Mac OS X 10.6 Called 'Snow Leopard', All Cocoa?

[EagerDragon]

Yep 2-3 million ppl will have to spend $1999 to replace their 4 yr old computer instead of $129 for a new OS that it will come with. Seems like good business sense.

If all 10.6 brings to the table is better stability and more speed for 64 bit systems, then there is little incentive for Intel 32 bit systems and PPC systems to be upgraded.

There are a lot of people still on tiger because they do not think that the features of Leopard are worth 129.

People on 64 bit systems will need something compelling in order to switch to "Boring Cat" if all 10.6 brings to the table is better stability and more speed.

People want flash and new features.

I hope 10.6 brings to the table Bootable ZFS and Resolution independence, Apple was working on both but neither came out in Leopard.

 

[ppc_michael]

What if this OS is intended for a tablet? If I recall, the whole multitouch framework is cocoa, that could be the whole "all cocoa" thing, referring to the interface.

 

[Eric S.]

While I don't intend to give Vista a whirl anytime soon, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't say what you just said about Leopard or even 10.5.3 if you owned a technically supported Powermac G4 or low end G5 where Leopard is pretty much a disaster in my opinion. 10.5.3 has even pretty much bricked my Quicksilver G4 and its hardly snappy or stable even on my Dual 1.8 G5 and I've got 3GB RAM! Sure, some of these Macs are getting long in the tooth, but they are SUPPORTED MACS for Leopard, so Apple should have done a much better job on these supposedly supported PowerPC Macs than they did with Leopard in my opinion.

Anyone who owns lower end Macs probably bristles every time John Hodgeman lauds how stable Leopard is in those I'm a Mac commercials because stable it is not and snappy, well, we won't even go there!

I own a technically supported Power Mac G4 - a Sawtooth w/ Sonnet 1.0 GHz CPU upgrade - and Leopard runs just fine. I've moved from 10.5.1 to 10.5.2 and now 10.5.3 with no major problems. Performance is comparable to Tiger.

 

[iJawn108]

Uhh isn't the finder carbon?

 

[nuckinfutz]

When the major version number changes, it usually means there's a major change in the product. If Apple were to go 64-bit Intel only with a completely new file system (say, ZFS), got rid of Carbon and went solely Cocoa, that's a major revision which would likely get the 11. version number.

There is logic to the numbering system and as it's been noted many times here, the releases don't get a new major number when the digits are x.x.9 (it just goes to x.x.10). First number change, major version differences. Second digit in the string are revisions/updates to the major version. Last digit in the string are updates, patches and things like bug fixes (no new features).

So, it's perfectly logical for there to have a jump from 10 to 11 if the major revision warrants it.

Cheers😎

It's logical until you look at the former 6 version of OS X and note the succinct pattern in updates. Apple is well within their right to name any OS X version 11 but I think conventional wisdom is with them riding out 10.6,10.7,10.8,10.9

 

[Poll Smoker]

Well... good for you friend.

Your contributions to this thread are as numerous as they are useless and annoying.

 

[MShock]

that makes no sense that Apple would waste an 10.# on a simple stability and speed fix. There would need to be some major enhancements + stability and speed. I could see this as a (I hate to use the term) "service pack" with lots of fixes to 10.5.3, but to move to 10.6, Apple would need to include the following:

latest Flash
Full ZFS support, including boot
Major GUI refinements, reflecting the filesystem change (maybe something that looks more like the iPhone / iPod touch GUI with the black glass and all)
Full application support for ZFS (particular for Time Machine)
Full Finder and ZFS integration (like fixes to spotlight and such)
More touch and 3D feel would also be my guess for new features, even though I like the amount of touch in the current lines and don't want more.
brand spanking new super kernel underdevelopment for speed and stability
new versions of all CORE apis

 

[FightTheFuture]

the 10.0 - 10.1 free upgrade turn around to return as 10.6?

because of the lack of a new feature set and only rebuilt code to improve stability and speed while earmarking the future, anyone think that 10.6 may be a free upgrade? seeing as how updating the original os x 10.0 to 10.1 was free - it startled some users that they were expecting to pay for an upgrade to 10.2 Jaguar.

perhaps a free upgrade would be Apple's way of saying "thanks for the support guys, this ones on us" 😉

and who says that it has to have new features to be worthy of an upgrade? they could just revamp the features currently in leopard. ie... page rendering speeds in safari, location awareness in address book or multi-touch interaction with finder?

