So, I was able to convince a friend of mine to let me try out his developer copy of 10.6 (Snow Leopard). After fooling around on it for awhile I decided I should write about my findings. However, being a developer copy, there really wasn’t much that stood out. There is one difference however, this version comes with 64bit optimized versions of the core OS X apps. So I took it upon myself to do some benchmarking. (Note: take all of the following with a grain of salt. Many features that are expected to be in the final version are absent in this version)

Benchmarks were executed on a 20″ iMac with a C2D @2.4GHz W/2GB RAM.

The Hard Numbers: OS X 10.6

• Safari Launch to News.com – 2.96 Seconds* (1.75 Cached**)
• Safari Launch to Amazon.com – 5.46 Seconds* (4.26 Cached**)
• Safari Launch to Digg.com – 4.06 Seconds* (3.82Cached**)

• 12.1MB jpg display – 6.54 Seconds (3.42 Cached**) Read the rest of this entry »