Sidebar Sidebar
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

Possibly - The developers using the seeded versions might have been given rough guidelines as to minimum specs. Macs released nearer WWDC 2009 and beyond will be able to benefit more from the OS update.


AppleInsider'sarticle comes in with new information, that's hit the front page here at Macrumors. Arn comments:

A rewrite of Finder and other apps from Carbon to Cocoa. This was kind of anticipated, but good to hear.
With Arn commenting that "Apple has reportedly tapped select members of its developer community to begin testing the updated graphical file system manager as part of a new pre-release copy of Snow Leopard belonging to the build train 10Axxx."

It looks like the rumor lid is still fairly well capped on, but we might be able to get some murmurings soon, depending on the actual number of this select developer cabal.

Another feature mentioned by Arn is "a new ImageBoot feature" that could let a Mac running Snow Leopard to boot from a disc image, and so allow someone to store multiple disc images and hence configurations. Testers may well rejoice, and i'd imagine there may be other uses too.

The latest version of Snow Leopard "is expected to be broadly seeded to Apple's developers as early as this weekend."

Whether we hear more of these seeds is up for debate. Haven't been too many whisperings thus far, but then other Apple events have preoccupied the Apple media (laptops, iPhone...)


Edit: Arn seemed to miss a few pertinent details in his overview:

ImageBoot: A 3rd option for "disc image-based installation". It'll not only let you boot your Mac from a remote disk over the network, but will let you set up a number of images on a secondary partition of or external drive.

This new feature will allow users to set up a series of test environments or uniquely configured Mac OS X systems, store the bootable systems as discrete disk images, and subsequently store multiple boot targets on the same disk or partition. Currently, only one bootable Mac OS X installation can be stored on a given disk partition. "

With ImageBoot, multiple NetBoot sets can be maintained locally on the same storage partition, and the user can select any one of the disk images available to boot from without having to restore or mount the disk image first. The result is a system that works similar to virtualization software such as Parallels, which can create disk images for different PC operating systems and selectively boot from any of them. The difference is that Mac OS X isn't booting up in a virtual environment; it actually boots a fully native Mac OS X system.
Click to expand...

Appleinsiders take on the opening up of testing Snow Leopard:

A little over two weeks ago, AppleInsider noted that Apple was preparing to broaden evaluation of Snow Leopard through software seeds to a limited number of developers. It's now expected that the company's vast developer community, or members of the Apple Developer Connection network, could be added to the mix as early as this weekend.
Click to expand...

ADC getting it's hands on Snow Leopard = lots more juicy details hopefully.


With the 4th Quarter 2008 (4Q 2008) financial results out on the 21st, for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2008 (next Tuesday), we might hear a little more. Was the effects of setting up the hardware to make the new cases for the MacBook and MacBook Pro what was referenced to last quarter, rather than the redesign of the iPod Nano? You'd imagine the former would cost more than the latter... So there might be some more hints to come next Tuesday (With IDF and Atom processor announcements the day before, next Monday).

Edit: The saga of RAM limits on the MacBooks continues, as does a rumour of hardware H.264 acceleration. (More likely next year?)

Edit 2: More info on RAM - Nvidia says it will fit, (which we knew) and also that it would presumably work, but not give really much difference in terms of gaming here

Edit 3: 8GB not going to really do much currently.
 
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/20/intel_shows_off_working_moorestown_mid_device.html

Gizmodo had NVIDIA confirm that the NVIDIA kit in the new MacBooks has the potential to:
- be in other notebooks soon
- support up to 8GB of RAM
- do on-the-fly GPU switching
- can get the GPU to work together with the MacBook Pro's discrete 9600M GT.

Potentially a software, firmware, driver update. I'd imagine this won't happen until WWDC 2008, (roughly 8 months away) when Macbooks get refreshed to Nehalem, and Snow Leopard, if the shipping date doesn't slip, if they do open it up. Could be that they open it up for the next version of the MacBooks. If you could dedicate one of the chips for one task, the other for another task also would be useful (similar to beingable to dedicate a CPU to a program/process which I think you can already do).


