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

[Westside guy]

jeezes, one 'fart' of information is known about the next major release and already 22 negative ratings...some people just keep complaining and are never happy.

So you apparently think Leopard is perfect?

I voted negative - I value stability and speed, but if we have to pay for a major OS upgrade just to get it that's a bit too Microsoft-ish.

Now it's very possible this rumor is off the mark, as I can't imagine them making such a major break with the past... yet; but remember we're voting on the rumor, not whatever the eventual reality is (unless the rumor ends up being exactly correct).

 

[/dev/toaster]

This is a very bold and very smart move for Apple. PPC is end of life, its time to move on.

I love backwards compatablity and all, but lets face it. Windows has some very serious issues for a reason. The following article really opened my eyes to what the real issues are.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/what-microsoft-could-learn-from-apple.ars

Nothing is going to change with Microsoft on this, and that is ok with me. Apple is moving the right way with this and I really look forward to it.

Side note, that article has me really pumped about starting to learn Objective-C. Although it looks ugly as crap for a language, I appericate its power.

 

[corygreenwell]

I think 10.6 ought to be named ceiling cat personally.

 

[john7jr]

i'd love to see the adobe developers faces when this is official! lol
say bye bye to ancient code!

The Adobe developers are already working feverishly to get to Cocoa, primarily for 64-bit support. When Apple dropped 64-bit Carbon they freaked. Result: CS4 will be 64-bit for Windows only. Thanks Apple.

Will they drop Carbon? Yes, not right away, but yes. They will still support the API, even if they don't use it. That's too sudden.

Still, Apple likes to lead by example, and I expect they will be the first to say let's all start moving to Cocoa, and the Finder is the first to go.

 

[vincebio]

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.

i love how a newbie comes on and knows everything apple is going to do... (sorry stevie boy if thats you)
when did apple do things by common sense? they think beyond normal regular rules to advance the state of play...

maybe you dont understand the meaning of this site?

rumors
speculation
guesses - best mostly

dont like it? dont comment....and let others guess

 

[ricosuave]

Snow Leopard will make Safari the snappiest ever!

 

[Loge]

If the update is going over 1GB there's no way they can distribute it via software update.

Why not? They distribute iPhone SDK via download and that is > 2GB.

 

[ivladster]

hmmm

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.

Why skip 10.8 and 10.9?

 

[ivladster]

Cant wait to those ne Snow Leopard wallpapers!

LOL that's all i care about too!!!
Too bad moved away from cat image. They should rebrand 10.6 to the fierce look.

 

[Val-kyrie]

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, if Snow Leopard is just a minor upgrade to 10.5, then the close name association also makes sense. I also hope that the price reflects this (free to at most $79) or I doubt I will upgrade.

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.

Actually, this makes perfect sense. Eliminating PPC will reduce the size of the code for the OS and apps and carbon may only be mostly eliminated. 10.6 will be a time to tie up loose ends and consolidate the OS before changing things significantly (think touch and gestures incorporated throughout the OS). Then 10.7 could introduce full ZFS support (I doubt Apple will allow booting from a ZFS partition in 10.6) and may even be 64-bit only.

 

[DOUGHNUT]

speed and stability....isn't that mainly what the 10.5.x updates are designed for?

 

[MacsRgr8]

It could be a sort-of Developer only OS release...

Just like the Tiger x86 release back at the famous "it's true" WWDC.

Just to "help" developers create not UB software anymore, but the fastest and greatest x64 Cocoa.
This could be more or less a preview of the "real" new 10.6 which will truly be x64 Coca only, but still at least 12 months away.

 

[Santa Rosa]

If the update is going over 1GB there's no way they can distribute it via software update.

Not entirely, now I'm not talking for the masses here but that isnt that large really if you have a good connection. For example I could down that big guy in about 20 mins on my current connection, which is half the speed of what I used to have!!!

 

[noriyori]

It is only a guess, but maybe Apple will release its first Multi-Touch Macs (or MacBooks or whatever) in early 2009. These would require the OS to be Multi-Touch compatible.
But Apple is not going to ship only Multi-Touch Macs by then, so they need OS X to support Macs with and without Multi-Touch. They could do this by releasing 10.6 (maybe free for existing Leopard users, because it would only be an upgrade to security, stability and speed for them).
In this scenario it would make sense, if they were dropping PPC support, because this release wouldn't add functionality for PPC.

yep. I'm thinking it's pretty much just leopard with multi-touch. and hopefully some stability and performance too.

