Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) Due in Q1 2009?

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/11/18/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-10-6-due-in-q1-2009/)

Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard spoke at LISA '08 (http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa08/tech/) last week. LISA (or Large Installation System Administration Conference) is a technical conference targeted at engineers and system administrators. This year's conference invited (http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa08/tech/) Apple's Jordan Hubbard to speak about the evolution of Mac OS X from large servers to embedded platforms. While technical readers may find the content of Hubbard's presentation slides (PDF) (http://www.usenix.org/events/lisa08/tech/hubbard_talk.pdf) quite interesting, the most surprising revelation is a more specific target date for Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): 1st Quarter 2009.


http://images.macrumors.com/article/2008/11/18/233750-snowleop.jpg

When Apple first previewed (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/06/09snowleopard.html) Snow Leopard at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2008, they simply stated that Snow Leopard would ship "in about a year" from the announcement.

Apple has said that they would be focusing on both quality and performance in Snow Leopard. In particular, Apple has made it clear that there will be efforts to improve support for multi-core processors and GPU processing. These improvements will help developers more efficiently use these capabilities that already ship in Macs.



Article Link: Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) Due in Q1 2009? (http://www.macrumors.com/2008/11/18/mac-os-x-snow-leopard-10-6-due-in-q1-2009/)

[AlexH]

Interesting. Snow Leopard @ MacWorld? I'm game. Probably won't be that soon, but I can dream can't I?

[jaw04005]

I guess we know now what the focus of MacWorld Expo is giong to be. I predict a March ship date.

[pismodude2]

Looks like they don't release things on leap years... Wonder why?

[Blue Velvet]

It's a MacRumors tradition that we see the absolute worst in every rumor, so before anyone else gets there...

It may not be cheap. It may not run on PPC processor machines. Like Leopard, it might be fragile on release. It may mess with your apps and your setup, it may be disappointing to many and it may just be late.

OK, we've got that out of the way. ;)

[h.21]

It's more likely that this guy just got his facts wrong. I would hope that if he WAS privy to inside information, like the dev schedule of OS X, he would be a bit more discerning regarding what he put out there in the public for everyone to see.

Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see 10.6 released Q1 '09.

[kaiwai]

I doubt it'll be Q1 of 2009 - there is still a tonne of stuff that needs be added - the latest build of it was not feature complete, so I doubt they'll push out another release before Christmas and start pushing the RTM out to the cd stampers in February to aim for the end of the quarter. I have a feeling it will be 'finished' then but won't be released until after. As with any software company, there is a release date and a revenue release date.

[LanPhantom]

Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom

[dagamer34]

Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom

Far from it. Apple has decided that adding OS level features at the same time as adding major UI features is the fastest way to a trainwreck of an operating system and is taking it one step at a time.

Besides, I think that increased performance and that oh so wonderful Exchange support are more than enough for me. I'd like to ditch Entourage like a hot potato!

[nacengineer]

Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom

Actually that's inaccurate as M$ is pretty much doing the same thing with Windows 7. Its unfair to say what you said IMHO. And I have 4 Macs BTW so yeah I'm an OS X fanboy.

[twoodcc]

wow, now this would be great. i would love to see snow leopard at macword. at least we should here more about it then

[LanPhantom]

Originally Posted by LanPhantom
Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom

Far from it. Apple has decided that adding OS level features at the same time as adding major UI features is the fastest way to a trainwreck of an operating system and is taking it one step at a time.

Besides, I think that increased performance and that oh so wonderful Exchange support are more than enough for me. I'd like to ditch Entourage like a hot potato!

Not quite sure I follow youre "Far from it." statement.

Basically what I'm trying to say is our friends in the North seem to release OS's that are radically different than the previous ones causing massive confusion and adoption issues. Apple on the other hand (at least on this release) will be shipping something that SHOULD be transparent from a UI perspective and just RIP on current boxes.

[Eidorian]

That's a bit sooner then I expected.

[kinless]

Is it just me or does one of the presentation slides in the PDF (File Quarantine section) have an example claiming to download a malicious file from macrumors.com?

[LanPhantom]

Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom

Actually that's inaccurate as M$ is pretty much doing the same thing with Windows 7. Its unfair to say what you said IMHO. And I have 4 Macs BTW so yeah I'm an OS X fanboy.

Hahahha, how long have you been working with Windows PC's? Obviously not that long. It appears that Windows 7 will be similar to Windows Vista (according to pre-release Alpha version screen shots) but I bet big money on it that M$ will not have a leaner, more capable OS that resembles Vista (from a UI perspective).

And with all the new features M$ is claiming to be adding to Windows 7 as far as gestures, etc I would imagine that it's going to once again require more robust hardware or at a MINIMUM a compatible video card. Although we may get lucky and M$ could detect that we have legacy PC's and give us just an OS that "looks and performs" like Vista for the price of Win7.

We'll just have to wait and see 2Q 2010. Right after Apple release's it's 10.7 version of OS X "Melanistic Leopard"

LanPhantom

[mathcolo]

Looks like they don't release things on leap years... Wonder why?

Maybe Steve Jobs had some bad experiences? :P

[avigalante]

Perhaps the sheer dedication of resources to Snow Leopard for a Q109 release is the reason why other projects have been put-off/delayed (iPhone push-notification, in-ear headphones, 120GB-HDD MacBook Air, etc)... it certainly raises the question.

[MattJessop]

In theory this makes perfect sense, as Snow Leopard has very few new features, its mainly optimising the code, and streamlining OS X 10.5 features so that the OS as a whole has a smaller foot print and runs tighter, compacter and faster. If you make the OS more efficient and stable, apps now have a more consistent code base to pull from, and have less margin for error. Not to say Apple can't mess it up, they easily could. But after adding so many features year after year, its nice to have them rounding it off. Snow Leopard could easily be the least justifiable upgrade they've ever made, but by far the most needed one. They might not get much publicity over it, but it'd be their best move yet.

[fleshman03]

I doubt it'll be Q1 of 2009 - there is still a tonne of stuff that needs be added - the latest build of it was not feature complete, so I doubt they'll push out another release before Christmas and start pushing the RTM out to the cd stampers in February to aim for the end of the quarter. I have a feeling it will be 'finished' then but won't be released until after. As with any software company, there is a release date and a revenue release date.


I have a funny feeling that March 09 is pretty much on target. I'm sure Apple was working on this long before they mentioned it. (See Prototype MBA running tiger.)

As for builds being complete, I don't think Apple shows the Devs everything. Just a gut feeling. Wouldn't it make sense to just include the things needed to ensure smooth running of Apps? Esp. from Apple.

[sfh]

When is wwdc? That would make more sense

[JeffTL]

I doubt we'll see Snow Leopard be as big an upgrade phenomenon as the last couple updates unless there is more to it than we've heard. So far it sounds more like something that will mostly be cost-effective in terms of adding value to new computers.

[xrayzed]

This is much sooner than I expected. Now if they release a new iMac around the same time I'll finally be able to complete my PC-to-Mac conversion.

2009 is looking like a good year.

[SnowLeopard2008]

I'll wait until the MBs are refreshed and then maybe I'll upgrade.

[ImAlwaysRight]

Man, I just installed 10.5 a month ago. Pffft.

[kaiwai]

In theory this makes perfect sense, as Snow Leopard has very few new features, its mainly optimising the code, and streamlining OS X 10.5 features so that the OS as a whole has a smaller foot print and runs tighter, compacter and faster. If you make the OS more efficient and stable, apps now have a more consistent code base to pull from, and have less margin for error. Not to say Apple can't mess it up, they easily could. But after adding so many features year after year, its nice to have them rounding it off. Snow Leopard could easily be the least justifiable upgrade they've ever made, but by far the most needed one. They might not get much publicity over it, but it'd be their best move yet.

Apple never said they weren't going to add any features, they said that their focus was not going to be about boasting over user visible features. OpenCL - what do you call that? a feature? of course its a feature!

Whether they're adding features, changing things around or what have you, it'll still require massive checking to ensure no/minimal regressions.

[grue]

I haven't seen a load of crap this big since Biff got covered in Back To The Future

[Michael CM1]

I don't think I've even had Leopard for a year. This seems a bit rushed to me, but maybe the "Snow Leopard" name means it'll be a major yet not major upgrade. I understand the need for utilizing multi-core processors, but that's about the only big improvement I have heard of. Nothing else really landmark like Time Machine.

[arn]

Is it just me or does one of the presentation slides in the PDF (File Quarantine section) have an example claiming to download a malicious file from macrumors.com?

Ya, a malicious file was posted to the forums in 2006: http://www.macrumors.com/2006/02/16/the-first-mac-os-x-virus-a-new-os-x-trojan/

Events like that triggered the whole Quarantine thing.

arn

[kaiwai]

I have a funny feeling that March 09 is pretty much on target. I'm sure Apple was working on this long before they mentioned it. (See Prototype MBA running tiger.)

As for builds being complete, I don't think Apple shows the Devs everything. Just a gut feeling. Wouldn't it make sense to just include the things needed to ensure smooth running of Apps? Esp. from Apple.

Again, do you even READ what I said? for them to ship it by the end of the quarter they have to at least the code complete by January; you're saying to me that they can get it adequately tested in under two months? really?

[todd2000]

streamlining OS X 10.5 features so that the OS as a whole has a smaller foot print and runs tighter, compacter and faster.

Did you say "Compacter" :confused::D

Anyway I can't wait for Snow Leopard, maybe it will fix the graphics bug I have with Leopard.

[AlexH]

It's a MacRumors tradition that we see the absolute worst in every rumor, so before anyone else gets there...

It may not be cheap. It may not run on PPC processor machines. Like Leopard, it might be fragile on release. It may mess with your apps and your setup, it may be disappointing to many and it may just be late.

OK, we've got that out of the way. ;)
Most likely, it will have some snags when released, possibly a major issue or two. I never use OS X 10.X.0 because of bugs, but Apple usually addresses those bugs rather quickly. The sooner 10.6 ships, the quicker we'll get to 10.6.1 and a really cool OS with some nice upgrades under the hood.

[Eidorian]

Ya, a malicious file was posted to the forums in 2006: http://www.macrumors.com/2006/02/16/the-first-mac-os-x-virus-a-new-os-x-trojan/

Events like that triggered the whole Quarantine thing.

arnThose were the days...

[Chundles]

Those were the days...

Ahhh I remember that one. For some reason I just decided not to download the file. Anything else I would've snapped up but this one just went sailing past.

[Soba]

It's more likely that this guy just got his facts wrong. I would hope that if he WAS privy to inside information, like the dev schedule of OS X, he would be a bit more discerning regarding what he put out there in the public for everyone to see.

Jordan is a pretty high-up engineer at Apple, and judging from his job title, is in charge of everything Unix-y in OS X, which is a lot of responsibility. He was one of the guys who started the FreeBSD project in 1993 and is highly skilled, so if anybody would have inside info about the development cycle, it's him.

Having said that, I agree that it's odd he would let this slip out in a public presentation. LISA is not an Apple conference and thus is not governed by NDA, so he knew this would be publicized. Either this was a deliberate but fairly quiet pre-announcement, or he was in a rush and didn't edit his slides carefully enough. The latter strikes me as uncharacteristically sloppy, so I'm leaning towards the former.

