Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Shipping in September: $29 for Leopard Users

Anyone notice that on the newest beta, Display Scaling (defaults write -g AppleDisplayScaleFactor .5 for example) is broken more so than earlier versions of Snow Leopard, and Leopard?
 
ansj64 said:
I really don't understand why people keep comparing the pricing strategies....it's not like you can install Snow Leopard on a Windows Notebook? and it's not like you want to uninstall MaC OSX to install windows only in the Mac machines?

So can somebody tell me what's this brouhaha about comparing these operating systems?
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Actually my roommate is using my Mac Mini with Windows only. There is no Mac OS X installed on it. Why? Because he needed a fast machine.

Hugh
 
It's probably way to early for this, but I was wondering if anybody had (what seems to be) the default wallpaper for Snow Leopard?
I adore it, and was just curious as to whether or not anybody had it. :)
 
*LTD* said:
More physical media to mess with, and store. I'm perfectly content to wait online streaming/availablity and take full advantage of the goodies that are already available in this area. If you know what to look for you can avoid wasting your money on Blu ray physical media.
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You'll have to wait for a decade before average consumer can have BD quality equivalent legal content faster and cheaper online than going to a nearest store and buying a BD movie.

Apple was first to ditch floppy and adopt dvd-r, but it seems that it will be last to ditch dvd and last to adopt BD. So much for state-of-the-art from Cupertino these days...

And for fast external drives, will Apple be also last to adopt eSata connectors?
They surely were last to adopt sd card readers...
 
toke lahti said:
You'll have to wait for a decade before average consumer can have BD quality equivalent legal content faster and cheaper online than going to a nearest store and buying a BD movie.

Apple was first to ditch floppy and adopt dvd-r, but it seems that it will be last to ditch dvd and last to adopt BD. So much for state-of-the-art from Cupertino these days...

And for fast external drives, will Apple be also last to adopt eSata connectors?
They surely were last to adopt sd card readers...
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A decade? At NAB RED showed a prototype RED Ray (optical player that stores 4k video on regulard DVD) . They played 4k content to people that didn't know it was RED Ray. There were no complaints. They then were told it was coming from RED RAY at 10Mbps.

So if any of you think that compression technology has suddenly stopped you're wrong as the day is long. We have wavelet compression and h.265 which will probably deliver a further %50 data reduction

If you think Blu-ray is state of the art you haven't the foggiest idea what anything close to state of the art truly is.

eSATA ...come on man you're killing me.
 
So are Apple planning to have RED Ray support in the next Macs? I think he means affordable state of the art. There's no way those technologies are going to be in anything but the richest people's homes any time soon.
 
windywoo said:
So are Apple planning to have RED Ray support in the next Macs? I think he means affordable state of the art. There's no way those technologies are going to be in anything but the richest people's homes any time soon.
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I don't know Apple's plans but the successor to h.264 is h.265 which will halve the size of movies today yet keep the same quality. I'd say it's the odds on favorite for next movie distribution format and it's due in less than 5 years. Anything that cuts the bandwidth in half is by default a cheaper product distribution wise. The initial startup costs will be there but theres a long tail afterwards where you reap the rewards of more efficiency,

toke lahti said:
You'll have to wait for a decade before average consumer can have BD quality equivalent legal content faster and cheaper online than going to a nearest store and buying a BD movie.
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What's our bandwidth going to look like in a few years in metropolitan areas? 50Mbps ? 100 Mbps ?
 
nuckinfutz said:
A decade? At NAB RED showed a prototype RED Ray (optical player that stores 4k video on regulard DVD) . They played 4k content to people that didn't know it was RED Ray. There were no complaints. They then were told it was coming from RED RAY at 10Mbps.
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My guess is that it will take more than decade before red ray codec (or h.265) will be mainstream distributing codec, if it will ever make even to that.
Remember when h.264 was done?
 
toke lahti said:
My guess is that it will take more than decade before red ray codec (or h.265) will be mainstream distributing codec, if it will ever make even to that.
Remember when h.264 was done?
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I can't argue with that. Your guess is as good as any. The technology to deliver Blu-ray quality will be there though in the US our broadband infrastructure may be our undoing here. If you live in the city or a densely populated area you're doing well on broadband (though you're probably being served by a local monopoly). Bandwidth caps are going to force Apple, other IPtv vendors and more to persue more efficient mechanisms of delivery.

It should be interesting actually. Not only has h.264 become a nice less proprietary option as compared to say .wmv but it has created a viable market for downloads so any sucessor should benefit from the infrastructure already being in place.
 
nuckinfutz said:
What's our bandwidth going to look like in a few years in metropolitan areas? 50Mbps ? 100 Mbps ?
Click to expand...
Five years ago average was 1Mbps adsl, today it is something like 4Mbps adsl2, so after next five years it might be about 10Mbps vdsl2. FttH/FttB is getting more popular really slow...
And on a regular household there might be 3 streams watched simultaneously...
 
toke lahti said:
Five years ago average was 1Mbps adsl, today it is something like 4Mbps adsl2, so after next five years it might be about 10Mbps vdsl2. FttH/FttB is getting more popular really slow...
And on a regular household there might be 3 streams watched simultaneously...
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And I'm still on 768 kbps...
 
