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

[MacRumors]

Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard spoke at LISA '08 last week. LISA (or Large Installation System Administration Conference) is a technical conference targeted at engineers and system administrators. This year's conference invited 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) 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.




When Apple first previewed 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?

[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]

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!

[nacengineer]

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

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

Originally Posted by dagamer34

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]

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

Originally Posted by nacengineer

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]

Originally Posted by pismodude2

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.