[Silver Samurai]

So while Snow Leopard does a lot of things right, I'm sure everyone can agree that it's not perfect.

So maybe we can figure out what it does wrong and see if anyone else has any fixes.

I"ll start.
For me, it's good. I'm liking how I have a good chunk of space available on my HD.
My 1 BIG complaint is that it takes a LONG time to empty out the trash bin. Does anyone know why? In Leopard it was a LOT quicker. The difference was night and day.
I put in 1 file and when emptying out, it somehow multiplies, wtf?!

On a side note can anyone recommend a program to use for converting .mp4, .divx or various video files onto an iPod Touch?
I caved and ordered a 2G 32Giger today. Couldn't really justify the extra price ($50) for the 3G when the difference technologically was pretty much non-existent, especially considering it doesn't seem like the extra "speed" would really be all that noticable. At least not from the video I've seen.

[teflon]

Handbrake would be a good choice for file conversions.Its pretty much what everyone uses.

As for slow trash emptying, haven't got a clue, sorry.

On the whole 10.6 has been good for me. I can't really think of any niggles that get me much. My eSATA expresscard has mainly stopped working, but I don't think that's to do with 10.6, more to do with the card itself...

[morback]

I don't get a low battery indicator anymore (MBP).

Other than that I think it freed up more than the "up to 7GB" advertised...

[Eric5h5]

Silver Samurai, on September 27th 2009, 12:54 AM, said:

I caved and ordered a 2G 32Giger today. Couldn't really justify the extra price ($50) for the 3G when the difference technologically was pretty much non-existent, especially considering it doesn't seem like the extra "speed" would really be all that noticable. At least not from the video I've seen.

Do you play games on it at all? The new CPU runs things 50-100% faster, and the graphics chip is substantially upgraded, not to mention there's twice the RAM (which means apps actually have around 4 times the available RAM, considering how much the OS uses). The difference technologically is quite significant actually; a bit like going from a G3 with a Rage 128 to a G4 with a Radeon 7000 and twice the RAM. It's true that if all you use it for is playing music, the differences aren't important (but if that's the case, why buy a touch in the first place?). Although even aside from games, it boots much faster, all apps launch quite a bit faster, etc.

--Eric

[Janichsan]

Silver Samurai, on September 27th 2009, 06:54 AM, said:

So while Snow Leopard does a lot of things right, I'm sure everyone can agree that it's not perfect.

So maybe we can figure out what it does wrong and see if anyone else has any fixes.

I"ll start.
For me, it's good. I'm liking how I have a good chunk of space available on my HD.
My 1 BIG complaint is that it takes a LONG time to empty out the trash bin. Does anyone know why? In Leopard it was a LOT quicker. The difference was night and day.
I put in 1 file and when emptying out, it somehow multiplies, wtf?!

I don't have much complaints about SL, except maybe regarding the Dictionary (application). First of all, the sorting of the found words has changed (I have some extra dictionary installed and now these are listed first – before SL, it was the default New Oxford). Second peeve is that the dictionary always opens a new window when looking up words in other programs via the context menu. I use that rather often, so the changes are quite grating.

There are a couple of other, small bugs, but nothing grave.

I can't confirm the long emptying time for the trash, though. For me, it's almost instantaneous.

Quote

On a side note can anyone recommend a program to use for converting .mp4, .divx or various video files onto an iPod Touch?

A while ago, I would have recommended iSquint. Unfortunately, it's no longer available. I haven't found a really decent successor yet.

Quote

..., especially considering it doesn't seem like the extra "speed" would really be all that noticable. At least not from the video I've seen.

Oh, believe me – the speed gain is notable. If I wouldn't be tied to my iPhone 2G for about another year (I bought it rather late, but cheap), I probably already would have upgraded to the iPhone 3GS which is technically equivalent to the new iPod touch.

[Silver Samurai]

Eric5h5, on September 27th 2009, 08:43 AM, said:

Do you play games on it at all? The new CPU runs things 50-100% faster, and the graphics chip is substantially upgraded, not to mention there's twice the RAM (which means apps actually have around 4 times the available RAM, considering how much the OS uses). The difference technologically is quite significant actually; a bit like going from a G3 with a Rage 128 to a G4 with a Radeon 7000 and twice the RAM. It's true that if all you use it for is playing music, the differences aren't important (but if that's the case, why buy a touch in the first place?). Although even aside from games, it boots much faster, all apps launch quite a bit faster, etc.

--Eric

I pretty much plan to use it for watching movies, the odd websurfing time i can pick up WIFI connection and music lastly. I really don't see myself playing anything beyond a game like tetris since I didn;t like using a touch screen for gaming. I tried out Resident Evil while I was in Germany.
From the video's I've seen online, the big difference between the 2G and 3G touches is just loading time. Even the battery life is the same between the Touch's when it comes to WiFI and Video. Although if anyone has any info or a link, I'm open! Ive not had much luck in finding info comparing the 2G and 3G iPods.

[teflon]

Janichsan, on September 27th 2009, 05:28 PM, said:

I don't have much complaints about SL, except maybe regarding the Dictionary (application). First of all, the sorting of the found words has changed (I have some extra dictionary installed and now these are listed first – before SL, it was the default New Oxford). Second peeve is that the dictionary always opens a new window when looking up words in other programs via the context menu. I use that rather often, so the changes are quite grating.

