Apple Mac Os 10.6 Free Download Updated

Apple Mac Os 10.6 Free Download

Sneaking in a few days before its promised September release, the tune-upward for Mac Bone X Leopard costs $29 for current Leopard users, and packs but enough dial to be worth your money. Apple is careful to indicate out that Snowfall Leopard isn't a complete organisation overhaul, simply rather a collection of hundreds of smaller refinements to brand Leopard run more gracefully. Hidden among smaller tweaks are some technical improvements that result in a smoother, easier-to-use Leopard with enough for Mac fans to be excited about. The user interface and everyday tasks feel faster in general, although we didn't notice a noun improvement in application performance.

Even if you lot're not a current Leopard user, the $169 packet that includes Snow Leopard, iLife, and iWork is a steal for the organization upgrade and two of Apple'due south major software suites, not to mention the long-pined-after inclusion of Microsoft Substitution compatibility. Finally you volition be able to connect with Exchange Servers (without using Microsoft's Entourage), just just if your company is using Microsoft Substitution 2007; many still aren't. Snow Leopard is offered on a single install deejay--there are no split up, tiered pricing structures to worry nigh--and you're getting every feature and technical enhancement bachelor in a single install. Unfortunately, for those on PowerPC systems, Snow Leopard only works with Intel Macs.

Installation
Installation of Snow Leopard is dead simple and (co-ordinate to Apple) up to 45 percent faster than Leopard using a newly designed installer that asks only one question during the process. On our test machine, the process took well-nigh an hour, including 2 automatic restarts. The default setting installs Snow Leopard without tampering with any of your saved files, music, photos, or documents. Generally nosotros had no problems, just on 1 test automobile we needed to reinstall the Bone when it had trouble rebooting. Fortunately the new installer is designed for safely reinstalling the OS in the event you encounter any hiccups during your initial installation. On our 2d effort, the OS installed perfectly on our test motorcar and no files were harmed. PowerPC Macs are no longer supported with Snow Leopard, however; you will need an Intel-based Mac to install the latest Mac Bone.

Those who want to do a "Clean Install" (starting fresh by deleting everything for minimal conflicts) still can, but different installations in previous versions of previous Mac Os X that offered the clean install as a primary option, you'll need to use Disk Utility to start erase the volume, then run the install. Apple explained to united states of america that not everyone knows what a clean install is and often chose it, non knowing that they would lose their files. We're happy with that answer, as long as people still go the selection in some form.

Apple also claims that Snowfall Leopard uses 7GB less space than Leopard because of amend file pinch paired with selective commuter inclusion. Co-ordinate to Apple, Snowfall Leopard will locate whatever missing drivers on the Web for you. We had no need of whatsoever special drivers during our tests.

New technologies
Apple says a few new technologies in Snowfall Leopard brand it worthy of the upgrade alone, with several features that Apple says will heave performance. Because all new Macs come with 64-bit multicore processors, multiple GBs of RAM, and high-powered graphics processing units, all the major applications in Snow Leopard--including the Finder--have been rewritten in 64-bit to take full advantage of the hardware. (The 64-fleck technology allows awarding developers to allocate more than memory to consummate tasks so that the software runs faster and more smoothly.)

Apple tree has as well added what information technology calls the Grand Central Dispatch that manages data sent to multicore processors in an effort to maximize performance; Apple says the GCD will speed upwardly any awarding job, from processing images in Photoshop to playing your favorite games. The addition of the GCD also takes away the demand for software developers to spend as much time managing multicore processors.

Another new technology in Snow Leopard is OpenCL, which allows software developers to tap into the ability of any onboard video cards (or GPUs, for graphics processing units) for full general-purpose computing without the addition of enormous amounts of code. Like the GCD, these are improvements that will mainly affect software developers. But hopefully it will mean more and better-performing software for users in the hereafter.

To put some of these claims to the test, we decided to pit Mac Os X 10.5.8 Leopard against Mac OS 10 10.6 Snowfall Leopard to see how these new technologies affected overall performance.

In our anecdotal tests of performance inside the Snowfall Leopard user interface (UI), the operating system seems faster and more responsive than with Leopard. Finder, Stacks, Expose, launching apps, and other everyday processes feel snappy. We didn't, however, notice any improvement in application performance.

Overall, we saw only a 2.5 pct slowdown in application performance from Leopard to Snow Leopard on our more processor-intensive performance tests, including our multimedia multitasking exam, in which nosotros measure the fourth dimension for QuickTime to finish converting a brusque movie while iTunes is performing its ain conversion of MP3 into AAC format in the background simultaneously. As this falls inside our typical margin of mistake (five percent), we saw no meaning difference with awarding functioning when moving from Leopard to Snowfall Leopard. (Run into the bottom of this review for performance charts.)

