Enhancements and refinements
Mac OS X Snow Leopard includes refinements, both big and small, to
a wide range of applications, processes and interface elements.
Rewritten for Snow Leopard.
The Finder has been completely rewritten using Cocoa to take advantage of the new technologies in Snow Leopard, including 64-bit support and Grand Central Dispatch. It’s more responsive from top to bottom, with snappier performance throughout the Finder.
Restore deleted items to original folders.
If you put an item in the Trash then change your mind, you can restore it to its original location. Just select the item in the Trash folder and choose Put Back from the File menu.
Enhanced icon view.
Just as in Cover Flow, you can thumb through a multipage document or watch a QuickTime movie right in the Finder in icon view.
Larger icon sizes.
To see your files clearly in the Finder, you can use a slider to adjust the size of the icon previews up to 512 by 512 pixels, four times their resolution in Leopard.
More reliable disk eject.
Snow Leopard makes ejecting external drives more reliable. Core system services such as Spotlight indexing and file system events will intelligently stop their work so you can remove your drive. And improved dialogs tell you which applications are using the drive so you know what to close in order to safely disconnect your drive.
Change search locations.
Change the default behaviour of Spotlight to have it search the currently selected folder or your most recent search location.
Adjust view options.
Adjust view options for Spotlight results just as you can with any Finder window. Modify the default view as well as the size, labelling and alignment of icons.
Sortable search results.
Sort your Spotlight search results by name, date modified, date created, size, kind and label. Just open the Action menu, choose Keep Arranged By and select the field you want to sort by.
Removable sidebar headers.
If you remove the items under the Devices, Places or Search For header in the sidebar, the header will disappear, too. To add it back, simply drag an item into the sidebar.
Assign applications to spaces.
Assign an application to any space from its icon in the Dock with a click. Quickly spread your work out in different spaces by assigning an application to a space right from the Dock. Just right-click the Dock icon and select a space for the application.
Scroll through your stacks.
Stacks are now scrollable in grid view, so you can easily view all items in the stack.
Activate Exposé from
the Dock.
Click and hold an application icon in the Dock and all open windows in the application you selected will unshuffle so you can quickly change to another window. Press the tab key while in Exposé to move to the next application in the Dock and show the windows for that application. Minimised windows appear as smaller icons below the other windows. And windows are spring-loaded, so you can drag and drop items between windows.
Navigate folders in stacks.
You can open folders in a stack to see all the files inside. Quickly return to previous folders by clicking the return path icon in the upper left of the stack.
Faster shutdown and
wake-up.
Snow Leopard is up to 75 percent faster when shutting down, twice as fast when waking from sleep with screen locking enabled and up to 55 percent faster at joining wireless networks.1
Automatic updates for
printer drivers.
When you plug in a new printer, your Mac with Snow Leopard can download the most up-to-date driver over the Internet. It periodically checks to make sure it has the latest driver, automatically downloading the newest version through Software Update.
HFS+ read support in Boot Camp.
Boot Camp now includes HFS+ read support that enables you to access the files on your Mac OS X partition from Windows. It’s read-only to prevent PC viruses from affecting Mac OS X, but you can easily save your work to your Windows partition and access it later from Mac OS X.
New starting points for
Automator.
It’s easier to create workflows using Automator with new starting points for Applications, Services, Folder Actions, iCal alarms and more.
Digital Asset Exchange support.
Collada Digital Asset Exchange (.dae) files are a popular way to share 3D models and scenes between applications. Preview now displays these files with OpenGL-powered 3D graphics, so you can zoom and rotate around a 3D scene and play viewpoint animations. You can also print the scene or save it as an image or movie file. And you can use Quick Look to display them as well.
New split-pane terminal.
Command-line users can now split their window into different terminal sessions, simplifying comparisons between activities.
Redesigned Services menu.
The Services menu has been streamlined, displaying only the services relevant to the application or content you’re using. You can customise the Services menu and you can create your own services using Automator.
Improved Chinese handwriting input.
You can now use a Multi-Touch trackpad to draw Chinese characters in your documents. They’ll appear on the screen in a new input window, which recommends characters based on what you drew and lets you choose the right one. The input window even offers suggestions for subsequent characters based on what you chose.
New fonts.
Snow Leopard introduces four new fonts: Menlo, a new monospace font for use in applications like Terminal; Chalkduster; Heiti J, K, SC and TC; and Hiragino Sans GB.