 

[Eraserhead]

Oh ok, then we'll be sure to conform to your needs.

My needs are for Apple to not alienate their userbase.

There is no way that not allowing Adobe Creative Suite CS3 and CS4 to run on Apple's new OS is a good idea. There is no way not allowing MS Office 2004 or 2008 (note that Office 2004 is required for businesses because it supports VBA), to run on their new OS is a good idea.

Neither MS or Adobe can magic out a Cocoa version of their programs in time, they can't just add programmers to the project as it doesn't actually work. See the OS/360 and read the Mythical Man Month for why, the following quote is key:

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.

Anyway given that this rumour is highly unlikely to be true I don't need to worry too much.

 

[Val-kyrie]

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.

Actually, if OS X.6 is so close to X.5 then most users will likely not care to update. This would also function as a way to give programmers (MS, Adobe, Accordance-which is more important to me) a cushion period during which they will have to take seriously the need to move to a cocoa framework. From a business perspective, it is win-win. Force developers to change and don't make consumers feel like they are missing anything if they can't/won't update.

 

[TheSpaz]

I know!

Leopard Noob
Leopard Home
Leopard
Leopard Advanced
Leopard Pro
Leopard Ultra
Leopard Ultimate
Leopard Super Massive Supreme Edition
Leopard Intergalactic 2x

 

[noriyori]

I think 10.6 ought to be named ceiling cat personally.

LOLZ!!! I CAN HAZ MULTI-TOUCH?

 

[Stridder44]

What I find funny is the debate around what type of cat code name it will have! Who cares?!

You think this is bad? You should have seen it when they were discussing how if there could ever be a 10.x.10. Page after page of explanations on how the decimal system works, all kinds of crap.

In their time? The quad G5 is still a great machine, and more powerful than many of the machines apple is shipping now.

HAHAHA don't get ahead of yourself there buddy. They're awesome, no doubt, but saying they're faster than current machines? Like what? The Mac mini?

Face it, the grave for PPC was already being dug when Apple announced the move to Intel. PPC was placed in the grave with Leopards system requirements. It's been a long time, and the time has come to throw the flowers on the grave. Did you really think they were going to be supported forever? Hardware gets replaced all the time. Complaining about it is stupid. The software is keeping up with the hardware, which is awesome. No one ever said you can't use your Quad G5 anymore. Who are you guys trying to fool here, us or yourself?

But hey, don't get me wrong, paying (potentially) for a speed and performance upgrade is not my cup of tea.

 

[Lone Deranger]

Hmm.. I just remembered something... The developers (Pixologic) of a popular sculpting and painting application called ZBrush are currently working on finalizing version 3 of this software.
It has taken them more than a year since the version 3 release for Windows and there have been very few announcements from Pixologic why it's taking them so long.
One of the things that was mentioned on their forums (to much anger and surprise) was that there probably will not be a version 3 for PPC owners.
I wonder if this could mean that Pixologic know something about this dropping of PPC support for 10.6. I mean they've already pissed off their entire Mac userbase with this 12+ month delay,
why would they make things even worse unnecessarily for PPC users? It could mean they had no choice because of Apple's future plans for OSX.
Sounds more plausible than alienating a large part of your userbase even further.
Just speculating ofcourse..

 

[Eraserhead]

This would also function as a way to give programmers (MS, Adobe, Accordance-which is more important to me) a cushion period during which they will have to take seriously the need to move to a cocoa framework.

Apple's already ahead of you, that was done last time by dropping Carbon 64 bit support.

 

[NickFalk]

I think people need to start calming themselves down over this. It is just a rumour ('rumor' to you yanks).

Perhaps someone misunderstood something along the way? Isn't it much more likely that the "all cocoa" refers to all the included applications and innards of the OS, rather than removing the API. Certainly no-one would pay for an "upgrade" that deliberately break a huge amount of the pro-apps available, not the least Apple's own Final Cut...

 

[noodle654]

I am sure we will hear something on Monday or Tuesday.

 

[ckurowic]

Pretty sure Apple promised they wouldn't be dropping support for PPC in 10.6.

Then again, they also promised they'd never use integrated GPUs... Or drop features from the iPod.

<que_flames>The PPC is Dead</que_flames>

 

[akac]

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

We don't know. This is a rumour. Most rumours are partially true and partially wrong. From what I know, 10.6 is real. But losing Carbon is probably not. Carbon is not deprecated and Apple would have to mark it as deprecated for a couple releases before they drop it.