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The myth of Snow Leopard

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Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#61

Post by anthk »

pico303 wrote: post #3
mymacbook wrote: post #2

I don’t necessarily agree with Jeff Johnson’s conclusion that major software upgrades are impossible on an annual schedule. I also don’t know what he’s looking for, as someone who worked at Apple during this time quality improved substantially in 10.6 Snow Leopard and continued. Most bug fixes don’t get a marketing line item or even much fanfare. We were all users of what the OSX guys were doing and lived on the dogf…

There’s red flags I look for in articles like this, and a FreeBSD partition on your MacBook Pro is one of them. Tells me the author is probably hypercritical of MacOS because it’s not a GPL OS. That’s fine, but as someone who likes MacOS, I don’t share the pessimism. Snow Leopard was a great experience for me. So much more stable, and the OS felt tighter, like lots of the little wonky things got sorted out. It well d…

FreeBSD is not GPL and in that era FreeBSD was almot the low-level Mac OS X testground for ex-FreeBSD developers working for Apple.

Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#62

Post by frollogaston »

kccqzy wrote: post #19
gord288 wrote: post #8

As I recall, there were plenty of legitimate user gripes when the very first iteration of Snow Leopard (10.6.0) was released. But by the time of the very last point-release (10.6.11?), the OS was rock-solid. It was only after all the initial bugs were ironed out, that Snow Leopard achieved the legendary status that it has enjoyed ever since. The blogger doesn’t take this factor into account.

It was 10.6.8 v1.1. They didn’t want to increment the version number so they made a version number on top of a version number.

That number 10.6.8 is burned into my brain because I was on that release for so long.

Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#63

Post by frollogaston »

vor_ wrote: post #30

Snow Leopard was so buggy that it had an infamous data loss bug: https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/snow-leopard-bug-d... People forget these things after they get patched out and time passes. What's left behind as memories fade is a feel-good mythology about a bug fix release that never really existed. The truth was that engineering resources had been shifted to iOS, which delayed Leopard, and the "no new fea…

The guest account bug was the one thing. But who still uses guest accounts in 2009?

Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#65

Post by frollogaston »

bitwize wrote: post #48
snowwrestler wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but it’s also true of many other OS X and MacOS releases over the years. You’ve definitely hit on the core of the issue with the Snow Leopard myth, though: comparing the final battle-hardened bug-patched version of an OS, to a newly released version. Seems like “Snow Leopard” always gets trotted out whenever someone is unhappy with the latest release.

See also: Windows XP. Upon release it was a security/stability CF. Today there are retrocomputing forums dedicated primarily to it. What they are gazing rose-coloredly back on is likely Windows XP SP3, not how the OS was upon its release.

Because it was followed by garbage that didn't get taken out until 7, which was soon after followed by permanent forced garbage.

Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#66

Post by galad87 »

kenferry wrote: post #58
LegNeato wrote: post #40

Oh, this again. I should put a website with this up... I was the person who personally ran 10.6 security updates at Apple (10.6.1+), the "DRI". My team in the Updates Program office and I reviewed every single bug to determine if it should go in a security and stability update or wait for the next major version. Seriously, every morning we group triaged all Mac OS X bugs, both incoming and those nominated internally…

I was there too, but this blog post agrees with my memory. I agree with you that Snow Leopard was billed as no USER VISIBLE features. But people did NOT just fix niggling bugs, it was an architecturally huge release. E.g., it introduced GCD. And unless I’m confusing the year, it rewrote the Mail backend to use it and mail hasn’t had reliable search since. My memory is that quality was so low that we pushed back the r…

Snow Leopard shipped a new 64-bit Cocoa Finder too, but no one noticed because it was almost a pixel perfect and behaviour perfect copy of the previous one.

Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#68

Post by darkwater »

bitwize wrote: post #48
snowwrestler wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but it’s also true of many other OS X and MacOS releases over the years. You’ve definitely hit on the core of the issue with the Snow Leopard myth, though: comparing the final battle-hardened bug-patched version of an OS, to a newly released version. Seems like “Snow Leopard” always gets trotted out whenever someone is unhappy with the latest release.

See also: Windows XP. Upon release it was a security/stability CF. Today there are retrocomputing forums dedicated primarily to it. What they are gazing rose-coloredly back on is likely Windows XP SP3, not how the OS was upon its release.

Indeed. Just like OSX 10.6.8, Windows XP SP2 was the version that made Windows XP actually stable, and then SP3 added on top of that. But initial Windows XP (not even SP1) sucked big times indeed. Although not like Windows Millennium :)

Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#69

Post by steve1977 »

giantrobot wrote: post #52
LegNeato wrote: post #40

Oh, this again. I should put a website with this up... I was the person who personally ran 10.6 security updates at Apple (10.6.1+), the "DRI". My team in the Updates Program office and I reviewed every single bug to determine if it should go in a security and stability update or wait for the next major version. Seriously, every morning we group triaged all Mac OS X bugs, both incoming and those nominated internally…

Yeah as someone else that worked on Snow Leopard I found this article and ones like it a bit silly. They're a lot like the old "debug code" posts on Mac forums back in the day trying to explain why Puma was slow (no, you've got a G3 and an unaccelerated video card). Tiger and Leopard were sprawling releases. Tiger covered 32-bit and 64-bit PowerPC, then 32-bit x86, then 64-bit x86 Macs. Tiger was also what I guess I'…

iOS killed the macOS star...

Re: The myth of Snow Leopard

#70

Post by jtfrench »

Snow Leopard _did_ focus on stability. It wasn't just marketing. Did new bugs (and even new features) slip in? Yes, of course. It's still an OS made by humans, making imperfect cost-benefit calculations on how to mitigate risk while providing increased value to the end user.

So to say that some people weren't happy with all iterations of Snow Leopard is par for the course for just about any OS or even software release, and IMO doesn't really change the ethos of Snow Leopard.

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