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

[Dorfdad]

Wait so 10.6 is going to offer NO new features, its going to be a faster and bug free version of 10.5?? This sounds like a service pack or an extension of 10.5 why the hell should we pay for 10.6 when they should be fixing the bugs and speed for 10.5...

LAME so far not impressed..

 

[Diode]

I feel burned. Faced with a dying hard drive in my iMac G5, I chose to replace the drive and buy Leopard instead of getting a new Mac. That was like two months ago.

Yeah, I know that I can run Leopard indefinitely and still have email and web and all that stuff, but I'm also enough of an enthusiast to want the latest and greatest.

Although if I want to look at this a bit more rationally, the cost of my upgrades was only $200 and change (hard drive, Time Machine backup drive, and Leopard).

What there was a time when Apple phased out the 680x0 chips, then the PowerPC chips. You had to have known when they switched to Intel they would eventually phase out the Gx chips ....

 

[jprovost]

I can't help but think of Mr. T as a Night Elf Mohawk, storming through forests on his Snow Leopard (Frost Sabre)...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqJE5TH5jhc

 

[mainstreetmark]

"Snow Leopard"? Well, that is interesting isn't it?

Does anyone really have any speed/reliability issues beyond some minor occasional glitches? I mean, I am aware that one scratch ruins a paintjob, but of the issues people have, how many are truly show stopping?

Of course, I use WinXP inside VMWare a lot, which may make OSX feel quite zippy. But, generally, I don't get too many beachball events. I find I'm more aggrivated at the 1 second delay switching between iphone apps.

 

[Peace]

"Snow Leopard"? Well, that is interesting isn't it?

Does anyone really have any speed/reliability issues beyond some minor occasional glitches? I mean, I am aware that one scratch ruins a paintjob, but of the issues people have, how many are truly show stopping?

Of course, I use WinXP inside VMWare a lot, which may make OSX feel quite zippy. But, generally, I don't get too many beachball events. I find I'm more aggrivated at the 1 second delay switching between iphone apps.

Trust me. Some unreleased apps that use mainly cocoa are very efficient.

 

[Darkroom]

can cocoa do everything that carbon can? so if they axe carbon, than the carbon framework will be no longer? so won't be useful to developers? also, isn't Pages written using a lot of carbon?

Wait so 10.6 is going to offer NO new features, its going to be a faster and bug free version of 10.5?? This sounds like a service pack or an extension of 10.5 why the hell should we pay for 10.6 when they should be fixing the bugs and speed for 10.5...

LAME so far not impressed..

i really can't imagine apple charging 10.5 users for this upgrade, or certainly not full price fees anyway. i think their goal is to make the Mac OS X as strong as possible. if it doesn't offer any new features than not many people are going to be drawn to upgrade.

 

[Tosser]

Err... Firewire. Where were you when the 5G was released?

And don't tell me it doesn't matter. USB is technically rubbish, causes much higher CPU load for the same data transfer even if modern implementations can almost keep up with FW, and the connectors are mechanically rubbish too.

They also dropped Disk Mode. It's not on the Touch (nor the iPhone).

 

[hdsalinas]

Cant wait to those ne Snow Leopard wallpapers!

 

[lord patton]

if this is true, expect to see an all-Cocoa iTunes 8 on Monday.

And I'd expect 10.6 to be free (or cheap) for 10.5 users, $129 for everyone else.

 

[mainstreetmark]

They're going to charge people for "speed and stability"?

We don't know anything yet. If it's a feature-less update, I doubt it'll be a charge. I also doubt it'll be a feature-less update. Apple will always try to cram some novel thing into the OS and make a selling point out of it, such as with Spaces.

I mean, does Spaces really deserve a spotlight in Leopard? Yes, it's a new feature, but it's not a very big one.

"Mac OSX 10.6 -- Literally 'Just a Few' of New Features"

 

[hdsalinas]

Cant wait to those new Snow Leopard wallpapers!

 

[blugel]

i understand the desire to drop ppc support as well x32 for performance reasons, but i was one of the fools who bought the first intel iMac to come out (ie, 32-bit). i know i can drop a 64-bit processor in it, albeit with some work, but i've been holding off, not thinking it would make that big a difference and planning on buying a new machine within the next two years. this decision, though, if true, may sway me to do it.

 

[maxrobertson]

It's NOT GOING TO BE Snow Leopard.

Cougar and Lynx are the only two names unused by Apple that they have trademarked. Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Lynx, and Cougar. Lynx for 10.6, Cougar for 10.7 or vice versa, then on to OS 11.

For the love of god, stop playing guessing games. It's all common sense.

You obviously don't understand why they would call this one Snow Leopard then. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Also, with the way trademarks work, no company could use the name Snow Leopard to describe an operating system since it's so close to Leopard. They have no reason to trademark it.

Also, everything but the no-carbon (very unlikely) and no powerPC (pretty unlikely due to the PA Semi buyout) part sounds almost plausible. Think about all the features in OS X that don't work entirely properly or aren't available to the user, like resolution independence, Quartz Extreme 2D (or is it Quartz GL?), FTP, the Finder, etc. This would be a great way for them to tie all those loose ends together. Release it for maybe $59 or somewhere around there and make OS X a lot more cohesive. The reason none of those features ever really got fixed is because they aren't marketable features and therefor would be less important than the huge ones like Time Machine.