If anyone followed the last thread:
http://theappleblog.com/2008/10/22/microsoft-sidesight-should-apple-really-worry/
All in good time. Wonder if Apple will have anything that way too.

Patent watching, with an eye to SL
Forbes article here.
3 patents:

1) Data Parallel Computing On Multiple Processors - Talking about how to divvy out tasks to be processed across both CPUs and GPUs, as the title suggests
2) Parallel Runtime Execution On Multiple Processors
3) Application Interface On Multiple Processors

As MacDailyNews points out, quoting an article from InformationWeek by Thomas Clauburn:

Some of the people listed no the patent applications have worked at ATI, e.g. Aaftab Munshi, who worked as a senior architect. Jeremy Sandmel, listed on the 3 patents also "appears to have worked at ATI."

A hint about OpenCL perhaps... Macrumors take here and a WIPO patent read here.

New Seed of Snow Leopard:Build 10A190
As Arn notes, Apple has seeded a new version of Snow Leopard (Build 10A190) to developers this morning. (Arn says Apple emailed ADC members "that a preview build of Snow Leopard was made available to them" so this presumably is open to some or all of the ADC members?)

Chances of a preview of Snow Leopard at MWSF?
A hunt for previews of previous OS X releases at the keynote prior to their release. Dates from wiki:

(I make it that Leopard, Tiger and Panther were all previewed in the event prior to their release, so it's odd on it'll have a preview at MWSF if they're releasing at WWDC, and even if they delay release till past WWDC 2009, we might see a preview at MWSF 2009, rather than waiting till WWDC 2009.)

OS X v10.0 (Cheetah)
Announced:
Previewed: September 2001 with the OS X Public Beta
Released: March 24, 2001

OS X v10.1 (Puma)
Announced:
Previewed:
Released: September 25, 2001 - Released the same years as Cheetah, and released as a free upgrade CD for 10.0 users.

OS X v10.2 (Jaguar)
Announced:
Previewed:
Released: August 23, 2002 - the end of the Happy Mac and start of the large grey Apple logo

OS X v10.3 (Panther)
Announced:
Previewed: WWDC 2003, June 23-27
Released: 2003, October 24 - Support for some early G3 computers was discontinued. Not like this hasn't happened before then...

Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger)
Announced:
Previewed: WWDC 28 June 2004.
Released: April 29, 2005 (Jan 10, 2006 Apple released the first Intel-based Macs along with the 10.4.4 update)

Mac OS X v10.5 (Leopard)
Announced: WWDC June 2005
Previewed: WWDC 2006, announcing this preview the previous year at WWDC 2005.
Released: October 26, 2007 Supporting PowerPC- & Intel x86-based Macis, but not the G3 processor & a minimum spec for the G4

Mac OS X v10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Announced: June 9, 2008 at WWDC
Previewed::
Release date: Estimated to be WWDC 2009 potentially, ~ 1 year after WWDC 2009.

Will Apple wait on the release of SL until all the features are sorted? It hasn't necessarily in the past
 
Microsoft, Windows 7 & PDC

Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) starts this week. Agenda/timetable here

Zdnet tells us attendees and presumably the hoi polloi get some video and live blogging later on today, as attendees get a demo of Windows 7 by Steven Sinofsky, Engineering Chief at Windows. Other areas covered will be the Live Platforms: Microsoft’s Live Framework, the Live Mesh development platform (which does have some promise, but also some fuzziness); cloud development at Microsoft, Silverlight 2 for mobile, and some parallel/concurrent computing (which is interesting if you're into that sort of thing, there's some video links from the Channel 9 via the PDC site link).
Parallel computing - Overview and future direction info here, video here
Nice to see part of it is how it fits into a for loop, just creating modifying it in a line of code (adding .NET Extensions' new Parallel.For)
It's interesting that David Callahan (Distinguished Engineer) notes of the reqriting needed to really to really make use of "multicore and many core" to get general purpose Parallel Computing.
For Windows 1m:40s How the Base OS needs changes - couple of forms, underlying kernal that needs "some deep refactoring", a bunch of components on top - many need editing, "particularly media routines" too.
Is this potentially display that Apple might be (slightly) ahead on this wrt Windows? Nice use of a 26 processor machine though.

