App Store.

▪                iSync, software used for syncing contacts and calendars to third-party mobile phones, is no longer included; however, iSync v3.1.2 from Snow Leopard continues to work.

▪                Remote Install Mac OS X, software which allows OS X to be installed using the Remote Disk feature. Using Target Disk Mode, users can circumvent this omission. This is replaced by the Recovery Partition, which does the exact same thing but without needing an external disk.

▪                Apple USB Modem is not compatible with Lion.

Reception

Reception for OS X Lion has generally been positive, but tempered by a substantial backlash by "Pro" users with workflows affected by the Autosave/Revert workflow. In an extensive review of the operating system, Ars Technica recommended Lion. They noted that it feels like it is the start of a new line of operating systems that will continue to be influenced by Apple's iOS platform. The review also compared the introduction of Lion, along with its new conventions that change traditional ways of computing, to the original Mac OS X and when it replaced the classic Mac OS. Macworld called Lion a "radical revision", praising the changes made to the operating system to be more user friendly to new Mac users that are familiar with the iOS interface, while criticizing the limited utility of the interface. Ultimately, the magazine considered Lion an operating system worth getting, giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars.[78] guardian.co.uk called Lion a substantial improvement from its predecessors, and considered it a "steal" given its price.

On the other hand, Gizmodo stated that the new interface "feels like a failure" and concluded by saying that "it doesn't feel like a must-have upgrade". Ted Landau of MacObserver also had serious criticism of Lion, reversing his earlier praise of Autosave and writing "Auto Save takes irritatingly long when working with large documents. Still others lament the loss of the Save As… command, noting that the new Duplicate option is not as convenient to use. The consensus is that none of this would matter much — if you could disable Auto Save. If you like how it works, leave things as is. Otherwise, get rid of it. But Lion offers no way to turn Auto Save off. This is the heart of the “my way or the highway” complaint. A posting sums it up: “The new features are intrusive, non-respectful of the users’ choices, and cannot be changed.”

Due to Lion's enhanced security features, including application sandboxing, Dino Dai Zovi, principal of security consultancy Trail of Bits and the coauthor (with Charles Miller) of The Mac Hacker's Handbook, characterized Lion's security as "a significant improvement, and the best way that I've described the level of security in Lion is that it's Windows 7, plus, plus. I generally tell Mac users that if they care about security, they should upgrade to Lion sooner rather than later, and the same goes for Windows users, too."

