Snow Leopard Screenshots Show Little New

[MacRumors]

Over the holiday weekend, some screenshots and video of the developer release of Snow Leopard were posted to a german site.

Overall, the images show little new from the WWDC build originally released back in July, but may be of interest to some readers. By its nature, Snow Leopard will have little in the way of visual changes and most of the improvements are said to be "under the hood". New Apple technologies such as Grand Central and Open CL will allow developers to easily tap into multi-core CPUs and GPUs that reside in most Macs.

Apple is expected to update the Mac mini and iMac to incorporate the latest NVIDIA GPUs. In doing so, they will enable all shipping Macs to take advantage of many of the benefits of Snow Leopard. Apple is rumored to be showing Snow Leopard at Macworld Expo which kicks off on January 5th.



Article Link: Snow Leopard Screenshots Show Little New

[Tallest Skil]

Obligatory "I want ZFS standard and resolution independence" post.

Is this news, really? Hopefully this 32-bit compatibility mode will be dead before launch...

[Yvan256]

Fingers crossed for the nVidia 9400GM in an updated Mac mini.

[Tallest Skil]

Originally Posted by Yvan256

Fingers crossed for the nVidia 9400GM in an updated Mac mini.

Pretty much a lock given the leaked code we've seen.

[El Carbonite]

Apple could just be keeping things a little close to the vest and not distributing builds to devs with features that they don't want to be leaked. Look what they did with Leopard.

Who knows?

[numbsafari]

Originally Posted by El Carbonite

Apple could just be keeping things a little close to the vest and not distributing builds to devs with features that they don't want to be leaked. Look what they did with Leopard.

Who knows?

I'm waiting for Apple to silently incorporate steganography into the screen cap util. Either that or have a steganographic watermark on the desktop and possibly all window backgrounds.

Using something like perhaps they could track which developer leaked these images.

If I were them I'd keep it really quiet and just monitor who is doing what and then use other means to nail them for violating NDAs and such.

[wizard]

Originally Posted by El Carbonite

Apple could just be keeping things a little close to the vest and not distributing builds to devs with features that they don't want to be leaked. Look what they did with Leopard.

Who knows?

I'm sure there might be a surprise or two but nothing really major. The problem is this, while being undersold by Apple the changes coming in Snow Leopard are rather major. Apple will want to minimize the changes visible to the users to stabilize the release. In other words expect SL to be a bit buggy and needing a service release or two to firm up. You would not want to make major changes to your apps when the whole OS and the libraries those apps are built against are going through a major change.

At the most you can expect that apps that aren't currently Cocao will be. This is actually a major update in and of itself but for some will be required. Here I'm thinking finder (all ready rumored) and things like iTunes. These apps will transition to the new 64 bit libraries and features but may not have a lot of new capabilities beyound that.

From what I know right now this should be looked at as a transitional release. That is a platform upon which Apple and the other developers can deliver next generation software on. If everything comes together as it appears that Apple wants, SL will be a very interesting platform for developers. In a very true sense a next generation platform.


Dave

[Yvan256]

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

Pretty much a lock given the leaked code we've seen.

Still, I'm curious about the new size/style (if any), the new maximum for the RAM (or is it still 3GB?), will they drop the combodrive on the entry model, etc.

[Tallest Skil]

Originally Posted by Yvan256

Still, I'm curious about the new size/style (if any), the new maximum for the RAM (or is it still 3GB?), will they drop the combodrive on the entry model, etc.

Hopefully a "match the MacBooks" dealio, even if they white plastic on top is just exchanged for black glass.

They'll use an nVidia chipset, so it'll be 4GB official and 6GB should work, which will be NICE for the Mini.

If they have any sense, they'll say goodbye to that thing, five years late. They finally dropped it from all MacBooks, so I can see them getting rid of it here.

[burningbright]

Look at how much smaller Mail and iCal are- amazing! This is the kind of thing they promised, and I think this is a great move!

If you like small apps, you should download a copy of Xslimmer and give it a trial run. On my Leopard machine Mail.app is 24.7 MB and iCal 11.4 MB. All it does is strip out the localisations and the PPC code, the stuff the computer ignores anyway. I remember hearing that Apple were slimming apps for 10.6 by doing the same thing, presumably adding lots of new code to bulk it back up somewhat. Leopard is one chubby tabby...

[Sweetfeld28]

A little off topic, but does anyone happen to know what that song is in the first linked video? I like it, but have no idea who its by, or what the name of the song is.

[chadder007]

Hopefully with them using more of the GPU, the Black Screen of Death problem won't accelerate with the NVidia chipsets....

[roamy]

I can't wait until LeopardVista is replaced!! I am almost ready to reload tiger.

Does anyone know if the new ops sys will be "intel only"

thanks

[ctucci]

Originally Posted by Yvan256

Fingers crossed for the nVidia 9400GM in an updated Mac mini.

Oh heck yeah, and with a mini dvi for a second monitor. This tritton setup I'm using is pretty good, but I'd rather have a second native display.

[QuantumLo0p]

Originally Posted by Yvan256

Fingers crossed for the nVidia 9400GM in an updated Mac mini.

Ditto. Many of us are more than ready for an update. My PowerMac is aging but now days I cannot justify another loaded top end machine. I simply do not need the power.

