Difference Between Similar Terms and Objects

Difference Between Leopard and Snow Leopard

macos_snowleopardFirst off, if you are looking for the animals, this is not the right place. Leopard and Snow Leopard are names for operating systems on the Mac systems. Leopard is the name for OS X version 10.5 while Snow Leopard stood for the version 10.6. At first glance, there seems to be nothing new with Snow Leopard. Aside from minor tweaks in the user interface, there were no new programs or new capabilities introduced. There seemed to be no reason to spend the extra few bucks needed to upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard even if its quite cheap.

Looking deeper into these two, you would find that the changes in the OS is not in the aesthetics but in its core. Snow Leopard was coded to take advantage of the processing power that has been available since Apple moved to the PC architecture. Multi core processing and high amounts of RAM have been largely untapped with the Leopard OS and Apple moved to utilize the untapped power. Benchmarks on the system and its native applications resulted in very significant gains. There are even a lot of side by side comparisons that shows just how fast the Snow Leopard operating system is.

The speed increase doesn’t really translate very well with all programs that runs on the Snow Leopard. Programs like Photoshop did not show any markable gains in performance. This is attributed to the code in these programs. They were originally written for Leopard and were not yet rewritten to exploit the advantages provided by Snow Leopard. This problem would probably be addressed once the makers of these third party programs release optimized code for their programs.

It might not be such a good idea to upgrade since there are still very few programs that takes advantage of what Snow Leopard has to offer. But considering that it only costs $30 to get the upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard, it might be worth it to upgrade just for the performance improvements and fixes in the native applications.

1. Snow Leopard does not present anything really new compared to Leopard.
2. The Snow Leopard’s significant change was the improvement in speed due to optimization.
3. The speed increase can only be noticed in native applications since third party programs have not yet been optimized for this OS.
4. It costs extra to upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard.

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  1. im using first snow leopard and even im using iMac in the middle of apple store.. this review is very helpful and i’ll never buy this LOL

  2. I would also mention that Apple have chosen not to make their native software backwards-compatible. To give you an example of this, the XCode/IOS SDK (used for making iphone apps) now requires you to have snow leopard, even though the previous versions all worked on older OS’s.

    If you don’t have the latest SDK then you can’t deploy your app to the app store. Essentially this means that if you are an iphone developer, you need to upgrade your OS and pay more money as and when apple say you have to, otherwise you arent’ allowed to be an iphone developer any more.

    Snow leopard is nothing more than a paid-for patch. We shouldn’t have to pay for them to refactor their inefficient code! WHY DO PEOPLE STILL GIVE MONEY TO THIS COMPANY!!?

    • Mikey, why do you assume that software should be free? What is free in this world? In order for a new software version to come out, programmers had to spend their time writing new code, implementing new methods and improving on top of something that, much on the contrary of what you said, was in no way inefficient, was already great! What I’m trying to say is, Leopard was a great operating system, and Snow Leopard is even better, both of them required a lot of time, hard work and thinking to be developed, I don’t see ANY reason why they should be given away for FREE to people like you who don’t even know what they are talking about to start with. If you knew how much work is put behind creating a computer program you wouldn’t go around saying s***t.

      • GPL/BSD(A lot of OS X’s code is BSD, so they got it for free and selling it off too) licensed software, people spend time writing code to remove a obstruction/bridge a gap for the greater good, and not for some pointless piece of paper.

        The guy who invented the cure to polio, that was free and not patented, because he did it /for the greater good/
        Therefore, it should be given away for free, just like FreeBSD/OpenBSD/PCBSD/OpenSolaris/Linux/Minix and all the other good quality OS’s.

        And in response to the childish swearing comment, it depends on the size of the project, the code used with it, who it’s being developed for, when it has to be done for, and who you’re doing it with, and what language that determines how hard a program is. Some programs take less than 10 minutes.

        • Try writing OS X in 10 minutes!

          Programming is what I do for a living so yes, I am well aware and familiar with the process as well as the Open Source philosophy. I have actively participated in different Open Source projects over the years and I think it’s a great thing, what I don’t think it’s a great thing is when people spend a lot of time doing something amazing and expect that to be given away for free. If I develop software, I should have the FREEDOM to choose what to do with it, and if I want to sell it, good for me! If I want to give it away for free, good for you! What I don’t understand is why people expect things to be given away.