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Mac OS X Snow Leopard‬ Mac OS X Snow Leopard (version 10.6) is the seventh major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Snow Leopard was publicly unveiled on June 8, 2009 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. On August 28, 2009, it was released worldwide, and was made available for purchase from Apple's website and its retail stores at the price of US$29 for a single-user license. As a result of the low price, initial sales of Snow Leopard were significantly higher than that of its predecessors. The release of Snow Leopard came nearly two years after the introduction of Mac OS X Leopard (version 10.5), the second longest time span between successive Mac OS X releases. Unlike previous versions of Mac OS X, the goals with Snow Leopard were improved performance, greater efficiency and the reduction of its overall memory footprint. Addition of new end-user features was not a primary goal. Much of the software in Mac OS X was extensively rewritten for this release in order to fully take advantage of modern Macintosh hardware. New programming frameworks, such as OpenCL, were created, allowing software developers to use graphics cards in their applications. This is also the first Mac OS release since System 7.1.1 that does not support Macs that use PowerPC processors, as Apple now intends to focus on its current line of Intel-based products. As support for Rosetta was dropped in Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard is the last version of Mac OS X that is able to run PowerPC-only applications. Snow Leopard was succeeded by Mac OS X Lion (version 10.7) on July 20, 2011. The earlier version continues to be sold for the benefit of users that require Snow Leopard in order to upgrade to Lion, which is primarily sold through the Mac App Store introduced in the Snow Leopard 10.6.6 update. Mac OS X Snow Leopard was the last release of Mac OS X to support the 32-bit Intel Core Solo and Intel Core Duo CPUs. System requirements Apple states the following basic Snow Leopard system requirements are: ▪ Mac computer with an Intel processor (IA-32). "Yonah" processors such as Core Solo and Core Duo can run only 32-bit applications; later x86-64 architecture processors such as Core 2 Duo are also able to run 64-bit applications. ▪ 1 GB of RAM ▪ 5 GB of free disk space ▪ DVD drive (also accessible via Remote Disc) or external USB or FireWire DVD drive for installation Additional requirements to use certain features: ▪ QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration support, requires an Nvidia GeForce 9400M, 320M, or GT 330M graphics card ▪ OpenCL, requires a supported Nvidia or ATI graphics card Snow Leopard does not support PowerPC-based Macs (e.g., Power Macs, PowerBooks, iBooks, iMacs (G3-G5), all eMacs, plus pre-February 2006 Mac minis and the Power Mac G4 Cube), although PowerPC applications are supported via Rosetta, which is now an optional install. Use on unsupported hardware Some ways of running Mac OS X Snow Leopard on certain unsupported hardware have been discovered. Users who have access to supported hardware have installed Snow Leopard on the supported machine then simply moved the hard drive to the unsupported machine. Alternatively, the Snow Leopard Installation DVD can be booted on a supported Mac, then installed on an unsupported Mac via the Firewire Target Disk Mode. Since Apple moved to using Intel processors in their computers, the OSx86 community has developed and now also allows Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard to be installed and run successfully on non-Apple x86-based computers, albeit in violation of Apple's licensing agreement for Mac OS X. A variety of installation processes can be used, the most common being to use Darwin-based bootloaders commonly known as "Boot 132" designed to emulate an EFI which Intel Macs use instead of a BIOS. This method of installation allows the use of an unmodified Apple installation DVD and the updating of the operating system from the built-in Software Update utility, but will work only on modern Intel-based PCs, unless a modified kernel is added to the pre-boot CD. Modified installation DVDs are also available illegally which offer a more outdated approach to installing. A hardware device capable of being attached to a PC's motherboard has also been released, EFI-X, but it is essentially a USB mass storage device with the needed bootloader. License Snow Leopard is available as an upgrade for Intel-based Macintosh computers. Single-user licenses and "family pack" licenses for up to five computers are available. For qualifying Mac computers bought after June 8, 2009, Apple offered a discounted price through their "up to date" program provided that customers' orders were faxed or postmarked by December 26, 2009. The standalone retail version of Snow Leopard is marketed as being restricted to users of Mac OS X Leopard, while the recommended upgrade path from Apple for Mac OS X Tiger is through the "Mac Box Set", which includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard and the current versions of iLife and iWork. There are three licenses available. These licenses differ in their requirements for pre-installed versions of Mac OS X: ▪ Leopard Upgrade: requires that Mac OS X Leopard already be installed. If you have purchased an Upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard license, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License, you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer as long as that computer has a properly licensed copy of Mac OS X Leopard already installed on it. A "Family Pack Upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard" license is also mentioned as a subset of the Leopard Upgrade. ▪ Single Use: places no restriction on which (if any) version of Mac OS X should already be installed. Used for the non-upgrade and Mac Box Set versions of Snow Leopard. