Schiller to Demo Snow Leopard at Macworld?

[hwojtek]

i have started to wonder if the apple TV, time capsule and mac mini might morph into one?

I think consultancy is not about inventing something that has been already rumored a few times before :)

[Columbo X]

From what I remember of past keynote commentary, people seem to think a keynote "sucked" or succeeded based on what products were delivered, regardless of whether Steve was there or not. I know there is little pre-Macworld rumour flying around but I'm looking forward to seeing what Phil talks about. Since Macworld is consumer oriented, perhaps we'll see OpenCL accelerated demos of Core Image or the iLife suite? I also agree with part of Tallest Skil's first post on this thread that I'd rather see Apple get Snow Leopard right and not rush it out early.

[What's Up Doc]

I think consultancy is not about inventing something that has been already rumored a few times before :)

True i was jesting and maybe regret the comment. having said that i havent seen the idea b4 (havent been on MacRumors for months) and does coming up with a great theory independantly when it is known by others make it any less impressive? read Genius about Richard Feynman - they all shared the nobel prize! :)

Seriously b4 i get accused of plagerism again :) is there a master list of known bugs in Leopard or other apps anywhere that people agree on? I read a few posts on a different thread about things like - "i have the screen bug on the macbook" - and no one agrees with them it is known about. I have a problem with mail not closing down sometimes - is this a known bug? or just me - where do i go?

[esXXI]

Sorry but read what i wrote. SJ is the one that likes everyone on the same version of the OS for good ecomonmic reasons, it is a lot less hassle to maintain and support one or two versions of OS than five.
What. Apple doesn't support anything but the previous-one and current OS X versions when they release new products or services. 10.3 and below? They'll just tell you to upgrade*. Not to mention the vast majority of Mac owners get new OS X versions when they buy a new Mac. When 10.6 comes out, expect the next versions of iLife, iWork, Pro apps, etc to all require at least 10.5. The "killer app" of 10.6 is a large speed increase from developers taking advantage of new technologies.

Apple is a business and wants to make a profit - it wont do something that increases its costs unless there is likely to be a bigger rise in income. witness the whole Vista nightmare.
So in order to counter this rise in costs and need for more income to offset it you're suggesting they give it away free or "cheap"... And Vista's failure had nothing to do with the issues you're talking about. Vista failed because 3rd parties didn't upgrade drivers or did them badly, poor performance, the nagging security, the higher system requirements and the confusing array of different versions.

I entirely agree i would like a faster more secure less buggy system but isnt that what the point increments are about? Or do you think this is a clever way of getting us to pay for fixing things? so no more point increments pay for bug fixes?
Point increases do not add major features. The notion that 10.6 is just 10.5.x for money is stupid.

[* - iLife, iWork, Mobile Me, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, Shake, etc all require 10.4+. I'm hard pressed to find ANY current products that support 10.3]

[What's Up Doc]

What. Apple doesn't support anything but the previous-one and current OS X versions when they release new products or services. 10.3 and below? They'll just tell you to upgrade*. Not to mention the vast majority of Mac owners get new OS X versions when they buy a new Mac. When 10.6 comes out, expect the next versions of iLife, iWork, Pro apps, etc to all require at least 10.5. The "killer app" of 10.6 is a large speed increase from developers taking advantage of new technologies.


So in order to counter this rise in costs and need for more income to offset it you're suggesting they give it away free or "cheap"... And Vista's failure had nothing to do with the issues you're talking about. Vista failed because 3rd parties didn't upgrade drivers or did them badly, poor performance, the nagging security, the higher system requirements and the confusing array of different versions.


Point increases do not add major features. The notion that 10.6 is just 10.5.x for money is stupid.

[* - iLife, iWork, Mobile Me, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, Shake, etc all require 10.4+. I'm hard pressed to find ANY current products that support 10.3]

your point on new owners getting the latest release is very valid but it will take a while to filter through even at their increase sales rate. however i was suggesting that the Speed increases arent going to be that amazing for older users on older machines so they arent as likely to upgrade for that alone unless the apps are worth it. i bought leopard first day because it gave me great new things to play with. hence my view that it will be cheap or have killer apps. it wont just be about multicore support. it will only be free if there are no major gains in apps and all they are trying to do is pull in the corporate buyers. they will end up with a stretched out user base which they may not support as previously but this will alienate the users whereas previously the message has been dont stay on older versions as look how cool the new one is on your old machine. the message will now be look at how little benefit you get from upgrading unless there are killer apps.