 

[bobertoq]

I honestly think this is a great idea, but it will be like the switch from OS 9 to OS X, just not nearly as strong.

Mac OS 10.5 is already filled with great features that would attract any computer user. Although Mac OS 10.5 is already extremely secure and stable, there is (always) room for improvement. Surely a few new features would be added. Maybe you could adjust the opacity of the menus, have a color wheel for the close, minimize and zoom buttons, and an option for a 'glass' 2D dock 😀 Maybe a slightly different UI? Such as no more Aqua elements (all replaced with iTunes 7 elements) and tabs in finder 🙂

Also the name 'Slow Leopard' makes plenty sense if it is not a major feature update.

 

[Abstract]

If Snow Leopard isn't a big change, why the hell are they going to charge us for it by making it a .6 release?

Can't wait until Mac OS X "Thundercats" is released.

 

[GeeYouEye]

Credibility of this rumor:

1. I'm pretty sure that it was reported last year that 10.6 would be the last OS to support PPC. -

2. Snow leopards are not actually leopards. +

3. Apple does not have Snow Leopard trademarked. -

4. Carbon was never meant to be a legacy technology, and makes porting to OS X easier than having to use Cocoa. Furthermore parts of Cocoa are implemented in Carbon. Menus until Leopard, the Dock, AppleScript support, etc. -

5. "All Cocoa" or "Cocoa everything" is meaningless. Optimistically it means all APIs will be accessible from Cocoa. This would be a HUGE increase in size of the Cocoa frameworks; 80% of all the frameworks are currently only in C. Pessimistically, it means that Cocoa will be the only desktop API going forward. This is stupid, as it would eliminate the other 90%. Apple's made some bad decisions before, but that would take the cake. ---

6. The end of UI Carbon is plausible. +

That's ++ to ------. I'm going with a "totally ********" rating on this one.

 

[bigwig]

Thanks for your extremely valuable input! 🙄

I'm glad you like it! I wanted to delete the post for redundancy, but the forum software wouldn't let me, nor would it let me edit the post to be zero characters.

 

[w0ngbr4d]

I doubt it would be free. They'll probably have to charge something for "accounting purposes" like the iPod touch and the Wireless N update. (I'm unsure of how they account for OS X sales, maybe they wouldn't have to charge for it.)

If they dump PPC support, like previously mentioned it will cut the size of the OS roughly in half. On a MacBook Air, or any other device where space is limited, it makes sense. I'd rather have a 2 GB Leopard install instead of a 5-6 GB install when the hard drive olds less than 80 after formatting. (The Dock executable is 2.3 MB by itself in Leopard, 680KB in Tiger on a PB G4) Lean device platforms (Air, touch) require lean software.

Universal apps are great. They facilitated the transition to Intel/x86. The hardware transition is complete. The software transition needs to be completed.

Just because something new comes out doesn't hurt the productivity of old technology. While the new technology might be faster at a task such as video encoding, a business isn't going to just go upgrade. They'll compare the costs (new hardware, software, etc.) to the benefits (more productivity) and see if it'll be worth it. If not, they'll wait a while. Its not like the old machines will stop encoding video or creating Word documents when the new OS is released.

Snow Leopard makes sense. Its still Leopard, just different.

This will be interesting.

 

[Foxglove9]

What if this OS is intended for a tablet? If I recall, the whole multitouch framework is cocoa, that could be the whole "all cocoa" thing, referring to the interface.

I was thinking the same thing.

I wouldn't mind a faster and more stable OS X release. Though I find Leopard pretty fast and stable already I can't imagine it being better. But I say that with every OS release.

 

[madmax_2069]

i wont buy a new computer just to get a semi updated version of leopard. i think that is why i bought a PC insted of waisting my money playing Apples games.

 

[Play4keeps]

I cant see the name (Snow Leopard) at all.
But thats just me😕

 

[maxrobertson]

Ok, if this is really true, then Steve Jobs has gonna crazy...
This type of release used to be called Mac OS X 10.5.4.

I don't think they are going to waste a release on "bug fixes"

I think 10.6 is going to be a Windows 7 killer.

10.4 was already a Windows 7 killer. Apple is so far ahead they have no reason at all to cram in more features. They can focus on refining if they want to. We'll see if they do.