Either way, I'm curious. That's quite a bit sooner than I expected, and I hope Snow Leopard ships when it's ready and not before. 10.5 still has some outstanding bugs and I wish they would get it right. Here's hoping for 10.5.6...

[ivladster]

Well if we see any new computer at MacWorld, perhaps a tablet. It has to run new OS that will be very light. Snow Leopard could be it.

Steve could announce Tablet in january and say its shipping in April with Snow Leopard. This can be very good year for Apple. (again)

[m1stake]

The unofficial slogan of many businesses is "under promise, over deliver." Remember how Leopard got delayed? And then delayed again? That was over promising and under delivering. Not something you want to do.

If it ships earlier than the projected "year from now," we'll all be happy that it shipped early, instead of just pleased that they met their own deadline.

[philbeeney]

Is it just me or does one of the presentation slides in the PDF (File Quarantine section) have an example claiming to download a malicious file from macrumors.com?

Yeah, I spotted that as well. There must be an in-house joke or something going on.

[Blue Velvet]

Either this was a deliberate but fairly quiet pre-announcement, or he was in a rush and didn't edit his slides carefully enough. The latter strikes me as uncharacteristically sloppy, so I'm leaning towards the former.

I completely agree with this line of thinking. Apple tend not to be sloppy with information about upcoming releases. Maybe with the release of this news, they hope we'll all forget about the glossy whatnots and firewire disappointments and start to love them all over again. Pre-emptive love-bombing to soften us up. Next up: juicy Mac Pro rumors. ;)

[Eric S.]

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Adokimus]

If the promises hold true... can't wait to dual-boot me some snow leopard and win7.



yum.

[MacRumors0108]

My pet theory (based on nothing but sheer unmitigated optimism) is that Snow Leopard will be released concurrently with the Nehalem chips which could make Q1 2009 a possibility. This coupled with a Blu Ray drive puts a shiny new MBP on my lap sometime in 2009. :D

Cheers

[fleshman03]

Again, do you even READ what I said? for them to ship it by the end of the quarter they have to at least the code complete by January; you're saying to me that they can get it adequately tested in under two months? really?

And what are the seeds for? Are they not adequately testing as building?

I'm in the Information Science Field and one of the pillars we live by is to step back as you build and look. Then you know what needs to be strengthen and what is already.

I did read and I posted. Your turn. :D

[arn]

Jordan is a pretty high-up engineer at Apple, and judging from his job title, is in charge of everything Unix-y in OS X, which is a lot of responsibility. He was one of the guys who started the FreeBSD project in 1993 and is highly skilled, so if anybody would have inside info about the development cycle, it's him.

Having said that, I agree that it's odd he would let this slip out in a public presentation. LISA is not an Apple conference and thus is not governed by NDA, so he knew this would be publicized. Either this was a deliberate but fairly quiet pre-announcement, or he was in a rush and didn't edit his slides carefully enough. The latter strikes me as uncharacteristically sloppy, so I'm leaning towards the former.


Agreed, he would be in a position to know. Interestingly he was very specific in a later slide that Intel information was based on publicly published information so as not to generate speculation

[Eidorian]

Agreed, he would be in a position to know. Interestingly he was very specific in a later slide that Intel information was based on publicly published information so as not to generate speculationThat's some pretty safe information to post there. 8 cores today? Maybe if you have a workstation.

This is a high end presentation though.

[kajitox]

Can someone please tell me what, as a regular run of the mill user such as most of my friends and family will get from Snow Leopard?

Everyone always says "faster" and "more secure," but as far as I can tell Leopard is fast...and secure?

Anyone have /details/ about it?

[mdntcallr]

I am looking forward to the update, but my question is will it be free or a paid update?

honestly, I ain't sure it would be worth the money if you don't get more than some mobile me and other update.

also... i don't want to wait till 10.6 for proper Blu-Ray support. it is just a bad idea to block a vibrant new party of the home video market.

[nacengineer]

Hahahha, how long have you been working with Windows PC's? Obviously not that long. It appears that Windows 7 will be similar to Windows Vista (according to pre-release Alpha version screen shots) but I bet big money on it that M$ will not have a leaner, more capable OS that resembles Vista (from a UI perspective).

And with all the new features M$ is claiming to be adding to Windows 7 as far as gestures, etc I would imagine that it's going to once again require more robust hardware or at a MINIMUM a compatible video card. Although we may get lucky and M$ could detect that we have legacy PC's and give us just an OS that "looks and performs" like Vista for the price of Win7.

We'll just have to wait and see 2Q 2010. Right after Apple release's it's 10.7 version of OS X "Melanistic Leopard"

LanPhantom

re: how long I've been working with Windows... I'm a sys admin... I've been using it since 1990ish... the DOS days... and yes I DO know what I'm talking about... whether it be *nix, OS X, windows, Novell, etc...

And when you say Windows 7 will be similar to Vista... that was my point. And for the record the the PDC "Beta" builds run fine on Net PCs which do not fall into...

require more robust hardware

which is usually the Norm. . They demo'd it on a Net PC.

And FYI its a bad example to use anyway as Snow Leopard will abandon far more previous Macs than Win7 will abandon PCs... i.e. PPC and Core Solo (which regrettably are 2 of my Macs and they're just 2 years old)

It's one thing to say Macs are the greatest machines in the world. (which they are of course) but give credit where credit is due. This is win/win for computer users all around. Snow Leopard will be streamlined and so will Windows!

[m1stake]

Next up: juicy Mac Pro rumors. ;)

Yes! YES!

Also going to enjoy SL and W7. Maybe it'll be time for a new PC build as well...

[nacengineer]

Can someone please tell me what, as a regular run of the mill user such as most of my friends and family will get from Snow Leopard?

Everyone always says "faster" and "more secure," but as far as I can tell Leopard is fast...and secure?

Anyone have /details/ about it?

You'll get a leaner OS (fewer GB), Fully 64 bit system, Better Exchange support. This is pretty much geared for the enterprise and machines released within the past 2 years (Core 2 Duos only).

[grue]

Everyone always says "faster" and "more secure," but as far as I can tell Leopard is fast...and secure?

Leopard's about as fast as a fat girl running uphill in a snowstorm with a headwind, and buggier than Paris Hilton's panties.

[Peace]

Screenshots mean nothing when it comes to the inner workings of a sophisticated operating system.

Looks like the switch to Cocoa is going better than expected.

[gikku]

Interesting take on the future, Intel and/or Mobility;

"The future: Intel"
"8 core configs now common"
"12-16 cores become common"
"2015: one million cores"

then

"The future: Mobility"
"microdevices"

the purchase of PA Semi, ...

where's the netbook?

[macduke]

Isn't Apple's Q1 over in December? I know their quarter system is weird.

And if he wasn't referring to their own quarter, then that definitely means the end of March. Now just add on 2-3 months worth of delays and bam, June 2009. So where's the news here?

I can't wait to use the Geforce 8600 in my MBP for GPGPU processing and have it completely FAIL due to the faulty video cards that nVidia decided to ship.

[Winni]

This is pretty much geared for the enterprise...

In theory, yes. But that is only relevant when Apple opens OS X for non-Apple hardware, meaning: Regular PCs, as in Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Acer or Lenovo.

You will have a hard time finding corporations or large organizations that willingly enter a hardware-vendor-lock, especially when that vendor is more expensive than the competition, does not sell low-end office machines, has the general policy of not providing product road maps, has no enterprise-level support services worth mentioning and worst of all is not even compatible with legacy (Windows-based) applications out of the box.

On top of that, OS X is lacking a large amount of enterprise-level features, from deployment over administration to backup.

Try selling that to an IT department of a large organization. Good luck, you'll need it.

OS X was made for consumers, small sites and basically everything that has nothing to do with the enterprise. Its direct competition from Redmond was mainly made for exactly the other end of the spectrum: Large scale deployments in huge organizations. Places where nobody cares for design and beautiful user interfaces and where only enterprise-ready feature lists count.

You'll have more luck selling Linux in those places than OS X. For starters, Linux can be deployed on already existing hardware. And that closes the circle back to the statement that Apple needs to open OS X for third party hardware if they want to gain any significance in the enterprise market.


(Does this forum have a problem with Firefox?)

[The Hammer]

This is much sooner than I expected. Now if they release a new iMac around the same time I'll finally be able to complete my PC-to-Mac conversion.

2009 is looking like a good year.Amen! So will I.:D

[vansouza]

It's a MacRumors tradition that we see the absolute worst in every rumor, so before anyone else gets there...

It may not be cheap. It may not run on PPC processor machines. Like Leopard, it might be fragile on release. It may mess with your apps and your setup, it may be disappointing to many and it may just be late.

OK, we've got that out of the way. ;)

Got goosebumps... are you beta testing 10.6 for me? are you me? :eek:

[vansouza]

Jordan is a pretty high-up engineer at Apple, and judging from his job title, is in charge of everything Unix-y in OS X, which is a lot of responsibility. He was one of the guys who started the FreeBSD project in 1993 and is highly skilled, so if anybody would have inside info about the development cycle, it's him.

Having said that, I agree that it's odd he would let this slip out in a public presentation. LISA is not an Apple conference and thus is not governed by NDA, so he knew this would be publicized. Either this was a deliberate but fairly quiet pre-announcement, or he was in a rush and didn't edit his slides carefully enough. The latter strikes me as uncharacteristically sloppy, so I'm leaning towards the former.

Either way, I'm curious. That's quite a bit sooner than I expected, and I hope Snow Leopard ships when it's ready and not before. 10.5 still has some outstanding bugs and I wish they would get it right. Here's hoping for 10.5.6...

OK his name is Jordan, not Moses, so whatever he says can be adjusted or edited...

[Beric]

It's a MacRumors tradition that we see the absolute worst in every rumor, so before anyone else gets there...

It may not be cheap. It may not run on PPC processor machines. Like Leopard, it might be fragile on release. It may mess with your apps and your setup, it may be disappointing to many and it may just be late.

OK, we've got that out of the way. ;)

Heh, you got me. Within seconds of seeing the article, I was thinking all those exact things. ;)

[bizzaregood]

"" Q1 release would deliver it early than most had expected and makes it conceivable that we could see a demo or announcement at Macworld San Francisco 2009.""


early should = earlier

Am i mistaken ?

[TwinCities Dan]

Heh, you got me. Within seconds of seeing the article, I was thinking all those exact things. ;)

Then that was an excellently performed preemptive strike by Blue Velvet! :p

[Beric]

Then that was an excellently performed preemptive strike by Blue Velvet! :p

Yup. She read my mind. :p

[Detektiv-Pinky]

In theory, yes. But that is only relevant when Apple opens OS X for non-Apple hardware, meaning: Regular PCs, as in Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Acer or Lenovo.

You will have a hard time finding corporations or large organizations that willingly enter a hardware-vendor-lock, especially when that vendor is more expensive than the competition, does not sell low-end office machines, has the general policy of not providing product road maps, has no enterprise-level support services worth mentioning and worst of all is not even compatible with legacy (Windows-based) applications out of the box.

On top of that, OS X is lacking a large amount of enterprise-level features, from deployment over administration to backup.

Try selling that to an IT department of a large organization. Good luck, you'll need it.

OS X was made for consumers, small sites and basically everything that has nothing to do with the enterprise. Its direct competition from Redmond was mainly made for exactly the other end of the spectrum: Large scale deployments in huge organizations. Places where nobody cares for design and beautiful user interfaces and where only enterprise-ready feature lists count.