I actually think we are saying similar things? that we are all excited to see what snow leopard contains and we hope its more than just better multicore support. though perhaps our difference of opinion is about the large speed increase - i use the following apps regularly - mail, word, excel, pages, evernote, safari, address book, iPhoto, iWeb, calendar, sync services, keynote and powerpoint. i also play with lightroom and photoshop. i just dont believe i am going to notice an amazing speed difference. now if i was encoding a lot of video and doing a lot of graphics maybe - but the user base seems to be in several camps. "arty" users, home users, Students, cool business users etc. how many of them are going to notice a difference?
whats your predictions? im genuinely interested. what would you like to see in the apps?

[law guy]

From what I remember of past keynote commentary, people seem to think a keynote "sucked" or succeeded based on what products were delivered, regardless of whether Steve was there or not. I know there is little pre-Macworld rumour flying around but I'm looking forward to seeing what Phil talks about. Since Macworld is consumer oriented, perhaps we'll see OpenCL accelerated demos of Core Image or the iLife suite? I also agree with part of Tallest Skil's first post on this thread that I'd rather see Apple get Snow Leopard right and not rush it out early.

It's true, but that's disappoint is due to the excitement that builds up for the keynotes - the magic recipe of the combination of Jobs / products / how Jobs introduces the products. Apple is sometimes the victim of the expectations that it helps to create with its secrecy and product introduction style. Even with the disappointment, the press buzz is usually substantial and free publicity is nice.

People weren't usually that up or down about a Steve Balmer keynote. It's true that an Apple keynote is likely going to be more interesting than Microsoft regardless of the presenter because we're more excited about the Apple products. Still, it may be a - I'll check the web store at the end of the day rather than refreshing Engadget continuously to find out that "doors are opening" "people sitting down" "lights dimming" etc.

[AidenShaw]

...it was pretty damn comprehensively covered on Arstechnica over the nature of 64bitness http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/4 :
It's clear that the road to "full 64-bit support" will be a long one. There are few benefits to being a 64-bit process for the vast majority of GUI applications. Nevertheless, it's safe to assume that, eventually, all Macs will include 64-bit CPUs. The introduction of 64-bit versions of all Mac OS X subsystems (Carbon, Cocoa, Core Foundation, QuickTime, Quartz, etc.) seems inevitable.


Well, it wasn't inevitable after all. Ask Adobe about Carbon64... ;)


If you're running the program that needs to access the share mapped to the H drive, Windows automatically reconnects. The drive mapping acts as a placeholder, even for dead connections and will try to reconnect automatically when accessed. That's beautiful and the way it should work (and ironically, it's more Mac-like in that respect than the Mac.)

This reconnect process is so transparent on Windows that in fact the system will automatically disconnect idle shares to reduce the number of connections that the server has to manage.

As soon as a reference is made to a disconnected share, it is transparently reconnected.

Most people don't even realize that this is happening. (Issue the "net use" command in a command window, it will list shares and their states.)

[Amdahl]

Anyways, since Apple makes most of their money through their hardware sales, it makes sense to me for them to release new OS's that require new hardware...annoying maybe, but it is good business on their part.

Which means you are missing the point again. Apple can release all the OS versions they want, and sell them to you as many times as you want to buy. But they should be DEMANDED to support the things for security for five years!
An OS & computer is NOT obsolete in 17 months!

[Amdahl]

That's an interesting thought. Apple is making a big deal that their software is licensed, not sold. Is it was sold, then they would be off the hook about not providing updates. (First sale doctrine.) But since they license it, what are they required to supply for that license fee? Not much, according to the EULA.
Yes, for a software-only purchase, it is a harder case to make. That is why I am making the point specifically to a computer bought at retail. Apple is NOT selling the software. They are selling a hardware/software solution that is advertised on American Idol and sold as easy and safe. The reality is they are not delivering on the safety portion. EU has much tougher standards and laws about these things, so I expect if a lawsuit bites them, it will probably be there.