Parallel Computing - here to stay
Some more Parallel Computing information from channel9:

  • Inside Parallel Extensions for .NET 2008 CTP Part 1, Part 2
  • Lynne Hill: Parallel Computing Platform - The Vision and Future - A good intro from the leader of the Windows' Parallel
    Computing Platform team - very switched on, and will be at the all day Symposia and PreCon, and some hardware partners will be showing up too.
    Parallelism becoming a requirement to leverage the hardware coming out. Having to force to solve the problem, doesn't make it easier to solve the problem.
    Talks about the problems stacking up already ready and waiting for parallelism - physics e.g. for games, image processing, rendering, natural gestures (inc. a reference to multitouch), speech, vision, financial markets... About the tools that will be needed, and potential tools e.g. to show areas of code that could be parallelised (Xcode bump? hehe)
  • Burton Smith: On General Purpose Super Computing and the History and Future of Parallelism here
    Another good intro by a man who can, has and does.
  • How to test concurrency, complexities and how to deal with them here
  • Parallel Computing Platform: An Integrated Approach to Tooling - Microsoft's overall approach to Parallel Computing inside Visual Studio
  • Concurency for C++ programmers here and more for ye native coders here
  • Concurrency and language design
  • Countdown to PDC2008: Parallel Computing and Getting Your Head in the Cloud - a talk about the end of PDC, and 2 workshops:
    - Parallel Computing – A Detailed Look at How Multi-Core Architectures will Unleash Computing Power and Enable Innovation
  • Head in the Cloud, Feet on the Ground – A Practical Look at Architectural Challenges and Opportunities with Identity, Management, Data and Interoperability in the Cloud
Parallel Computing is going to be a big theme today at PDC apparently (Enough for a PreCon Parallelism Track), so there'll be lots more, especially on
Microsoft's plans for "making writing concurrent code reasonable and readily understandable by a much larger class of developers".
There will be problems of developers needing to know when to parallelise, and also making it easy for them to express it.
"It'll be quite a while before any developer without any knowledge of syncronisation and multithreading will be actually able to write fully multithreaded applications - there is still a significant kernel of knowledge that's important."



Microsoft in publicly leading the way here through getting all this out now - by having more information out for programmers. Note they're not talking GPU. Unless that's a crafty under the hood nudge nudge wink wink say no more demo... (personally, that would be a great keynote trick - look at how fast it's going, and oh, by the way, did we show you the CPU usage...)

There to "help developers, architects, and technical managers to better prepare for the challenges and opportunities that will come with increasingly more multi-core processing power coupled with powerful cloud-based services and platform". I'd imagine WWDC 2009 will have something akin to this also.
Things like basic heads up information on simple things like race conditions



Programming in the Age of Concurrency - Anders Hejlsberg and Joe Duffy - Intro

Joe Duffy, Huseyin Yildiz, Daan Leijen, Stephen Toub - Parallel Extensions: Inside the Task Parallel - more in depth

What parallel computing can do:
Halo

Dan Reed: On the ManyCore Future and Parallelism in the Sky -

Microsoft's Director of Scalable/Multi-Core Systems Research and head of the recently formed Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers (UPCRC)(at Uni of Illinois & UC Berkeley): (previously talked about here)

Seeing there is both server-side parallelism problems in part distinct from client problems.
 
Daniel Eran Dilger aka Prince McLean brings in two more articles on Snow Leopard, as people are starting to wise up to the potential articles to be spun from head to head comparisons of Windows 7 previews and Snow Leopard previews. (And don't write off Windows 7 - it's got a whole raft of improvements - http://activewin.com/reviews/previews/windows7/ )
e.g a 4 page PDC Microsoft sided look at 2009's OSs here

Continuing the Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard Series, 64-bit to the Kernel rehashes a bit the 64-bitness of Snow Leopard.

