I have been going over the details of this release and found a few interesting points I wanted to share.
Gamma 2.2.
The default gamma has been changed from 1.8 to 2.2 to better serve the color needs of digital content producers and consumers.
^ This has been a KEY DIFFERENCE in PC/MACs forever and ties into everything relating to color accuracy (video, images, etc). Making it the same as Windows makes a lot of sense.
HFS+ read support in Boot Camp.
Boot Camp now includes HFS+ read support that enables you to access the files on your Mac OS X partition from Windows. It’s read-only to prevent PC viruses from affecting Mac OS X, but you can easily save your work to your Windows partition and access it later from Mac OS X.
Faster shutdown and
wake-up.
Snow Leopard is up to 80 percent faster when shutting down and up to twice as fast when waking from sleep with screen locking enabled.
Larger icon sizes.
To see your files clearly in the Finder, you can use a slider to adjust the size of the icon previews up to 512 by 512 pixels, four times their maximum resolution in Leopard.
Cisco VPN.
Snow Leopard includes native support for Cisco IPsec VPN connections.
More reliable iChat connectivity.
Snow Leopard includes technology to address some of the most common router incompatibilities when video chatting with iChat. If iChat can’t make a direct connection to a buddy, it uses the AIM relay server, which acts as a known intermediary between computers.
High-resolution iChat Theater.
iChat can now display iChat Theater content at higher resolution — up to 640 by 480 pixels, or four times the maximum resolution in Mac OS X Leopard.
Two-thirds less bandwidth required.
iChat requires only one-third the upstream bandwidth to deliver near DVD-quality, 640-by-480-resolution video chats. Leopard requires 900-Kbps upstream bandwidth; Snow Leopard requires just 300 Kbps.
Quick Look capable.
When a buddy sends you a file in iChat, you can instantly preview it with Quick Look.
Visual chapters.
Instead of text-only chapter names, QuickTime Player displays frame-based thumbnail images for each chapter marker, allowing you to easily navigate your chaptered media.
Share your media across
your devices.
QuickTime Player converts your media files for use by iTunes and your iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV, using the optimal settings for each destination. After conversion, QuickTime Player automatically delivers the content to your iTunes library.
Record your screen.
Catch the action taking place on your screen with screen recording. Start recording and QuickTime Player captures the activity on your screen and creates a movie file. It’s perfect for creating instructional media or when you need more than a simple screen shot.
Greater color accuracy.
QuickTime X takes advantage of the proven capabilities of ColorSync to color-manage your media. Modern media files are color-managed to your display for the best playback experience and when shared to your iPhone, iPod, or Apple TV.
Digital Asset Exchange support.
Collada Digital Asset Exchange (.dae) files are a popular way to share 3D models and scenes between applications. Preview now displays these files with OpenGL-powered 3D graphics, so you can zoom and rotate around a 3D scene and play viewpoint animations. You can also print the scene or save it as an image or movie file. And you can use Quick Look to display them as well.
Higher-quality image scaling.
The Adjust Image Size command in Preview uses the advanced Lanczos interpolation algorithm to provide higher-quality scaling with fewer blurry artifacts compared with traditional interpolation methods.
Soft Proof with Profile.
Preview makes it easy to see what your images will look like when printed, on the web, or even on a printing press. Using readily available color profiles, Preview applies an on-the-fly color simulation, enabling you to quickly and easily soft-proof large numbers of images.
Jump around web pages
with web spots.
The patented web spot technology lets you jump directly to important parts of a web page. Mac OS X interprets complex visual page designs and identifies the most important parts of the page. It also provides a way to go directly to the web spot without having to traverse other elements of the page.
New flight data detector.
Data detectors now automatically identify flight numbers in email messages and text documents and take you directly to the Dashboard Flight Tracker widget to get up-to-date flight information.
Faster, more
reliable installer.
The installation process is up to 50 percent faster5 and more reliable than ever. It checks all your applications and sets aside programs known to be incompatible. And in case a power outage interrupts your installation, it can start again without any danger to your data.
Smaller footprint.
Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing about 7GB for you — enough for about 1,750 more songs6 or a few thousand more photos.
Open CL supported video cards.
NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS, Geforce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870.
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