A Glimpse at Snow Leopard
As many of you know, Snow Leopard will be the new OS for upcoming Macs. It is currently in beta for anyone who wants to test it.
AppleInsider reader inewton1974 pointed us to an annotated Flickr albumof nearly four dozen Snow Leopard screenshots he published a bit earlier in the week. He begins by noting that the software’s setup assistant will now warn users if they don’t supply a password hint and claims that QuickLook capabilities have been built into universal Open and Save dialog windows.
inewton1974 has been kind enough to supply the world with glimpses of Snow Leopard. There seem to be a ton of improvements to the OS already. A first big change is the apparent loss of Quicktime. There are many options for it that are completely missing. Apple may be doing away with Quicktime. Everything is becoming smoother. The Finder slides icons into place instead of shifting abruptly.
For just a quick run down of the small changes made so far to Snow Leopard:
There is a slider in the Finder to change icon size and there are updates to the Date & Time preference pane will let Snow Leopard users display the time and date (or day of the week) side-by-side in the Mac OS X menubar. Time Zone preferences have also seen an overhaul. Each time zone is highlighted as a user moves their mouse cursor across the map. And as previously note, users will have the option to have their time zone updated automatically with help of Snow Leopard’s new Core Location framework.
Users who prefer not to have their Mac’s location identified via Core Location can switch the option off via the general security preferences. The same preference pane also introduce a handy new feature that will let users adjust the time interval between when their Mac goes to sleep (or activates a screen saver) and when their password will be required to regain access.
For instance, you could set your screen to dim after 10 minutes of inactivity but not lock down the system and require a password prompt for 45 minutes. In current versions of the Mac OS, there’s no separation of these features.
Below is a capture of QuickTime X Player’s HUDless movie playback presentation:
The new Player software will also let users upload movie files to Youtube or their Mobile Me accounts.
The same software also provides both basic video and audio editing (trimming):
A handful of changes are also in store for Snow Leopards Preferences, namely a separation of the Keyboard & Mouse preferences, a relocation of Bluetooth preferences from “Hardware” to a new section called “Internet & Wireless,” and a renaming of the “International” preferences to “Language & Text.”
There are many more changes made in Snow Leopard. This new OS already seems appetizing and I can’t wait to get a hold of it.