Apple's Newest Snow Leopard (10A314) Shows Steady Improvements

[MrCrowbar]

How likely to people think the Marble GUI is to appear? The way people are talking about it almost makes it sound like a cert. Is there any links to the rumours about its appearance. I'd really love a new user inerface, not so fussed about being able to change my own themes but just a fresh looking option other than all the grey would be nice.

Apple OS look have traditionally been made to match the style of the hardware. For some time, the hardware (iMacs, display, Powermac) all had pinstripes, and the OS got it to. During the PPC to Intel transition, hardware was mostly white (iMac, Macbook) with no textures. Tiger and Leopard thus dropped the brushed metal look and small things were refined to make the OS looks "at home" on the current hardware.

Today Apple has the black glass plus aluminum theme going; it started with the iPhone and now you have it on the iMacs, Macbook, Cinema Displays, iPods. Actually, it's weird that the Mac Mini isn't all aluminum with a black Apple logo inside (like the front of the iMacs).

I expect "Marble" to have some black glass and anodized aluminum elements in it. The mockups of the new QuickTime already has the black glass look going. A faint anodized aluminum texture would look good actually, still gray (neutral color is important, the blue WinXP them drives me nuts every time I see it) but with a little grain to it. The blue scrollbar candy could be replaced by black glass. Still stands out (i.e. you don't need to search for the scroll bar slider) but has an updated look. I expect a graphite theme will stay thoug, with less contrast and saturation.

Did Apple do anything with Resolution Independence or does everything still look very off if you change the PPI ratio on command line? It was such a hyped feature for Leopard and I feel it was just abandoned. :-(

 

[MrCrowbar]

It seems Apple is still having some problems with the 64-bit kernel transition. Hopefully it will be default for all x64 capable machines. Telling devs to do 64-bit ktexts now makes it sound like there may not be 64-bit drivers for everything right out the gate.

I believe 32bit KEXTS will still work, but not as efficiently. So developers can take their time upgrading and old apps can still be used.

 

[skillwill]

Doesn't matter at all when it comes out. If it takes them until September to get it as good as they can, that's fine with me. As long as Leopard keeps on improving which it does, and looks set to continue doing with 10.5.7 out soon. Looking forward to Snow Leopard but Apple if it's not ready in June or summer please just keep us waiting.

 

[whitefang]

Where is resolution independence/DPI adjustment???? How can a modern OS not have a DPI adjustment setting?

Windows has had it since Windows 95.

 

[SBeardsl]

2) When installing it, will I have to back up my stuff on an external, or will installing it not delete anything?

You should ALWAYS backup your data before doing an major OS upgrade, even if you take advantage of one of Apple's 'upgrade in place' options.

(because nothing ever goes wrong with an upgrade if you have a full backup available but if you don't ...)

 

[walnuts]

So, when Steve first announced Snow Leopard back in June 08 (they may have had the first developer seed then too, I can't remember), how much of the stuff that he talked about (Grand Central, OpenCL, etc.) was actually done? I have very limited knowledge on this, but it seems like they have been doing a huge amount of work on this since Steve's announcement, which is a good thing, but when he announced it, these announcements were really just ideas that had months of work before they were even a beta project.

I guess it kinda devalues the announcement. I mean- he could have said anything- he could have announced any feature in the world and then told his employees to get to work. There's a big difference between "Snow leopard will have this" and "we were thinking of doing this in Snow leopard" and while we took his statements to mean the former, it seems like after all the seed progress that the truth was actually more the latter.

Like I said- I really don't know the technical details about it- does this make sense to the people who understand the technical implications and have worked with the seeds?

 

[eastercat]

I'm going to wait this one out and let you all be the guinea pigs . . . uh, I mean trailblazers. It's probably a holdover from when I used windows, but I never buy a new release of an OS.

 

[MrCrowbar]

Where is resolution independence/DPI adjustment???? How can a modern OS not have a DPI adjustment setting?

Windows has had it since Windows 95.

And it never worked.
Tried making everything smaller for a while so I could fit more in my screen, it was a total glitchfest. Haven't tried with Vista yet though.

 

[knightlie]

People said the same thing before the Leopard release, when there also was a rumour about a new skin. It never showed up in the dev releases, and not in the final release. Maybe it's time we learn something.

And by the way, a new "unifying" skin isn't really exciting. What would be exciting is if Apple supported themes, and even provided some themselves. Although I guess that never will happen, Apple has never been about giving the customer options.

Themes are awful, and simply add another bloated layer of mess to the OS just as XP and Vista does, both of which still retain the original Windows GUI elements underneath and pile another drawing layer on top. Themes are a bad idea and Apple are wise to avoid them.

Not to mention that a resolution-independent UI as SL is rumoured to have is way more than a "skin."

Where is resolution independence/DPI adjustment???? How can a modern OS not have a DPI adjustment setting?

Windows has had it since Windows 95.

Sure. Let us know when it starts working properly.

 

[hacksaw-C87]

Themes are awful, and simply add another bloated layer of mess to the OS just as XP and Vista does, both of which still retain the original Windows GUI elements underneath and pile another drawing layer on top. Themes are a bad idea and Apple are wise to avoid them.

I couldn't agree more. I also feel that I never saw a custom made 'theme' online or w/e that didn't luck decidedly tacky. Really glad that Apple have avoided it and we're not inundated by awful 'BRAND NEW THEMES' for the Apple OS.