You'll have more luck selling Linux in those places than OS X. For starters, Linux can be deployed on already existing hardware. And that closes the circle back to the statement that Apple needs to open OS X for third party hardware if they want to gain any significance in the enterprise market.

Wow! I could not have said it better.
But what is the way forward? Growth in the consumer segment is limited (we will see this soon) and "opening up" brings it's own set of problems...
:(

[grue]

It may not run on PPC processor machines.

Xenu willing, it won't.

Hell, I'll pay extra for a 64bit Xeon-only optimized version that doesn't have the stupid time & resource wasting crap like the transitions between desktop and dashboard.

I just want speed, speed, badass speed.

[kaiwai]

Jordan is a pretty high-up engineer at Apple, and judging from his job title, is in charge of everything Unix-y in OS X, which is a lot of responsibility. He was one of the guys who started the FreeBSD project in 1993 and is highly skilled, so if anybody would have inside info about the development cycle, it's him.

Having said that, I agree that it's odd he would let this slip out in a public presentation. LISA is not an Apple conference and thus is not governed by NDA, so he knew this would be publicized. Either this was a deliberate but fairly quiet pre-announcement, or he was in a rush and didn't edit his slides carefully enough. The latter strikes me as uncharacteristically sloppy, so I'm leaning towards the former.

Either way, I'm curious. That's quite a bit sooner than I expected, and I hope Snow Leopard ships when it's ready and not before. 10.5 still has some outstanding bugs and I wish they would get it right. Here's hoping for 10.5.6...

Even so, the problem is that we don't have any voice that goes with it. All the slide show is, is a basic outline of what was talked about; when he says, 'release date' what does he mean? did he talk about 'best case scenario - we're aiming for this date' release date? we don't know the full circumstances - the why's and where-for's to explain the change from 'second half of 2009' to 'q1 of 2009'. Personally, I'd rather wait before celebrating with the birthday suit boogie.

[i.maverick]

In theory this makes perfect sense, as Snow Leopard has very few new features, its mainly optimising the code, and streamlining OS X 10.5 features so that the OS as a whole has a smaller foot print and runs tighter, compacter and faster. If you make the OS more efficient and stable, apps now have a more consistent code base to pull from, and have less margin for error. Not to say Apple can't mess it up, they easily could. But after adding so many features year after year, its nice to have them rounding it off. Snow Leopard could easily be the least justifiable upgrade they've ever made, but by far the most needed one. They might not get much publicity over it, but it'd be their best move yet.

bet on them to get that publicity. they always do.
:cool:

[Beric]

Wow! I could not have said it better.
But what is the way forward? Growth in the consumer segment is limited (we will see this soon) and "opening up" brings it's own set of problems...
:(

Apple's current strategy in the consumer market is very high profit margins in a niche market with small market share. It's worked well so far, but my opinion is that Apple's margins will seriously suffer in today's economy. Their recent release of notebooks was a slap in the face for those wishing more affordable Macs that are actually reasonably priced compared to the competition.

I'd love to see an open OS X. I dislike Apple hardware. But there is a 0% chance Apple will allow it. And so users like me will have to continue making the decision of whether OS X is worth the lackluster, overpriced hardware.

[Blue Velvet]

Xenu willing, it won't.

Careful there. You're risking the tortured cries of the many. Xenu won't save you, electric ribbon or not.

I hold out this insane and desperate hope that it's going to be cheaper than the usual OS X updates. Throw something our way, Steve. :o

[kaiwai]

Screenshots mean nothing when it comes to the inner workings of a sophisticated operating system.

Looks like the switch to Cocoa is going better than expected.

"damn those threads look sexy!"
"wow, you can really see how finely locked that operating system is!"

:D

[grue]

Careful there. You're risking the tortured cries of the many. Xenu won't save you, electric ribbon or not.

I hold out this insane and desperate hope that it's going to be cheaper than the usual OS X updates. Throw something our way, Steve. :o

Hell, cut off the Core Duo owners, too. I don't want 32bit stuff holding back my machine.

I'd HAPPILY drop $300 on a version of OS X coded ONLY for 64bit Intel chips, with full OpenCL/CUDA and multithreading. No bloat, no stupid flashy crap, just pure performance. Get the install under 4GB, idle RAM usage down to a couple hundred megs.

I'm bitter, though. I'm tired of bloat and bugs.

[MacFly123]

Can't wait for Mac World :D I don't think it will be done by January either but I expect a demo at Mac World along with some new desktops including the Mac Pro and the all new Mac Mini :) Now I just want my new MacBook Pro!

[nacengineer]

In theory, yes. But that is only relevant when Apple opens OS X for non-Apple hardware, meaning: Regular PCs, as in Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Acer or Lenovo.

You will have a hard time finding corporations or large organizations that willingly enter a hardware-vendor-lock, especially when that vendor is more expensive than the competition, does not sell low-end office machines, has the general policy of not providing product road maps, has no enterprise-level support services worth mentioning and worst of all is not even compatible with legacy (Windows-based) applications out of the box.

On top of that, OS X is lacking a large amount of enterprise-level features, from deployment over administration to backup.

I wasn't saying they were looking to conquer the corporation. Just support corporate users better. So this eliminates Exchange as a barrier to entry. Apologies for any confusion.

Some counterpoint as a lot of what you say as I feel OS 10 is a viable solution if admins are open to it. I’m not bashing or fanboi-ing just trying as you stated to
Try selling that to an IT department of a large organization. Good luck, you'll need it.

The sell...

One big problem is companies are generally so heavily invested in Windows (from training to licenses) they can't break away from thinking of anything else as an option... from Windows to ASP.net.

re: roadmaps I don't see this as an issue. The Vista release debacle should prove my point. Just because MS says it'll be x, y, or z date doesn't mean it will. And Apple has been pretty spot on with hitting their committed marks in the previous releases.

re: Vendor lock. This is all corporations DO! Its how they get discounts. They only buy Dell, or HP, or... vendor x. Granted the OS in this case is Windows and will work with multiple vendors PCs (hopefully) but they are just as tied to one vendor because of the bean counters. Try buying from a non approved vendor!

If you're ordering feature for feature the Macs are comparable to PCs. Yes you can get a cheaper PC... but it will not be component for component the same. Apple does tend to favor more bleeding edge stuff and PCs generally make trade offs to get a lower price. I agree Apple is slightly higher (in most cases) but not by as much as you imply. You're talking more about the bottom end in my opinion. In other words, cheap, so in that case then yes look somewhere else besides Apple.

The legacy stuff... what couldn't you run in a VM? Most legacy stuff isn't supported out of the box on Windows without a crap ton of configuration anyway. I speak from experience. I say this is a wash with a 15 minute tip of the hat to the windows side because it is pre-installed. Addressing a problem of licenses... you’re installing old software so you’d already have the licenses, etc. One problem would be on the obsolete hardware side (i.e. hardware locks, ISA cards, etc)... but this same problem would exist on newer PCs too.

On top of that, OS X is lacking a large amount of enterprise-level features, from deployment over administration to backup.

I can’t think of anything off hand that falls into this category. In fact I would argue with ssh you can do more on a Mac, and yes you can do remote deploys and administration on a Mac... not sure why you’re saying you can’t...

I think you underestimate OS X here and at the risk of making an incorrect assumption your background is probably heavy on the Windows side. Perhaps I'm wrong but your statement has a bit of Windows bias in it.

If your talking about imaging... its built into the OS... Backup and Restore of partitions in Disk Utility. And there are great third party tools for this too.

Other great tools that would be available to admins would be ssh access, Remote Desktop, Applescript, and Automator. Remote software updates are really easy. And you don’t need Remote Desktop on Leopard or greater. (Screen Sharing) but if you had it nothing is off limits. So I’m not sure how you’d be worse off with OS 10. In fact I think you’d have more options out of the box. Plus you’d NEVER have to deal with the registry.


OS X was made for consumers, small sites and basically everything that has nothing to do with the enterprise. Its direct competition from Redmond was mainly made for exactly the other end of the spectrum: Large scale deployments in huge organizations. Places where nobody cares for design and beautiful user interfaces and where only enterprise-ready feature lists count.

You'll have more luck selling Linux in those places than OS X. For starters, Linux can be deployed on already existing hardware. And that closes the circle back to the statement that Apple needs to open OS X for third party hardware if they want to gain any significance in the enterprise market.

I think you mean OS X is marketed to consumers... and in that you’d be right. But design wise (OS Level) its comparable to a Windows box but with a more consistent design which translates into better ease of use. There is a consistency throughout the OS thanks to the Carbon and Cocoa frameworks. Which ensure when you learn the basics of one program they translate easily to others.

Plus not to mention support time is significantly reduced on a OS 10 box. No viruses, spyware, and great sand boxing of users. Perhaps its a pipe dream of mine but why is this never factored into purchasing decisions... its a shame IMHO.

And as for enterprise users... in my experience “enterprise” users need Excel, Word, email, and an internet browser but claim they need more... and most of the other stuff they “have” to have they never use in their job functions and is wasted money for said company.

Plus if you take the Linux route you lose the Excel/Word edge (basing this on needing 100% compatibility) and that opens a world of options for native (disregarding Office:Mac) OS 10 with programs like Openoffice.org and NeoOffice which are free and save the company 400 bucks per license. Not surprisingly these are also available on Windows but yet companies still require “official” licenses of Office for their “enterprise” users. More waste. In addition, I think the learning curve of Linux for the end users is still too steep.

I think if you consider the entire cycle. From cost of hardware, software, training users, and supporting a machine. The argument can be made that a Mac is right there with Windows if not ahead.

[newyorkguy]

...and 10.5.5 is sluggish enough for me still. It looks like just a race with Redmond. no thanks.


Man, I just installed 10.5 a month ago. Pffft.

[doctoree]

This is nothing new

[newyorkguy]

Leopard's about as fast as a fat girl running uphill in a snowstorm with a headwind, and buggier than Paris Hilton's panties.
I totally agree. Apple should keep their pants on.:mad:

[ikir]

Apple's current strategy in the consumer market is very high profit margins in a niche market with small market share. It's worked well so far, but my opinion is that Apple's margins will seriously suffer in today's economy. Their recent release of notebooks was a slap in the face for those wishing more affordable Macs that are actually reasonably priced compared to the competition.

I'd love to see an open OS X. I dislike Apple hardware. But there is a 0% chance Apple will allow it. And so users like me will have to continue making the decision of whether OS X is worth the lackluster, overpriced hardware.

Macs are not overpriced this has been discussed too many times now. If you didn't get it...

Mac has features and a quality you rarely find elsewhere. Some features of new macbooks aren't comparable in small notebeook pc maket like multitouch pad, Nvidia, 9400M, unibody. So get the fact and stop whining.

[kaiwai]

In theory, yes. But that is only relevant when Apple opens OS X for non-Apple hardware, meaning: Regular PCs, as in Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Asus, Acer or Lenovo.

You will have a hard time finding corporations or large organizations that willingly enter a hardware-vendor-lock, especially when that vendor is more expensive than the competition, does not sell low-end office machines, has the general policy of not providing product road maps, has no enterprise-level support services worth mentioning and worst of all is not even compatible with legacy (Windows-based) applications out of the box.

