Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Sitting across from me as usual as
Speaker 1: senior writer Jonathan Strickland me al, oh, I know where
Speaker 1: you're going with this right. Well, first, let's go with
Speaker 1: a little listener mail. This listener mail comes to us
Speaker 1: from Ian and Ian says, hey, I was wondering if
Speaker 1: you could do a podcast about the new Mac operating
Speaker 1: system Mac OS ten snow Leopard. Also, I was wondering
Speaker 1: about the iPhone on Verizon. I read some places that
Speaker 1: Verizon will carry the iPhone coming December two thousand nine,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure, but thanks and I love your
Speaker 1: podcast so clearly you can tell already. Ian wrote us
Speaker 1: some time ago this would be back in November of
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. It is now two ten and the
Speaker 1: iPhone is not on Verizon yet yet there's still rumors
Speaker 1: about it. Um As of the recording of this podcast,
Speaker 1: no official announcement, but we all suspect that that's where
Speaker 1: it's headed. Yeah. Actually, on the day they released the iPad,
Speaker 1: a lot of people have expected an announcement that Apple
Speaker 1: would have finally decided to open the iPhone up to
Speaker 1: a number of UH cell phone providers, but that hasn't happened. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Imagine that there's a big breast release for one thing
Speaker 1: that Apple is doing, and people expect Apple to say
Speaker 1: something else. Now, in this case, I'm actually defending Apple,
Speaker 1: and I'm saying, shame on you Apple fanboys. If Apple
Speaker 1: is going to explain something to you and and unveil
Speaker 1: something to you, don't just sit there and get upset
Speaker 1: if it doesn't also tack on some other announcement that
Speaker 1: you're eager to hear. Well, you see that happen over
Speaker 1: and over. I criticize Apple a lot. I won't lie,
Speaker 1: but I feel for them when they them out and
Speaker 1: do a press event and and if everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, it was awesome that you unveiled that totally
Speaker 1: new device that no one has ever seen before, but
Speaker 1: what about this Verizon iPhone thing? Well, there's a that's
Speaker 1: pretty much fans of every tech when they release something
Speaker 1: they really want to see I think it's the discretion
Speaker 1: of the income that makes the Apple ones even worse.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You can write me at tech stuffs
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com, yeah, and they will.
Speaker 1: I know. Um, I own Apple products, so I know
Speaker 1: about this. Yes, yes, and I admit that. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like many eager to see what they're going to release,
Speaker 1: but you know, then there's no surprises if they do
Speaker 1: it all on one day. So I kind of don't
Speaker 1: mind so much if they because it's kind of like
Speaker 1: spreading the holidays out throughout the year. But anyway, but
Speaker 1: as far as snow Leopard goes, let's let's talk about
Speaker 1: that because we haven't talked about it yet on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and uh, we thought we'd do a little bit of
Speaker 1: an overview on the operating system. Now. I'm glad. I'm
Speaker 1: glad that we actually waited to do this, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know and Windows seven you know, we're doing these together, um,
Speaker 1: because it's it's kind of nice to see how consumers
Speaker 1: have accepted, or in some cases not accepted, um. These
Speaker 1: newer versions of the operating systems for their respective machines.
Speaker 1: Now also gives us a chance to play with them
Speaker 1: a little bit so that you know, we actually can
Speaker 1: talk about it. Right. A lot of times when people
Speaker 1: write in, they don't they don't understand that most of
Speaker 1: the most the new stuff you see in various blogs
Speaker 1: and on the news and things, we don't get that
Speaker 1: in advance. That's because we don't do We don't do
Speaker 1: reviews it how stuff works. Traditionally we talk about the
Speaker 1: technology underlying whatever it is that we're talking about, right,
Speaker 1: So we don't right right, Manufacturers don't necessarily want to
Speaker 1: send us stuff because we're not going to be doing
Speaker 1: a review. So therefore it doesn't make a lot of
Speaker 1: sense on their end to send us advanced copies of things.
