I’ve had Snow Leopard for about a week, and there’s a few things I’ve noticed with Apple’s recent operating system.
First, there’s a slight focus on security. Outside of the introduced malware scanner in Snow Leopard, removing files from the trash has become more security. The default has been changed to secure delete, a feature in Leopard, but was optional. It’s almost as if Apple is trying to stay a step ahead of the game for a looming attack or marketing towards business use. The downfall, deleting a large amount of files now takes a ridiculous amount of time.
The next change with Snow Leopard relates to my interactions with it. I find myself the Finder more often instead of opening applications. With the new thumbnail abilities and an improved Quick Look, I find myself not having to open applications as often to determine what I may or may not need.
Snow Leopard did not change a lot on the surface. All of my old programs work as anticipated and there are plenty of improvements, but I’ve not used half of them. This is not to say they aren’t welcomed, but Snow Leopard is clearly the groundwork for something’s to come.
Google’s Chrome is an excellent web browser; it is fast with a clean and simple interface. For the past month I’ve been using Chrome as my default web browser to compare its performance to Firefox (my regular browser). Chrome has some bugs still left to shake out (it is a browser in development) but very polished which is more than I expected. Chrome handles JavaScript faster than Firefox, although with bugs are seen heavily with some JavaScript intensive applications (such as Plurk). Comparing system memory and resources, I have some mixed results, compared to the current release of Firefox (3.0) Chrome uses slightly less system resources, although the upcoming version of Firefox (3.1) appears to change that fact. The real difference between the two browsers when comparing memory and system use is Chrome’s multi-processes architecture, a feature I expect (and hope) Firefox will adopt in the future.
While I enjoy using Chrome, I keep coming back to Firefox, although many of Chrome’s features are very innovate (some you can mimic through extensions). There are a few issues I have with Chrome such as: weak support for RSS integration (such as Firefox’s Live Bookmarks), non-keyword bookmarking and lack of a bookmark export, poor support with streaming Windows Media Files (a symptom Firefox suffers from occasionally, not nearly as bad as Chrome) and its lack of add-on and extensions (although they are planned).
Chrome pushes a lot of innovative advances to the web browser it lags slightly behind Firefox as the browser to use (no one should be using IE). However, Chrome is still in development and very young compared to Firefox. If the current development is any indication of what is to come, Chrome may and should take over as a dominant browser (provided Firefox remains stagnant).