'enter a hardware vendor lock in' - and Microsoft lock in is even better? how about pulling your head out of your ass for 5 minutes and realising that hardware lock in means NOTHING when the software is based on open standards that allow easy interoperability with non-MacOS X platforms!

Dear god this is pathetic, just because you can choose hardware vendors, doesn't mean you actually have choice. You have a choice of hardware but you're stuck with software lock in - you're in a worse position than if you went all Mac.

On top of that, OS X is lacking a large amount of enterprise-level features, from deployment over administration to backup.

What about backup? if your employee's don't save to the server, where all the backups take place - then it is tough luck for them. Obviously if they don't follow company policy, the work they're doing isn't of particular high importance.

As for deployment - ever heard of NetBoot/Netrestore?

Try selling that to an IT department of a large organization. Good luck, you'll need it.

OS X was made for consumers, small sites and basically everything that has nothing to do with the enterprise. Its direct competition from Redmond was mainly made for exactly the other end of the spectrum: Large scale deployments in huge organizations. Places where nobody cares for design and beautiful user interfaces and where only enterprise-ready feature lists count.

You'll have more luck selling Linux in those places than OS X. For starters, Linux can be deployed on already existing hardware. And that closes the circle back to the statement that Apple needs to open OS X for third party hardware if they want to gain any significance in the enterprise market.


(Does this forum have a problem with Firefox?)

Again, another clueless statement; You simply line up your hardware upgrade to your software transition - how the bloody hell is that any different to the approach which companies are taking today with migrating to Windows Vista?

Dear god, please - work in the IT field for a period of time before opening your ill informed mouth.

[niklot]

Apple's current strategy in the consumer market is very high profit margins in a niche market with small market share. It's worked well so far, but my opinion is that Apple's margins will seriously suffer in today's economy. Their recent release of notebooks was a slap in the face for those wishing more affordable Macs that are actually reasonably priced compared to the competition.

I'd love to see an open OS X. I dislike Apple hardware. But there is a 0% chance Apple will allow it. And so users like me will have to continue making the decision of whether OS X is worth the lackluster, overpriced hardware.

there we go again... if you compare pc hardware to mac hardware than ull come to the end, that there is not a real big difference in price but an enormous difference in design!

[ccuk]

'enter a hardware vendor lock in' - and Microsoft lock in is even better? how about pulling your head out of your ass for 5 minutes and realising that hardware lock in means NOTHING when the software is based on open standards that allow easy interoperability with non-MacOS X platforms!

Dear god this is pathetic, just because you can choose hardware vendors, doesn't mean you actually have choice. You have a choice of hardware but you're stuck with software lock in - you're in a worse position than if you went all Mac.
<SNIP>


Your post is somewhat ranty to be quite honest.

Read what you wrote. If someone transitions to an all Mac environment, and subsequently get bespoke apps written for said OS, which quite a few companies I know of do, then they are tied not only to Mac OSX, but also to the Mac hardware. At least running Linux or Windows for example, the IT dept have choices over different forks of upgradability, software and or hardware. They also get to choose where to source the hardware from and what software licensing strategy suits their business.

Mac OSX isn't the be all and end all OS you seem to think it is, every OS has its place and purpose, hence why they each have a slice of market share.

[GekkePrutser]

The slide says "14+" which I take to mean 14 months or more.

Since we don't know exactly how much 'more' means, there's very little in this that we didn't know before. All we know now is not to expect it this year.

I'd say the guy just stuck the '14+' in because Apple just doesn't know yet when to release but they know it's not this year. Although he could have put 'TBD' or something like it.

Are the beta's even stable yet? That's usually a good indication (and it was also warning of Leopard's delay back in the days when we were all waiting for it to come out at the original date).

[arn]

I'd say the guy just stuck the '14+' in because Apple just doesn't know yet when to release but they know it's not this year. Although he could have put 'TBD' or something like it.

14 months brings you to the beginning of Q1 2009. So 14+ just means at least 14 (to get you to Q1 2009)

arn

[dubhe]

I wonder if there will be a big announcement at the consumer level about it. For us Mac addicts this is a big thing, but for your average consumer, if it doesn't look any different then they won't even notice. They will see it like Leopard SP2

[iPave]

Hell, cut off the Core Duo owners, too. I don't want 32bit stuff holding back my machine.

I'd HAPPILY drop $300 on a version of OS X coded ONLY for 64bit Intel chips, with full OpenCL/CUDA and multithreading. No bloat, no stupid flashy crap, just pure performance. Get the install under 4GB, idle RAM usage down to a couple hundred megs.

I'm bitter, though. I'm tired of bloat and bugs.

Why??? 32 bit compatibiity won't slow your mac.

[3247]

Perhaps the sheer dedication of resources to Snow Leopard for a Q109 release is the reason why other projects have been put-off/delayed (iPhone push-notification, in-ear headphones, 120GB-HDD MacBook Air, etc)... it certainly raises the question.The Snow diet for Leopard is probably necessary to fit the cat onto an Atom. :cool:

In other words, Apple might need Snow Leopard to be able to release some new hardware products. (12" MacBook <<1000 USD, MacBook Touch, Mac Nano... who knows?) If this is the case, they would certainly dedicate as many ressources as possible to Snow Leopard.

I don't think I've even had Leopard for a year. This seems a bit rushed to me, but maybe the "Snow Leopard" name means it'll be a major yet not major upgrade. I understand the need for utilizing multi-core processors, but that's about the only big improvement I have heard of. Nothing else really landmark like Time Machine.Steve announced that Snow Leopard will have no new features but only improvements to the core in his MacWorld 2008 keynote.

BTW, snow leopards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_Leopard) (Uncia uncia or Panthera unica) are actually smaller than leopards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard) (Panthera pardus). So yes, it all makes sense.

[MacTraveller]

Interesting. Snow Leopard @ MacWorld? I'm game. Probably won't be that soon, but I can dream can't I?

More likely, it will be announced or introduced at Macworld. It probably won't actually ship until February or March.

[MacTraveller]

Macs are not overpriced this has been discussed too many times now. If you didn't get it...

Mac has features and a quality you rarely find elsewhere. Some features of new macbooks aren't comparable in small notebeook pc maket like multitouch pad, Nvidia, 9400M, unibody. So get the fact and stop whining.

Some people just want a $2.00 hamburger (PCs). It feeds their hunger fine.

Others are more willing to spend the money on sirlion steak (Macintosh).

Both hamburger and sirloin steak will feed anyone's hunger.

[bergmef]

I'd like to see snow leopard demo'ed at macworld and hear Steve say that it will be finished for wwdc and everyone that comes to wwdc will walk out with a free family pack box.

Take the time, make sure it's the best it can be.

PS. I wish my company would switch to Macs. Our IT guy uses a Mac in his personal life but corporate is 100% against it. My only problem is the engineering software. I use Mentor Graphics running on Linux and there is no version for Macs. I would love a Mac workstation with snow leopard and my CAD tools.

[dernhelm]

I didn't get a chance to read everything in this thread, but I had to post these two pressing questions:

1. LWMLAF? Anyone know what this means?

2. Where is the latestpics download? I see it came from here...

Careful there. You're risking the tortured cries of the many. Xenu won't save you, electric ribbon or not.

I hold out this insane and desperate hope that it's going to be cheaper than the usual OS X updates. Throw something our way, Steve. :o

Amen. But it won't be less expensive. Just because you can't see the "bling" doesn't mean they didn't spend a lot of engineering resources on the release. The price of the upgrade covers those resource costs (among other things). I kinda doubt they are making an real money on them.

[GSMiller]

Hopefully when it's said that "Apple has said that they would be focusing on both quality and performance in Snow Leopard." that doesn't mean that they're just changing the color of the scroll bar in Safari and stripping PPC support.

Since Snow Leopard is mainly focusing on performance, I would imagine the system requirements not being much greater (if at all) than Leopards. Albeit, no PPC support.

[Cassie]

Well, Here's hoping it does have PPC support. (I fully expect it to be dropped in 10.7, but come on, one last time, please?)

[koobcamuk]

It's a MacRumors tradition that we see the absolute worst in every rumor, so before anyone else gets there...

It may not be cheap. It may not run on PPC processor machines. Like Leopard, it might be fragile on release. It may mess with your apps and your setup, it may be disappointing to many and it may just be late.

OK, we've got that out of the way. ;)

Personally, I think that if you want to get the best out of an OS release, join the party at 10.X.5 or 10.X.6 as the OS is getting to be very refined by then. When 10.5 gets it's last iteration, it'll be great. 10.4 wasn't great. 10.4.3 crashed all my macs. 10.4.11 is amazingly stable...

10.6 will have issues. For sure.

[t0mat0]

Interesting to see the possible change of date (not that it wasn't anything other than written on sand before, being an "about a year" description).

If it's within Q1, unless Redmond can move their Windows 7 launch date forward another quarter, Snow Leopard will be out before 7, which is a potentially good thing in my book (no clash of events, better comparisons).

Even if they can't launch by WWDC 2009, if they're quite ready, they can sneak some of the secret features out their to whet our appetites. Nothing like being given some tidbits, and a few months to discuss rumours on the site, eh?

[iOrlando]

I've asked this in the past, but never got an answer.

How do you get this new operating system when it comes out if you buy a macbook now? Do you just have to buy the program and install it and thats it? all the info is switched over?

[samh004]

Not sure of this was mentioned, did a quick search of the thread but found no reference to it.

Concerning the prospect of Snow Leopard being released in Q1 2009, towards the end of the PDF it says Back to My Mac being based off .Mac. However since the middle of this year it's been known as MobileMe, so perhaps this slideshow is based off old information. At least in parts.

I've asked this in the past, but never got an answer.

How do you get this new operating system when it comes out if you buy a macbook now? Do you just have to buy the program and install it and thats it? all the info is switched over?

You are more or less correct. Generally you just install the new system over the old one, and instructions are provided/it is all automatic so you don't have to worry about it. There are several ways the upgrade happens, and those ways are all heavily debated by members on here as to what is best.

To sum them up very simply:

1. Overwrite old system
2. Backup old files, install new system, copy old files to new system
3. Delete everything and install new system

[Sky Blue]

I've asked this in the past, but never got an answer.

How do you get this new operating system when it comes out if you buy a macbook now? Do you just have to buy the program and install it and thats it? all the info is switched over?

You buy the DVD from Apple and boot your machine off of it.

[bishboria]

I didn't get a chance to read everything in this thread, but I had to post these two pressing questions:

1. LWMLAF? Anyone know what this means?

2. Where is the latestpics download? I see it came from here...

I would also like to know what LWMLAF is!

Anyone got an idea?

[Half Glass]

I've learned from the others here after rushing to Leopard: I'll wait until at least 10.6.2 before I upgrade.

--HG

[TJunkers]

That would be awesome! I guess they are doing this to compete with Windows 7... Hopefully there is enough to be thrilled about cause Windows 7 is a huge update! Wonder if we are going to see 10.5.6 to 10.5.9 in the next coming months!

[CyberBob859]

I've asked this in the past, but never got an answer.

How do you get this new operating system when it comes out if you buy a macbook now? Do you just have to buy the program and install it and thats it? all the info is switched over?

If you buy the MacBook now, you'll have to buy the Snow Leopard DVD when it comes out and install it. (This does NOT include the iLife suite, BTW.)