Speaker 1: We do occasionally get them anyway, which is great because
Speaker 1: we get to test it out. You know. If if
Speaker 1: we know that we don't have to return it, we
Speaker 1: can even take it apart, which, by the way, taking
Speaker 1: it apart pretty much means it's done. There's this is
Speaker 1: like when when the two year old takes a part
Speaker 1: of Watch to see how it works. That's kind of
Speaker 1: how we are. Uh, there's no guaranteed that's going to
Speaker 1: come back together ever again, Yes, that poor Plio still
Speaker 1: can hear the screaming. Yeah. So in the case of
Speaker 1: in the case of snow Leopard, UM, this is the
Speaker 1: the latest version ten point six to come out of Apple.
Speaker 1: After this gates back to the early two thousand's UM.
Speaker 1: The Apple OS ten is UH the result of UM,
Speaker 1: the deal when Apple reacquired UM Steve Jobs, I mean,
Speaker 1: they acquired the Next Computer System UM, which was actually
Speaker 1: heralded as a very high tech UH competitor back in
Speaker 1: the ES. UM Steve Jobs started the company after leaving Apple,
Speaker 1: and UH, you know the machines that ran it, the
Speaker 1: operating system known as Next Step, we're UM or really
Speaker 1: kind of for tech heads because it ran on a
Speaker 1: on a different kernel. It ran on on BSD, which
Speaker 1: is what UM, which is what OS ten runs on,
Speaker 1: deep deep inside the operating system. I know, we took
Speaker 1: it apart and can't get it back together again. UM.
Speaker 1: But so this is OS ten has been evolving and
Speaker 1: this is the sixth formal version of it major formal
Speaker 1: version of it. UM. It's actually been updated a couple
Speaker 1: of times since last fall when it was released. UM.
Speaker 1: But unlike previous versions that we were talking about the
Speaker 1: the Apple press conferences when everybody goes nuts about the
Speaker 1: latest and greatest thing, UM snow Leopard. It's sort of
Speaker 1: a different sort of operating system because the update was
Speaker 1: released with no new features, sort of because everybody expects
Speaker 1: the new you know, little programlet that they put in
Speaker 1: there which allows you to do some great thing you know,
Speaker 1: or widgets or you know, some other thing. I want
Speaker 1: to play with this gizmo that they've thrown into the
Speaker 1: OS this time, UM. Which is good for marketing too,
Speaker 1: because you know, it helps them go, hey, well, you
Speaker 1: know if you buy it this way, UM snow Leopard,
Speaker 1: which you know they've been using these cat names. The
Speaker 1: one two times before it was Tiger, but the one
Speaker 1: previous ten point five was leopard, so this is a
Speaker 1: different kind of leopard. Snow was kind of an indication
Speaker 1: that this was this was a refinement of the previous
Speaker 1: version and not not like a huge jump ahead and
Speaker 1: and that and that really was what it was. It's
Speaker 1: a it's an incremental step ahead. UM. The big big
Speaker 1: difference again, this is not exciting in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: you know, especially if you're looking for some flashy new
Speaker 1: bell or whistle that you can show off to your friends.
