Why Are /Aren't You Looking forward to Snow Leopard?

[relaxo]

10.0 was such a relief that the looooong wait is over and Steve is back. (Newton, BeOS, Performa *%$#, etc, remember pain?)
10.1 got us actually somewhat working.
10.2 got us at least civilized and decent.
10.3 now you are really getting somewhere. Very real, very usable... essentials all there and kicking.
10.4 bam...that's it!!! Superb system.
10.5 bling flash and fluff, although Time Machine is running on all 7 of my Macs.
10.6 will be taking the neglected Ferarri Dino into the F1 pit to be repaired, rebuilt and tweaked.

By far I'm the most stoked about optimized multi processor support. So often an application is working as hard as it can, but iStat Menus is only showing 80% out of 800%...it's only using one processor out of 8 when number crunching!!! Apple claims, "Grand Central Dispatch makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems." If Apple does it right, come October our 8 core Mac Pros will be 8 times as powerful! Wooaaaaaa!!!!!

Second, Apple is also planning on giving us back sorting options after doing a find or Spotlight in Snow Leopard. By far the WORST and most PITA feature of 10.5 was taking away Spotlight sorting options. With the very limited view options of search windows in the Finder in Mac OS X 10.5, you effectively only have three sort options: by name, by kind, and by “Last Opened” date. “Last Opened”?!?!? Worthless!!!!!

From some blog so I don't have to retype all of this about PITA search results display in 10.5:

"Where, oh where is the option to sort by “Date Modified” date? This seems a glaring omission to me. I have tons of older files on my hard drives that I have not opened a single time since Spotlight first came about. So they all have a totally irrelevant “Last Opened” date. On the other hand, they still have a very useful “Date Modified” date.

But there is simply no way to see that date and sort by that date in a list of search results in Mac OS X 10.5!

Similarly, it is not possible to sort by size, by “Date Created,” by label, by version, or by comment. Granted, some of these options might be of limited usefulness, but why place any restrictions at all? Why should Apple engineers get to decide how I want to sort the results of my searches?

To me, such a design choice smacks of arrogance. They think they know best, and you are just supposed to do as they say and use the feature as they please. I really cannot see any other reason for such limitations. And it’s not like these limitations help achieve a significantly higher level of simplicity or intuitiveness for the average user. On the contrary: because a search results window does not have the same view options as a regular Finder window, yet looks almost exactly the same, the average has to deal with yet more unexpected, unexplained inconsistency."

[guitar486]

Definitely looking forward to snow leopard for many reasons. The one thing I hope to see though, and I've talked to someone in apple about this so maybe it will be here with snow, is for the columns in finder to autosize to the width of the longest file name. Simple right?!

[relaxo]

Off to another excellent DUC '09 start. Simply enchanting discussion.

[guitar486]

It's been DUC '09 for 8 months already?!

[ronwasserman]

Why does every thread on the DUC turn into a bitch fight all the time? People are obviously stressed out big time.

[nod25]

Originally Posted by ronwasserman

Why does every thread on the DUC turn into a bitch fight all the time? People are obviously stressed out big time.

Obviously

[scottleader]

wow. Gotta love the DUC...And to think, this is where DIGI sends people for support. Awesome.

[25ghosts]

Originally Posted by relaxo

By far I'm the most stoked about optimized multi processor support. So often an application is working as hard as it can, but iStat Menus is only showing 80% out of 800%...it's only using one processor out of 8 when number crunching!!! Apple claims, "Grand Central Dispatch makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems." If Apple does it right, come October our 8 core Mac Pros will be 8 times as powerful! Wooaaaaaa!!!!!

Unfortunately, 8 cores does not equal 8 times faster than 1 core. Lotta marketing behind the 8 core thing.
1) It takes TIME to establish communication between the various cores
2) The coders of the application in question would need to reprogram the application entirely to really take use of the cores. So far, no one has really done that. At least according to some very smart people who know about these things (I am NOT one of those. Above is what I have read).

3) If all this mulit-dulti-culti core BS was so darn easy dont you think they would offer 64 cores already

[relaxo]

I second what you're saying that we won't see anything like an actual 4x improvement. Given that, even 2x or 3x would be a CPU power jump that is truly once in a generation. If Apple make it relatively easy for developers to recode for multi-core efficiency AND developers actually do the recoding, then for $29, our old 2GHz eight core Macs will be like 4GHz or maybe even 6GHz machines. But I hear you, our 2GHz won't suddenly be 16GHz beasts. It's very promising on the Apple site...hope it surpasses our expectations. I bet Digi developers are figuring out how to integrate this into the RTAS solution.

[formfunction]

Originally Posted by ronwasserman

Why does every thread on the DUC turn into a bitch fight all the time? People are obviously stressed out big time.

I read that exaggeration is the way some folks relieve stress. ff