[wallaby]

10.6 before May would be nice; I could still grab it at student discount prices before I graduate. Snow Leopard, CS4, and a bigger hard drive for my MBP would be a nice upgrade from my current 10.4/CS3 set up, granted they don't all suck.

[dwman]

Q1 seems awfully ambitious. I'd rather they wait until late spring/early summer and get it right. Obviously they can't catch every single potential bug, but 10.5 had more than it's share of issues upon release last year. Anything that makes the OS smaller, more secure and faster is more then ok by me. That said, I'll probably wait until at least 10.6.2. Leopard is pretty solid for me.

[Srai-W]

Well if they update this at MWSF, then I hope they also update some more of their hardware! :rolleyes:

[Lesser Evets]

This isn't surprising.

• The OS was said to be "nothing new" and just retooled for 64 bit
• It makes money

An early 2009 release of OSX 10.6 would benefit everyone--users and producer.

[BornAgainMac]

At the Macworld Keynote, I would like to see Steve Jobs show how fast a new version of Handbrake optimized for Snow Leopard is with a Mac Pro and one of his old Pixar films.

I wonder if the iWork and iLife packages are going to be snowed versions too?

[137489]

I did not bother to read all the posts.... But, this would be cool if this date was somewhat accurate. Of course Q1 means anywhere from January to April 1st. Like one person pointed out, we will probably hear alot at macworld and then a release in March timeframe. WWDC would be late as that would be in Q2 - although if they push back to work out as many bugs as possible, I would not mind.

Seeing this makes me want to hold off anymore software purchases, or just not upgrade (will have to see at release and I hear what others have to say). I just wonder how much of my apps will break. I bought my macbook in april, and since that time 98% of my apps are now native mac apps. There are only a couple left running under windows. My total platform change has cost me over $3,000 (between the macbook, software purchases, buy a 19-inch monitor, 7 port USB hub, etc). money is a little tight right now to have to re-buy alot of software or upgrade versions.

hmm.. I wonder - Can anyone answer me this, I never tried it - but it should work (I would think -unless there are some real screwy things under the hood):

if I was to upgrade and get the latest Parallels or VMWARE - should I not be able to have a Windows installation on a virtual machine, and then also setup another Virtual machine to run my existing Leopard? Of course I would probably have to do a memory upgrade to run both Virtuals simultaneously.

that would work for me, because then I could SLOWLY upgrade my software as money permits.

*Edit - One other thing, I hope with the smaller OS, they do not strip out what makes a Unix/Linux OS so great - Java, CPP, Python, TCL, and all the other INCLUDED programming languages. It would stink if it became a MS like OS, where we started to have to buy or find open source versions to download. I am hoping in my spare time (what little I have) to start writing my own apps for the mac. Church related software for the mac seems to be very much lacking right now.

[smacsteve]

That the code name "Snow Leopard" is absent. I would suspect that this is a very early slide that was made before the announcement of 10.6 and that this date is very pre-mature. I'm betting this is all wrong and it's still going to be mid to late 09.

[t0mat0]

The time-frame of 14+ months and Q1 2009 is in both slide 5 and 6.

Slide 1: Front slide
Slide 2: Who Hubbert is
Slide 3: What Hubbert does
Slide 4: "Let's start with a quick history"
Slide 5: Mac OS X Releases
Slide 6: Mac OS X Releases (excluding 10.4 Tiger /x86).

It might have been an old slide. Might have been that putting "Snow Leopard" in would have made the Snow Lopard row 2 rows thick, making it less pleasing to the eye.

Still - it's his first 2 proper slides - surely he'd be most likely to (re-)check the dates he's giving out of an as-yet unreleased OS - if he didn't he be getting one painful phonecall from Cupertino, no? We'd know more if there were older talks by him that used that slide including 10.6 release date.

MWSF only 47 days away anyhow (assuming the start of MWSF, 5th January will have the Keynote speech).

[guzhogi]

If Snow Leopard arrives this early, I really hope it's really stable. I don't want a repeat of Leopard when it first came out.

One thing I'm kinda excited to see is how much snappier Snow Leopard will be compared to Leopard on the same computer. One thing I've wondered for a while is how efficient is software?

[john7jr]

As for deployment - ever heard of NetBoot/Netrestore?

NetRestore is dead (http://www.bombich.com/software/netrestore.html). Mike killed it. =(

[odedia]

Did anyone notice that in the slides he has a screenshot of something downloaded from macrumors?? :)

See page 21.

[kaiwai]

Your post is somewhat ranty to be quite honest.

It was a necessary rant because none of what you said was in the remotest bit valid. Mac OS X has limitations, but to make the claims as as you did is a big stretch.

Read what you wrote. If someone transitions to an all Mac environment, and subsequently get bespoke apps written for said OS, which quite a few companies I know of do, then they are tied not only to Mac OSX, but also to the Mac hardware. At least running Linux or Windows for example, the IT dept have choices over different forks of upgradability, software and or hardware. They also get to choose where to source the hardware from and what software licensing strategy suits their business.

Again, when are we going to see Linux (or a some other operating system) become a valid alternative? Its either Windows or Mac OS X - Linux isn't even on the radar. To claim you have choice is like the spam skit off Monty python.

Mac OSX isn't the be all and end all OS you seem to think it is, every OS has its place and purpose, hence why they each have a slice of market share.

Never said it was the be-all and end-all. If you are going to make a statement, back it up with facts. If you said that Mac OS X scales poorly, I'd agree. But when you said that deployment was difficult and yet ignore NetBoot/NetRestore, I really question the validity of your whole argument.

[knightlie]

That would be awesome! I guess they are doing this to compete with Windows 7... Hopefully there is enough to be thrilled about cause Windows 7 is a huge update!

Is it? All I've seen so far is yet another photo viewer and a lame touch-screen implementation. What else will make up the Windows 7 update?

[johnmcboston]

Hey, new OS and new imac at the same time??? could be cool.... :)

[t0mat0]

Did anyone notice that in the slides he has a screenshot of something downloaded from macrumors?? :)

See page 21.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=180579

[kaiwai]

NetRestore is dead (http://www.bombich.com/software/netrestore.html). Mike killed it. =(

Thats pretty damn depressing, but then again, from what I understand there are alternatives that'll be included with the server version of Snow Leopard.

[aethelbert]

Q1 2009, eh? I'll be moving my chips over to autumn now.

[Oneness]

Man, I just installed 10.5 a month ago. Pffft.

I decided a couple of months ago to wait for Snow, so while yes you paid $129 and quite possibly will have to pay another $129 in March if you want to upgrade at least you have Leopard now. I have Tiger and no Plex. :(
Snow please come out soon!

[pgifford]

It'll probably be just another preview of Snow Leopard at Macworld. They'll give a less-vague release date than 'within a year'. Then they'll have to push that date back one or two times before it's actually released.

Final release date: July 27, 2009

[Diatribe]

That would be awesome! I guess they are doing this to compete with Windows 7... Hopefully there is enough to be thrilled about cause Windows 7 is a huge update! Wonder if we are going to see 10.5.6 to 10.5.9 in the next coming months!

If they really release it in Q1/2009 Windows 7 will be rather competing with 10.7 than 10.6 if they keep up with this release schedule.

[AidenShaw]

It's a MacRumors tradition that we see the absolute worst in every rumor, so before anyone else gets there...

It may not be cheap. It may not run on PPC processor machines. Like Leopard, it might be fragile on release. It may mess with your apps and your setup, it may be disappointing to many and it may just be late.

OK, we've got that out of the way. ;)

You forgot:


It will be x64-only, and won't run on Core Duo and Core Solo Apples!

[edenwaith]

Who created that timeline? Mac OS 10.1 came out in late September/early October 2001, NOT in November. It was about a six month difference when Mac OS 10.0 and Mac OS 10.1 were released. After that, each new version took a little longer to release.

[Topper]

I was hoping Snow Leopard would come out in less than a year.
There are not supposed to be any new features, just improvements in the OS itself.

I am looking forward to QuickTime X.

“Grand Central” is the feature I am really looking forward to.
From Apple's web site, "Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems."

Add to that 64-bit technology.

Snow Leopard should turn my already powerful Mac Pro into a number crunching monster!

[AidenShaw]

... but I bet big money on it that M$ will not have a leaner, more capable OS that resembles Vista (from a UI perspective)...

Read this and weep ;)

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10082909-56.html

While the new Windows [7] will enable high-end machines with multitouch, it will also work on low-end machines. While Vista has largely been absent in the fast-growing Netbook category, Windows 7 is aimed to work well on such low-end devices--a number of which are on display at WinHEC.

Among the machines Microsoft showed was an Eee PC with a 1GB [RAM] and a 16GB solid-state drive, which the software maker said could run Windows 7 with "room to spare."

[iParis]

I really hope they ship the new iMacs and Mac Mini's with it.

Well, that is if they're updated.:D

[Infrared]

That the code name "Snow Leopard" is absent. I would suspect that this is a very early slide that was made before the announcement of 10.6 and that this date is very pre-mature. I'm betting this is all wrong and it's still going to be mid to late 09.

No, "Snow Leopard" is there, but it's invisible.

Try cutting and pasting from the blank area :)

[huntercr]

Man, I just installed 10.5 a month ago. Pffft.

HAHAHa me too. I also had the great timing of buying a G5 Mac Pro 2 months before the announcement to move to Intel. I know how to call em! :)

[milo]

So has there been any real (official) clarification about whether 10.6 will be intel only?

[kingtj]

Actually, I think the jury's still out on what MS will or won't wind up doing with Windows 7.

Already, I saw them adding "features" such as their gadget bar being phased out, in favor of the ability to place gadgets anywhere on the screen - and a feature that's supposed to auto-size application windows to 50% of the total screen space when they're drug off the left or right edges of the screen. The menu bar is being re-worked too, so minimized apps have their respective icons shown, vs. the rectangular boxes containing their names (and funny how it has quite the OS X dock look to it in the process).

It's still in such an early stage of development, it shares a LOT of GUI look and feel, and the entire "skeleton" of Vista - but that's in transition.

I'd venture to say it is pretty "fair" to argue that Apple's "Snow Leopard" upgrade is far more focused on strictly being a performance improvement release of OS X. Windows 7 is more about doing whatever MS can come up with to make people happy with the product, post Vista's marketing fiasco. Raw performance is one factor, but possibly not even a "primary" factor for Microsoft. They may wind up adding a ton of new features to "make the sale", since Vista was accused of being mostly eye-candy and no "substance" over XP.


Actually that's inaccurate as M$ is pretty much doing the same thing with Windows 7. Its unfair to say what you said IMHO. And I have 4 Macs BTW so yeah I'm an OS X fanboy.

[manowarwi]

On top of that, OS X is lacking a large amount of enterprise-level features, from deployment over administration to backup.

Try selling that to an IT department of a large organization. Good luck, you'll need it.

OS X was made for consumers, small sites and basically everything that has nothing to do with the enterprise. Its direct competition from Redmond was mainly made for exactly the other end of the spectrum: Large scale deployments in huge organizations. Places where nobody cares for design and beautiful user interfaces and where only enterprise-ready feature lists count.