Speaker 1: The biggest difference is now the kernel, which is a
Speaker 1: very very basic part of the operating system, is a
Speaker 1: sixty four bit kernel UM, which means that it takes
Speaker 1: advantage of a lot more processing power than other previous
Speaker 1: versions of the operating system UM. This is good because
Speaker 1: they're incrementally moving up bit by bit sorry for the
Speaker 1: pun UM to be able to take advantage of more
Speaker 1: advanced microprocessors. UM and a lot of the refinements and
Speaker 1: snow Leopard are like that too, like things like Grand
Speaker 1: Central Dispatch, which UM essentially manages processing threads so that
Speaker 1: they are run by your processor more efficiently. UH and
Speaker 1: open c L, which is a technology that uses your
Speaker 1: graphics processor. It's not doing something like say, for example,
Speaker 1: you are running UM editing a video, You're gonna need
Speaker 1: your graphics processor chip to do a lot of that uh,
Speaker 1: to do a lot of that work. But if you're
Speaker 1: working on something else that doesn't require a lot of
Speaker 1: graphics processing, open cl will basically say, you know, commonteer,
Speaker 1: your your graphics process or chip, which is you know
Speaker 1: a different kind of microprocessor dedicated to graphics UM, and
Speaker 1: we'll co opt that and say come here, I need
Speaker 1: you to do these other things until you're busy with
Speaker 1: something else. And and basically the the operating system is
Speaker 1: handling processing threads more efficiently than it was before. But
Speaker 1: that's not really all that sexy, right, And and there's
Speaker 1: not that much to show for it. You know, you
Speaker 1: can't go, hey, look at this thing, because really it's
Speaker 1: the same, looks almost exactly like the thing it was before. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some people have actually gone so far as to criticize
Speaker 1: Apple and call snow Leopard a service pack to Leopard,
Speaker 1: and that it could have it could have just been
Speaker 1: released as an upgrade to Leopard without having justifying you know,
Speaker 1: its own name, and and uh. But then other reviewers
Speaker 1: are a little more kind toward Apple, and and I
Speaker 1: think justifiably so. I think there is enough there to
Speaker 1: justify a separate purchase price for snow Leopard. It's not
Speaker 1: like the changes are also subtle that you wouldn't even
Speaker 1: you would never notice them. They did tweak several of
Speaker 1: the applications within snow Leopard so that they run a
Speaker 1: little better. They have a few more features. Again, nothing
Speaker 1: as revolutionary as a brand new feature that is going
Speaker 1: to blow everyone's socks off, But um, applications that can
Speaker 1: do more than they did in the previous versions. So
Speaker 1: things like stacks or or or even the male and
Speaker 1: the ICL features had more functionality than they did in
Speaker 1: previous versions, and enough of it so that, um, if
Speaker 1: you were upgrading from Leopard to snow Leopard, the price
Speaker 1: was not prohibitively prohibitively expensive, not by a long shot.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking unlike the previous upgrades to the operating system,
Speaker 1: which cost a hundred and twenty UH, Snow Leopard is
Speaker 1: now statically. That's for people who have Leopard. If you
Speaker 1: have Tiger or a previous version, UM, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be paying the full price. But if you go into
Speaker 1: an Apple store and say I'm upgrading from Leopard to
Speaker 1: snow Leopard, it's not like they're going to ask you
Speaker 1: to bring your machine sen and and prove it. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, from now I was, I upgraded my
Speaker 1: machine from Leopard to snow Leopard, so I didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about that. Um. But as it turns out,
Speaker 1: apparently you can even format a drive with one of
Speaker 1: the twenty nine dollar discs. Uh. It doesn't ask you
Speaker 1: if you have Leopard, or automatically detect whether you have
Speaker 1: Leopard on your operating system. Now, before any of you
Speaker 1: rush out there to upgrade your your old, old old
Speaker 1: Mac Into two snow Leopard, there's something very important you
Speaker 1: need to know about this operating system, especially if you're
Speaker 1: running a power PC based Specifically, what you need to
Speaker 1: know if you are running a power PC based Mac
Speaker 1: which is uh uh, there's the older chips, the microprocessors
Speaker 1: from Motorola and IBM. If you're if you're running one
Speaker 1: of those, UM, snow Leopard will not work on your machine.