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License ... you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-branded computer at a time. ▪ Family Pack: identical to the Single Use license in this respect. It is not entirely clear which license is offered with the retail version of Snow Leopard. As noted above, Apple's website advertised this version as an "upgrade from Mac OS X Leopard for $29" and suggest that others upgrade using the Mac Box Set, implying the stand-alone retail version to be a "Leopard Upgrade" license. On the other hand, some Apple press materials appear to indicate that this version is, in fact, the "Single Use" license: The Snow Leopard single user license will be available for a suggested retail price of $29 (US) However, even if the retail edition of Snow Leopard is in fact a "Leopard Upgrade", the company has acknowledged that there is no technical barrier in that edition preventing a direct upgrade from Mac OS X "Tiger". The Leopard Upgrade license explicitly applies to the Up-To-Date Program (US$9.95) for Macs bought between June 8 and December 26, 2009 and the installation discs provided through this program are clearly marked as upgrades unlike either of the retail editions. New or changed features Mac OS X Snow Leopard is intended to be a release aimed to refine the existing feature set, expand the technological capabilities of the operating system, and improve application efficiency. Many of the changes involve how the system works in the background and are not intended to be seen by the user. For example, the Finder application was completely rewritten in the Cocoa application programming interface. Despite significant changes in the software, users will experience almost no changes in the user interface. Snow Leopard includes the following changes: ▪ Boot Camp now allows Windows partitions to read and copy files from HFS+ partitions. The new version also adds support for advanced features on Cinema Displays and a new command-line version of the Startup Disk Control Panel. ▪ The Finder has been completely rewritten in Cocoa to take advantage of the new technologies introduced in Snow Leopard. ▪ A much smaller OS footprint, taking up about 7 GB less space than Mac OS X Leopard. Some of the recovered disk space (~250 MB) is because printer drivers are now downloaded or installed only as needed, rather than being pre-installed. The default install only contains those drivers needed for existing printers and a small subset of popular printers. ▪ iChat enhancements include greater resolution video chats in iChat Theater and lowered upload bandwidth requirements. ▪ Microsoft Exchange support is now integrated into the Mail, Address Book, and iCal applications. However, only Microsoft Exchange 2007 is supported and customers using prior versions of Exchange must either upgrade or use Microsoft Entourage. ▪ Full multi-touch trackpad support has been added to notebooks prior to those introduced in October 2008. While the original MacBook Air and other early multi-touch trackpad enabled notebooks had support for some gestures, they were unable to use four-finger gestures. This limitation has now been removed in Snow Leopard. ▪ Preview can infer the structure of a paragraph in a PDF document. ▪ QuickTime X, the next version of QuickTime player and multimedia framework, has been completely rewritten into a full 64-bit Cocoa application and builds on the media technologies in Mac OS X, such as Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Animation, to deliver playback. Apple has redesigned the QuickTime user interface to resemble the full-screen QuickTime view in prior versions, where the entire window displays the video. The titlebar and playback controls fade in and out as needed. QuickTime X also supports HTTP live streaming and takes advantage of ColorSync to provide high-quality color reproduction. If Snow Leopard is installed on a Mac with an nVidia GeForce 9400M, 320M or GT 330M graphics card, QuickTime X will be able to use its video-decoding capabilities to reduce CPU load. ▪ Safari 4 features Top Sites, Cover Flow, VoiceOver, expanded standards support, and built-in crash resistance, which prevents browser crashes caused by plug-ins by running them in separate processes. Safari 4 is bundled with Snow Leopard but does not require it, as it is available for free for Mac OS X Tiger, Leopard as well as Windows. ▪ Time Machine connection establishment and backups are now much faster. ▪ VoiceOver has also been greatly enhanced in Snow Leopard. Reading of web pages is improved with Auto Web Spots — areas of a page automatically designated for quick access. On newer Apple portables, trackpad gestures can be used to control VoiceOver functions, including the "rotor" gesture first seen in VoiceOver for the iPhone 3GS, allowing for the changing of certain VoiceOver navigation options by rotating fingers on the trackpad. Braille Display support is also improved, with Bluetooth displays supported for the first time. Refinements to the user interface While the Finder was completely rewritten in Cocoa, it did not receive a major user interface overhaul. Instead, the interface has been modified in several areas to promote ease of use. These changes include: ▪ Exposé can now display windows for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock. Windows are arranged in a new grid pattern. ▪ Contextual menus which come out of Dock icons now have more options and have a new look, with a semi-transparent charcoal background and white text. ▪ An option has been added to the Finder preferences that allows the user to