Times have changed and now that statement is completely incorrect. I have had fully automated Mac deployment services in place for over 5 years. I've used Netrestore, Radmin, and now we are moving towards DeployStudio. All three have more features than Microsoft Windows Deployment Services and I'm even able to schedule a re-image, package install and bind to Active Directory by pressing one button. I support Macs in a Windows shop and the macs have no problem fully integrating into Active Directory, the home directories sit on Windows servers and we even use Exchange 2007 almost flawlessly. All of that doesn't even touch the fact that our Macs run pretty much problem free compared to our Windows PCs.

I should mention, those three products listed above were free. The closest thing to that for PCs is the full Ghost package which is very expensive and from our experience not as reliable. We backup to Symantec backupexec servers using the Unix plugin with no problems so we are fully integrated into our environment.

[liam5150]

Having a SR (late 2007) MBP, I wonder if it is really a good idea to stress the GPU with Snow Leopard, since Apple has admitted the nVIDIA chips are prone to failure... Maybe the problem is heat related?

[psingh01]

March 21, 2009

Most OS X have been released around that date in previous years.

[epilef987]

Personally, I think that if you want to get the best out of an OS release, join the party at 10.X.5 or 10.X.6 as the OS is getting to be very refined by then. When 10.5 gets it's last iteration, it'll be great. 10.4 wasn't great. 10.4.3 crashed all my macs. 10.4.11 is amazingly stable...

10.6 will have issues. For sure.

That's what I usually do as well. Everyone get's all excited when they launch the latest OS, but its always more stable at 10.X.3+. The wait's worth not having all the headaches that the first ppl get.

[puckhead193]

Man, I just installed 10.5 a month ago. Pffft.

a little late to the party eh? lol

I'm not holding my breath for a Q1 release. But hey you never know.

[nacengineer]

I did not bother to read all the posts.... But, this would be cool if this date was somewhat accurate. Of course Q1 means anywhere from January to April 1st. Like one person pointed out, we will probably hear alot at macworld and then a release in March timeframe. WWDC would be late as that would be in Q2 - although if they push back to work out as many bugs as possible, I would not mind.

Seeing this makes me want to hold off anymore software purchases, or just not upgrade (will have to see at release and I hear what others have to say). I just wonder how much of my apps will break. I bought my macbook in april, and since that time 98% of my apps are now native mac apps. There are only a couple left running under windows. My total platform change has cost me over $3,000 (between the macbook, software purchases, buy a 19-inch monitor, 7 port USB hub, etc). money is a little tight right now to have to re-buy alot of software or upgrade versions.

hmm.. I wonder - Can anyone answer me this, I never tried it - but it should work (I would think -unless there are some real screwy things under the hood):

if I was to upgrade and get the latest Parallels or VMWARE - should I not be able to have a Windows installation on a virtual machine, and then also setup another Virtual machine to run my existing Leopard? Of course I would probably have to do a memory upgrade to run both Virtuals simultaneously.

that would work for me, because then I could SLOWLY upgrade my software as money permits.

*Edit - One other thing, I hope with the smaller OS, they do not strip out what makes a Unix/Linux OS so great - Java, CPP, Python, TCL, and all the other INCLUDED programming languages. It would stink if it became a MS like OS, where we started to have to buy or find open source versions to download. I am hoping in my spare time (what little I have) to start writing my own apps for the mac. Church related software for the mac seems to be very much lacking right now.

Yes on the Windows VM no on the OS X VM. The only way to get an OS X VM is through Parallels Server which would be cost prohibitive for your needs.

[CaryMacGuy]

Steve talking about Snow Leopard at MWSF:

"It has this and it has that, yada yada yada". "and it available TODAY"

[Kilamite]

The Snow Leopard name is missing - maybe they won't name it SL after all. I see that as more of a code name.

[happydude]

i'm just surprised we've had leopard this long. doesn't seem like it has been 13 months already. looking forward to what is to come, for sure!!

[tonyl]

i'm just surprised we've had leopard this long. doesn't seem like it has been 13 months already. looking forward to what is to come, for sure!!

Same here, I felt we had Tiger for ages.

[137489]

Yes on the Windows VM no on the OS X VM. The only way to get an OS X VM is through Parallels Server which would be cost prohibitive for your needs.

:eek: - after you said that, I looked at the price (and almost choked on my lunch). :eek: - OUCH! $1248.75

Ok, looks like I

1. Don't upgrade onless the vast majority says it did not break older apps.
2. Wait until another year to a year 1/2 when my machine is 2 years (approaching 3), and my applecare is getting ready to expire - thus would warrent me getting a new machine with it already installed. By then I should have the money for a macbook pro (and hopefully be in a position of needing less software - that I would have to buy).

[137489]

i'm just surprised we've had leopard this long. doesn't seem like it has been 13 months already. looking forward to what is to come, for sure!!

yep - hard to believe my macbook is 7 months old already, and my wife's mini is 3 months. I still feel like I just got the thing, and what is cool - it still performs that way:D. I would have had to go through a tough time by now with windows (reinstalls, defrags, more memory, etc, etc, etc). I already killed 2 Dell's in that 7 month period.

I love Apple. Can't wait to see what snow brings, but like I said in my last post - I may have to wait a while. SO GIVE FEEDBACK and LOTS OF IT. when it comes out.

[rychencop]

i'm not real excited about a potentially "early" release. that usually means bugs and that's not cool. come on :apple:!

[137489]

Actually, I think the jury's still out on what MS will or won't wind up doing with Windows 7.

Already, I saw them adding "features" such as their gadget bar being phased out, in favor of the ability to place gadgets anywhere on the screen - and a feature that's supposed to auto-size application windows to 50% of the total screen space when they're drug off the left or right edges of the screen. The menu bar is being re-worked too, so minimized apps have their respective icons shown, vs. the rectangular boxes containing their names (and funny how it has quite the OS X dock look to it in the process).

It's still in such an early stage of development, it shares a LOT of GUI look and feel, and the entire "skeleton" of Vista - but that's in transition.

I'd venture to say it is pretty "fair" to argue that Apple's "Snow Leopard" upgrade is far more focused on strictly being a performance improvement release of OS X. Windows 7 is more about doing whatever MS can come up with to make people happy with the product, post Vista's marketing fiasco. Raw performance is one factor, but possibly not even a "primary" factor for Microsoft. They may wind up adding a ton of new features to "make the sale", since Vista was accused of being mostly eye-candy and no "substance" over XP.

It has been so hard to follow:

1. Vista is the long awaited long horn
2. MS sued had to take a bunch of features out.
3. Trade commission would not allow the release because it did not live up to technological standards.
4. they rushed to put things back in, in a different way and rush a release because they were behind.
5. Vista is not the longhorn.
6. Windows 7 is the long horn.
7. Oh wait, SP1 (Mohave) did not fix what we hoped and it broke more, so windows 7 will be a stabilization release (much like SL).

So, yeah - I don't think we will have any clue (and I don't think MS has any clue) of what windows 7 will be until it is released.

Thank God apple knows what it wants to place its focus on, because I really think MS has lost its focus, especially since Gates is out of the picture (full time atleast).

[flottenheimer]

I'm sooo looking forward to Snow Leopard. I enjoy 10.5, but I don't see it as being a major step up from 10.4. This time I'm feelin' the 10.6-vision. Snappier, speedier, smaller 'n' all is disruptive thinking in the OS development world. Me like.

[BigD58]

Unibody MBP + Snow Leopard = sex:D

[ari gold]

So I'm new and about to jump into the mac game, should I wait a few months on picking up a unibody for when SL gets released or should I not bother and buy in the next month or two? Thanks.

[MacsRgr8]

That is wishful thinking, IMHO.
After the WWDC only one beta of 10.6 has reached the developers, and not one server version. Usually you'll see lots of developer seedings (betas), with each new release more frequently seeded when it nears RC status. Stuff like the setup assistant, or default desktop pic usually change too during its beta-life hinting at late beta or RC status.

IMHO the GM 10.6 release will probably be more late 2009 than summer 2009, let alone Q1. But, we'll see.

I can't imagine Apple treating 10.6 as something that different.... i.e. far less betas for devlopers.
I mean, I assume OpenCL will be one major target area for developers! I do think we will see a sneak preview of 10.6 @ MWSF '09, to show off how well Apple is doing... maybe Steve doing a *boom" on a 16 Core Mac Pro ;)

[RedTomato]

I would also like to know what LWMLAF is!

Anyone got an idea?

I think t0mat0 said it means something like "Level Windows Makes Laughable Attempts at Following" i.e. 20% is low, but 70% is a good result.

That came up on the first page of Google for LWMLAF, didn't even need to go to the link :)

[AidenShaw]

So, yeah - I don't think we will have any clue (and I don't think MS has any clue) of what windows 7 will be until it is released.

You may be clueless, but the tens of thousands of people who are now running Windows 7 have a pretty good idea. Microsoft's had two recent large conferences focussed on Win7, and a lot of information has been released.

You should get a copy off the net and try it.

[duncyboy]

Quarter 1 or no, I'll wait at least two months from the date of release before I consider buying Snow Leopard.

1) Stability, even with the best will in the world there's always niggles.

2) Will it be worth my while to update from Leopard? Will I see a real-world difference?

I'm looking forward to seeing what Snow Leopard's like, though- anything new and shiny, the sooner the better :D

[iMacmatician]

The most surprising revelation is a more specific target date for Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): 1st Quarter 2009.I'd say about March 2009. Surprisingly early, but then again, the early rumors said MWSF 2009, so March is kinda in the middle. :D

Well if we see any new computer at MacWorld, perhaps a tablet. It has to run new OS that will be very light. Snow Leopard could be it.

Steve could announce Tablet in january and say its shipping in April with Snow Leopard. This can be very good year for Apple. (again)Although I can see a tablet, I don't think Snow Leopard will be streamlined enough to run well on handheld devices (mini-tablet, "iPod stick").

Interestingly he was very specific in a later slide that Intel information was based on publicly published information so as not to generate speculation2015: Here’s the plan: ONE MILLION CORES!LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Even Haswell has 8 cores by default, so that's a lot to do in 3 years... but if they pull it off, I'll be impressed! :cool:

[macbookairapple]

We heard the same crap about Vista before it was released with all those promises, as they say lipstick on a pig. :rolleyes:

[shigzeo]

i think reasonably. i waited a long time for leopard. i think too long. finally, with it installed, i have the osx i have waited for since it was released. but, to have an updated version so soon on the horizon is too much for my poor nerves.

if it is released in june or january i care not but rather am so excited to hear that it is indeed, coming soon. the changes in snow leopard will make my humble mbp a proper mbp i do hope.

[grue]

Why??? 32 bit compatibiity won't slow your mac.

No, but the codebase for it is just more wasted space on my drive. Apple already sucks at writing efficient code, so the less bloat on my drive, the better. Like I said, they can continue releasing the same bloated, buggy crap to the fanboys who will lick their boots. I on the other hand would like something less crappy, and I'm ok with paying extra for it.

[morespce54]

Lets only hope they won't rushed it this time (but still be on schedule too... if such thing is possible) ;)

[137489]

You may be clueless, but the tens of thousands of people who are now running Windows 7 have a pretty good idea. Microsoft's had two recent large conferences focussed on Win7, and a lot of information has been released.

You should get a copy off the net and try it.

heh maybe, but it is still pre-mature to get a real feel at this time. I'll look at the information though.

In the enterprise solution world, we have a major problem though...

