You hardly think there’s much anyone can say about Apple’s Snow Leopard that hasn’t been said over and over again, almost to the point of excessiveness in recent days. Starting with the favored members of the media who contributed their words of wisdom, and extending to individual bloggers around the world, it seems almost every respectable publication, and some other than respectable, has had something to say on the subject.

Now it’s a sure thing that a lot of people have been working with Snow Leopard for weeks and perhaps months. That includes Apple’s registered developers and, of course, the folks who wrote books on the subject that have just been released, or will be shortly. So now it can be told, but I won’t spend half this review writing about the features you already know about, or you can find described at Apple’s site in exquisite detail. I don’t believe in wasting your time.

As a cleanup release, Snow Leopard acquits itself nicely, thank you. Unlike most operating system upgrades, which excrete evidence of excessive bloat, Apple decided that it wanted to take stock of the situation, fix what ailed the operating system and build a secure foundation for the future. That, indeed, may take us through to Mac OS 11 and beyond, assuming they all bear the reasonably standard Mac OS numbering scheme.

It’s clear that Apple rethought the installation process carefully, because they’ve refined it to the nth degree. For most of you, all you need do is put the Snow Leopard DVD in your Mac’s drive (or a shared drive if you’re using, for example, a MacBook Air) and, when the disc mounts simply launch the Installer and begin the setup process. The Archive & Install routine that power users demanded is no longer present, although you can still wipe the drive, install Leopard and restore your files via Apple’s Migration Assistant or your preferred backup tool.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

This article was posted on Sunday, August 30th, 2009 at 8:35 PM and is filed under News and tagged with: Apple, DVD, Leopard, Mac Os, Mac Os X, Macbook, Macintosh, Migration Assistant, Operating System, snow leopard, Steve Jobs.