[Eric S.]

Snow Leopard is all about the developers. Why show it at Macworld, which is for consumers? There better be some really impressive figures.

Developers? No, it's all about OS technologies that will give future machines superior performance. We've hit a ceiling where just upping the GHz of the CPU doesn't pay off in substantially better performance. The next generation of computers will be all about how to make larger numbers of processors work together and how to make the best use of GPUs. The point is to make this as transparent to developers as possible by building the intelligence into the OS.

I'd also prefer Snow Leopard stay in incubation until WWDC. Perhaps do an open beta. Apple's taking this time to make sure that under the hood, OSX has the technologies to take advantage of better hardware. I'd really like it if they could take as much time making sure that everyday bugs are fixed.

Besides, I doubt Apple could have rewritten all their drivers already. If they don't support Black Macbooks on this system, I'm really going to be very angry indeed.

Why would they have to rewrite their drivers? If you mean for 64-bit, all they need to do is recompile. The number of data structures that are 32-bit/64-bit dependent should be minimal, and I bet they've been testing a 64-bit OS for a long time now.

Edit: 10.6 will probably support all of Apple's Intel systems, but at least all of the Core 2 Duo systems.

[SACD02]

The future is all about using the GPU to do some of the work. GPUs are floating point monsters which are left almost to no use except gaming or heavy professsional applications. Apple and Microsoft must bring GPUs to ordinary applications as well. A midrange GPU like ATI 4670 is more powerful than an i7 system when it comes to parallel and floating point calculations (I have both and the 4670 leaves the i7 system in dust in Folding@home)
I really hope Snow Leopard ushers a new era in that regard. It is long overdue and I cant believe it is taking all these companies such a long time to get it to work

As AMD says, Tomorrow is all about Fusion = CPU + GPU
The power of general processing in CPU + the massive floating point and parallel power of GPU can do a great deal even in ordinary applications

[butterfly0fdoom]

The iMac can't cool them or the x58 chipset. If we're really lucky we might see the 65w Core 2 Quads. You won't see the i7 in the iMac until late 2009-early 2010.

There was some code revealed (how accurate it is, I don't know), but it lists a new generation for iMacs and Mac minis; Apple could have completely redone the inside of the iMac.

[wakka092]

Aagh! It's Jonathan. What a particularly wrong and horrible version of Jonathan your spelling is.

Sorry - I can't help myself.

I apologize - that's how my nephew's name is spelled.

"Developers, Developers, Developers"...nuff said :rolleyes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8To-6VIJZRE
Look at those sweat stains.. :eek:

[Truffy]

I couldn't agree more! It's amazing to me how easy it is to show another Windows user where something exists on a network and how friggin' difficult it is to do the same for Mac users. With Windows users, you just email them the network path, they click it in their email, a window pops up with that location and you're done. It's one area where Windows gets the ease-of-use thing dead-on right and Macs have no equivalent to it.

I may be displaying my ignorance here, I don't use a Mac on a large network (only home LAN), but can't you email something like afp://server/share?

[inkswamp]

I may be displaying my ignorance here, I don't use a Mac on a large network (only home LAN), but can't you email something like afp://server/share?

In theory, yes, but in practice, it tends not to work half the time. And unlike the Windows equivalent, you can't specify a path. OS X is just too network-stupid to figure out what is a share and what is a path. A Mac will choke on this for example:

afp://server/share/path/to/something/

I just tried it myself and now I have the "connecting to server" dialog frozen on my screen and no way to get it to stop other than rebooting. And get this... I was *already* connected to that server and share. That's just dumb, dumb and dumb.

Windows, on the other hand, does it consistently and without complaint.

This reconnect process is so transparent on Windows that in fact the system will automatically disconnect idle shares to reduce the number of connections that the server has to manage.

As soon as a reference is made to a disconnected share, it is transparently reconnected.

Most people don't even realize that this is happening. (Issue the "net use" command in a command window, it will list shares and their states.)

