Very very nice. Here’s a quick list of random observations
I did a clean install of the 10A380 beta build on a 16Gb USB key, testing on a 15" MacBook Pro so the overall performance is pretty sucky, but that’s an issue with the key’s performance rather than the actual OS or the machine.
**First impressions:**The install process is pretty much unchanged from Leopard as far as I could tell, with some nice little touches like identifying immediately that the key did not use GUID style partitions so I needed to fix that before installing.
Once into the OS, I noticed a little alert icon on the battery and it was advising me that my battery probably need to be replaced which is very true and has been on my to do list for a couple of months as the retained charge is way down.
The usual post-install grind where mdworker/Spotlight index the entire hard drive (which is kind of painful on a USB key).
Mail/ExchangeThe Exchange integration is flawless. I plugged in my name, address and password and it automatically found the proper Exchange server, complained about our unsigned certificates (normal) and offered the choice of integrating the Address Book and iCal. Some nice updated integrated shortcuts: Command-Shift-Backspace for purging deleted messages in all accounts for example. I did have some issues with the fact that the internal and external servers names for my office account aren’t the same and I had to fall back onto a VPN connection to access Exchange, but that’s not a huge problem.
IMAP Servers are just as easy, and less knowledgeable intervention is required, with SSL being the preferred connection, falling back to unsecured if it’s not available.
Screen saver securityAnother nice little touch - you can now specify the amount of time after the screen saver starts before it requires you to enter your password. Just a useful little feature so that you can quickly stop the screen saver within a reasonable amount of time before requiring the password.
FirewallStill off by default - bad Apple.
DockThe Exposé integrated dock functions don’t seem to be working for me and I haven’t found an option to activate/disable the feature. Click and hold gives the usual pop up menu with a list of windows.
MobileMeSubtle little encouragement to sign up for MobileMe: There is an iDisk icon in the dock and clicking on it asks you if you want to configure MobileMe, taking you to the Control Panel.
TerminalNew default font! Alas, monaco, we knew ye well.That’s going to take some getting used to :-) Us old timers are pretty used to Monaco.
64bit (almost) all the timePretty complete coverage with Intel 64-bit being the standard for just about everything that comes with the OS. Still mulling over the kerneltask entry that is just plain old Intel though.
General notesPreviews and stuff are definitely much snappier. The new Stacks navigation is pretty and effective.
It looks like the current Preferences Application has changed a bit and (currently) refuses to load third party (or perhaps it’s because they’re 32bit) PrefPanes which currently means no iSCSI for me. You definitely notice that some applications launch at astounding speeds, Activity Monitor being one that stood out, especially since I’m running off a USB key. No bounces and the screen full of info appears practically immediately.
Some little logical design changes. The Directory Utility is no more. The user directory authentication component used for linking to Active Directory and LDAP servers is now a part of the Accounts Control Panel. The NFS mounts have migrated to a menu item in the Disk Utility which is better than the Directory Utility, but still not ideal since we’re talking about network shares rather than disks. Why don’t we have a simple NFS utility?
Overall, the whole environment feels faster (which was part of the point), but it’s extremely IO bound. Running on the USB key with it’s very slow IO highlights a lot of Just In Time disk fetch operations. I can really see this screaming on an SSD (anyone feel like lending me one to test?)
Not a trace of ZFS or iSCSI natively anywhere that I could find.
NFS performance is significantly better - when I browse big directory listings via NFS over Wifi it’s almost like a local hard drive. Really really nice. Streaming 1080p is still a little hard on it, but most of that is an issue with the lack of local graphics horsepower and the fact that I have to scale down the raw source which is bigger than my physical screen resolution.
Perfect integration with External/Portable accounts let me log into my existing accounts, although this has confused MobileMe synchronization since it appears that the interchange formats for iCal and Address Book have changed.
Overall a solid A. If I had native iSCSI and ZFS, that would boost it to an A+, but a very stable beta release. Looking forward to september!