16Mbps Cable at my gf

10/2 FIOS/FIOS TV at home

:D

Sorry fellas.

Though you know what's going to prevent downloads from becoming popular? Pricing. If i'm bringing my own bandwidth and storage I'm expecting more of a discount than what i'm seeing.
 
HyperZboy said:
These are very valuable points and the very reason for Snow Leopard's creation....... BLOATED SYSTEM.

I have Panther, Tiger, & Leopard partitions on multiple Macs and TIGER by FAR runs the BEST on every PowerPC Mac I own.

Since the 10.5.7 update, the Leopard kernel panics & most of the other anomalies have stopped and Leopard is stable on every PowerPC Mac I own, but it's hardly as lean and mean as Tiger and nowhere near as fast on any of my PowerPC machines.

Snow Leopard appears to be a FIX for the BLOATED SYSTEM problem, by shedding PPC files and support. Once again, I think its great for INTEL machine owners, but 20-25% of the Mac population still are NOT INTEL Mac owners.
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20-25% of a user-base is small enough to not support, especially when 50-75% of said group would typically be getting new machines in the next year.

Apple made a choice here, the logical one: support your current users and give the majority a superior product at the sake of the smaller minority.
 
Eidorian said:
Do tell.
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You beat me to it, I was going to finish that.... "For that class/size/noise."

He needed a fast and stable machine that will run JAWS. On all his computers (Home made/store bought) crash a lot. Now maybe the newer machines are better, I do not know. He seems to be happy with the Mini. No Mac OS X was installed on the machine, the thing that was used was the drivers.

Anyway the point was the Mini is being use as a WIN machine and not as a Mac.

Hugh
 
Hugh said:
You beat me to it, I was going to finish that.... "For that class/size/noise."
He needed a fast and stable machine that will run JAWS. On all his computers (Home made/store bought) crash a lot. Now maybe the newer machines are better, I do not know. He seems to be happy with the Mini. No Mac OS X was installed on the machine, the thing that was used was the drivers.

Anyway the point was the Mini is being use as a WIN machine and not as a Mac.

Hugh
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All perfectly good reasons. ;)

It's just nice to know.
 
nuckinfutz said:
Though you know what's going to prevent downloads from becoming popular? Pricing. If i'm bringing my own bandwidth and storage I'm expecting more of a discount than what i'm seeing.
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Sony and Apple are quite the same in this regard, they both want to have big premium. And that's partly why dvd is still beating both BD and iTunes.
 
MartiNZ said:
Just found it thanks to Google at http://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?showtopic=642366&st=465 :). I think it's a bigger Q than the old one, and it looks out of place among all the still blue-themed icons between which QT lives in my Dock (Software Update, Safari (WebKit), MS Messenger, iTunes), but again, I just feel one step closer to SL!
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Considering the new icon isn't even in the WWDC build, it's possible Apple is just experimenting and may not use it in the final build. So save that icon while you can, as it may be a one-off.
 
nuckinfutz said:
It should be interesting actually. Not only has h.264 become a nice less proprietary option as compared to say .wmv but it has created a viable market for downloads so any sucessor should benefit from the infrastructure already being in place.
Click to expand...
Times are interesting, as they have also been in the past.
More processing power has made software development more important over hardware, so new things might be coming sooner than before.

On the other hand research costs are increasing, deeper they go.
So something new to breakthrough has to sell millions to cover research costs.
Then also older mass market penetrated technology becomes a hindrance; people are pleased with older generation and doesn't want to throw their good equipment to trash.

I noticed this when I bought my first 16:9 videocam back in '95 and when I participated to produce first HD movies / tv-shows here in Finland.

Better efficiency is not the only thing people will want from new codec to be mass accepted. Displays' PQ will be from another planet next 5 years compared what they were 5 years ago. People want cinema theatre PQ to their home. Better contrast and colors. No visible macroblocks with fast motion. Etc. This means that 8bit 4:2:0 YCbCr won't cut it anymore. This means that red ray / h.264 codec won't narrow the bandwidth need, but it will increase PQ (resolution, gamut, fidelity) with about same bandwidth than with older codec.

When online content will really be mass adopted, bandwidth need will anyway explode and infrastructure for this will take long time.
That's why my prediction is that after couple of years "Super Blue-Ray" will be hit with more layers, speed, 2k rez, 10bit 4:4:4, cieXYZ gamut, etc., but with reduced price compared to what BD costed when it was released.
When superBD has boomed and accepted mainstream, infrastructure for online content will be good enough, so I think there won't be any BD3 and future optical (holographic) storage will be data storage only (like (video)tape is becoming right now (to data tape) in professional area).
 
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