Exactly! I've noticed that too and it makes me wish Apple would do something equivalent to that. It's so elegant and Mac-like. The Mac just throws up his hands and does this ditzy little "Gee, I lost my network connection and I don't know what to do." It's freakin' annoying and one very badly designed aspect of OS X.

[iMacmatician]

Hmmm...First revision of Macbook Pro with better processor and now Snow Leopard? It's looking more and more like I'll be purchasing a Macbook Pro this spring!Same here, although I don't think my iBook can wait any longer than January. I guess a lot of it will have to do with iLife '09, Snow Leopard, and Spring update dates and significances.

I assume this'll just be a performance demo then? A whole "look how fast and efficient OS X is".The optimistic side of me has thought for a while that there will be a few end-user features that will be pointed out, primarily to entice users to upgrade. We've already seen one: Icon audio/video play previews. Maybe we will see more.

The reason you have Snow Leopard is not to do today's jobs faster but to enable other types of applications.
...
The trouble is that you can't demo those new kinds of applications so it might come down to a useless demo where they do video rendering in Final Cut Pro or something like that.Maybe Apple will add one or two new applications to Snow Leopard that take advantage of its new features. That would also be one or two more reasons to buy it.

And my MWSF predictions? Cinema Displays, Mac mini, iPhone talk, sales talk etc., Snow Leopard talk, maybe iLife/iWork '09 (maybe they'll have Snow Leopard optimizations). iMac update only if it's significant (quad-core desktop CPUs).

[petermcphee]

I hope that Snow Leopard shows the same performance boosts that Leopard showed over Tiger.

[k2spitfire88]

Which means you are missing the point again. Apple can release all the OS versions they want, and sell them to you as many times as you want to buy. But they should be DEMANDED to support the things for security for five years!
An OS & computer is NOT obsolete in 17 months!

While I agree with the last point, since it is their software, don't they have the right to stop updating it when they want??? I would rather have them look forward as much as possible, then be like Windoze, stuck in legacy code that they can't dump, but that's just my $.02. Feel how you want, but I'm ok with the way they do it. :)

[AidenShaw]

While I agree with the last point, since it is their software, don't they have the right to stop updating it when they want???

And the customer has the right to pick a platform where there are guarantees and tradition of support.


I would rather have them look forward as much as possible, then be like Windoze, stuck in legacy code that they can't dump...

First, Microsoft's support for older operating systems doesn't tie them to "legacy code" per se. Supporting Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 for security patches and interoperability doesn't prevent new features. It's more work, but for business systems you need support commitments.

Second, Microsoft doesn't add new features to the old systems - usually they'll ensure that system X and system X-1 can co-exist, often by letting system X run in a compatibility mode that disables features incompatible with system X-1. To get the latest feature set, you'll need to upgrade. (This is common with Active Directory enhancements - only when all domain controllers in the forest are at the new version are all the new features available.)

Apple can be more capricious about support - if they decide that an 18-month old system is obsolete, they can leave it off the upgrade path. When 10.6 comes out, and is x64 only - time to think about replacing all those PPC and Core Duo systems.

[kaiwai]

Well, it wasn't inevitable after all. Ask Adobe about Carbon64... ;)

The article was an assumption - with that being said; Steve had been parading around on stage for almost a decade with his proverbial todger swinging from side to side chanting the virtues of XCode and Cocoa. If you as a programmer have ignore the site - then obviously you shouldn't have a job as a programmer.

[Matty-Andy]

This has probably been discussed already, but with OpenCL can one simply plug in an extra video card to act as a co-processor even if said video card is not used as a video card (ie no monitor attached)?

[AidenShaw]

The article was an assumption - with that being said; Steve had been parading around on stage for almost a decade with his proverbial todger swinging from side to side chanting the virtues of XCode and Cocoa.

To be truthful, Apple's been parading around for decades talking about things that never came to pass - Pink, Yellow, Blue, Taligent, Copland.... You can't fault software companies for taking a "wait and see" approach with regards to Apple's claims about software roadmaps.


If you as a programmer have ignore the site - then obviously you shouldn't have a job as a programmer.

I really strongly disagree with this point. A programmer at Adobe doesn't decide to port to Cocoa - that's a much higher level decision. The engineering product and development managers have to decide where to invest effort and money.