Bidirectional text.
For languages that are written right to left, such as Hebrew and Arabic, Snow Leopard now elegantly handles mixing in left-to-right text. It also has a split-cursor option that shows the appropriate cursor direction at the boundary between right-to-left and left-to-right text.
Text substitution.
Text substitution lets you create shortcuts for phrases you use frequently that will expand automatically as you type. Common substitutions are built in — for example, changing (c) to a copyright symbol (©) and fractions from 1/2 to ½. You can also add your own substitutions; for example, “pnc” can expand to “privileged and confidential”, and your initials can expand to your full name.
Faster Time Machine backup.
The initial Time Machine backup using Time Capsule is up to 80 percent faster.1
AirPort menu signal strength.
The AirPort item in the menu bar now includes signal strength for all available wireless networks, so you can see which access point has the best signal before selecting it.
More efficient file sharing.
With Snow Leopard and a compatible AirPort Extreme or Time Capsule base station, a computer that acts as a file or media server can go to sleep yet continue to share its files with other computers and devices, saving energy. Learn more about energy efficiency and the Mac.
More synchronisation options.
Now everyone, not just iPhone users, can synchronise their contacts through MobileMe, Yahoo! and Google.
Gamma 2.2.
The default gamma has been changed from 1.8 to 2.2 to better serve the colour needs of digital content producers and consumers.
All-new thesaurus.
Snow Leopard includes the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus second edition. New features help differentiate between easily confused words, find the right shade of meaning, provide context to select the correct word and give you background on words through the voices of well-known authors.
Date in menu bar.
The date can appear alongside the time in the menu bar.
More reliable
iChat connectivity.
Snow Leopard includes technology to address some of the most common router incompatibilities when video chatting with iChat.2 If iChat can’t make a direct connection to a buddy, it uses the AIM relay server, which acts as a known intermediary between computers.
High-resolution iChat Theater.
iChat can now display iChat Theater content at higher resolution — up to 640 by 480 pixels, or four times the maximum resolution in Mac OS X Leopard.
Two-thirds less
bandwidth required.
iChat requires only one-third the upstream bandwidth to deliver near DVD-quality, 640-by-480-resolution video chats. Leopard requires 900-Kbps upstream bandwidth; Snow Leopard requires just 300 Kbps.
Quick Look capable.
When a buddy sends you a file in iChat, you can instantly preview it with Quick Look.
Automatically show
past conversations.
If you save your chat transcripts, you can configure iChat to automatically show the last 5, 25, 100 or 250 messages you exchanged with someone whenever you reopen a chat with that buddy.
Date and time stamp
your transcripts.
Have your transcript marked with the current date and time by choosing Mark Transcript from the Edit menu.
Different statuses for
multiple chat accounts.
If you are simultaneously logged in to multiple accounts, you can have a different status for each one.
New To/From menu.
Choose the chat ID that you’re sending to or from using a conveniently located menu in the chat window.
Search for a buddy in Spotlight.
Search for any buddy’s IM handle in Spotlight. Just choose “Search in Spotlight” from the Buddies menu.
Close other chats with a click.
If you have multiple chats open, you can close all the chat windows except your active chat: Control-click the active chat and choose Close Other Chats.
New, faster version of Safari.
Safari 4 is the latest version of the blazing fast web browser. With Snow Leopard, it delivers 50 percent faster JavaScript performance thanks to its 64-bit support.3
Top Sites.
Enjoy a stunning, at-a-glance preview of your favourite websites with Top Sites. Safari 4 tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favourites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page.
Resistant to crashes.
Safari 4 in Snow Leopard is more resistant to crashes. Browser plug-ins are the number one cause of crashes in Mac OS X, so they now run in a separate process. If a plug-in crashes, the content stops working but Safari continues to run. Just reload the page to resume using the plug-in.
Full history search with Cover Flow.
Cover Flow lets you review your complete browsing history and bookmarked sites visually, presenting full-page previews of the websites that look exactly as they did when you last visited them. Safari 4 uses Spotlight to deliver full text searching, so it’s easy to find what you need.
All-new QuickTime Player.
The new QuickTime Player includes an elegant interface that puts the video you’re watching on center stage. Window and playback controls fade away, leaving just the high-quality video.
Visual chapters.
Instead of text-only chapter names, QuickTime Player displays frame-based thumbnail images for each chapter marker, allowing you to easily navigate your media.