 

[Quillz]

How is a G5 running Leopard useless? You are out the park on this one. PPC support will be lucky to survive 10.6 and it's certainly not going to be in 10.7. Apple is not going to jump from 10.7 to 11.0 that's nonsensical.

How is it any more/less nonsensical than Apple jumping from 7.6 to OS 8 or Apple jumping from OS 8.6 to OS 9?

 

[Quillz]

10.4 was already a Windows 7 killer. Apple is so far ahead they have no reason at all to cram in more features. They can focus on refining if they want to. We'll see if they do.

Completely baseless, borderline trolling comment, since you, or nearly anyone else, has seen a fraction of what is going to be in Windows 7. And for being such a killer release, you'd think Mac OS X would have a halfway decent Windows Explorer killer.

 

[nuckinfutz]

How is it any more/less nonsensical than Apple jumping from 7.6 to OS 8 or Apple jumping from OS 8.6 to OS 9?

Because 7.1, 7.2, 7.3,7.4,7.5 didn't represent paid upgrades same for 8.0-8.6.

10.1 was the only free OS X update. Each successive version implemented new core technology. Your comparison is certainly not Apple to Apples here (no pun) when taken in the context of paid upgrades for point release.

Without the historical context both 7.x, 8.x and 10.x evolutionary paths would appear equally sensible

 

[bobertoq]

People want flash and new features.

I think 10.5 is already filled with enough 'flash and features'. Now, they need to focus on stability, security, speed and performance (SSSP). If they continue to just pack OS X with features without focusing on the SSSP, before you know it, OS X will be very cluttered, unstable, slow, and complicated. Like Vista.

Some have labeled Leopard as 'Apple's Vista'. Even though I strongly disagree, I'd like this to change.

 

[Eric S.]

1. I'm pretty sure that it was reported last year that 10.6 would be the last OS to support PPC.

I would certainly be interested to see a reference for that.

 

[Jon the Heretic]

Nailed wrong appendage

I think you nailed it spot on there.

Windows was built on top of DOS for a long time and included far too much legacy stuff for far too long. Sure you upset some people by dropping legacy support but it makes for better software for the majority in the long run.

As with the original post, this just isn't so.

DOS was the foundation for Windows until NT came along...Win2000, XP are all derived from an all new code base. But MS kept the APIs supported from the first versions of Windows (Win16s) on the new codebase. Through virtualization, DOS apps also run, even though XP and Vista have no DOS code.

Backwards compatibility through virtualization hurts nothing. It doesn't impact stability one bit. Windows is a mess because of things it chose NOT to virtualize but run natively on the NT base, like older variants of the Win APIs. Those do nasty things.

Retaining Classic in a virtual environment would have made lots of old timer Mac users happy without affecting stability at all, just like DOS virtualization under NT variants. Virtual is safe, and stable. Killing Classic was just an arrogant move without no good reason behind it. MacOS X gained absolutely nothing from it, though slavish Apple defenders like to pretend otherwise.

In contrast, backwards compatibility with older natively supported APIs (which not a single Classic app was) can be precarious. While dropping PowerPC and Carbon support probably will improve MacOS X on Intel (unlike the move to drop Classic, which helped nothing at all at a technical level), it will piss a lot of people off.

But Apple is on a roll and is selling computer hands over fists. Methinks they will take that risk, since planned obsolescence is after all their plan of record for the last several years anyway. And while heartless and a very bad idea from an user support point of view, at least this time there really is a technical advantage to doing so, unlike the pointless dropping of Classic which achieved absolutely nothing given it was virtualized to begin with.

 

[Nermal]

Because 7.1, 7.2, 7.3,7.4,7.5 didn't represent paid upgrades same for 8.0-8.6.

I'm pretty sure that 8.5 was a retail, paid upgrade. However, 8.6 was a free upgrade for 8.5 users.

 

[ReanimationLP]

Thats exactly what Leopard is like at the moment. The 10.5.3 update was excellent in my opinion. Leopard has been brilliant on my end on 2 different Macs. The recent update just solidified that.

So what are you going on about? You tried using Vista recently. Everyone who has a Mac on here should be thankful and the ones that complain should stop, give Vista a whirl.

Funny, I'm running Windows Vista Ultimate SP1 on a Pentium4 based PC, and it runs faster and smoother than Windows XP, and as stable as XP ever did.