Anything after XP and server 2003 dropped Vistual studio 6 support, and I still support a large amount of clients with old VB code (they are still trying to balance upgrading with running their core business). plus with SQL 2008, MS did not release a key piece for reporting services that is needed, so unfortunately it is still pre-mature (that piece is suppose to be coming Q2 2009). so even with Server 2008 which is released, there are still pieces missing where enterprise solutions cannot adopt.

One thing someone threw at me, was there was talk about needing to upgrade from XP to Vista; before you can upgrade to windows 7. That is going to put a big damper if that is true. :o

[Axemantitan]

Could someone please explain to my why my post in this thread was deleted? It was the one in which I was trying to give helpful grammatical advice to someone who was confused. It was not defamatory, insulting or libelous, but merely an attempt to be helpful.

[AidenShaw]

heh maybe, but it is still pre-mature to get a real feel at this time. I'll look at the information though.

Check out:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/2008/pres.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/2008/papers.mspx

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx
(click on "Windows 7" in the list)

and other parts of those sites.


One thing someone threw at me, was there was talk about needing to upgrade from XP to Vista; before you can upgrade to windows 7. That is going to put a big damper if that is true. :o

It's true that M3 (build 6801) won't do an XP upgrade, but it's not uncommon for early alpha and beta builds to have limited upgrade capabilities. (Note that the Snow Leopard kit won't run on PPC.)

I haven't found a definitive statement about plans for the final release.

[chris200x9]

^_^

[ccuk]

It was a necessary rant because none of what you said was in the remotest bit valid. Mac OS X has limitations, but to make the claims as as you did is a big stretch.



Again, when are we going to see Linux (or a some other operating system) become a valid alternative? Its either Windows or Mac OS X - Linux isn't even on the radar. To claim you have choice is like the spam skit off Monty python.



Never said it was the be-all and end-all. If you are going to make a statement, back it up with facts. If you said that Mac OS X scales poorly, I'd agree. But when you said that deployment was difficult and yet ignore NetBoot/NetRestore, I really question the validity of your whole argument.

Well Mr Pedantic I never said any of that (RE netboot, and I never said rollout was difficult, I happen to agree with you on that matter), I wasn't the original poster to whom you responded, I merely interjected.

However to say Linux isn't a viable alternative is a generalisation too far in my opinion. It depends what, where and how the company needs their IT needs meeting.

My point still remins that with OSX you are locked into a hardware and software series of solutions. Linux and Windows offer dual forks for upgradability. Try thinking about what I am saying, ignoring what the OP was saying who clearly had some sort of vendetta against OSX in large roll outs, before replying with hot headed replies.

[Beric]

Macs are not overpriced this has been discussed too many times now. If you didn't get it...

Mac has features and a quality you rarely find elsewhere. Some features of new macbooks aren't comparable in small notebeook pc maket like multitouch pad, Nvidia, 9400M, unibody. So get the fact and stop whining.

For 2/3 the price of the new Macbook, you can get dedicated Nvidia graphics. And what if I couldn't care less about a multitouch pad or a unibody? Do you happen to have a much cheaper Mac for someone like me who couldn't care less about those specific minor features?

I want specs and performance running OS X at baseline PC prices. These small and relatively worthless Mac hardware features mean nothing. If you can find me a true performance-cost oriented Mac, then I'll ignore the rest of the current lineup. But when Macs cost 50%+ more for identical hardware specifications, something is wrong. And that's when I decide no OS is worth $1000.

there we go again... if you compare pc hardware to mac hardware than ull come to the end, that there is not a real big difference in price but an enormous difference in design!

Have you actually tried it for yourself?

I've spent hundreds of hours speccing machines, PC's versus Mac. Macs are always at least 50% more, spec per spec, unless you're going somewhere like Sony. Apple simply does not offer true performance-oriented machines that are at competitive prices.
EDIT: And if you'd like some examples, give me any Mac, and I'll show you it's cheaper, performance-oriented, reliable counterpart.

[macbookairapple]

Have you actually tried it for yourself?

I've spent hundreds of hours speccing machines, PC's versus Mac. Macs are always at least 50% more, spec per spec, unless you're going somewhere like Sony. Apple simply does not offer true performance-oriented machines that are at competitive prices.
EDIT: And if you'd like some examples, give me any Mac, and I'll show you it's cheaper, performance-oriented, reliable counterpart.

Find me an ultraportable like the macbook air something like the sony tt, which is 50 percent cheaper? What about the Mac Pro? Macbook Pro? I want 50 percent cheaper for all them.

[stewy]

I haven't seen a load of crap this big since Biff got covered in Back To The Future

I wonder how many kids just thought... "What's Back to the Future"?

[richard.mac]

^ dude dont underestimate BTTF its one the best trilogies ever! im 21 and i loved it… although im probably at the lower end of the scale espesh for part 1.

[seashellz]

uh...shouldnt it be released when its READY?
the last 2 seeds have NO ISSUES- I would say we ought to be tripping over it as we leave for work tommorrow

[grue]

I've spent hundreds of hours speccing machines, PC's versus Mac. Macs are always at least 50% more, spec per spec, unless you're going somewhere like Sony. Apple simply does not offer true performance-oriented machines that are at competitive prices.
EDIT: And if you'd like some examples, give me any Mac, and I'll show you it's cheaper, performance-oriented, reliable counterpart.

Mac Pro :)

[RoboCop1]

I really hope there is more info coming soon.

[Beric]

Find me an ultraportable like the macbook air something like the sony tt, which is 50 percent cheaper? What about the Mac Pro? Macbook Pro? I want 50 percent cheaper for all them.

MBA ($1800): Lenovo Thinkpad X200 ($1100)

Mac Pro ($2800) -- A tough one. The Mac Pro is probably actually worth its price, if you care about its heavy CPU emphasis. If you want a gaming-oriented desktop (pure graphics power), there's plenty of cheaper PC choices. But with the Mac Pro's emphasis on CPU performance, one might say it's actually worth it.

Macbook Pro 15" ($2000) : BTO HP dv5t series: $1300 -- with better specs all around

Macbook Pro 17" ($2800) : BTO HP dv7t series: $1650

Mac Pro :)

Yep. I stand corrected. Of course, it's hard to say the Mac Pro is consumer-oriented, and thus cost really isn't the main thing here.

[gikku]

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=144858&d=1227071898

I would sooo just click OPEN on this.
I know I downloaded a pic, what time it was, where i got it.
I know I want to open it, why is the dumbass OS asking me to confirm my last request? as bad as Vista !!
I wouldn't even see that it says application rather than pic, too much other gumf in the dialog box.

well, that was until I read that presentation, now I know.

[Beric]

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=144858&d=1227071898

I would sooo just click OPEN on this.
I know I downloaded a pic, what time it was, where i got it.
I know I want to open it, why is the dumbass OS asking me to confirm my last request? as bad as Vista !!
I wouldn't even see that it says application rather than pic, too much other gumf in the dialog box.

well, that was until I read that presentation, now I know.

I wouldn't open it, because one, I know you only get that on a downloaded application, and two, I would be surprised to see any message upon opening a supposed "picture", and thus take the time to look over the message carefully.

[grue]

Yep. I stand corrected. Of course, it's hard to say the Mac Pro is consumer-oriented, and thus cost really isn't the main thing here.

Yeah, I have to admit it's also the only worthwhile machine in the product range at this point. I've been a Mac user for coming up on two and a half decades, and it's the only machine I'd buy from Apple.

[vansouza]

MBA ($1800): Lenovo Thinkpad X200 ($1100)

Mac Pro ($2800) -- A tough one. The Mac Pro is probably actually worth its price, if you care about its heavy CPU emphasis. If you want a gaming-oriented desktop (pure graphics power), there's plenty of cheaper PC choices. But with the Mac Pro's emphasis on CPU performance, one might say it's actually worth it.

Macbook Pro 15" ($2000) : BTO HP dv5t series: $1300 -- with better specs all around

Macbook Pro 17" ($2800) : BTO HP dv7t series: $1650



Yep. I stand corrected. Of course, it's hard to say the Mac Pro is consumer-oriented, and thus cost really isn't the main thing here.

How do you factor in OS X into the price or actually the value?

[macbookairapple]

MBA ($1800): Lenovo Thinkpad X200 ($1100)

Mac Pro ($2800) -- A tough one. The Mac Pro is probably actually worth its price, if you care about its heavy CPU emphasis. If you want a gaming-oriented desktop (pure graphics power), there's plenty of cheaper PC choices. But with the Mac Pro's emphasis on CPU performance, one might say it's actually worth it.

Macbook Pro 15" ($2000) : BTO HP dv5t series: $1300 -- with better specs all around

Macbook Pro 17" ($2800) : BTO HP dv7t series: $1650



Yep. I stand corrected. Of course, it's hard to say the Mac Pro is consumer-oriented, and thus cost really isn't the main thing here.But none of those are 50 percent cheaper dude. :D

[137489]

Check out:

http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/2008/pres.mspx
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/winhec/2008/papers.mspx

https://sessions.microsoftpdc.com/public/timeline.aspx
(click on "Windows 7" in the list)

and other parts of those sites.




It's true that M3 (build 6801) won't do an XP upgrade, but it's not uncommon for early alpha and beta builds to have limited upgrade capabilities. (Note that the Snow Leopard kit won't run on PPC.)

I haven't found a definitive statement about plans for the final release.


Thanks, I'll look at it. All my macs are intel, so PPC does not concern me (only if Apple should ever decide to go back to PPC and therefore can't run Windows - which is doubtful will happen; but you never know).

[137489]

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=144858&d=1227071898

I would sooo just click OPEN on this.
I know I downloaded a pic, what time it was, where i got it.
I know I want to open it, why is the dumbass OS asking me to confirm my last request? as bad as Vista !!
I wouldn't even see that it says application rather than pic, too much other gumf in the dialog box.

well, that was until I read that presentation, now I know.

Pictures are just normally opened automatically by preview. this is a warning that the pic is not a pic, but has code to run as an application. Virus writers are being very saavy to get around security holes.

I can see your point of this being an annoyance. (oh and as bad as Vista - I heard on a talk show that somewhere you can turn off the Deny/Allow, but again you are taking your chances and MS put a disclaimer that they cannot be held liable). again it was on one of those Geek talk shows, and I don't use vista, so I can't point out where. It is buried in the control panel settings somewhere.

so to that I say..... Give me a choice in preferences as to whether to have this dialog appear. If your computer never touches the internet (including any unsecured wireless internet connections in your area), and you were sure of everything - then turn it off. Otherwise, I would say, oh thank you for warning me that this is not really a jpeg.

[liam5150]

MBA ($1800): Lenovo Thinkpad X200 ($1100)

Mac Pro ($2800) -- A tough one. The Mac Pro is probably actually worth its price, if you care about its heavy CPU emphasis. If you want a gaming-oriented desktop (pure graphics power), there's plenty of cheaper PC choices. But with the Mac Pro's emphasis on CPU performance, one might say it's actually worth it.

Macbook Pro 15" ($2000) : BTO HP dv5t series: $1300 -- with better specs all around

Macbook Pro 17" ($2800) : BTO HP dv7t series: $1650



Yep. I stand corrected. Of course, it's hard to say the Mac Pro is consumer-oriented, and thus cost really isn't the main thing here.


