Product spotlight: Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Jason Hiner: Hey everybody, this is Jason Hiner of TechRepublic, and today I'm going to share my thoughts on Snow Leopard, the latest upgrade to Mac OS X, from a business perspective. We'll talk about the pros and cons of Snow Leopard and what it means for IT. Stick around.

 

The most interesting thing about computer operating systems in 2009 is that they are going on a diet. We see this both in Snow Leopard for Mac and in Windows 7.

 

In the past, operating system upgrades had a huge list of new features and interface changes. That's NOT the case with either of these upgrades, both of which are more about slimming down bloated code and tuning up the software engine under the hood.

 

In the case of Mac OS X, there are a lot of underlying architecture changes aimed at future developments in software, especially multimedia, multi-core processors, and 64-bit platform issues. That makes a little tough to do a interesting review but there are still some things we should talk about.

 

However, one of the things we won't talk about is application incompatibilities, which are part of every operating system upgrade and Snow Leopard doesn't seem to have any more or less than usual.

 

So let's take a quick look at the pros and cons of Snow Leopard from an IT perspective. First, let's start with the positives:

 

1. Performance boost -- All of the tinkering that Apple developers did under the hood provides noticeable speed increases in startups, shutdowns, opening files and Web pages, JavaScript applications, and more. Macworld ran a battery of 16 speed tests in their lab and found that eight of them were faster in Snow Leopard.

 

2. Clean installs -- IT pros tend not to like in-place operating system upgrades because they often lead to later software problems. They'd prefer to just backup the data and then do a fresh install of the new OS. This is standard practice in the Windows world, and now the Snow Leopard installation disc allows you to do the same thing for the first time in Mac OS X.

 

3. Cisco VPN client -- Due to a deal with Cisco, Snow Leopard now comes with the popular Cisco VPN client built in.

 

4. Exchange support -- Perhaps the most talked about new feature in Snow Leopard is its native support for Microsoft Exchange, which allows a user to integrate their Exchange data into the Mac's Mail, iCal, and Address Book applications.

Now for the drawbacks:

1. Only supports Exchange 2007 -- While having Exchange support out-of-the-box is a great feature, the big problem is that it's limited to Exchange 2007, and it's safe to say that far less than 50% of Exchange installations are running the latest version. As a result, a bigger impact on Exchange integration could come during the second half of 2010 when Microsoft brings Outlook to the Mac for the first time.

 

2. Virtualization is AWOL -- As Jason Perlow commented on ZDNet, one of the big things that's missing from Snow Leopard is integrated virtualization software. Virtualization is a big part of the future of operating systems, and for a software release that is so future-oriented, Snow Leopard's lack of virtualization awareness is a glaring omission.

 

3. Lack of business software -- The biggest thing keeping Snow Leopard and Macs in general out of the enterprise is still the lack of business software. With more apps migrating to the Web browser as their front-end, that will change in the coming years. But in the meantime, even many IT departments impressed by Mac OS X will not be able to consider it for everyday enterprise use.

 

I'm Jason Hiner, and this has been a quick look at Mac OS X Snow Leopard. For more, you can find my blog at hiner.techrepublic.com and you can find me on Twitter at twitter.com/jasonhiner. Thanks for watching. See you next time.