 

[mr.fancypants]

I kinda like the ring of 10.6 Battle Cat

Wow, that's awesome.

On a different note, um, shouldn't Apple offer free stability upgrades for the software I just paid $129 for—instead of selling it as a new OS?

Sheesh.

 

[JonasLondon]

Buy Buy, G5 - I guess it really is time to start thinking about retiring the ol' G5

That should have been "Bye, bye G5" then methinks...

 

[Cromulent]

Wait so 10.6 is going to offer NO new features, its going to be a faster and bug free version of 10.5?? This sounds like a service pack or an extension of 10.5 why the hell should we pay for 10.6 when they should be fixing the bugs and speed for 10.5...

LAME so far not impressed..

It is a rumour. We don't know anything.

 

[Eraserhead]

Wouldn't it be just as bad a move as 10.5 dropping Classic?

No, because that was given due time.

Wasn't Carbon always designed to simply be a stepping stone, from Classic to Cocoa?

Sure, but major applications such as Photoshop and MS Office still use it.

If Apple wants their latest OS to be incapable of running MS Office they can go right ahead.

Announcing they'll remove it after 10.6 or after 10.7 at this years WWDC would be reasonable however.

 

[Peace]

Wow, that's awesome.

On a different note, um, shouldn't Apple offer free stability upgrades for the software I just paid $129 for—instead of selling it as a new OS?

Sheesh.

It will be a new O/S..We don't know what features it will have. Only idle speculation. I do believe we will see some of them Monday.

 

[PlaceofDis]

It's NOT GOING TO BE Snow Leopard.

Cougar and Lynx are the only two names unused by Apple that they have trademarked. Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, Leopard, Lynx, and Cougar. Lynx for 10.6, Cougar for 10.7 or vice versa, then on to OS 11.

For the love of god, stop playing guessing games. It's all common sense.

because they can't trademark anything else evar again!


learn to calm down.

oh and i don't know what to make of this to be honest. it'd be a quick update in my book, considering they were focusing on the longer end of the 18 month update before, but that does fit okay if Leopard would've been released as planned and not pushed back. its interesting to say the least.

i guess we'll find out soon enough.

 

[minik]

How about bobcat? Snow Leopard sounds like Slow Leopard.

iTunes 8 baby

 

[bdkennedy1]

I don't have a PPC anymore but I have a friend that does and I think it's sad if they drop support for it with 10.6. He has a PowerMac dual G5, which has yet to be pushed to it's full 64 bit potential.

Not to mention that G5 owners that bought Macs as late as the beginning of 2006 are screwed.

 

[Nutter]

Core Foundation is a renamed Carbon API. I forgot what but if you follow the Apple Carbon mailing list it will be in the archives.

I don't see how Core Foundation can be a renamed Carbon API, since it's specifically designed to re-implement many classes from Foundation Framework in such a way that they can be used from both C and Objective-C. (Toll-free bridging.)

In any case, it doesn't matter what Core Foundation was, only what it is.

From Apple's Core Foundation page:

Core Foundation provides the fundamental data types and essential services that underlie both the Cocoa and Carbon environments on Mac OS X. To accomplish this, Core Foundation defines a set of C-based programming interfaces derived conceptually from the Cocoa Foundation framework.

 

[dr_lha]

Wouldn't it be just as bad a move as 10.5 dropping Classic? Wasn't Carbon always designed to simply be a stepping stone, from Classic to Cocoa?

The difference is that major Mac software packages still use Carbon, e.g. Office and Photoshop. You can't drop support for Carbon because of those.

I'm sure Apple would love to simplify their lives by removing Carbon, but any version of Mac OS X that doesn't run Office is not a version I can ever use.

 

[ilflyya]

As a matter of interest have they trade marked any other groups of animal names that might give a hint to OS 11? Bird types might work well, OS 11 Kestrel, 11.1 Hawk, 11.2 Eagle .... (Anything but dogs or monkeys )

I think Poodle and Golden Retriever would be great! Then when they transition between the two... OS Golden Doodle!

 

[mikeytrend]

I have not read up a lot on the 10.6 rumors but i don't see it likely that they will be dropping PPC entirely. I can see them dropping the G4 but not the G5. I mean really, there are Quad core G5 still out there that should still be able to run the next major release of the OS. I see 10.6 being PPC and Intel but 10.7 moving to Intel only.

I know my current iMac G5 runs Leopard just fine and i can't see why it would not handle 10.6 decently either.



And about 10.6 being released in January... I don't see that happening. I think it is to soon for a major release, but a lot can change in that time i guess. To be honest i would not mind seeing Apple move to an every 2 year cycle for major OS releases.

I can see them dropping PPC, not because the computers can't handle it, but if they're focusing on stability and speed, they want to use the computers that will ship with this OS, and if they only have to work on one processor, they only need one team of people working and it probably saves them a bunch of compatibility issues and things can be coded in a more efficient way for an intel processor.

However, if this release is only bug fixes than I see it more as an upgrade and people with leopard shouldn't have to pay that much more, but it's not apple's style to release more than one version of an OS. It'd be disappointing if these fixes weren't given to leopard users because people have been quoted as leopard becoming the new standard and staying that way for possibly the next ten years.