modify search behavior. The default setting can be selected to (1) search the entire computer, (2) search only the current folder from which the search was initiated, or (3) perform the search based on the previously used scope. ▪ Dock Stacks, when viewed as a grid, allow viewing of a subfolder as a new stack, rather than launching a Finder window, in a manner similar to "tunnelling". When viewed as grids or lists, scroll-bars are provided to navigate folders with more items than the current screen resolution will accommodate, as the program does not scale the icons to show as many as possible the way it did in OS X 10.5. ▪ The default gamma has been changed from 1.8 to 2.2 to better serve the color needs of digital content producers and consumers. ▪ Windows can now be minimized directly onto their application's icon in the dock. ▪ Faster PDF and JPEG icon refreshes. ▪ When searching for a network, the AirPort menu-bar icon animates until it finds a network and shows network strength of available networks in the drop down menu. ▪ Prefixes for bytes are now used in strictly decimal meaning (as opposed to their binary meaning) when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1 million bytes, as commonly used by hard disk manufacturers. ▪ Snow Leopard shuts down and goes to sleep faster. New wallpapers As with most upgrades of Mac OS X, new wallpapers are available. There are new wallpapers in the Nature (two of which are of snow leopards), Plants and Black and White sub-folders under the Apple folder. Furthermore, there are new Apple wallpaper sub-folders with multiple wallpapers: ▪ Art: Dancer on the Stage, Nighthawks, Poppies Blooming, Sunday Afternoon, Suprematism, The Great Wave, and Water Lilies. ▪ Patterns: Pinstripe and Saree. New solid colors can be used as wallpapers as well. There is a new blue and gray, as well as a solid kelp which serves as the "green wallpaper." The default "space nebula" wallpaper has been updated as well. Dropped features ▪ AppleTalk is no longer supported. ▪ It is no longer possible to change an application's language using the Finder "Get Info" dialogue. While there are workarounds for some applications, others (such as Adobe After Effects CS4) will not be able to be run in a different language than the one installed without using Terminal commands or 3rd party software. ▪ Creator codes, which are per-file metadata attributes that define, for a file that has a creator code, what application should open that file, regardless of its extension, have had their priority in the application selection process reduced. Developer technologies 64-bit architecture Mac OS X Tiger added limited support for 64-bit applications on machines with 64-bit processors; Leopard extended the support for 64-bit applications to include applications using most of Mac OS X's libraries and frameworks. In Snow Leopard, most built-in applications have been rebuilt to leverage the 64-bit x86-64 architecture (excluding iTunes, Front Row, Grapher and DVD Player applications). They will run in 32-bit mode on machines with 32-bit processors, and in 64-bit mode on machines with 64-bit processors. In addition, the Mac OS X kernel has been rebuilt to run in 64-bit mode on some machines. On those machines, Snow Leopard supports up to 16 terabytes of RAM. Newer Xserve and Mac Pro machines will run a 64-bit kernel by default; newer iMac and MacBook Pro machines can run a 64-bit kernel, but will not do so by default. Users wishing to use the 64-bit kernel on those machines must hold down the numbers 6 and 4 on the keyboard while booting to get the 64-bit kernel to load. A change to the com.apple.Boot.plist will also enable users with compatible computers to permanently boot into 64-bit for those wishing to do so. Stuart Harris, software product marketing manager at Apple Australia, said, "For the most part, everything that they experience on the Mac, from the 64-bit point of view, the applications, the operating system, is all going to be 64-bit, but that at this stage there were very few things, such as device drivers, that required 64-bit mode at the kernel level". Amit Singh has reported that the early 2009 Mac Mini and MacBook may be capable of running the 64-bit kernel; however, Apple has set these models to boot into the 32-bit kernel. With some tweaking, the Unibody MacBook can be set to boot the 64-bit kernel. Grand Central Dispatch Grand Central Dispatch uses the multiple processor cores now in every new Macintosh for more efficient performance. Due to the technical difficulties traditionally involved in making applications optimized for multicore CPUs, the majority of computer applications do not effectively use multiple processor cores. As a result, processing power often goes unused. Grand Central Dispatch includes APIs to help programmers efficiently use these cores for parallel programming. Grand Central Dispatch shifts thread handling focus to itself rather than leaving it to specific applications to distribute jobs evenly across cores and clears up unused memory created by inactive or old threads to achieve maximum performance. Apple is also releasing APIs for Grand Central Dispatch for developers to use in their applications and also to analyze specific blocks of code running on Grand Central Dispatch.