 

[DELLsFan]

Love it

Can't wait either ...

 

[BlackLight]

can't wait either... i just hope there is a upgrade option so i won't loose all my apps. and documents..OH and that i hope that my current apps. won't have compatibility issues......

 

[Pika]

I hope Snow Leopard will make Windows 7 his biatch.

 

[AidenShaw]

And it never worked.
Tried making everything smaller for a while so I could fit more in my screen, it was a total glitchfest. Haven't tried with Vista yet though.

It's pretty good with Vista, better with Windows 7.

Not complete (some apps are brain-damaged and insist on a certain number of pixels), but for the usual case of wanting to shrink things a bit (to fit more) or enlarge them (for vision problems) it's mostly there.

 

[Hattig]

Where is resolution independence/DPI adjustment???? How can a modern OS not have a DPI adjustment setting?

Windows has had it since Windows 95.

Windows doesn't use it, despite having a setting. Higher resolution == tiny UI elements. Some software like Firefox, etc, might use it for sizes in pt (like they do on my 168dpi netbook making things quite inconsistent) of course, but that's different.

 

[pohl]

So, when Steve first announced Snow Leopard back in June 08 (they may have had the first developer seed then too, I can't remember), how much of the stuff that he talked about (Grand Central, OpenCL, etc.) was actually done?

Well, from the seed notes, regarding XCode...

Significant performance improvements when building, searching, or indexing due to adoption of Grand Central technology.

This suggests that Grand Central is sufficiently mature for developers who are using the latest seed to benefit. If it's far enough along for XCode to use, that's a good sign.

 

[SpinThis!]

It seems Apple is still having some problems with the 64-bit kernel transition. Hopefully it will be default for all x64 capable machines. Telling devs to do 64-bit ktexts now makes it sound like there may not be 64-bit drivers for everything right out the gate.

That's pretty much true of any new OS. If your 3rd party hardware (or some software) is older, you may never get 64 bit support at all until you get new software/hardware. Especially developers who don't subscribe to Apple's seeds, it'll be awhile before 64-bit is complete across the whole OS.

Same thing happened/still is happening with Vista. If you want to do 64-bit on Vista, you better scope out hard/soft before you decide to do 64-bit because it's all or nothing (Linux is the same way). At least with Apple's implementation (iirc), 32-bit apps/kexts will run alongside the rest of the 64-bit OS just fine.

 

[MShock]

I really want to know an update on ZFS. Is it present? Is it integrated with Finder, FileVault, TimeMachine? Did it integrate well with the 64-bit kernel?

SL offers a lot of room to integrate ZFS into the system, especially with all the work to redo drivers for the kernel.

 

[0racle]

we should at least get a demo in june, if not more. september seems a long time away

Has Apple ever released a public beta of OS X? Most likely the only way you're going to get a demo of Snow Leopard is the same way you'd get the Developer previews, or possibly by going to the WWDC.

September isn't that far away.

 

[jholzner]

So, when Steve first announced Snow Leopard back in June 08 (they may have had the first developer seed then too, I can't remember), how much of the stuff that he talked about (Grand Central, OpenCL, etc.) was actually done? I have very limited knowledge on this, but it seems like they have been doing a huge amount of work on this since Steve's announcement, which is a good thing, but when he announced it, these announcements were really just ideas that had months of work before they were even a beta project.

I guess it kinda devalues the announcement. I mean- he could have said anything- he could have announced any feature in the world and then told his employees to get to work. There's a big difference between "Snow leopard will have this" and "we were thinking of doing this in Snow leopard" and while we took his statements to mean the former, it seems like after all the seed progress that the truth was actually more the latter.

Like I said- I really don't know the technical details about it- does this make sense to the people who understand the technical implications and have worked with the seeds?

He actually said very little about it at all. And so far, it has what they said it would.

 

[jholzner]

Has Apple ever released a public beta of OS X? Most likely the only way you're going to get a demo of Snow Leopard is the same way you'd get the Developer previews, or possibly by going to the WWDC.

September isn't that far away.

They offered a public beta of the very first release (10.0) way back when, but it wasn't free. I think they charged 30 bucks or something. I remember buying it. Wasn't much to it back then but It sure was cool...and slow. I think they then knocked 30 bucks off the purchase price of the final release for those who bought the beta.

 

[Riemann Zeta]

I think the fact that the real OS kernel is still considered experimental and has to be specifically activated by a multi-finger salute on each bootup is a clear sign that 10.6 is still very early in development. Something must be really problematic for pure 64bit mode; I wonder what the snag is?

 

[Stridder44]

I hope Snow Leopard will make Windows 7 his biatch.

Clearly you have not yet used Windows 7.

I really want to know an update on ZFS. Is it present? Is it integrated with Finder, FileVault, TimeMachine? Did it integrate well with the 64-bit kernel?

SL offers a lot of room to integrate ZFS into the system, especially with all the work to redo drivers for the kernel.

x2. Anything new with ZFS or is it supposedly still only offered on the Server edition?

 

[ELMI0001]

For fun ...

Let's pretend Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are released at the same time and the big secret behind Snow Leopard is that it now runs on PC's giving PC users a chance to upgrade to OS X instead of Windows 7.

On a realistic note; whenever it comes out I will buy it. I can't wait.

 

[rented mule]

Has Apple ever released a public beta of OS X?

Yep. It charged 30 dollars for it too.