Like the pre-PDC demo shown in one of the videos above, Microsoft is working to make it easier to code for and use a multi-touch Windows experience. Cribbing up on Apple OS includes a stacks like feature, Expose being given the nod on the Windows 7 blog, multi-touch.
(The Steve quote being: "multi-touch makes a lot of sense on the iPhone, but not so much sense on an iMac. Consider it a research project" But then it wouldn't be "on" an iMac, but interact with one. Or be built into a MacPad)

Apple to sweeten Snow Leopard with more Cocoa talks about Cocoa and its role with Leopard and Snow Leopard.



XServe's future
A former "IBM PowerPC chip designer" heads to Apple..Noise or signal? Cnet article
 
I don't know about you guys, but I want this to be heard.

I just bought my first Mac ever, the new MacBook, and I could not care less for a performance-update on OSX. It's already fast.

User-friendlyness and features is what OSX does best, and I want new ones. So I don't buy this whole "take a break from new features" thing.
 
Ramius said:
I don't know about you guys, but I want this to be heard.

I just bought my first Mac ever, the new MacBook, and I could not care less for a performance-update on OSX. It's already fast.

User-friendlyness and features is what OSX does best, and I want new ones. So I don't buy this whole "take a break from new features" thing.
Click to expand...

too bad vecause that's whats going to happen
 
dukebound85 said:
too bad vecause that's whats going to happen
Click to expand...

No new features* at all...

Microsoft Exchange Support
Extending 64-bit technology
Grand Central
QuickTime X
OpenCL
Rewrites of multiple programs including Finder to have more Cocoa, and less Carbon (and potentially rewritten with concurrency in mind too)
iCal Server
Podcast Producer 2
Mail Server
Address Book Server
ZFS

*Subject to change.
 
That Finder has more Cocoa tells me nothing. It actually sounds kind of stupid as a salespoint. lol.

I want more userfeatures, like that quickview function of folders which Leopard introduced. I want more smartness like that.
 
Wow! Awesome thread - full of useful info. Some questions though:

1. Will Apple preview Snow Leopard at all prior to releasing it? At this point it looks like they won't, assuming they meet their self-imposed 1 year deadline.
2. How much will SL help the current generation of iMacs? I have one of these, and I wonder just how useful SL will be to a dual-core Mac. Sure, I'll see some improvements but not as drastic as what a twin 4-core Mac Pro user would see, I'd imagine.
3. Will Apple even attempt to market SL, or let it market itself? My bet is on the word of mouth marketing for Snow Leopard, given the lack of user-visible features. That said, the HUGE under the hood changes will make Mac OS X that much more ready for future hardware.
 
I have a question. Will I have to buy the Snow Leopard OS? Or is it free as an update to leopard?
 
Ramius said:
I have a question. Will I have to buy the Snow Leopard OS? Or is it free as an update to leopard?
Click to expand...
It looks like, at this point, that Apple has no compelling reason to make it a free update. They'll almost certainly sell it for $129 just like Leopard.
 
wrldwzrd89 said:
It looks like, at this point, that Apple has no compelling reason to make it a free update. They'll almost certainly sell it for $129 just like Leopard.
Click to expand...

Wtf, in all honesty thats retarded. Its just a system update. It's not a new Operating System.

As cool as OSX is, I would pay for something like OSXI, but not for an update that really does nothing more than improve what already is.

Btw, does anyone have a clue if OS11 actually will come? Have Apple said anything about this? I keep reading about these cat-updates, but basically, they're like Windows Service packs. I wonder how it would look if Apple designed a completely new operating system. Could they top their old design?
 
Ramius said:
Wtf, in all honesty thats retarded. Its just a system update. It's not a new Operating System.

As cool as OSX is, I would pay for something like OSXI, but not for an update that really does nothing more than improve what already is.

Btw, does anyone have a clue if OS11 actually will come? Have Apple said anything about this? I keep reading about these cat-updates, but basically, they're like Windows Service packs. I wonder how it would look if Apple designed a completely new operating system. Could they top their old design?
Click to expand...
I agree with you regarding Mac OS XI but totally disagree regarding Snow Leopard. Here's my reasoning (looking at this from Apple's point of view):
  • Apple would much rather you buy a new Mac than sell Snow Leopard at retail.
  • Apple knows that if you do this you'll get the most out of Snow Leopard.
  • At the same time, Apple realizes that there are people who aren't ready for new hardware but still want to upgrade, and would gladly pay full price to do so (such as me). These people are who the Snow Leopard retail boxes cater to.