Speaker 1: It is not designed for that processor, and you won't
Speaker 1: be able to run it. Even if you were to
Speaker 1: uh go out there and and fool Apple and pay
Speaker 1: the twenty nine x for it, it would just be
Speaker 1: a useless piece of software to you. Now. UM, In
Speaker 1: general benchmarking tests UM have shown that all these processor
Speaker 1: improvements may not necessarily be all that improved. In fact,
Speaker 1: some of them may some For some processes, snow Leopard
Speaker 1: may actually perform uh slower, more poorly. I guess you
Speaker 1: could say, or UM or if you prefer, Leopard is
Speaker 1: more efficient than snow Leopard for some processes. At least
Speaker 1: it's faster. I think there are a number of reasons
Speaker 1: for this. UH. One is that a lot of Apple
Speaker 1: UM software for let's say this, a lot of software
Speaker 1: for macOS ten UM is running in thirty two bit mode,
Speaker 1: and your snow Leopard installation will too, unless you specifically
Speaker 1: tell it you want to just start up in sixty
Speaker 1: four bit mode. At this point, UH, if you boot
Speaker 1: up your Mac running snow Leopard, it will boot in
Speaker 1: a thirty two bit mode unless you hold down the
Speaker 1: six and the four key at the same time as
Speaker 1: you are booting it up, and you have to hold
Speaker 1: it down until it boots, and then it is running
Speaker 1: sixty four bit mode. And it doesn't actually tell you
Speaker 1: this because I tried it and I'm going, okay, did
Speaker 1: you show UM. However, some of the older programs UM
Speaker 1: maybe running thirty two bit. They may not necessarily take
Speaker 1: advantage of the multiprocessor UH functionality that you can use
Speaker 1: in snow Leopard, and they may be running UM. You know,
Speaker 1: for a while now, they've been running universal code, which
Speaker 1: means it can run on a power PC chip or
Speaker 1: an Intel chip, and if it's running in with those,
Speaker 1: you know, that's basically going to slow down the piece
Speaker 1: of software. It's not optimized to work with that machine.
Speaker 1: I think in time you'll find that. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just based on my own experience and what I
Speaker 1: happen to know. Um. I think in time, more programs
Speaker 1: that are written to take advantage of these things in
Speaker 1: snow Leopard will. Uh. You know, when you benchmark those
Speaker 1: against earlier versions of the software, you're going to see
Speaker 1: that these programs do better. But I think when they
Speaker 1: first did those benchmarking tests there were probably some some
Speaker 1: issues with that. Sure, sure, I'm I'm just guessing here. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I know that those things like
Speaker 1: universal binaries, fat binaries, there's the programs that have code
Speaker 1: in them to run on more than one processor chip.
Speaker 1: I know for a fact that those are in general slower, right,
Speaker 1: and and some of the applications that like the quick
Speaker 1: Time application UM felt a lot different than the earlier
Speaker 1: ones for things like Leopard and UM. The user interface
Speaker 1: on snow Leopard is is kind of a little more
Speaker 1: snazzy and and has a bit more sex appealed to it.
Speaker 1: I guess you could say, um, so, I mean there
Speaker 1: are some cosmetic differences as well. It's not it's not
Speaker 1: at all just under the hood. And UH, if that
Speaker 1: matters to you, then of course that that becomes the
Speaker 1: selling point. UM. If you're like me and you've gotten
Speaker 1: to the point where you don't really care what your
Speaker 1: computer looks like as long as stuff works the way
Speaker 1: it's supposed to. UM. And in fact, actually I'll go
Speaker 1: even further. If you end up doing a dance of
Speaker 1: joy because your computer actually did something that you told
Speaker 1: it to do, then the how good it looks may
Speaker 1: not really matter to you very much, but it matters
Speaker 1: a lot during press conferences. Yep, that's true. Now. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, if you uh, there are other things that
Speaker 1: you are probably gonna be interested in. If you're still
Speaker 1: considering upgrading to snow Leopard. UM. You know, if you
Speaker 1: do have uh an Intel machine, generally anything in the
Speaker 1: last four years is until based machine. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: it's there are some some things that that you'll enjoy.
Speaker 1: There's a new version of quick Time that comes that
Speaker 1: came with it. It does it's very nice. I really
Speaker 1: enjoy that. UM And UH it tends to update things
Speaker 1: like networking. UM automatically detects whether or not they're new
Speaker 1: drivers for your printer, which is nice. UM it can
Speaker 1: even identify which printers are closer to you. If you
Speaker 1: are working in an office that has mac Um, it
Speaker 1: might be able to tell, uh, the laser printer around
Speaker 1: the corner versus the one down the hall um, which
Speaker 1: is kind of neat. Again, these are just a little
Speaker 1: incremental improvements that I think would be nice if every
Speaker 1: operating system had them. So it's but nice to have
Speaker 1: attempt to install Safari on your computer, no matter how
Speaker 1: many times you scream, I don't want that operating Are
Speaker 1: that web browser? Oh yeah, there's a new version of
Speaker 1: Safari that came with Snail. Of course, that's pretty much true,
Speaker 1: I think. For I know, I know there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people out there who really do like the
Speaker 1: Safari web browser, and they've they're accustomed to its user interface. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I know I joke about how much I hate
Speaker 1: the Safari uh web browser. So I just want to
Speaker 1: be serious here for a minute. I really hate Safari browser.