IMO, anything less than a 3GHz quad i7 in the Mini or iMac will harken back too the Apple days of old when users are forced to eat table crumbs whilst PC user enjoy the latest hardware. A simple 940 processor will suffice. Save the Xeon i7 for the MacPro. Currently we have to take a leap from the red headed step child known as the Core2 Duo to 8 core Xeons in the MacPro. Huh? Yeah, there IS a HUGE, GAPING HOLE the size of the Grand Canyon.

Please do not let us down, Steve. Those days should be long gone. Keep looking forward; TO THE FUTURE AND BEYOND!!!

Sorry, just had a Star Trek/Buzz Lightyear moment. I'm alright now.

[econoline06]

Originally Posted by Yvan256

Fingers crossed for the nVidia 9400GM in an updated Mac mini.

I would seriously consider purchasing one if this happens! The mini was a hot little machine (literally if you ran UT2004 ) when it had a dedicated graphics chip.

[mdriftmeyer]

Originally Posted by Tallest Skil

Obligatory "I want ZFS standard and resolution independence" post.

Is this news, really? Hopefully this 32-bit compatibility mode will be dead before launch...

What do you care? Your kernel will be 64 bit and your OS will take advantage of that natively. If you have a pet application that isn't 64 bit yet, cutting 32 bit compatibility won't accelerate it in time for the release. There are tons of UNIX applications that will be moving to 64 bit, not just on OS X, but on Linux, FreeBSD, OpenSolaris/Solaris, AIX, NetBSD, etc.

They aren't handcuffing the OS with a 32bit kernel and 64 bit app layer.

[weckart]

If the changes are under the hood then you will upgrade or expect to do without software/hardware upgrades that require 10.6 to run.

[mark88]

Snow Leopard seems to me like an admission that Leopard needs improvements and has flaws that need fixing. Not quite the flawless OS that the marketing dept tout it as uh.

I welcome the improvements as Leopard has some major performance issues IME. It's a shame they need a .1 release to do this though and it will be interesting to see how many users cough up the cash for the upgrade.

[4armshiver]

Originally Posted by mark88

Snow Leopard seems to me like an admission that Leopard needs improvements and has flaws that need fixing. Not quite the flawless OS that the marketing dept tout it as uh.

I welcome the improvements as Leopard has some major performance issues IME. It's a shame they need a .1 release to do this though and it will be interesting to see how many users cough up the cash for the upgrade.

Your foolish if you think an OS can be perfect. You can always improve on your OS, and its the marketing teams job to tell you its perfect. Even an marketing exec from Microsoft will tell you Vista is perfect. Wanting to improve the behind the scene components of an OS shouldn't be argued about. The real question here is of course the price tag.

[AidenShaw]

Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer

They aren't handcuffing the OS with a 32bit kernel and 64 bit app layer.

I can't wait for Phil to explain why it was so wonderful that 10.5 gave full support for 64-bit, but without requiring new 64-bit drivers and 32-bit compatibility mode - but now 10.6 gives true full support for 64-bit, but requires all new drivers and 32-bit compatibility mode.

Apple 10.5: Ship 32-bit kernel, and knock Windows for the issues that a 64-bit kernel introduces.

Apple 10.6: Ship 64-bit kernel, and admit that Windows did it right the first time?

[Amdahl]

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

Apple 10.5: Ship 32-bit kernel, and knock Windows for the issues that a 64-bit kernel introduces.

Apple 10.6: Ship 64-bit kernel, and admit that Windows did it right the first time?

You're on the mark there. Maybe Phil will have some RDF gas piped in to the room.

[Krevnik]

Originally Posted by AidenShaw

I can't wait for Phil to explain why it was so wonderful that 10.5 gave full support for 64-bit, but without requiring new 64-bit drivers and 32-bit compatibility mode - but now 10.6 gives true full support for 64-bit, but requires all new drivers and 32-bit compatibility mode.

Apple 10.5: Ship 32-bit kernel, and knock Windows for the issues that a 64-bit kernel introduces.

Apple 10.6: Ship 64-bit kernel, and admit that Windows did it right the first time?

Realize this: XCode 3.0 and 10.5 let you develop 64-bit drivers. The APIs got tweaked to handle writing one set of code for 32/64-bit drivers in 10.5. Apple probably even tested, but didn't ship the 64-bit kernel to make sure developers writing against them would be doing the right thing.

As long as developers have been building a full UB driver since Leopard's launch, moving to a 64-bit kernel will not be nearly as painful as it was for Windows where everyone had to rewrite their drivers for a whole new API that didn't even exist prior to Vista (64-bit Vista drivers had extra requirements that 32-bit Vista drivers, and 64-bit XP drivers never had). Anyone building a 32/64-bit UB driver today for Leopard will be ready for Snow Leopard without doing anything.

32-bit compatibility mode has always been part of Leopard. Safari is built as a 32-bit app, as is System Preferences so that they can still load plugins correctly that haven't been made into a 32/64-bit UB yet. 10.6 will likely still have Safari launch in 32-bit mode, and System Preferences (IMO) should as well until 10.7.

[MShock]

SL looks ok - I wish the desktop and finder would resemble the iPhone interface a little more, with the black glass look and all. With the Finder rewrite, I hope to see options in system preferences to make it more functional like Path Finder. Clearly, a ZFS update would be nice! I don't think they will deploy that with the GUI until 10.7 or 10.8. That's server only from the command line until then...

[ziggyonice]

Originally Posted by MacRumors

Snow Leopard Screenshots Show Little New

Um... isn't that the point of Snow Leopard? Little new changes that are visible, but big changes that aren't?