A few days after Snow Leopard was released, I immediately installed my copy on the 13” Macbook Pro and the 17” iMac at home. Both were installed as direct upgrade from Leopard.

On the Macbook Pro, it calculated 47 minutes install time but the upgrade went on a few minutes longer. As marketed, I was able to save 7GB of space. I guess this was how much the PowerPC-support and tons of printer drivers must have used. Everything was intact - from my data to all the third-party apps that I installed on Leopard. Compatibility, I guess I can say that I was lucky to be using apps that are already compatible.

On the iMac, however, it was a different experience. Not only did the install indicate 1 hour to install (which I think was due to the space that it used), the installer rebooted right swap at the middle of the install. I thought there was something wrong but when it came back up, the installer picked up where it left of and continued. Similar to the Macbook Pro, everything was retained.

The 64-bit Snow Leopard, however, boots up using the 32-bit kernel instead of the 64-bit kernel by default. While this definitely does not mean much to the ordinary consumer, it does mean a lot to me. Not only is it faster, but I am sure that the Mac OS X apps are more optimized running on a 64-bit kernel. So, on the Macbook Pro, I rebooted while holding the “6” and “4” keys so the system will use the 64-bit kernel and it worked as advertised.

Unfortunately, running a 64-bit kernel is not without consequence. Some of the applications that I use only run on the 32-bit kernel, such as VMWare Fusion (which I use to run Crunchbang Linux for my Android development).

Despite these minor issues, the Macbook Pro with Snow Leopard is like having a new computer - it is fast! The speed increase is definitely something that all users, from beginners to experts, will notice and I think this is worth the PhP1600 already!

One of the features that I was eager to test was the Cisco VPN native support. I created a VPN interface and configured it for UP’s VPN service and boom! It worked! No more crappy Cisco client! Unfortunately, I have read that Cisco VPN only works on TCP and not UDP. Good thing that we use TCP!

After spending a day running Snow Leopard on the Macbook Pro, I decided to do a clean install, as what I always do with a new OS. So, with two hours to spare last night, I grabbed the installer and did a clean install. The installation took 20 minutes but configuring it and transferring my data back from my external drives took longer.

I am now typing this on a fully re-configured Snow Leopard and I must say that this is one lean, mean, speed machine! My Macbook Pro reboots using the 64-bit kernel by default. I decided to wait for VMWare to release the 64-bit version of Fusion. Other than that, everything just works!

Do I still think that this Snow Leopard is worth P1,600? Yes! Some will say that it is just a “Service Pack” because it contained bug fixes with only a handful of new features. While I will agree that some of the improvements (such as faster Time Machine back-up) are too lame to merit a full OS version, the fact that the OS has three new technologies (64-bit, Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL) is more than enough to justify it as a full new version.

Some are complaining about Snow Leopard breaking app compatibility. Well, c’mon!

The jump from 32-bit to 64-bit is huge! Don’t blame Apple for this - Snow Leopard Dev Preview has been out for a long time -- enough time for third-party developers to port their applications to support the full 64-bit architecture. Any changes in the internal components of the OS is bound to introduce incompatibilities!

Anyway, grab your copy from your favorite local reseller or you can order it from the Apple Online Store Philippines.