I installed the early version of Snow Leopard Apple gave out to developers attending their WWDC event last week (build 10A380) on my 2007 MacBook Pro (the 15-inch 2.16 GHz model with 3GB of RAM). This version is not the final release that will hit shelves this September, but it's got some (not all) of the enhancements Apple showed off at the WWDC. If you're thinking about hitting the torrent and trying out Snow Leopard for yourself to see what it's all about, let me save you the trouble.

Startup and Shutdown Speeds

First, Apple promises that Snow Leopard will wake from sleep, join Wi-Fi networks, and shutdown faster than plain old Leopard. While it's difficult to accurately test wakeups and network connections, I timed startup and shutdown on my MacBook Pro in both Leopard and Snow Leopard. Turns out Snow Leopard is indeed faster even on my old hardware.

While shutdown sped up by almost 66%, cold boots only sped up by 13%. Here are the numbers.

Operating System Average Time to Boot Up Average Time to Shutdown Leopard 10.5.7 52 seconds 29 seconds Snow Leopard

(Developer Preview, Build 10A380, WWDC edition) 45 seconds 10 seconds

These numbers are an average of about half a dozen restarts I timed using very unscientific means: a kitchen timer. Since my MBP has several programs planted in startup and I just wanted to test Snow Leopard, these times measure from the time the machine is off to the login screen only.

System Footprint

Apple also claims that Snow Leopard's footprint is so much smaller than Leopard's that you'll save 6GB of disk space. Granted, I upgraded Snow Leopard over my existing Leopard setup (instead of a clean installation), but I did not save that much disk space.

Running Leopard, my Mac's /System/ directory weighed in at 4.4GB, the /Library/ directory was 6.99GB, and the /Applications/ directory was 6.99GB. After the Snow Leopard upgrade, /System/ shrunk just a bit to 4.3GB, /Library/ shed the most bulk and slimmed down to 4.73GB, and interestingly, the /Applications/ contracted to 6.75GB.

While Apple promised 6GB of recovered disk space after upgrading to Snow Leopard, in total I only gained 2.6GB.

Finder Tweaks

Apple's boasts that Finder was "totally rewritten" in Snow Leopard—which is great for developers who want to take advantage of the new code base, but meaningless to the end user who sees the same old Finder. The lack of Finder revamp is what disappointed me the most about Snow Leopard; but hopefully now that it's "totally rewritten" the stage is set for a better file browser. (Finder tabs, please?)

That said, there are a few little new things you can do in Finder: notably, get huge file icons, play video, and page through PDF's without opening a new app. Hit the play button on this short screencast to see that in action.

UPDATE: Unfortunately Apple requested that YouTube remove our Snow Leopard videos, so if you missed the videos, our apologies.

Stacks Scrolling and Browsing

Fans of Leopard's Stacks feature will like the enhanced Stacks in Snow Leopard.

You can now scroll through Stacks that contain lots of items, and browse to subfolders within Stacks. Not sure if you could do this before in Leopard, but you can also hop to items in Stacks by typing the first letter of the name. (For example, when I've got the Applications Stack extended, tapping the U key selects the Utilities folder.) Hit play on the screencast here to see this in action.

New Menu Bar Niceties Render Third-Party Software and Hacks Unnecessary

Snow Leopard doesn't have many huge! exciting! features, but a few checkboxes and controls around the menu bar and in System Preferences will make the power Mac customizer happy.

Roaming Mac users will love the new addition to the Airport drop-down menu: signal strength indicators for every network around you. This way you can choose to connect to the network with the strongest signal. Haven't confirmed this yet, but from my tests it looks like Snow Leopard's Airport menu even shows Wi-Fi networks that are not broadcasting their SSID.

Used to be you'd have to muck around with international date formats just to get today's date on the menu bar. That's no longer the case in Snow Leopard. While it's not on by default, in System Preferences, Date & Time, Clock, you can check off "Show date" to see the date on your menu bar.

My MacBook's battery has been having problems, and I know that because it cuts out before I get the low battery warning. Leopard never alerted me about it, but Snow Leopard is smart—it displays a "Check Battery" indicator in the menu bar. If you click it, it pops a Help item basically telling me to have the machine checked out, because I might need a new battery (which I probably do). Points to Snow Leopard for being communicative about this.

QuickTime 10 Video Recording and Editing

QuickTime 10 is venturing into iMovie's territory with built-in video editing and even recording. While the version of QuickTime in the Snow Leopard preview doesn't appear to be the final version—it's not sporting that swanky new icon, anyway—recording, editing, and publishing video to YouTube is working (mostly).

Hit the play button to see how QuickTime 10 can record from your iSight or from the screen itself. (Screencasters, rejoice!) Note that while the "Share on YouTube" button is there, when I tried it out it hung on a "Processing video" pop-up endlessly. I wound up shooting these 'casts using Jing instead.

You can also cut down a video to its best parts using QuickTime's new trimming feature. Hit the play button here to see an adorable puppy get a good edit in QuickTime 10.

Exposé on the Dock

After risking the stability of my Mac in the name of previewing Snow Leopard, the biggest disappointment was that the new Exposé Dock integration is not yet enabled (on this build, anyway). Exposé on the Dock is Cupertino's response to Windows 7's new Aero Peek features, so I was anxious to screencast it. Alas. To see it in action, check out the demonstration from the WWDC keynote. (And don't do what I did and install the version of Snow Leopard from WWDC just to see this; you'll be disappointed.)

Phew! We didn't even get to Microsoft Exchange support and Safari 4, but as you can see Snow Leopard does pack several nice-to-haves that will make your time and $30 well worth it. (Thanks to the author of this article for helping me out with my Snow Leopard install from a FireWire drive.)

What snowflakes are you most excited about falling on your Mac this September? Let us know in the comments.

Gina Trapani, Lifehacker's founding editor, thinks 30 bucks for Snow Leopard is a bargain. Her weekly feature, Smarterware, appears every Wednesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Smarterware tag feed to get new installments in your newsreader.