In the preferences to the Dictionary app, you can drag your dictionaries into the order you prefer (you can turn off dictionaries or wikipedia if you want, and you can choose wikipedia's language too), and pick the behaviour of the contextual menu item.
That works just fine for me...

[Sneaky Snake]

Spotlight is freaking slow on the Mac Pro, everything takes forever to get found. I can hear the HDD chugging away quite harshly. It may be time for a defrag

[jgwdoc]

Silver Samurai, on September 26th 2009, 09:54 PM, said:

My 1 BIG complaint is that it takes a LONG time to empty out the trash bin. Does anyone know why? In Leopard it was a LOT quicker. The difference was night and day.
I put in 1 file and when emptying out, it somehow multiplies, wtf?!

The reason it takes so long to empty the trash is that the default setting is now "empty trash securely," which takes a lot longer. If you go into the Finder preferences and uncheck the secure delete box for the Trash, it'll go back to what you're used to.

My only real complaint so far is that every file you open needs to be told what App to open with. It doesn't just naturally open in the App that created it. In fact, it usually defaults to some Apple program (like Pages) which I may not even use.

[The Liberator]

Don't the HD's defrag every so often at shutdowns?

Liberator.

[J'nathus]

Janichsan, on September 27th 2009, 09:28 AM, said:

A while ago, I would have recommended iSquint. Unfortunately, it's no longer available. I haven't found a really decent successor yet.

It appears to be still out there: http://www.macupdate...fo.php/id/19769

I have a backup download of it too. It works in SL with no problems either.

I didn't know the company closed its doors (http://www.isquint.org/)... sad.

[Silver Samurai]

jgwdoc, on September 27th 2009, 10:23 PM, said:

The reason it takes so long to empty the trash is that the default setting is now "empty trash securely," which takes a lot longer. If you go into the Finder preferences and uncheck the secure delete box for the Trash, it'll go back to what you're used to.

My only real complaint so far is that every file you open needs to be told what App to open with. It doesn't just naturally open in the App that created it. In fact, it usually defaults to some Apple program (like Pages) which I may not even use.

Thanks!
That make a world of difference! Sooo much better now!

[Eric5h5]

The Liberator, on September 27th 2009, 10:47 PM, said:

Don't the HD's defrag every so often at shutdowns?

OS X defrags on the fly (except for really big files).

--Eric

[The Liberator]

Could you manually defrag then? Or do you not need to?

Liberator.

[Janichsan]

teflon, on September 27th 2009, 08:53 PM, said:

In the preferences to the Dictionary app, you can drag your dictionaries into the order you prefer (you can turn off dictionaries or wikipedia if you want, and you can choose wikipedia's language too), and pick the behaviour of the contextual menu item.
That works just fine for me...

I know that, but unfortunately that does not make a difference. The references found in the additional dictionaries I installed are always listed before ones from the default dictionaries.

[teflon]

Sneaky Snake, on September 28th 2009, 03:07 AM, said:

Spotlight is freaking slow on the Mac Pro, everything takes forever to get found. I can hear the HDD chugging away quite harshly. It may be time for a defrag

How old is this install of OSX? (I assume you updated to 10.6 instead of a clean & install)
You could always try re-indexing your HDD.
It'll take forever, but I believe that 10.6's Spotlight will be faster for it.
If you've got diskwarrior or another HDD app hanging around, you can check the fragmentation of your HDD using that, and see if you think its worth it.

jgwdoc, on September 28th 2009, 03:23 AM, said:

My only real complaint so far is that every file you open needs to be told what App to open with. It doesn't just naturally open in the App that created it. In fact, it usually defaults to some Apple program (like Pages) which I may not even use.

This one's Apple's fault, but the only ones who can fix it are the developers.
UTIs are better than Creator Codes, but it's going to take a while for devs to get around to adding UTI codes to their apps and restore the old functionality. Right now it's mainly Apple's apps with the UTIs, so things are going to default to them...

[Eric5h5]

The Liberator, on September 28th 2009, 03:18 AM, said:

Could you manually defrag then? Or do you not need to?

You can do it manually; it's still possible to end up with fragmentation, though it will take longer. I'm not sure that would help Spotlight though...sounds like something else is going on, because I haven't heard any other reports about it being slow in Snow Leopard. It's fast in Tiger and pretty much instant in Leopard.

--Eric

[Sneaky Snake]

The OS X install is quite old, about as old as Leopard. Its the family computer so I can't erase it and do a clean install. I will try re-indexing it

[Cobra]

Hmm can't complain as all seems good here. I haven't done a clean install once to this iMac so it is still going since Tiger and no issues have come of it to my knowledge.

[The Liberator]

Eric5h5, on September 29th 2009, 01:14 AM, said:

You can do it manually; it's still possible to end up with fragmentation, though it will take longer. I'm not sure that would help Spotlight though...sounds like something else is going on, because I haven't heard any other reports about it being slow in Snow Leopard. It's fast in Tiger and pretty much instant in Leopard.

--Eric

How would you do that then?

Thanks, Liberator.