This certainly does not mean rewriting the codebase whenever there's a new fashion in programming languages and frameworks. This is especially true when the "new fashion" is proprietary to only one of the target platforms.

Since moving to Cocoa was a huge expense (especially for a very large multi-platform project like CS), and since the added value for the end user is quite small, and since Apple's roadmap and beta drops showed continued support for Carbon -- it would have been foolish for Adobe to spend money on a Cocoa port.

Had Apple been less capricious, and stated years ago that Carbon64 would not happen, then those same engineering investment decisions would have been to move to Cocoa -- because the added value for the end user would be apparent.

Apple caused this problem, not decisions at Adobe. Recommending a port to Cocoa, and stating that Carbon is disappearing, are two different things. Apple should have stated that Carbon64 would not happen many years ago - not surprise their developers by pulling it after shipping a 10.5 beta with Carbon64.

The fact that Apple still ships a Carbon Finder shows that even Apple ignored the recommendations!

[AidenShaw]

This has probably been discussed already, but with OpenCL can one simply plug in an extra video card to act as a co-processor even if said video card is not used as a video card (ie no monitor attached)?

Nvidia supports this with CUDA - so certainly OpenCL could as well. Nvidiea even sells "graphics" cards without monitor connectors for this:

http://images.nvidia.com/products/tesla_c1060/Tesla_c1060_3qtr_low.png


Nvidia also sells prepackaged 1000 core supercomputing engines with 4 of these cards - http://www.nvidia.com/object/tesla_computing_solutions.html Supported for XP and Linux.

[RoboCop001]

So with Snow Leopard, they're getting rid of some unnecessary code, besides just coding everything more efficiently, right?

So, if that's right, does that mean it might take up a bit less HD space?

Or am I totally wrong, and it's going to just keep taking up more space?

[Tallest Skil]

So with Snow Leopard, they're getting rid of some unnecessary code, besides just coding everything more efficiently, right?

So, if that's right, does that mean it might take up a bit less HD space?

Or am I totally wrong, and it's going to just keep taking up more space?

So far, it's a heck of a lot smaller. Have you seen the charts on application size?

[t0mat0]

What if Schiller did this

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=doVyNVxovX8

4:54 in, but with Snow Leopard?

Remember, that at WWDC 2005, Jobs told the audience, that Apple had been working, for 5 years, on giving OS X a double life?

What's not to have stopped Apple having done this again, ever since the Intel transition?

Some of the dialogue:

Big topic, transitions...
1 - 68k to PowerPC
2 - OS IX to OSX ("and it has set Apple up for the next 20 years")
"we want to constantly be making the best computers..."
3 - PowerPC to Intel processors
"For you now, for our customers next year"...
"as we look ahead, even though we have great products right now, and to come, as we look ahead we can envision some amazing products, but we don't know how to build them with the future [powerPC] and that's why we're going to do this [Intel transition]

2 keys things -
Performance
Power consumption (performance per watt)

When we meet this time next year, our plan is to be shipping Macs with Intel processors by then...Planned a transition by end of 2007 (2 year transition)

"I have something to tell you"

4:54

"Mac OS X has been living a secret double life, for the past 5 years"


"Had teams doing the just in case scenario
Rules: Designs for OS X
#1 Designs must be processor independent,
#2 Every project must be built for both PowerPC and Intel

"Every release of Mac OS X has been compiled for PowerPC and Intel
has been going along for the last 5 years.... just in case. Cross platform by design.

-> Demo

[powers74]

When Snow Leopard ships, Tiger will lose security update support, according to Apple's own policy.

That means an iMac bought in August 2007 will be unprotected on the Internet in March 2009. That is 17 months after purchase.


Ooooh, I'm shaking in my boots... I don't know what you're worried about, but I'm still running panther.9 and the only security issues I've ever run into were from Apples own "security updates" which I quickly gave up on.

[Tallest Skil]

What if Schiller did this, but with Snow Leopard?

Remember, that at WWDC 2005, Jobs told the audience, that Apple had been working, for 5 years, on giving OS X a double life?

What's not to have stopped Apple having done this again, ever since the Intel transition?