Share your media across
your devices.
QuickTime Player converts your media files for use by iTunes and your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV, using the optimal settings for each destination. After conversion, QuickTime Player automatically delivers the content to your iTunes library.
Save for the web.
QuickTime Player makes it easy to prepare media files for the web. It converts your media to optimised movies for uploading to YouTube or MobileMe and for playback on a Mac, PC or iPhone.
Quick trimming.
Trim your media to the ideal length by removing unwanted portions from the beginning or end. Rather than relying on a simple timeline, QuickTime Player displays frame-based thumbnails that help you make the perfect edit.
Quick capture.
QuickTime Player makes it easy to capture live audio and video directly from your iSight camera, FireWire camcorder or microphone. Just click the Record button in QuickTime Player and start capturing your audio and/or video to disk.
Record your screen.
Catch the action taking place on your screen with screen recording. Start recording and QuickTime Player captures the activity on your screen and creates a movie file. It’s perfect for creating instructional media or when you need more than a simple screen shot.
GPU-accelerated
video decoding.
QuickTime X accesses the H.264 video-decoding capabilities of the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M integrated graphics processor found in the many of the latest Mac computers. Using the GPU to decode video not only provides an fluid playback experience but frees the CPU for other tasks.
Live HTTP streaming.
QuickTime X uses HTTP live streaming technology to playback live video online using the Internet standard HTTP protocol — the same one used to deliver web pages. HTTP live streaming works with common web server infrastructure such as Mac OS X Server and Apache and avoids difficulties caused by firewall and router settings.
Greater colour accuracy.
QuickTime X takes advantage of the proven capabilities of ColorSync to colour-manage your media. Modern media files are colour-managed to your display for the best playback experience and when shared to your iPhone, iPod or Apple TV.
Intelligent text selection.
Advanced artificial intelligence analyses each PDF document to understand the structure of its words, paragraphs, columns and visual layout and create a map of the document’s organisation. Preview uses this information to help you accurately target the text you want to copy and paste, even if the text is in columns.
Import from scanner.
Snow Leopard simplifies scanning by putting scanned data directly into Preview. Now you can scan, view and correct your files and images in Preview. The scanning interface even detects the placement of images or documents on the scanner to automate the selection of regions to scan.
Enhanced search.
Preview uses Grand Central Dispatch to improve search performance, presenting results immediately, even while the document is being indexed.
Higher-quality image scaling.
The Adjust Image Size command in Preview uses the advanced Lanczos interpolation algorithm to provide higher-quality scaling with fewer blurry artifacts compared with traditional interpolation algorithms.
Soft Proof with Profile.
Preview makes it easy to see what your images will look like when printed, on the web or even on a printing press. Using readily available colour profiles, Preview applies an on-the-fly colour simulation, enabling you to quickly and easily soft-proof large numbers of images.
New annotations toolbar.
Get easy access to all the annotation tools in Preview, including shapes, comments, links, strikethrough and highlighting, as well as two new annotation types: text and arrows.
Multiple documents in
a single window.
Open multiple PDFs in a single document window so you can easily view and search related documents together.
Contact sheet for images.
Open multiple images in a single document as a contact sheet, for a convenient thumbnail view of everything.
Image correction histogram.
Image adjustment controls in Preview now display a live RGB histogram of the current image, giving you additional feedback on how adjustments will affect the image.
VoiceOver trackpad control.
Control VoiceOver using just your trackpad. The surface of the trackpad represents the active window, with each corner representing absolute window coordinates. You can access different parts of a window or the desktop by simply touching the trackpad. VoiceOver guides you using voice prompts, effectively creating an aural map of the desktop.
Greater braille device
support and mirroring.
Mac OS X broadens its built-in support for braille displays by supporting even more models. Snow Leopard also enables multiple USB braille displays to be connected to one computer at a time — ideal for classrooms, where a teacher can take the whole class through a reading at the same time.
Bluetooth braille
display support.
Snow Leopard includes built-in support for wireless Bluetooth-based braille displays.
Jump around web pages
with web spots.
The patented web spot technology lets you jump directly to important parts of a web page. Mac OS X interprets complex visual page designs and identifies the most important parts of the page. It also provides a way to go directly to the web spot without having to traverse other elements of the page.
Automatically read web pages.
VoiceOver can begin reading a web page immediately when the page is loaded. You can increase or decrease the speaking rate while it’s talking, pause and continue, or stop and begin navigating the page on your own.