Speaker 1: But you know, hey, if you like it, that's cool.
Speaker 1: I'll no, I'm not gonna I'm just gonna keep using
Speaker 1: my little Firefox over here until they get Chrome to
Speaker 1: the point where it actually is good on the Mac.
Speaker 1: That's a that's a a jab at Google. Actually, uh uh,
Speaker 1: I used Chrome on my Mac at home running snow
Speaker 1: Leopard in it's a it's a very I'm running it
Speaker 1: on Tiger and it's not. Yeah, it works very nicely
Speaker 1: on snow Leopard. I'll have to go and lie to Apple. Dang,
Speaker 1: I should not have recorded this podcast. Um, well, here's
Speaker 1: something that we need to mention. I can't believe we've
Speaker 1: gone this long without mentioning it. Or maybe you did
Speaker 1: and I just zoned out. Exchange support yes built in
Speaker 1: Yes to snow Leopard, which you know that's a big
Speaker 1: deal because Exchange is one of those major, major UM
Speaker 1: platforms that lots of corporations use for things like email. Well,
Speaker 1: it's funny because I'm not to take a swipe it
Speaker 1: Microsoft at all. Um. Because then in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: I like Entourage, which is the mail program that comes
Speaker 1: with Office for Mac. UM. The new version of Officer
Speaker 1: Mac will actually come with Outlook, which is good because Entourage,
Speaker 1: Uh well entourages UM support for the Exchange server is
Speaker 1: if you're not actually okay, here's the thing. If you're
Speaker 1: not actually on the network, Um, it doesn't really do
Speaker 1: all that much supporting, whereas with mail, which is mail
Speaker 1: dot app is the Mac email program that comes with
Speaker 1: the os UM, you can actually put in your exchange
Speaker 1: server information basically like your email address and and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, some simple user information and automatically detects um
Speaker 1: the exchange server and goes ahead and download your information.
Speaker 1: Now I think this is being done. Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: and there has to be some cooperation on the part
Speaker 1: of the exchange server for this to work. But it
Speaker 1: does work, and it does work automatically, which is nice. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I've had the same experience on Evolution Mail
Speaker 1: for Linux, which is pretty cool because you're going, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: how come some of Microsoft Done products don't interface the
Speaker 1: exchange server as well as these others do. But but
Speaker 1: it is nice to have. Yeah, and uh, before we,
Speaker 1: I guess move into the final section here, there were
Speaker 1: some problems with snow Leopard when it launched. There were
Speaker 1: some applications that were compatible with the predecessor with Leopard
Speaker 1: that no longer worked properly or in some cases did
Speaker 1: not work at all in snow Leopard. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: this could be said, I should you know, with the
Speaker 1: grain salt, this actually could be said of virtually any os. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pretty much, time you're gonna have anything beyond a minor patch,
Speaker 1: you run the risk of of changing the operating system
Speaker 1: enough so that applications that were built on the old
Speaker 1: set of parameters will no longer work properly. Um, that's
Speaker 1: just you can't really blame Apple for that. You can't.