I have absolutely no idea what you're insinuating here. What double life would Snow Leopard be leading?

[AidenShaw]

I have absolutely no idea what you're insinuating here. What double life would Snow Leopard be leading?

Maybe someone is clinging to the notion that 10.6 will support PowerPC and 32-bit Core Duo processors :confused:

[TwinCities Dan]

Maybe someone is clinging to the notion that 10.6 will support PowerPC and 32-bit Core Duo processors :confused:

Have the Core Duo's been officially omitted from Snow Leopard? I thought the betas of SL supported these (Not to say that couldn't change before the official release). :confused:

[drsmithy]

Apple does not compete like that, the will release on their own schedule. 10.6 will come in the first qtr, windows 7 in mid year. 10.7 I would guess late 09- mid 10

What ? You'll be lucky to see 10.7 before 2011 (they might just squeeze it in Q4 2010).

[FrenchKheldar]

though perhaps our difference of opinion is about the large speed increase - i use the following apps regularly - mail, word, excel, pages, evernote, safari, address book, iPhoto, iWeb, calendar, sync services, keynote and powerpoint. i also play with lightroom and photoshop. i just dont believe i am going to notice an amazing speed difference. now if i was encoding a lot of video and doing a lot of graphics maybe - but the user base seems to be in several camps. "arty" users, home users, Students, cool business users etc. how many of them are going to notice a difference?


That's the whole point of Snow Leopard, and you're missing it. Multicore optimization for audio/video encoding is already close to perfection. Run handbrake on a Mac Pro with 8 cores, if you're converting some HD signal, there is a good chance your 8 cores are running at 100% already, no need for Snow Leopard. While Snow Leopard will allow you to run Handbrake on 256 cores on your GPU, this is not a breakthrough. It's the same technology simply scaled up.

The real breakthrough, and what we're all hoping from SL, is efficient use of multiple cores (whether they're on a CPU or on a GPU) EVERYWHERE in the OS. That means Mail is faster, Safari is snappier, no more beachball on Aperture, ... Everybody should benefit, provided you have the appropriate hardware.
If SL delivers on this, Apple will have a clear lead in terms of raw performance over every other single OS, Linux included. And will be more than entitled to charge end users for SL as they did for Leopard...

Let's see if they match the hype !

[MattInOz]

That's the whole point of Snow Leopard, and you're missing it. Multicore optimization for audio/video encoding is already close to perfection. Run handbrake on a Mac Pro with 8 cores, if you're converting some HD signal, there is a good chance your 8 cores are running at 100% already, no need for Snow Leopard. While Snow Leopard will allow you to run Handbrake on 256 cores on your GPU, this is not a breakthrough. It's the same technology simply scaled up.

The real breakthrough, and what we're all hoping from SL, is efficient use of multiple cores (whether they're on a CPU or on a GPU) EVERYWHERE in the OS. That means Mail is faster, Safari is snappier, no more beachball on Aperture, ... Everybody should benefit, provided you have the appropriate hardware.
If SL delivers on this, Apple will have a clear lead in terms of raw performance over every other single OS, Linux included. And will be more than entitled to charge end users for SL as they did for Leopard...

Let's see if they match the hype !

The real hope is that Apple can take enough risk out of MultiCore work for the 3rd party developers who are struggling can go multi-core. (CAD I'm Looking At You). As they no longer need to worry about low level stuff just the stuff that defines thier product.

[Chairman Plow]

Going to conduct my own tests. :cool:http://i273.photobucket.com/albums/jj217/hustlinbeatz/MBPtest.jpg

[Kilamite]

What if Schiller did this

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=doVyNVxovX8

4:54 in, but with Snow Leopard?

<- snip ->

Umm what?

What is your point? All you've done is typed up a dialogue of Steve's keynote of the transition plan. How on earth can that be linked to Snow Leopard?

They aren't going to be switching processors. What is your point?

[What's Up Doc]

That's the whole point of Snow Leopard, and you're missing it. Multicore optimization for audio/video encoding is already close to perfection. Run handbrake on a Mac Pro with 8 cores, if you're converting some HD signal, there is a good chance your 8 cores are running at 100% already, no need for Snow Leopard. While Snow Leopard will allow you to run Handbrake on 256 cores on your GPU, this is not a breakthrough. It's the same technology simply scaled up.