New features

Expose
Snowfall Leopard includes a number of user UI improvements intended to make working with Mac Bone Ten easier and more efficient. Expose, Apple tree'south system for visually finding the window yous want on a cluttered desktop, used to be relegated to the Role keys on your keyboard. Snow Leopard now makes Betrayal accessible from the Dock; just click and hold on a Dock icon to meet thumbnails of all the open up windows in that application. Hit the Tab cardinal lets you lot cycle through the preview thumbnails of each open application. Using Expose in the Dock is very natural and elegant, making us wonder why this wasn't already a feature in Leopard.

Click and hold on an awarding icon in the Dock to bring up full thumbnails of open windows in an application.

The Dock
In improver to using Expose to find the right window, you now also have the power to drag files from 1 awarding to another using the Dock. Let's say y'all want to add an paradigm to an email, only your desktop is full of open windows. In Snowfall Leopard you can get to the image, drag it to the Post icon in the Dock, and your e-post window will jump-load, assuasive y'all to driblet the image into place. Though the ability to drag and drop files in this fashion is prissy, we're not sure it's much easier than attaching an prototype by browsing through your folders. Nevertheless, if you know the image is already on your desktop, it'due south probably the faster method.

Stacks
Stacks got a much-needed upgrade every bit well. In Leopard, Stacks only listed a sure number of files and applications requiring you to get to a Finder window if your app wasn't listed. Similarly, if y'all tried to open a binder in Stacks, you were sent to the Finder. In Snow Leopard, Stacks comes with a coil bar so icons are still easy to read and anything can be launched out of the Dock. Folders are now accessible within Stacks as well, and so you'll be able to navigate to files inside folders all without leaving the Stacks Window. These changes make Stacks much more useful than before and probably should have been available when Stacks was introduced.

Now you tin curlicue through your applications and documents (and even open folders in Stacks) without being sent to the Finder.

The Finder
While the Finder itself saw fiddling in the fashion of interface tweaks, the fashion files acquit in the Finder makes it easier to use. A zoom slider has been added to the lower right of Finder windows so you can zoom in on icons. An enhanced icon view has been added, letting you preview multipage documents and even play QuickTime movies without ever leaving the Finder window.

Preview now lets you preview almost any file, fifty-fifty if information technology was created with software you lot don't accept on your hard drive. This means common file types from Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and even PDF files tin can all be previewed without owning the programs they were created in. As an added bonus, Preview in Snow Leopard provides accurate text pick to multicolumn PDF files using bogus intelligence to infer the layout of each page. This means that Preview recognizes that at that place are multiple columns in your document so yous tin can select the text yous want from any cavalcade.

Yous tin can now flip through the pages of multipage PDF documents using the arrows that announced over PDF docs when y'all mouse over.

Safari 4
Safari 4 has been widely bachelor for some time, but it offers a couple of new features when running in Snow Leopard. Safari 4 already includes Meridian Sites for viewing all your favorite sites as thumbnails for easy admission and full history search, which lets y'all view your history in a Cover Flow-like interface. But in Snowfall Leopard, Safari is now crash resistant. This means that if a plug-in crashes, it won't crash the whole browser. Merely refresh the page to try to load the plug-in again. Also, Safari checks to encounter if a site you are visiting is known to exist fraudulent, is distributing malware, or is known to be a phishing site, and then warns you lot if it is.

Top Sites, which was already available in Safari iv, lets you navigate to your most viewed Web sites quickly.

QuickTime X
QuickTime X, Apple'south media role player, got some major tweaks in Snow Leopard. Now, when you play a movie and motion your mouse outside the window, the interface fades away quickly to give you a more immersive video-viewing feel. When watching a motion picture, you can click the new Share button to catechumen your moving picture for iPod, iPhone, or Apple tree TV, and QuickTime converts the video to work best on your chosen device. Yous also can now tape video from your Webcam, audio, or just the activeness on your screen with a few clicks. Those with the iPhone 3GS volition recognize the new trimming feature in QuickTime 10, letting y'all grab just the video content y'all want.

QuickTime X probably received the most interface tweaks in the Snow Leopard update. The cleaned-upward interface and autofade features look neat (like most things Apple), merely it's more of an aesthetic comeback than anything else. The recording features for video, sound, and screencast capturing are the big wins here and used to be offered only in QuickTime Pro. Information technology'south proficient to see these features will be able to be used by a wider audience in Snow Leopard.

Trim your videos easily by clicking and dragging start and end points of the clip.

Commutation support
I of the master roadblocks for Mac users in a primarily Windows workplace was the inability to connect with Microsoft Commutation servers. Virtually Mac users used Microsoft Entourage or bachelor open-source options as a work-around, but it was never every bit smooth as connecting from a Windows machine with Microsoft Office. Snow Leopard now supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 out of the box so you tin can hands connect using Apple's Mail app, catch global address lists in the Address Volume, and create meetings with contacts using iCal.