Speaker 1: You definitely can't blame the developers because it's not like
Speaker 1: they can see in the future and see exactly what
Speaker 1: Apple is going to build into the next generation of
Speaker 1: the operating system. Um. It's just it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that upon the release of any operating system, new
Speaker 1: operating system, you're gonna see some instances of that. And uh, really,
Speaker 1: you've got a couple of options. One is you just
Speaker 1: wait to adopt a new operating system until most of
Speaker 1: those bugs get ironed out. You know a lot of
Speaker 1: times they say to uh, to wait for a dot release,
Speaker 1: which is in this case ten dot six, dot one
Speaker 1: right where they've they've addressed some of those problems. Or um,
Speaker 1: it may even be where you end up having to
Speaker 1: download a patch for the particular application as opposed to
Speaker 1: the operating system. It all depends on on who gets
Speaker 1: there first. Really. But the other option is you go
Speaker 1: ahead and you adopt the new operating system, and you
Speaker 1: just cope with the fact that you're not going to
Speaker 1: have access to some of the applications, UM that you
Speaker 1: might otherwise expect because they were running fine on your
Speaker 1: machine before. These weren't necessarily major applications that were they
Speaker 1: got a lot of use from your average user. But uh,
Speaker 1: but power users, people who had very specific UM reasons
Speaker 1: for using a Mac might have encountered that with various programs.
Speaker 1: That's true. Yeah, I had some I had some hiccups
Speaker 1: when I first switched over. UM. One thing that I
Speaker 1: can recommend to you if you're gonna switch your computer
Speaker 1: from one operating system of any kind to the other. Again,
Speaker 1: this is you know, true for pretty much everything. Back
Speaker 1: up your computer first, UM, even even doing an incremental
Speaker 1: release moving from Leopard to snow Leopard, or you know,
Speaker 1: if you're upgrading from this at a window seven, Um,
Speaker 1: you can't count on it always being a smooth installation. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, even I heard some complaints of people who
Speaker 1: moved from a bunch of nine point oh ford to
Speaker 1: nine point one zero. You just you know, you never
Speaker 1: know when they're your driver is gonna go away or
Speaker 1: you know some only something's gonna go awry and you
Speaker 1: can't access a certain kind of file or um heaven forbid.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, ah, your hard drive gets completely uh smashed,
Speaker 1: not literally, but you know it completely obliterates the information
Speaker 1: your high drive, which has happened in some instances. So
Speaker 1: always good to back up your data. And here's here's
Speaker 1: something that's also kind of an interesting comparison between the
Speaker 1: mac os and it's chief competitor, which being Microsoft's Windows product.
Speaker 1: Unlike the Microsoft machines, when you go and buy a
Speaker 1: new Mac and I'm talking about a new one, not
Speaker 1: a not a refurbished one or used when not buying
Speaker 1: it off Craigslist, you're going into the Apple store and
Speaker 1: you're buying it. Uh, whatever Mac machine you're picking up,
Speaker 1: you're gonna be getting the latest version of that software, right,
Speaker 1: that's what that's because they're gonna upgrade everything. So the
Speaker 1: day that the snow Leopard operating system was went gold
Speaker 1: on the shelves, it was also what was available as
Speaker 1: soon as you walk into the store to buy a
Speaker 1: new Mac or at least they give you a copy
Speaker 1: of it, right, Yeah, if it wasn't already pre installed
Speaker 1: in the machine, they would give you a copy and
Speaker 1: you could you could upgrade it. But on a Windows
Speaker 1: machine you could go into a storm. Because this is
Speaker 1: all from various manufacturers, not not a single manufacturer like
Speaker 1: it is from Apple. Uh. You could find machines that
Speaker 1: might be running Windows seven or Vista or even XP
Speaker 1: UM and in some cases they would just give you
Speaker 1: the option of do you want this machine on XP
Speaker 1: or Vista? Back back before Windows seven came out, you
Speaker 1: would even there were some that the machines came standard
Speaker 1: with Vista, but you could actually choose to downgrade the
Speaker 1: machine to XP, which a lot of people did. UM.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you can still find machines and stores that
Speaker 1: are running various versions of Windows because it's not a
Speaker 1: unified front like it is with Apple. Also, of course,
Speaker 1: as we pointed out in our Windows seven podcasts, which
Speaker 1: may or may not have have published before this one,
Speaker 1: it was recorded before this one, but we don't. We
Speaker 1: never know which one is publishing next. Uh. Because Apple
Speaker 1: controls this process from beginning to end, there's usually a UM.
