Snow Leopard: a reactionary writes
Things I like about Mac OS X version 10.6:
(Mac OS X 10.6 is also known as Snow Leopard, although I dislike Apple’s use of the operating system codename in their publicity material because it leads to conversations where people talk about “Leopard” and “Tiger” and one has to stop for a second to translate those to actual operating system versions and no-one is ever going to refer to Mac OS X 10.3 as Panther these days, let alone 10.2 being Jagwire or heaven forbid Puma and Cheetah. What are the chances I’ll have to look up the codename for 10.5 by the time we reach 10.10? Version numbers are not so evocative but are less confusing than codenames. This doesn’t mean I will stop naming hard disks after Mac OS codenames - my desktop has Veronica, Gershwin, Harmony and Sonata connected at the moment, with Copland and Pink sitting on the shelf as appropriate…)
Things I like about Mac OS X Snow Leopard:
- Apple’s drivers for my Epson all-in-one printer / scanner actually work. Epson’s drivers for the same printer / scanner only worked if you never used the scanner and promised to attend church more often.
- Significantly snappier.
- QuickTime Player’s minimal interface.
Things I dislike about Mac OS X Snow Leopard:
- By default the Finder does not show internal disks on the Desktop.
- The Finder ignores type / creator codes on files.
Everything else in 10.6 is good. However it strikes me that the de-emphasizing of old-style Mac metadata (type / creator codes) and the default of not showing your computer’s hard drive icon on the desktop are evidence of the triumph of old-school Next-ies within Apple.
I think the decision to cover-up the hierarchical filesystem is a bad thing.
P.S. Wouldn’t it have been awesome if, having released Mac OS X Cheetah, Apple had continued with naming their releases after other famous Hollywood animal actors? Why they stopped naming releases after disappointing Sylvester Stallone movies is beyond me - most any version of System 7 could have been named Lock Up.