It may not be a public beta, a la Windows 7, but SL is definitely IN beta, been for a while already.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - What, Where, When, Why & How much
- Thread starter t0mat0
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Semantics...you are neither correct nor incorrect here and the API are indeed frozen for developers now.
Some interesting info up now (while it last's) at AppleInsider
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...at_snow_leopards_more_subtle_refinements.html
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...at_snow_leopards_more_subtle_refinements.html
It would be nice if some of these features made their way back to Leopard, but I'm not betting on it. Remember when Intel apologists claimed there was nothing in Snow Leopard that would benefit PPC users? 
Interesting definition of "recently"...
(Internally, Apple engineering is divided into teams for each project; The Finder team, which is apparently a lot larger than one might expect given what they've produced, definitely hasn't just been twiddling their thumbs)
That's not what I meant. I meant as working in the code into the main trunk. Of course there's smaller teams for each part of the OS but not all of them are in the main code. However there are paths that each team has to take, certain teams can't start until another team finishes its part. Suppose the Finder team wants to take advantage of Grand Central, they can't really start on it until the APIs and Grand Central itself is done.
The code for the new desktop/finder (Cocoa-ized and 64bit) just got in the last two seeds. The same for QTX.
We're going to see all the pieces of the SL puzzle start to tickle in together over the next several seeds.
It would be nice if some of these features made their way back to Leopard, but I'm not betting on it. Remember when Intel apologists claimed there was nothing in Snow Leopard that would benefit PPC users?
I take it by "intel apologists" you mean the "get the hell over it, they (apple) dont even make computers with PPC chips anymore" crowd?
Apple is notorious for dropping dead technology even if it is still capable. You guys here should know better.
Edit: What could finder have to do that could actually take advantage of Grand Central? (honest question)
I take it by "intel apologists" you mean the "get the hell over it, they (apple) dont even make computers with PPC chips anymore" crowd?
Apple is notorious for dropping dead technology even if it is still capable. You guys here should know better.
Edit: What could finder have to do that could actually take advantage of Grand Central? (honest question)
It was an example. But multi-threaded file transfers, compressing, uncompressing, multithreaded network drive connections, and so on. The GUI could be very responsive with all the background tasks running. Finder might also take advantage of OpenCL to do some basic animations that was mentioned in the link to the photos above as well as Coverflow, QuickView could all get more fancied up without any kind of performance hits on the CPU.
I take it by "intel apologists" you mean the "get the hell over it, they (apple) dont even make computers with PPC chips anymore" crowd?
Yup.
But the point being that the idea that Snow Leopard would be a "featureless upgrade," from the UI perspective, was a bit silly from the get-go.I'm not complaining. I've had nine years use from my PM G4, and counting. Well, I'd be happier if I could replace it with an expandable midrange desktop based on current technology, but let's not start up that debate again.
I wonder what they will demo at WWDC. So far it seems like they'll demo QuickTime X for sure. I wonder what else they'll demo.
iPhone, maybe new hardware updates, Sale Statistics, how many new APIs in SL and so on.
I do agree, Snow Leopard will probably be the toughest to demo for Apple. Showing off certain minor changes is not Apple's style. They may do a couple of slides showing the efficiency and speed of SL compared to Leopard and Tiger. Like SL is 1.5X as fast as Leopard in rendering speed and so on.
Probably some slides on (some)how more energy efficient the new OS is, since they seem to be really into the green movement lately.
I did say that already.
It would be nice if Apple could share some information about the ability of SL to work even faster and better on SSDs. We still have no clue or information on SL's ability to support the TRIM command for SSDs. Also would like to know if Apple is working on replacing the HFS+ with Apple's modified version of ZFS for the near future of OS X as default file system.
More evidence for new UI?
Hi,
I've been playing with Snow Leopard 10A354, and I noticed a couple of subtle hints that suggest a UI overhaul. I apologise in advance for any repetition!
First, I use Pages in iWork a lot, and I noticed that the Inspector pane a little different to in Leopard. Specifically, in the Text pane, the sliders seem to be a little less vibrant than 10.5. I don't have a copy of 10.5 and iWork '09 to compare to, but what do you think? Link here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581151871/
On a more general note, the traffic lights in the corner of each window seem different. I can't put my finger on it, but they look slightly brighter. Here's the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581153441/
Finally (and this has probably already been mentioned), Safari 4 is here in Snow Leopard, with a few UI changes that either aren't in the Leopard public beta, or I missed. The main one is that the loading bar is stuck in the new, frankly, poor one. It seems to be confined to a little box in the right hand side of the address bar. And all the haxies to change it back (e.g. tabs on bottom, blue loading bar) don't work anymore. In fact, the resources for those are missing from the Safari 4 file. Link here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581963984/
Hope this helps!
<edit> Also just noticed - the Printer Proxy applications seem to have icons customised to the Printer now. My Phaser 8500N has it's own little icon:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581185907/ </edit>
Hi,
I've been playing with Snow Leopard 10A354, and I noticed a couple of subtle hints that suggest a UI overhaul. I apologise in advance for any repetition!
First, I use Pages in iWork a lot, and I noticed that the Inspector pane a little different to in Leopard. Specifically, in the Text pane, the sliders seem to be a little less vibrant than 10.5. I don't have a copy of 10.5 and iWork '09 to compare to, but what do you think? Link here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581151871/
On a more general note, the traffic lights in the corner of each window seem different. I can't put my finger on it, but they look slightly brighter. Here's the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581153441/
Finally (and this has probably already been mentioned), Safari 4 is here in Snow Leopard, with a few UI changes that either aren't in the Leopard public beta, or I missed. The main one is that the loading bar is stuck in the new, frankly, poor one. It seems to be confined to a little box in the right hand side of the address bar. And all the haxies to change it back (e.g. tabs on bottom, blue loading bar) don't work anymore. In fact, the resources for those are missing from the Safari 4 file. Link here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581963984/
Hope this helps!
<edit> Also just noticed - the Printer Proxy applications seem to have icons customised to the Printer now. My Phaser 8500N has it's own little icon:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/38976210@N04/3581185907/ </edit>
That loading bar in Safari reminds me of MobileMe. I really hope they're going to make an entirely new OS theme.
New front page post on some more Snow Leopard screen shots nd handwriting info link - https://www.macrumors.com/2009/05/31/more-snow-leopard-screenshots-chinese-handwriting-video/
They don't. The only books published with Apple's support are the small number of Apple Pro Training books by Peachpit. Frequently, they're written by Apple employees. Other than that, publishers and authors are on their own.
Not to mention they are bound by NDAs. So they can only release it once the NDA is up.
Does any one know how much more hard drive space you get when upgrading?? Do files take up less space, or does the system stuff just take up less space?