The real breakthrough, and what we're all hoping from SL, is efficient use of multiple cores (whether they're on a CPU or on a GPU) EVERYWHERE in the OS. That means Mail is faster, Safari is snappier, no more beachball on Aperture, ... Everybody should benefit, provided you have the appropriate hardware.
If SL delivers on this, Apple will have a clear lead in terms of raw performance over every other single OS, Linux included. And will be more than entitled to charge end users for SL as they did for Leopard...

Let's see if they match the hype !

ok - my cynicism is perhaps affecting me. lets hope everything is snappier. if as you say it makes a complete difference to me - i will buy it, but it will have to be a real noticable difference.

[t0mat0]

What if Apple has been working on the fundamentals of Leopard, to upgrade to Snow Leopard for a while. It seems Microsoft has been doing a lot of work on concurrency, and if you look around, you can see this - they had a lot on show at their recent conference. Would Apple be so far behind that they'd be bringing in parallelism through Grand Central, without doing the ground work first? We've heard it seems, nary a peep about this, yet they're touting Grand Central. Surely that means they've done a heck of a lot - they're bascially saying they've to a degree solved a problem that's been out there for a while, and neither Intel nor Microsoft has satifactorily solved.
The other thread being OpenCL - use of GPU power. Itself parallel, due to the hardware nature.

To try and make the point clearer - If Apple has been doing a lot of work behind the scenes (they pushed through OpenCL in a record time, so who's to not say that they weren't ahead on preparations for both what the spec would be, and also, crucially, what they are going to be doing with it.
The PA Semi, the Imagination Technologies, the NVIDIA links, the current MBP graphics set up, and the upcoming Nehalem CPUs - it's a big potential spring board if Apple has the software tech lined up to fully utilise it.

What if Schiller wowed us with stuff Apple had kept secret - The Intel transition is an example of something that was squirreled away for 5 years. They could have had 2 years or so for further work, when they knew for sure they were going Intel.
A lot of things relate in the transcript
- The whole use of what Apple was looking for, that caused a shift to Intel (performance and performanceper watt)
- How OS X had "has set Apple up for the next 20 years"
- their laudable statement that they "want to constantly be making the best computers..."
- How they primed developers for a shift - and presumably with Snow Leopard, the 64-bit shift is there, and there are others to be made (recoding for concurrency in mind).

Or not - wonder what might be being inferred as being delayed that was originally on track for MWSF 09?

Edit - Would Apple celebrate 25th of the 1984 ad? El Reg (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/12/15/1984_ad_anniversary/) wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(television_commercial)) And wasn't Schiller pretty good at the Paris expo in 2004, I seem to recall?

[IronRoses]

I hope sooo.

After leopard being the buggiest os's that i have ever used on the mac side.

I refuse to use leopard due to the huge ammount of problems i have had!

Snow leopard looks promising though.
However if they don't get the new huge features tied down and bug free it may end up being yet another leopard.

I hope apple go down the upgrade route though and give it out either free (yeh right...never happen) or half price (hmmm...doubt it)


Then again they may as well sell it as an entirely new version as in...not an upgrade copy.

I'm getting excited about snow leopard. The new intel support (full on, no ppc to slow the yss down) fu;l 64bit unlike the **** in leopard.

Come on apple give me a reason to be a mac fan once again!

[Kilamite]

<snip>

To try and make the point clearer - If Apple has been doing a lot of work behind the scenes (they pushed through OpenCL in a record time, so who's to not say that they weren't ahead on preparations for both what the spec would be, and also, crucially, what they are going to be doing with it.
The PA Semi, the Imagination Technologies, the NVIDIA links, the current MBP graphics set up, and the upcoming Nehalem CPUs - it's a big potential spring board if Apple has the software tech lined up to fully utilise it.

</snip>

Good point - but I think Snow Leopard has been worked on before Leopard was even released. I know Steve said that they began working on Snow Leopard as soon as Leopard was out, but Snow Leopard might have been in production in one of the labs for testing to see what they could get out of the new technologies.