Web table support.
VoiceOver provides full, native support for HTML-based tables, without the need for a separate mode. You simply navigate tables using the same commands you use to navigate other elements on the page.
Support for
Microsoft Exchange.
With Mac OS X Snow Leopard, the Mac is the only computer with built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. So you can use your Mac — with all the features and applications you love, including Mail, iCal and Address Book — at home and at work and have all your messages, meetings and contacts in one place.
Reorderable Mail sidebar.
The sidebar in Mail is now reorderable, so you can arrange your inboxes exactly the way you want them.
Faster, more responsive Mail.
Mail now handles all your mail more quickly. It’s 85 percent faster to open your first viewable message, 3.5x faster to list the contents of a mailbox, 90 percent faster to search and 2.3x faster to move messages.1
New flight data detector.
Data detectors now automatically identify flight numbers in email messages and text documents and take you directly to the Dashboard Flight Tracker widget to get up-to-date flight information.
Improvements to message composition.
Dozens of small improvements in Mail make composing and editing HTML email messages more reliable.
Automatic setup in iCal.
iCal sets up your Google Mail and Yahoo! calendars automatically. Just type in your address and password and iCal configures your calendars.
Omnipresent inspector in iCal.
In addition to per-meeting inspector windows, you can have a single inspector that displays the meeting information for the currently selected meeting. As you select different meetings, the inspector changes to show the appropriate meeting information.
Automatic spelling correction.
Common spelling errors in TextEdit can be fixed automatically as you type. It corrects short, simple misspellings like “teh” and “frmo”, and it also corrects longer misspellings like “mispell” and “concious”.
Support for data detectors.
TextEdit detects text fragments like dates and addresses and lets you choose smart actions with a click. You can create a new contact, map an address or create an iCal event, depending on the type of information in the document.
Screen saver shuffle.
Shuffle through your screen saver photos just as you shuffle through songs in iTunes.
New Language and
Text preference pane.
The International preference pane is replaced by a new Language and Text pane. Its Text tab lets you set your text preferences globally across all applications.
Configurable time window
for screen locking.
If you set your Mac to require a password to wake from sleep, you can now add a delay of five seconds to four hours before the password is required.
Multi-Touch gestures in
older Mac models.
All Mac notebooks with Multi-Touch trackpads now support three- and four-finger gestures.
Automatic time zone setting.
Using Core Location technology, Snow Leopard can use known Wi-Fi hotspots to set the time zone — perfect for world travelers.4
Faster, more
reliable installer.
The installation process is up to 45 percent faster and more reliable than ever.5 It checks all your applications and sets aside programs known to be incompatible. And in case a power outage interrupts your installation, it can start again without any danger to your data.
Smaller footprint.
Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing about 7GB for you — enough for about 1,500 more songs or a few thousand more photos.6
64-bit computing.
Although Mac OS X is already 64-bit capable in many ways, Snow Leopard takes the next big step by rewriting all key system applications in 64-bit code and by enabling the Mac to address massive amounts of memory. Now Mac OS X is faster, more secure and completely ready for the future.
Grand Central Dispatch.
A new technology called Grand Central Dispatch takes full advantage of multicore systems by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimising it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central Dispatch also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that utilise all the power of multicore systems.
OpenCL.
With graphics processors approaching speeds beyond a trillion operations per second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL in Snow Leopard is a new technology that makes it possible for developers to tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently in the graphics processor and use it for any application.
Static analysis.
Xcode has a new Build and Analyze operation to analyse code for correctness, point out errors with a Message Bubble and draw graphical arrows alongside the code steps that can trigger the errors.
Grand Central Dispatch support in Xcode debugger and Instruments.
Grand Central Dispatch better identifies units of work and exposes dispatch queues through the Xcode debugger and within Instruments. This makes debugging a Grand Central Dispatch-based application much easier than working only with the low-level threads that may be running the code.
Core Sampler analysis meter
in Instruments.
Xcode Instruments includes a new lightweight mode capable of recording application and system sampling data with greater detail. By running the Core Sampler recorder, developers can uncover more data about what may be affecting performance and better understand where the application spends critical CPU cycles.
Xcode usability enhancements.
The Xcode user interface includes more natural code completion with improved suggestions, a unified build results window with a persistent log, refined Message Bubbles that wrap cleanly alongside the source code, easy access to recent projects on launch and more.