          If Snow Leopard wasn’t unique and worth the money Apple asks for it, people wouldn’t be so pleased with it and wouldn’t buy it. I believe if you’re so keen on software being free, you should stick to free software, which BTW has NOTHING to do with OPEN software!

          And on that note, Apple has contributed greatly to the open source community over the years. Chances are, the linux you’re running probably has Apple code on it somewhere!

          • Did I say OS X was wrote in 10 minutes? or even imply such a stupid idea? no so don’t say it.

            Greed helps no-one, just because you don’t get paid for it, does not mean you get nothing from it, you get the good feel of knowing you did something right, you get the good feel that people can all benefit and learn from your code, and do so freely, and you also can get financial benefit(like the creator of Debian) by being hired by a upstanding company for your wellknown, good quality contributions not just for your skills, but for the name you bring to the company.

            “If Snow Leopard wasnâ€™t unique and worth the money Apple asks for it, people wouldnâ€™t be so pleased with it and wouldnâ€™t buy it. I believe if youâ€™re so keen on software being free, you should stick to free software, which BTW has NOTHING to do with OPEN software!”

            I cannot find a single person I know who was legally bought it, same with Windows(Other than my University). People don’t want to pay for software, and the majority won’t, this will not change regardless of how Apple deny you to use your device. When you say unique, that’s highly doubtful as chances are it’s just another stolen idea from somewhere else, Apple didn’t come up with the idea, a employee/s did and they don’t get their name on the adverts or get any exponential share of the profit they generated. I indeed to stick to free, and open software and promote it wherever I can, and I never said anything about free being open… what have you been smoking? :S

            And I never said Apple hasn’t contributed(greatly is debateable however) to the opensource community, I simply said it takes BSD code and generates profit off it, that does not happen vice versa.

            And currently I’m running FreeBSD, of which the OS X you’re running will be running code of, difference is is that it was done for the greater good, and was turned into a profit generator.

            I can imagine by your obsession with being paid, you’re American right?
            Money is money, just paper, we don’t own it, just like the machine you’re typing on, it’s not yours, the clothes you wear, it’s just material, of which we have no right to any more than any of the animals or anything else on this planet, something that capitalists seem not to be able to comprehend, and it’ll be the death of us all.

  3. @Canis

    “I cannot find a single person I know who was legally bought it”

    Well, I admit to buying it. I actually paid for Snow Leopard. And then I gave it away. For FREE. It was a waste of money. My mistake. You are completely right.

    Apple is like a consumer fashion brand. People buy Apple for the same reason that they pay 1000s of dollars for a 10 dollar purse with a logo on it. It’s group-think. Fashion. It is ironic that Apple products are substandard in construction quality despite being proprietary. Imagine if they tried to support open systems like Linux. They would fail by a wide margin.

    Why do people pay for worse quality…the bottom line is some want to make a statement to their coterie. “Woohoo, look at me, I fit in. I am just like you.” Apple has not always been like this, but once an American company starts to make mad money they attract the MBAs like flies to shit; quality engineering gets squeezed out and replaced with stupid marketing ploys like you point out.

    That’s what almost killed Apple the last time (P&G exec took over the board and kicked Steve out so they could just pump product like shampoo bottles with high margins). Problem was not enough people liked the Apple brand back then so their strategy failed — they lost the base who cared about their engineering. Even their hardware competitors were kicking their ass with the same OS. This time around they have achieved a shampoo-bottle level of loyalty so they are already abandoning the base and focused 100% on stupid sheeple kiddies who spend on logo-loyalty. Apple is at least two-years behind the market in innovation, but Americans don’t care about the data or the economics. They just want to fit in and follow.

  4. You geeks crack me up? who cares, as long as I (personally) can get online, get my ruckus off, and build houses for living, that’s all I am happy and my family to be thankful for. You guys are arguing over something so stupid, he made the software, he says one thing should be free, you know EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FREE, TRY MANUAL F*&^%G labor and see if y’all will survive you corporate jack a***s. You sit on your fat arses all day over something meaningless, try getting out of the house for once, help a neighbor out, or someone in need. For crying out loud, you guys are the epitome of what this “corporate ruled” called America supposedly united. Get a grip or a life for all this that don’t matter. My two cents


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