Apple tree did more than just give you the ability to connect, nevertheless. Common tasks like creating meetings, for example, are incredibly like shooting fish in a barrel with intuitive controls. iCal lets you view work events and personal activities all in the aforementioned window (with easy controls to include or not include the data y'all desire). The Apple Address Book works seamlessly across Mail and iCal so you tin quickly bring upwardly global address lists, add people to a meeting (including predesigned groups), and invitations volition automatically be sent to each attendee. As an added bonus, if some attendees have scheduling conflicts with your proposed meeting fourth dimension, iCal will automatically figure out the earliest available time that anybody is free. These are features already available in Microsoft's Outlook for Windows, but in Snowfall Leopard the process feels much more intuitive.

File Quarantine
According to Apple tree, File Quarantine has too been refined in Snow Leopard. First introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, File Quarantine checks for known malware signatures, and in Snow Leopard, will at present display an alarm dialog if it finds a known offender. The dialog volition tell users to movement the offending file to the Trash. For example, a bogus version of iWork circulated on the Web a few months agone that independent malware. That particular malware is now automatically detected past File Quarantine in Snowfall Leopard.

Apple says that File Quarantine will be automatically updated via Mac Os X's software update as new malware signatures are found in the wild. Nosotros had no way to test these features, but we are happy to run into that Apple is taking strides to defend against malware every bit more people switch to Macs and the danger of new malware becomes more prevalent.

Universal admission
Outset with Mac OS 10 10.4 Tiger, Apple included VoiceOver to help people who are blind or with dumb vision to improve understand and interact with what is happening onscreen. Apple continues to help visually impaired users in Snowfall Leopard past adding gesture support on multitouch trackpads with easy-to-learn gestures to perform specific functions. We had mixed results with these features depending on the Web folio we visited, but more often than not we constitute the features to be useful. The trackpad acts as the viewable area on the current window so you tin tap to have Window elements explained to you or swipe to move on to the side by side item in the window, for example. New features in Snow Leopard are peculiarly helpful when Spider web browsing, with options like Web page summaries to explicate the diverse elements on a Spider web folio you haven't visited earlier, making it easier to get the information you want.

More than than twoscore different Braille displays (including wireless Bluetooth displays) are supported in Snowfall Leopard correct out of the box, allowing visually impaired users to plug in and start computing immediately.

Other refinements
Some of the smaller refinements in Snow Leopard are worthy of annotation, affecting many of Apple's core apps. iChat is now compatible with more routers, making video conversation accessible to a wider range of users, and iChat Theater at present offers 640x480 resolution, using only one-3rd the bandwidth information technology used earlier. New Chinese character input via the trackpad predicts which characters you're creating and offers likely subsequent characters to speed up the process. A new text commutation feature in applications similar iChat, Mail, and TextEdit lets y'all create shortcuts for phrases y'all use oft. The Services menu in Snow Leopard has been rewritten to include only the services relevant to the application or content y'all're viewing. Core Location applied science locates nearby Wi-Fi hot spots to find your location and automatically resets your time zone so wherever yous are in the world, your Mac will exist set to the correct fourth dimension. While all of these are pocket-size refinements, each make your Mac easier to apply with smart features not found in other operating systems.

Conclusions
Mac Bone X 10.six Snowfall Leopard is non a complete system overhaul and is instead a refinement of the current Leopard Bone--some have gone so far every bit to telephone call it a "service pack." We think the interface tweaks to Betrayal, Stacks, the Finder, Mail service, and iCal make Snow Leopard more than than simply a service pack and worthy of the $29 upgrade price. We don't like that PowerPC users are unable to use Snow Leopard, but we understand that after three years with Intel, Apple tree is making a decision to continue moving frontwards with this applied science.

The largest of the feature enhancements are probably reason enough for Intel Mac users to spend the money on Snow Leopard. Added enhancements such equally video, audio, and screen recording in QuickTime X were once only available to those who purchased QuickTime Pro (which was about $30--the same as this organization upgrade). But the killer feature improver for Snowfall Leopard might be Exchange support out of the box--not fifty-fifty Windows seven comes with Microsoft Exchange support without buying Microsoft Office.

Overall, we retrieve that Snow Leopard did almost everything Apple says it set out to do: it refined and enhanced Leopard to make information technology easier to use. Though the system performs well in everyday employ, many of our tests bespeak it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more than intensive application processes. Even so, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange back up.

iTunes encoding (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate ameliorate performance)

Photoshop (in seconds)
(Shorter bars bespeak amend performance)

QuickTime multimedia multitasking exam (QT7 on 10.5.8 and QTX on x.vi) (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate meliorate performance)

iTunes multimedia multitasking test (in seconds)
(Shorter bars betoken better performance)

Cinebench
(Longer bars indicate better functioning)

Arrangement configurations:

Unibody Apple tree Macbook Pro / Cadre 2 Duo 15.4-inch
Intel Cadre two Duo two.53GHz; 4096MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GT; 320GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

Apple tree MacBook Pro / Core Duo 15.4-inch
Intel Core Duo 2.0GHz; 2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz; 256MB ATI Radion 1600, 100GB Toshiba 5,400rpm