Here are my observations after using Snow Leopard for a while:
Better: It does seem faster in areas such as networking. But that may be because I was having so much trouble with Leopard networking, that anything is better.
Bug: There’s a bug in Mail where Smart Mailboxes always sort by Subject. I can change it, but the next time I relaunch Mail, it’s back sorting by Subject again. Extremely annoying. [Update: With some judicious editing of a .plist file, I managed to make it so that it always sorts by date. Better, but needs to be fixed.]
Feature: I do like the new white text on black background menus in the dock. I shouldn’t though, because they’re different than the menu bar. I prefer consistency to cuteness, so maybe Apple should try this look in other menus.
Same: There are still bugs with the 2G Shuffle and iLooneyTunes connecting. iTunes doesn’t recognize my Shuffle very often. I have to undock the Shuffle, turn it on, wait 5 seconds, turn it off, wait 5 seconds, dock it. I’m restoring the Shuffle for the one billionth time in its short life. More annoyingly, 100% of the time that my MacBook wakes from sleep with the Shuffle connected, the MacBook thinks a new generic iPod is connected and corrupt.
I’ve concluded that Apple will never fix the years long problems with the 2G Shuffle. They just won’t put competent people on it.
Same: And, iTunes is supposed to be connected to my Apple TV right now — but it isn’t — again. No improvement over Leopard here.
Fixed: At least mounted server volumes remain mounted after sleeping. With Leopard, they always disconnected, so this is a huge improvement. Actually, it’s just returning things to the way they’ve been.
Feature: The dock preview by clicking and holding an application icon so it shows you the minimized windows is nice. I did find a 1Password 3.0 BETA bug though related to that.
Bug: Even though I had restored my setting from a Time Machine backup, I still had to tell Time Machine what disk to use. This disk was on a server.
Bug: I just observed that when the Time Machine backup completed, it immediately started another one. Uh, isn’t it supposed to be one hour apart? Yes, it took more than an hour to do the first one due to the large number of changes between Leopard and Snow Leopard, but I’m thinking the clock should start ticking after the backup finishes not at the start. And it’s taking forever to just calculate the changes. What gives?
Same: It is simply stunning that Apple didn’t fix the Find command in Finder so that we could choose the columns displayed, such as file size. Gee, don’cha thinks it’s kinda important to sort by size when searching by size? This is the same silliness that we saw with the delay in getting Cut/Copy/Paste into the iPhone OS, except this is far, far easier to implement. Simply no excuse for a paid upgrade not to have fixed this. Remember, we used to have it at one time and it was removed. Yes, Steve, we really do need to know the nitty-gritty details such as file size.
Bug: Found a bug where a file is dragged out of the trash and then use undo results in this error, “The operation can’t be completed because an unexpected error occurred (error code -8058).”
Bug: I know that Mail is losing outgoing messages. I get a reply to a message I recently sent, go looking for the sent message, and it has vanished. This is a very serious bug.
Like: I don’t use Mail’s data detectors much, but I found adding an iCal event from Mail worked surprisingly well.
Feature: I love the fact that Snow Leopard now tells you what app is preventing a disc from being ejected. It’s a long overdue feature.
Same: For the life of me I cannot understand why Apple will not support repeating to-dos in iCal. It’s part of the standard, they already do it for events, it should be trivial. But they steadfastly refuse to do it.
At one time this may have been a feature that didn’t make it in a early version, but iCal is getting pretty old so this is an egregious omission.
Don’t even get me started on shared, writable calendars and contacts features that should have been available years ago too.
Bug: I don’t know if this is new in Snow Leopard, but since Snow Leopard was all about fixes, this shouldn’t be here. I search for an event in iCal, click on it in the results list, delete it, it’s still in the list. Clear the list, search again, gone now.
Notice two entries in the iCal search results that appear to be clones. Click one, delete it, both stay in list. Search again, both gone.
Yup, iCal is just a hobby for Apple, like the Attila TV, er, I mean, Apple TV.
Bug: It’s not consistent, but I’ve noticed that Finder copies between a MacBook and my dual G5 over switched gigabit Ethernet can crawl at 11 MB/s with nothing else running.
Like: Another OS 9 feature makes it back into Snow Leopard. We can now put files back in their original folders after they were trashed.
Hate: But then they go and remove creator codes so that documents don’t necessary open in the creating app — you know — like they’ve done since 1984! Hint: this is not a feature. Evolution is supposed to make things better, not take us back before recorded history.
Feature: I like Snow Leopard’s screen snapshot that doesn’t name images Picture 1, … 2, etc. Now titled “Screen shot 2009-09-18 at 10.59.59″.
Bug: When I used the Preview app to search a PDF file for “59.02″. It finds BOTH 59 AND 02 occurrences. Sigh.
Bug: My MacBook is a petulant child. It doesn’t want to go to sleep, and when it does, it wakes itself up.
Bug: Mail shows one count in the dock and a different count in the sidebar of the app. Why? Because there are unread messages in nested folders and Mail doesn’t show the count on the parent folder. Sloppy.
Same: Preview is supposed to be better at selecting text on a multi-column PDF file. I see no difference. It selects across, then down. Still broken.
Bug: Several times when waking my MacBook from sleep it claims there’s another computer on the network by the same name. There isn’t. This is a race condition at startup that didn’t exist in Leopard.
Bug: I’ve seen some images appear as a thin horizontal line in Quick View and if the Cover Flow image is dragged too large. Only Preview gets it right.
Hate: Interface elements are sometimes hidden now until you hover the cursor over them, like Safari’s close tab box.
Same: Snow Leopard doesn’t fix the MacBook audio popping all day long shortly after any audio is played. Apparently, this is due to the audio system being powered down. Hey, I’ve got an idea … STOP THAT! I hope that wasn’t too technical a solution for Apple’s programmers.
Same: Address Book still can’t auto-complete entries, or copy addresses from one contact to another or …
Oh, right, those are features and Snow Leopard is all about fixes. Well, sometimes something is so deficient in basic features, they are bugs.
Love: I can now watch 1080i TV with digital 5.1 surround sound on my LCD TV. It looks great. Why did we have to wait for Snow Leopard for this basic feature?
Bug: Mail leaves a copy of a message in the Drafts folder of an IMAP server. Naughty.
Change: Copying an address in Mail now gives you the person’s name too. I liked it better the old way. At least give us a choice.
Change: At least Snow Leopard gave us a new login background. That’s far more important than fixing the myriad bugs in important applications.
Same: Use Finder sidebar to attempt to connect to server. Fails. Click Connect as…, choose defaults, works.
Same: I see that Snow Leopard hasn’t fixed the Mail problem of randomly asking for passwords it already knows.
Bug: My screen sharing password for a remote computer was lost. Why pick on that item? Any time the keychain gets flaky, I get seriously worried.
Bug: Received HTML email with tiny type and an image. Try to zoom in to read the text and only the image magnifies.
Conclusion: I’m afraid Snow Leopard does not make for a compelling upgrade, even at $35. Apple claims it’s all about bug fixes, but in my experience it just switches out one set of bugs for another.
It seems Apple didn’t balance fixing things under the hood in Snow Leopard, and fixing the visibly broken things. I think they owe me money now.
This took two years?