[34] A new C and Objective-C language feature named "Blocks" facilitates creation of code that will easily optimize to take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch. OpenCL OpenCL (Open Computing Language) addresses the power of graphics processing units (GPUs) to leverage them in any application, and not just for graphics-intensive applications like 3D games. OpenCL automatically optimizes for the kind of graphics processor in the Mac, adjusting itself to the available processing power. OpenCL provides consistent numeric precision and accuracy, fixing a problem that has hampered GPU-based programming in the past. OpenCL is a C-based programming language with a structure that is already familiar to Mac OS X programmers, who can use Xcode developer tools to adapt their programs to work with OpenCL. Only the most process intensive parts of the application need to be written in OpenCL C without affecting the rest of the code. OpenCL is an open standard that has been supported by AMD, Intel, and Nvidia; it is maintained by Khronos Group. It serves a similar purpose to Nvidia's C for CUDA and Microsoft's Direct3D 11 compute shaders. It only works with the following Mac GPUs: NVIDIA GeForce 320M, GT 330M, 9400M, 9600M GT, 8600M GT, GT 120, GT 130, GTX 285, 8800 GT, 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, FX 5600 and ATI Radeon HD 4670, HD 4850, HD 4870, HD 5670, HD 5750, HD 5770, HD 5870, HD 6490M, HD 6750M, HD 6770M, HD 6970M. If the system does not possess one of these compatible GPUs, OpenCL code will instead execute on the system's CPU. CUPS CUPS (the printing system used in many Unix-like operating systems) has been updated to version 1.4 which provides improved driver, networking, and Kerberos support along with performance improvements. CUPS 1.4 is also the first implementation of the Internet Printing Protocol version 2.1. Power management Power management has been improved, with implementation of a new wake on demand feature supported on more recent Macintosh hardware. Wake on demand takes advantage of the sleep proxy service implemented in AirPort and Time Capsule routers, so that the computer can sleep while the router responds to mDNS queries. Should the request require the host computer to wake up, the router sends the necessary special wake-up-packet to the sleeping computer. Security Apple strengthened Mac OS X by implementing stack protection, and sandboxing more Mac OS X components such as the H.264 decoder in QuickTime and browser plug-ins as a separate process in Safari. An anti-malware feature was also added to the system that alerts the user if malware is detected. Mac OS X 10.6.8 added daily malware definition updates. Computer security researcher Charlie Miller claims that OS X Snow Leopard is more vulnerable to attack than Microsoft Windows for lacking full address space layout randomization (ASLR) since Mac OS X Leopard, a technology that Microsoft started implementing in Windows Vista. Compatibility Snow Leopard breaks compatibility with several older versions of some applications, such as Parallels Desktop 3.0, versions of Aperture before 2.1.1, and versions of Keynote before 2.0.2, among other software.[49] Apple has also published a list of applications with known compatibility issues with Snow Leopard. Printer and scanner drivers used by previous versions of Mac OS X are not compatible with Snow Leopard and will be replaced during Snow Leopard installation. Since the initial release of Snow Leopard many manufacturers have provided compatible drivers that are available via Software Update. If a native driver is not available Snow Leopard also includes CUPS and Gutenprint open source drivers that may provide limited functionality. 10.6.0 introduced a bug that frequently prevented DNS queries from returning IPv6 addresses. This was resolved in 10.6.8. Reception At the WWDC in 2009, Apple stated that Snow Leopard features no new major visual changes. Instead, the release focuses on refining the operating system to enable better performance. OSNews reported that Mac OS X Snow Leopard was well-received by critics. Engadget reviewed Snow Leopard and pointed out that the price of Snow Leopard dropped from the $129 Apple charged for previous versions of Mac OS X to $29. Engadget's opinion was that this could be largely because most users would not see a noticeable change in the look and feel of the system. However, most reviews commented on the large improvement in speed of the native Mac OS X applications Finder, iCal, Mail, etc. CNET editors gave it 4 stars out of 5, stating "Intel Mac users will like Snow Leopard's smartly designed interface enhancements, and its Exchange support is a must-have (especially with Outlook for Mac on the way). With a ton of technological improvements, Snow Leopard is worth the $29 upgrade fee." On 21 October 2009, SFGate blogger Yobie Benjamin wrote that the "MacBook Pro that came preloaded with Snow Leopard kicks butt and is a screaming fast machine", but "when I tried to upgrade one of my 'older' MacBooks, it was a fricking disaster from hell". Apart from upgrading, Benjamin also tried a clean install. But he complained of slowness even after his clean install. He wrote, "I ended up downgrading back to OSX 10.5.8" then he concluded by writing, "I might try to do it again but it won't be till Apple releases at least 2 major fix updates. If you want to roll the dice and try, go ahead... your upgrade might work however random installs not working is not good for me. Lesson learned --- I'll wait." The single-user upgrade and Family Pack units of Snow Leopard ranked 1 and 2 respectively on Amazon.com's software bestseller charts when Apple announced it would release it within the week. Testmac.com highlighted other unexpected improvements including the release of a new version of Boot Camp, version 3.0, a cleaner, popup software update process and screen and video recording in the new QuickTime Player. The BBC reported that a bug in Mac OS X versions 10.6.0 and 10.6.1 which, in rare cases, caused loss of user account data after use of a previously-existing guest account by users who had upgraded from a previous version of Mac OS X, received wide publicity. The bug was fixed as of version 10.6.2.

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