Yesterday I got me Snow Leopard since a computer store specialized in Apple stuff is right around the corner of my worky place. When I stood there at the counter waiting for someone to take my money I watched one of their sales clerks leisurely chatting with another customer and another one google some stuff and checking emails. Well, after someone finally decided they wouldn't like me to leave without paying for stuff I had my very own Snow Leopard copy. Yay for me.

Cut Out the Crap and Give Some Details

Of course I had to install it right when I got home to get all those super duper improvements and speed ups and all the great stuff. The one that caught my eye first was the new default background. It actually doesn't differ that much from the Leopard one but enough to make me smile. (I never was a great friend of the Leopard aurora thingie background.)

The second thing I really had been looking forward to was the new Wi-Fi dialog which shows a quality indicator for all available networks. I tried it, I liked it.

Oh and the Exposé thing got an overhaul I really like. It actually tries to remove clutter now by aligning windows and adding some spacing.

Its Not All Sunshine in Snow Leopard Ville

One thing nearly ticked me off after 5 minutes. Its possible to have another keyboard layout for every window again. And to me it seems you cannot switch that off (besides the option that does pretty much nothing). If you are used to US layout but have to switch to DE from time to time its really handy to be able to switch per keyboard. But Snow Leopard pretty much said: "You know what? Fuck that I'll just switch it for you at random."

Another thing that kept me busy for a few hours: Snow Leopard breaks a lot of stuff. Letterbox? Dead. PGP for Mail? Very dead. MacPorts? Oh, why do you ask - just reinstall and recompile the whole thing.

Oh and did you wonder how they reduced the hard drive space requirement by 50%? They stole the idea from Microsoft who gave up on it in Windows 2000 or something. They simply don't install stuff you might not need. And once you do something stupid like try to run old software it asks you if you really want to install Rosetta and pulls it out of the net.

Your Conclusion?

To be honest: Had I remembered how all this happened to me when I got Leopard already - even after I had waited a month or so before getting it - I would have waited. I just don't see that many great improvements yet but I do see loads of broken software I use daily.