As some of you may already know, I am a HUGE Apple fanatic. Well, this
past Friday, the 28th of August, Apple released their upgraded version
of OS X which they so lovingly named “Snow Leopard”. Oh Joy. Now, before
everyone starts jumping up and down with giddy school boy excitement, you
should know that this isn’t a totally new OS.
Apple hasn’t introduced any
earth-shattering additions with Snow Leopard. In fact, when you finish
installing it, you may not notice anything new at all. But there are
quite a few subtle changes that will enhance usability and give you a
more enjoyable overall experience.

1. Faster Finder

Finder was rewritten in Cocoa to be completely compatible with newer technologies, including 64-bit support.

2. New Exposé and Stacks

Exposé is more convenient now that it is integrated into the dock. You can now click and hold on an application in the dock and it will exposé the windows you have open specific to that application.

Stacks gained the ability to scroll when you have the view set to Grid. Normally it would preview 20-25 of the files in a given folder, but now the folder can have hundreds of files and you can scroll through them without clicking out of stacks.

3. Faster Time Machine Backups

Snow Leopard not only increases the speed of your initial backup, it increases each subsequent backup by 80%.

4. Faster Wake up and Shut down

Your Mac will wake up twice as fast when you have screen locking
enabled, and the shut down process is now 80 percent faster.

5. Frees up a minimum of 7GB’s of hard drive space

Snow Leopard requires less than half of the space that Leopard
(the previous OS) required, freeing up at least 7GBs of space on
your hard drive. For me personally, my installation of Snow Leopard freed
up about 12GB’s, which can be summed up in one word: Awesome.

These are just a few of the small changes and enhancements that Snow
Leopard has introduced to the world of Macintosh. Even now, I’m constantly
finding new additions and improvements, and each new find impresses me
even more. All of the subtleties may not seem like much individually, but
put them all together and they equal one great OS, Snow Leopard OS X. You
can get your copy of Snow Leopard at an Apple store near you, or you can
order online at store.apple.com. It’s only $29, so do something special
for the Mac in your life.

Technorati Tags: Snow Leopard features, Apples operating system, Snow Leopard OS X, New Features

Written by Shane Jeffers

Shane Jeffers is the Creator and Author of Three Styles. He has a unique passion for design trends and tutorials. Reach him through the Contact page or follow him on twitter @ThreeStyles