Snow Leopard Server Download Free

Sneaking in a few days before its promised September release, the tune-up for Mac Os Ten Leopard costs $29 for current Leopard users, and packs just enough dial to exist worth your money. Apple is conscientious to point out that Snow Leopard isn't a complete organisation overhaul, but rather a collection of hundreds of smaller refinements to make Leopard run more gracefully. Hidden amongst smaller tweaks are some technical improvements that consequence in a smoother, easier-to-use Leopard with enough for Mac fans to be excited about. The user interface and everyday tasks experience faster in full general, although we didn't notice a noun comeback in application operation.

Fifty-fifty if you're not a current Leopard user, the $169 bundle that includes Snow Leopard, iLife, and iWork is a steal for the system upgrade and two of Apple's major software suites, not to mention the long-pined-after inclusion of Microsoft Exchange compatibility. Finally you volition be able to connect with Exchange Servers (without using Microsoft'due south Entourage), simply merely if your visitor is using Microsoft Exchange 2007; many even so aren't. Snow Leopard is offered on a single install disk--there are no separate, tiered pricing structures to worry about--and yous're getting every feature and technical enhancement available in a unmarried install. Unfortunately, for those on PowerPC systems, Snow Leopard but works with Intel Macs.

Installation
Installation of Snow Leopard is dead simple and (according to Apple) upward to 45 pct faster than Leopard using a newly designed installer that asks just i question during the process. On our exam machine, the procedure took near an hour, including two automatic restarts. The default setting installs Snowfall Leopard without tampering with any of your saved files, music, photos, or documents. Mostly we had no problems, merely on one examination machine we needed to reinstall the Os 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 second endeavor, the OS installed perfectly on our test car 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 Os.

Those who want to do a "Make clean Install" (starting fresh past deleting everything for minimal conflicts) notwithstanding can, simply different installations in previous versions of previous Mac Os Ten that offered the clean install as a primary choice, you'll need to use Disk Utility to first erase the volume, and then run the install. Apple explained to u.s. that not everyone knows what a clean install is and often chose it, not knowing that they would lose their files. We're happy with that answer, every bit long as people still get the choice in some form.

Apple also claims that Snow Leopard uses 7GB less infinite than Leopard because of better file compression paired with selective commuter inclusion. According to Apple, Snow Leopard volition locate any missing drivers on the Web for you lot. We had no need of any special drivers during our tests.

New technologies
Apple tree says a few new technologies in Snow Leopard make it worthy of the upgrade alone, with several features that Apple says will boost 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 accept full advantage of the hardware. (The 64-chip technology allows application developers to allocate more than memory to complete tasks so that the software runs faster and more smoothly.)

Apple tree has besides added what it calls the G Central Acceleration that manages data sent to multicore processors in an effort to maximize performance; Apple says the GCD will speed up whatsoever application task, from processing images in Photoshop to playing your favorite games. The addition of the GCD also takes away the need for software developers to spend as much time managing multicore processors.

Another new technology in Snowfall 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 calculating without the improver of enormous amounts of code. Similar the GCD, these are improvements that will mainly affect software developers. But hopefully it will mean more than and ameliorate-performing software for users in the futurity.

To put some of these claims to the test, we decided to pit Mac Bone X ten.five.eight Leopard against Mac OS X ten.6 Snow Leopard to come across how these new technologies affected overall performance.

In our anecdotal tests of performance within the Snow Leopard user interface (UI), the operating system seems faster and more than responsive than with Leopard. Finder, Stacks, Betrayal, launching apps, and other everyday processes feel snappy. We didn't, nevertheless, notice whatsoever improvement in awarding operation.

Overall, nosotros saw only a 2.five percent slowdown in application performance from Leopard to Snow Leopard on our more than processor-intensive performance tests, including our multimedia multitasking test, in which we measure the time for QuickTime to finish converting a curt movie while iTunes is performing its own conversion of MP3 into AAC format in the background simultaneously. As this falls within our typical margin of mistake (v percent), we saw no significant difference with awarding performance when moving from Leopard to Snowfall Leopard. (See the lesser of this review for performance charts.)

New features

Betrayal
Snowfall Leopard includes a number of user UI improvements intended to make working with Mac OS X easier and more than efficient. Expose, Apple'due south system for visually finding the window yous want on a chaotic desktop, used to be relegated to the Function keys on your keyboard. Snow Leopard at present makes Expose accessible from the Dock; just click and hold on a Dock icon to meet thumbnails of all the open up windows in that application. Hitting the Tab key lets you cycle through the preview thumbnails of each open up awarding. Using Expose in the Dock is very natural and elegant, making united states wonder why this wasn't already a characteristic in Leopard.