Speaker 1: It's usually a more stable release than and opering system
Speaker 1: like Windows is because Apple knows all the different players
Speaker 1: in this game. They know what the video cards are
Speaker 1: going to be, they know what the sound cards are
Speaker 1: going to be, they know what the resolution of the
Speaker 1: screen is going to be. UH. They know every aspect
Speaker 1: that's going to go into the hardware that's going to
Speaker 1: handle this operating system. Assuming you're not using a Hackintosh, right,
Speaker 1: Assuming you're using an Apple approved machine to run this
Speaker 1: operating system, UH, which means that it's gonna run the
Speaker 1: way it's supposed to run unless something is fundamentally flawed
Speaker 1: with the actual operating system UM Windows Microsoft they don't
Speaker 1: have that luxury because Microsoft creates an operating system that
Speaker 1: can run on essentially any sort of machine that meets
Speaker 1: a basic set of of stats, like a basic you know,
Speaker 1: a bare minimum process or an a bare minimum amount
Speaker 1: of memory, that kind of stuff. Once it hits that,
Speaker 1: then theoretically the Microsoft product should be able to run
Speaker 1: on it. But as we all know, depending on what
Speaker 1: elements you have in your computer, it may or may
Speaker 1: not run properly because Microsoft can't predict what video cards
Speaker 1: gonna be in there, what sound card. Sometimes video cards
Speaker 1: and sound cards will have uh incompatibilities with each other
Speaker 1: or with a certain kind of processor, and Microsoft has
Speaker 1: no control over any of those elements. That's all a
Speaker 1: manufacturer kind of thing. So. Um, so the experience of
Speaker 1: purchasing a Mac computer is is different from Windows. That's
Speaker 1: why you often will hear Apple customers say, you know
Speaker 1: why I want to Mac because it just works, and
Speaker 1: it's because Apple has controlled that whole process. Um, it's
Speaker 1: still a matter of debate whether or not the Mac
Speaker 1: OS is superior to a Windows OS. That's really kind
Speaker 1: of a personal taste thing, I think. Um, it's hard
Speaker 1: to be super objective about. I mean, you could you
Speaker 1: could argue based on how well they perform similar tasks.
Speaker 1: You could do a benchmark test that way, but they
Speaker 1: both have such a unique user interface to to their
Speaker 1: own experience that um, I think it does come down
Speaker 1: to a matter of personal tastes. Also, if you're a
Speaker 1: video gamer or not because you're a gamer, it's still
Speaker 1: a PC world. There are a lot of great games
Speaker 1: out there for the Mac, but it's just a subset
Speaker 1: really of some of the games that you'll find for
Speaker 1: the PC. Well, uh snow Leopard does include support for
Speaker 1: boot camp, or rather to allow you to boot into Windows,
Speaker 1: or for that matter, of Linux. UM, so you know
Speaker 1: you can install Windows alongside you are a Mac OS ten. Yeah,
Speaker 1: especially it's yeah, you can. You can boot into Windows
Speaker 1: instead of the mac os on your Mac and then
Speaker 1: run various uh Windows oriented software. Earlier, earlier, I misspoke
Speaker 1: a little it, I think, UM, when I said rather
Speaker 1: boldly that I know for a fact that binary applications
Speaker 1: are slower to run. UM. That's not necessarily true. Well,
Speaker 1: some of them are, UM, but the chances are uh,
Speaker 1: chances are pretty good that they're going to run about
Speaker 1: the same on UM power PC and Intel chips. However,
Speaker 1: the programs themselves are going to be bigger because they
Speaker 1: have more code in them, essentially, you know, because they
Speaker 1: have to have code that takes advantage of either processor. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know, some of the files they create may
Speaker 1: or may not be a little larger as a result.
Speaker 1: But uh, suffice it to say that a program written
Speaker 1: for just one processor type of processor is going to
Speaker 1: be more efficient. Uh, you know, it'll be smaller, it'll
Speaker 1: be uh, you know, lets there's less code in there,
Speaker 1: sort of like less moving parts. The chances are are
Speaker 1: good that it's going to be make your computer more
Speaker 1: efficient on the on the long run, and I think
Speaker 1: that's uh the benefit there. But yeah, I probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: have said that. They all forever and ever are larger.