Ok. Now let me remind you that with any of those computers you listed (the non Macs) you have to add a bunch of software to get the same functionality that you get with a Mac WITH iLife and OS X... Software is more than worth the difference, specially when you can start to use your Mac right away instead of spending maybe days removing all the crapware that comes with PCs these days...

[137489]

<SNIP>

Again, when are we going to see Linux (or a some other operating system) become a valid alternative? Its either Windows or Mac OS X - Linux isn't even on the radar. To claim you have choice is like the spam skit off Monty python.

<SNIP>.


As I pointed out before on many threads - my feeling is this. Linux can be great (and I have used it), but the usage adoption for most people/companies has always been server related and not much for the desktop/laptop consumer implementation (for the most part the x11 desktop has been slow, or the available applications had been lacking). A lot of linux installations come and go, and the whole linux kernal has become fragmented across installations. I will not rehash everything. I think the one of main breaking points has been the fact that early editions required you to be a techno-geek in order to get it running successfullly, and you had to answer a way too many hardware related questions upon install. Most consumers would not have a clue on how to answer some of the questions.

slackware, Caldera, red Hat, Linspire/Lindows, Madrake/Mandrivia, Suse/Novell, etc. are pretty much either gone, off the radar, or were too propriatry on what software could run on it. I know they are still out there, but news about them has pretty much died.

I think Ubuntu (from what I seen so far), has the best shot as being a success. I do not like Dell, but I think Uduntu will see more of a success due to Dell adopting it and releasing Dell add ons to make it more enjoyable to work with (only on Dell computers). also the makers of Ubuntu are the first to make the OS really friendly toward running on desktops and laptops.

This is pretty much why it is MS or Apple only:

1. Marketing

2. More of a closed platform, therefore better hardware support.

3. Larger companies, therefore more people are apt to write applications for them without fear that the platform will be gone in a few months. plus you get better support (tonge-in-cheek) than some linux distributors.


Plus, since MAC OS X is freeBDS, which is more of a solid UNIX than Linux; people trust its stability more. Apple also did a good job with Darwin to put a nice easy to work with desktop GUI on a Unix install. most linux desktops look too much windows like. the other problem I seen with linux, switch between desktops and your installed applications may not always be there to run.


So in short, I think your choices are quickly going to move from two to three.

MS - Windows
Apple - Mac OS X
<not sure of manufacturer off-hand> - Ubuntu (Linux)

I did a quick google search - many other latptop/desktop manufactures are also offering Ubuntu installations (Lenovo, HP, etc).

I would also like to see more apps written that will run on both Unbuntu and OS X, so that I could easily switch back and forth (ie mac desktop, ubuntu netbook [until apple comes out with a netbook]).

[peejack]

Excuse me for my stupidity but will 3rd party programs have to update for leopard>snow leopard like they did for tiger>snow leopard? or not?

[137489]

Ok. Now let me remind you that with any of those computers you listed (the non Macs) you have to add a bunch of software to get the same functionality that you get with a Mac WITH iLife and OS X... Software is more than worth the difference, specially when you can start to use your Mac right away instead of spending maybe days removing all the crapware that comes with PCs these days...

Just a point of reference:

My old Dell Laptop:

1. 4 hrs calling support to go over the shipped computer specs with what I had ordered. Dang they keep you on hold for a long time and transfer you often. not to mention the guy was in india and did not speak english and onlty had a script in front of him and could not answer questions (just kept re-reading the same script)

2. 2 hrs making backups disks (mine was not shipped with any recovery disks and they wanted to charge me for them - most PC's you don't get disks and have to make your own backups; you are only given one chance on the first boot up only).

3. 1-2 hrs formating the hard drive to get rid of the restore partition, and crapware/trials so that I could have full use of my drive.

4. 1-2 hrs to restore the computer back.

4. 1/2 day to 1 full day switching over and installing my software and moving my data.

<hours for issues afterwards not included, this also includes downtime to reformat the hard drive once it became too fragmented and various other downtimes>


My macbook:

1. 15 min - take out of box, boot up and look around.
2. 1 hr to install software I purchased separately, and my old Windows software onto the parallels VM.
3. 2-3 hrs to move my data (I have gigbytes of books, movies, music, photos, etc - 100 gb worth and growing).

<had not had any issues in the 7 months I have been using it, so no downtime or hours considered>

When I buy my new mac (some point down the road):

1. 15 min - take out of box, boot up and look around.

Since I am using timemachine and an external drive, I know I can just drag my data from the drive to the new mac (I've done it before and also done it from this drive to another non-mac computer when I needed to move something) - not sure if applications in the applications folder would work correctly, probably better off re-installing as I will probably buy the newer versions anyway.

<time listed for draging data from timemachine backup to mac, not even a consideration. I would just start it up before bed and everything will be done in the morning>

<time for backing up new computer - not a consideration, I will just turn on time machine and let it backup while I am working>

Yes - I have spent more time getting a non-mac to the point of where I want it to use on an everyday bases, than I did with a mac.

Yes - thanks to ilife and other minimal apps a mac comes with (cleanly installed and non-trial versions), I have been able to ditch 1/2 to 3/4 of the software I owned.

[AidenShaw]

Excuse me for my stupidity but will 3rd party programs have to update for leopard>snow leopard like they did for tiger>snow leopard? or not?

If they are PPC code, most likely ;) ....

The real answer is "some will, most won't" as with any OS upgrade.

[137489]

Excuse me for my stupidity but will 3rd party programs have to update for leopard>snow leopard like they did for tiger>snow leopard? or not?

I think you meant.

tiger>leopard?

I have the same question myself.... since this is a stability update - one would think not. However with the switch from Carbon to Cocoa, introduction of OpenCL, and more multi-core processing - the jury is still out. Some say yes, some say no. we will just have to wait to see right now.

Anyone one with early developer seeds care to answer? Just a simple simple, I seen old Apps work or break would suffice - don't want to have you disclose any NDA's.

I think some update would occur or would be wanted so as to take advantage of any thing new introduced and faster processing. But truthfully, I think for right now - more is at the OS level and how commands are handled from the apps.

[peejack]

If they are PPC code, most likely ;) ....

The real answer is "some will, most won't" as with any OS upgrade.

Thanks for the reply.

I have an Intel Mac so it might be less troublesome than if I had PPC?

[peejack]

I think you meant.

tiger>leopard?


Yes I did, sorry :o

I was thinking more about the plug-ins (AU's) for Logic 8, i wondered if they would need to be updated?

[Eric S.]

March 21, 2009

Most OS X have been released around that date in previous years.

Huh? Around that date, yes; around that month, no.

10.0 - 24 March 2001
10.1 - 25 September 2001
10.2 - 23 August 2002
10.3 - 24 October 2003
10.4 - 29 April 2005
10.5 - 26 October 2007

The Snow Leopard name is missing - maybe they won't name it SL after all. I see that as more of a code name.

Except that S.J. himself referred to it by name in his WWDC keynote, and it is clearly named on its own Apple web page (http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/). I wouldn't think either would happen if the name weren't official (and either of those trump the slides from this presentation, IMHO).

[bilbo--baggins]

I doubt it'll be Q1 of 2009 - there is still a tonne of stuff that needs be added - the latest build of it was not feature complete, so I doubt they'll push out another release before Christmas and start pushing the RTM out to the cd stampers in February to aim for the end of the quarter. I have a feeling it will be 'finished' then but won't be released until after. As with any software company, there is a release date and a revenue release date.

This didn't stop them with Leopard. They dropped features, didn't do very extensive testing. They just started cashing in, and then slowly finished it as the months rolled by after release.

[bogg]

This didn't stop them with Leopard. They dropped features, didn't do very extensive testing. They just started cashing in, and then slowly finished it as the months rolled by after release.



Same with Tiger, and Panther... But I didn't have any problems with any of those versions (Panther, Tiger, Leopard). So for the general market Leopard was ready for release... A few people with problems (some major) aren't really showstoppers for normal users, only business and professional users. And they don't upgrade before it has been proven stable already (unless they have crappy IT Management)

[alexbates]

Snow Leopard is coming... I bet we will see it tomorrow.

[john7jr]

Same with Tiger, and Panther... But I didn't have any problems with any of those versions (Panther, Tiger, Leopard). So for the general market Leopard was ready for release... A few people with problems (some major) aren't really showstoppers for normal users, only business and professional users. And they don't upgrade before it has been proven stable already (unless they have crappy IT Management)

No, Leopard Server was practically unusable until about 10.5.4. It was a rush job, and quality was clearly not a consideration. If it wasn't ready for business users then it should have been kept back. IT waits for Microsoft to fix their bugs. We shouldn't tolerate that, and we certainly shouldn't expect it from Apple as well.

Snow Leopard is coming... I bet we will see it tomorrow.

Not a chance. It's not ready yet.

[bogg]

No, Leopard Server was practically unusable until about 10.5.4. It was a rush job, and quality was clearly not a consideration. If it wasn't ready for business users then it should have been kept back. IT waits for Microsoft to fix their bugs. We shouldn't tolerate that, and we certainly shouldn't expect it from Apple as well.



I have no experience in the Server versions of OS X, so I'm not going to argue with you about that.

[Eric S.]

Not a chance. It's not ready yet.

There's been some talk that they might rush it out by March or April. For anyone who installs it then, to paraphrase Bette Davis, "fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride."

[numbersyx]

There's been some talk that they might rush it out by March or April. For anyone who installs it then, to paraphrase Bette Davis, "fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride."

With a release that quick (and ahead of time) I can only agree...

[illitrate23]

With a release that quick (and ahead of time) I can only agree...
pfffft - you guys have no sense of excitement and adventure
:-) :-)

[nicnic77]

Absolutely no mention of Snow Leopard today? Worst MacWorld I've ever seen I have to say!

[Bosox3]

Absolutely no mention of Snow Leopard today? Worst MacWorld I've ever seen I have to say!

HAHAHA Surprise surprise..a mac fan that isnt happy about an event.
what else is new. :D

[jackfrost123]

Snow leopard will look great on the mac mini, right boys?:cool:;););):D

[Quillz]

Absolutely no mention of Snow Leopard today? Worst MacWorld I've ever seen I have to say!
Assuming Snow Leopard is pegged for a Q3-Q4 2009 release, won't we hear more about it at WWDC? I've always gotten the impression that Macworld was more consumer-based and WWDC was more developer-based.

The fact is, most Mac users probably don't know or care about Snow Leopard. They are more interested in hardware and "fun" applications, like iPhoto.

[Quillz]

Snow Leopard is coming... I bet we will see it tomorrow.
No.

[NightStorm]

Assuming Snow Leopard is pegged for a Q3-Q4 2009 release, won't we hear more about it at WWDC? I've always gotten the impression that Macworld was more consumer-based and WWDC was more developer-based.

The fact is, most Mac users probably don't know or care about Snow Leopard. They are more interested in hardware and "fun" applications, like iPhoto.
A $2800 Macbook Pro is not a consumer item... new iMacs and Mac Minis would have been.

[nicnic77]

Assuming Snow Leopard is pegged for a Q3-Q4 2009 release, won't we hear more about it at WWDC? I've always gotten the impression that Macworld was more consumer-based and WWDC was more developer-based.

The fact is, most Mac users probably don't know or care about Snow Leopard. They are more interested in hardware and "fun" applications, like iPhoto.

Thought it was Q1?