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

The Dock
In add-on to using Expose to find the right window, you now also have the ability to drag files from 1 application to another using the Dock. Let's say y'all want to add an epitome to an email, but your desktop is total of open windows. In Snow Leopard you lot can get to the image, drag it to the Mail icon in the Dock, and your electronic mail window volition leap-load, allowing you to drop the prototype into place. Though the ability to drag and drop files in this fashion is nice, we're non sure it's much easier than attaching an image by browsing through your folders. Withal, if y'all know the image is already on your desktop, it'due south probably the faster method.

Stacks
Stacks got a much-needed upgrade as well. In Leopard, Stacks merely listed a sure number of files and applications requiring y'all to become to a Finder window if your app wasn't listed. Similarly, if you tried to open a folder in Stacks, you were sent to the Finder. In Snowfall Leopard, Stacks comes with a curlicue bar and so icons are nevertheless easy to read and anything can exist launched out of the Dock. Folders are now accessible within Stacks besides, so yous'll be able to navigate to files within folders all without leaving the Stacks Window. These changes brand Stacks much more useful than before and probably should have been available when Stacks was introduced.

Now y'all can scroll through your applications and documents (and even open folders in Stacks) without being sent to the Finder.

The Finder
While the Finder itself saw little in the way of interface tweaks, the way files behave in the Finder makes it easier to use. A zoom slider has been added to the lower right of Finder windows so you lot tin zoom in on icons. An enhanced icon view has been added, letting yous preview multipage documents and fifty-fifty 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 don't have on your hard drive. This means common file types from Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and fifty-fifty PDF files tin can all be previewed without owning the programs they were created in. Every bit an added bonus, Preview in Snow Leopard provides accurate text option to multicolumn PDF files using bogus intelligence to infer the layout of each page. This ways that Preview recognizes that there are multiple columns in your document so yous can select the text you desire from any column.

Yous tin now flip through the pages of multipage PDF documents using the arrows that appear over PDF docs when you mouse over.

Safari 4
Safari iv has been widely available for some time, but information technology offers a couple of new features when running in Snow Leopard. Safari 4 already includes Top Sites for viewing all your favorite sites as thumbnails for easy admission and total history search, which lets you view your history in a Embrace Flow-like interface. Just in Snowfall Leopard, Safari is now crash resistant. This ways that if a plug-in crashes, it won't crash the whole browser. Simply refresh the page to try to load the plug-in once more. As well, Safari checks to see if a site you are visiting is known to be fraudulent, is distributing malware, or is known to be a phishing site, and so warns you if it is.

Tiptop Sites, which was already available in Safari 4, lets you navigate to your most viewed Web sites speedily.

QuickTime X
QuickTime X, Apple'southward media histrion, got some major tweaks in Snowfall Leopard. At present, when y'all play a movie and move your mouse outside the window, the interface fades away quickly to give you a more than immersive video-viewing experience. When watching a movie, you lot can click the new Share button to convert your pic for iPod, iPhone, or Apple TV, and QuickTime converts the video to work best on your chosen device. You also can at present tape video from your Webcam, audio, or but the action on your screen with a few clicks. Those with the iPhone 3GS will recognize the new trimming feature in QuickTime X, letting y'all catch merely the video content you desire.

QuickTime 10 probably received the most interface tweaks in the Snow Leopard update. The cleaned-upwardly interface and autofade features look groovy (similar most things Apple), but it's more of an artful comeback than anything else. The recording features for video, sound, and screencast capturing are the large wins here and used to be offered only in QuickTime Pro. Information technology's proficient to meet these features volition be able to be used past a wider audience in Snow Leopard.

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

Substitution support
One of the main roadblocks for Mac users in a primarily Windows workplace was the inability to connect with Microsoft Exchange servers. Nearly Mac users used Microsoft Entourage or available open-source options as a work-effectually, only it was never equally polish as connecting from a Windows automobile with Microsoft Role. Snowfall Leopard now supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 out of the box and so you can hands connect using Apple'southward Postal service app, take hold of global address lists in the Accost Book, and create meetings with contacts using iCal.