Speaker 1: But it's a good point for technology, just in technology
Speaker 1: in general. As technology advances and we and we move
Speaker 1: into more advanced forms of processors, like you go from
Speaker 1: thirty two bit to sixty four bit to bit, and
Speaker 1: the every person, every person, every company, organization or developer
Speaker 1: has to face a question, which is do I develop
Speaker 1: this application or this operating system even that so that
Speaker 1: it will work on multiple kinds of processors, or do
Speaker 1: I just make the choice to abandon the older processors
Speaker 1: and say, if you're not running this kind of machine,
Speaker 1: this this application is off limits to you. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a tough choice to make, because you know, you limit
Speaker 1: your audience if you decide to to cut out a
Speaker 1: portion of the customer base that happens to be running
Speaker 1: older machines. On the other hand, it makes the development
Speaker 1: process much easier and it also keeps your code to
Speaker 1: a more manageable level. The more you have to support
Speaker 1: various kinds of of hardware, whether it's different processors or whatever. Uh,
Speaker 1: the harder and more complex, your development process is going
Speaker 1: to be just in general rule of thumb, yeah, it
Speaker 1: makes sense. I even saying that, I think most people
Speaker 1: would be like, well yeah, but I mean it's worth
Speaker 1: saying yeah, yeah, and it's um, I think to uh,
Speaker 1: thinking back on it, I've seen you know, we need
Speaker 1: to wrap up, but uh, it's um. I've seen generally
Speaker 1: positive reviews, especially once the the initial dust up over. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: this thing doesn't work with snow Leppard past, you know,
Speaker 1: once they had some some incremental releases. I know I've
Speaker 1: had a smoother experience in the last few months, and
Speaker 1: I did when I first switched over, because I did
Speaker 1: have a couple of applications that needed to be updated
Speaker 1: so that they would work properly. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: people don't really talk about snow Leppard. That's one of
Speaker 1: the downsides of having this very you know, in general
Speaker 1: positive uh incremental release. But you know, Windows seven has
Speaker 1: generated a lot of buzz, rapidly shot up to ten
Speaker 1: percent of the market share, and snow Leopard there's just
Speaker 1: not a lot to generate buzz around. Well, it's also
Speaker 1: just that the user base for max Is is smaller
Speaker 1: that it's not that they are any less passionate. In fact,
Speaker 1: I would argue that that real Mac fans tend to
Speaker 1: be some of the most passionate UH electronics consumers out there.
Speaker 1: But um, but there aren't as many of them. So
Speaker 1: I think that's part of it. Um, Like you said, Uh,
Speaker 1: part of it was also that it wasn't a huge
Speaker 1: leap forward, although it was a lot of improvements. But
Speaker 1: everything I've seen has essentially said it's worth the thirty bucks.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. It's a you know, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a good release, a's stable. It's if you're considering upgrading
Speaker 1: and your computer is capable of it at this point, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's an affordable upgrade and won't get you
Speaker 1: ready for the sorry if the Apple pun next step?
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna wrap this up now actually because
Speaker 1: of that pun, and also because we are reaching the
Speaker 1: amount of time we spent on Window seven, and this
Speaker 1: way we can avoid accusations of favoritism. Okay, So if
Speaker 1: you want to write us any comments or questions, or
Speaker 1: you just want to yell at me because I don't
Speaker 1: know enough about Apple, uh, send that email tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. I read every single
Speaker 1: one of them, and yes, you do hurt my feelings
Speaker 1: when you call me names. If you would like, check
Speaker 1: out our blogs. They are very informative. We have a
Speaker 1: live show every Tuesday one pm Eastern and go to
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Speaker 1: Take some of the quizzes. There are actually a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. I've been doing them recently. I got tin
Speaker 1: out of the tin on the kissing quiz. Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: not going in here. Well, I wasn't asking you to
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