Apple did more than simply give yous the ability to connect, however. Mutual tasks like creating meetings, for example, are incredibly easy with intuitive controls. iCal lets you view work events and personal activities all in the aforementioned window (with like shooting fish in a barrel controls to include or non include the data you want). The Apple Accost Book works seamlessly across Mail and iCal so you can quickly bring up global accost 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 time, iCal volition automatically effigy out the earliest available time that everyone is free. These are features already available in Microsoft's Outlook for Windows, but in Snow Leopard the process feels much more intuitive.

File Quarantine
According to Apple, File Quarantine has also been refined in Snow Leopard. First introduced in Mac OS X x.4 Tiger, File Quarantine checks for known malware signatures, and in Snow Leopard, volition now display an alert dialog if it finds a known offender. The dialog will tell users to movement the offending file to the Trash. For case, a artificial version of iWork circulated on the Spider web a few months ago that contained malware. That particular malware is now automatically detected by File Quarantine in Snowfall Leopard.

Apple says that File Quarantine will be automatically updated via Mac OS X'south software update as new malware signatures are establish in the wild. We had no way to examination these features, but nosotros are happy to see that Apple is taking strides to defend against malware equally more people switch to Macs and the danger of new malware becomes more prevalent.

Universal access
Outset with Mac Os X 10.4 Tiger, Apple tree included VoiceOver to help people who are bullheaded or with dumb vision to better understand and interact with what is happening onscreen. Apple continues to help visually impaired users in Snowfall Leopard by calculation gesture support on multitouch trackpads with easy-to-larn gestures to perform specific functions. Nosotros had mixed results with these features depending on the Web page we visited, but by and large we found the features to be useful. The trackpad acts as the viewable area on the current window so you lot tin can tap to have Window elements explained to you or swipe to movement on to the next item in the window, for case. New features in Snowfall Leopard are particularly helpful when Spider web browsing, with options like Web folio summaries to explain the diverse elements on a Spider web folio you lot haven't visited before, making it easier to become the information you desire.

More than twoscore dissimilar Braille displays (including wireless Bluetooth displays) are supported in Snowfall Leopard right out of the box, allowing visually dumb users to plug in and kickoff computing immediately.

Other refinements
Some of the smaller refinements in Snow Leopard are worthy of note, affecting many of Apple's core apps. iChat is now compatible with more routers, making video chat accessible to a wider range of users, and iChat Theater now offers 640x480 resolution, using but one-third the bandwidth it used before. 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 substitution feature in applications like iChat, Mail, and TextEdit lets you create shortcuts for phrases you use frequently. The Services menu in Snowfall Leopard has been rewritten to include merely the services relevant to the application or content you're viewing. Cadre Location technology locates nearby Wi-Fi hot spots to find your location and automatically resets your fourth dimension zone so wherever you are in the world, your Mac will be prepare to the correct time. While all of these are small refinements, each make your Mac easier to utilize with smart features non found in other operating systems.

Conclusions
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is not a complete system overhaul and is instead a refinement of the current Leopard Os--some take gone and so far as to phone call it a "service pack." Nosotros call up the interface tweaks to Expose, Stacks, the Finder, Post, and iCal brand Snow Leopard more than only a service pack and worthy of the $29 upgrade price. We don't like that PowerPC users are unable to use Snowfall Leopard, but we understand that afterward iii years with Intel, Apple is making a conclusion to continue moving forward with this technology.

The largest of the feature enhancements are probably reason enough for Intel Mac users to spend the coin on Snow Leopard. Added enhancements such every bit video, audio, and screen recording in QuickTime X were once just available to those who purchased QuickTime Pro (which was nigh $30--the same as this system upgrade). But the killer feature addition for Snowfall Leopard might be Exchange back up out of the box--non even Windows vii comes with Microsoft Exchange back up without ownership Microsoft Office.

Overall, we recollect that Snow Leopard did almost everything Apple says it fix out to do: it refined and enhanced Leopard to make it easier to use. Though the system performs well in everyday utilise, many of our tests signal it is slightly slower than the older version of Leopard in more intensive application processes. Still, we highly recommend upgrading for all the new features and Microsoft Exchange support.

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

Photoshop (in seconds)
(Shorter confined indicate amend performance)

QuickTime multimedia multitasking test (QT7 on 10.5.eight and QTX on x.6) (in seconds)
(Shorter confined bespeak amend performance)

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

Cinebench
(Longer confined betoken amend functioning)

System configurations:

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