As for Mac OS XI, Apple hasn't announced anything yet but I strongly suspect that they will eventually. My best guess is that we'll see one more big cat (Lynx) before Mac OS XI rolls out, and it'll make Lynx (and Snow Leopard) look like lame ducks in comparison. :D
 
Cromulent said:
It is a huge upgrade to the operating system. It will be a paid upgrade.
Click to expand...

Look, I love my MacBook and OSX, but I'm starting to see why many people hate on Apple.

and
(looking at this from Apple's point of view)
Click to expand...
No, never do that. You as a customer should be able to demand fair treatment. And you should always judge a company by how they think and develop for their consumers.

This is a democratic world, this business. But if you start to think for the behalf of the company that makes products to you, it's starting to be awfully imperialistic.

The truth is, this is a system update, not a new system, and it should be free, cause it's still OSX. Windows Service Pack does much of the same as these updates do. They heavily reprogram stuff, improves performance, fixes loads of bugs and weaknesses, and adds new features. All for free. And with 90% market share or something like that, Windows has set a standard for this that Apple should follow.
 
Ramius: The "10" on the front of the version number is really quite meaningless at this point, it's just for branding. Apple used to update the first number in the version (7, 8, 9) with major releases, but they weren't actually any more major than 10.x releases. If memory serves, 8 and 9 were actually significantly less major. I find it's easier and more accurate to just think of this as version 6.0, not version 10.6.0.


That said, I do expect 10.6 to be reduced price simply because most of the benefits from it are subtle(1), non-immediate(2), or indirect(3) (and therefore hard to sell to consumers). If they sell it for the regular $129 I'll be rather annoyed since it'll hurt adoption rates, and the #1 requirement for developers like me to take advantage of new 10.6 APIs is for the adoption rate to be very fast.


(1) performance and stability
(2) improved applications as developers adopt new APIs
(3) better future developments due to refactoring and cleanup
 
I hear Windows 7 isn't really changing the kernel, but you can be sure that'll be a paid update... Reasons for it being a paid update, and how significant it is is covered a fair bit in page 1 and 2 if anyone is interested.

Some uplifting news - It's ~60 days until MWSF 2009.


Touch

http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/PC03/ - check it out about 56 minutes in - the demos are impressive - and also how relatively simple it is to add touch functionality, and what can be done for apps that suit it a lot.

Would Apple be working to do the same with Snow Leopard?

Some more preliminary Core i7 benchmarking:
Comparing the Nehalem Core i7 965 Extreme CPU with the Core 2 Extreme QX9775
- Power consumption ~ equivalent
- Better memory performance 9inc. lower memory latency
- Better CPU performance (which is kind of desired!)
- Better Floating Point operation

I think that gaming might also get a boost, if Intel can bring the tech to get CPU to be used for GPU work where the CPU workload is manageable and the system can afford to use some CPU power for GPU work.
Chart of overall results comparing to the QX9775 here

Core i7 reported to be hitting the Aussie shelves in a day or two. Costly, but good. Additional info.

Anyone heard of Intel's Ct model?

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/softwa...rallel-computing/0,130061733,339288038,00.htm
 
Wow, t0mat0, thank you for all your work in putting this thread together. I've been reading it for a couple of hours now and I'm glad I found it. I hope I'm not imposing on the thread, but I really need the help of folks who understand Operating Systems architecture better than I do.

I've been using Tiger since April '06 when the new MacBook was introduced - bought mine the first day they were sold at retail. I have never been happier as a computer user than the past 2 and one-half years. I consider myself an above average Windows user (30+ years of fixing things), but I am but a lowly newbie, still, with OSX. So, to my point and question.

I am in a position of needing to upgrade to Leopard to use a piece of hardware I am purchasing. I have a 13.3" white MacBook with 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM spinning a Western Digital 320GB hard drive.

The $149.00 question is should I buy Leopard or wait for Snow Leopard? A Genius advised waiting as "Snow Leopard will be for Intel chipset machines only AND THEREFORE FASTER AND BETTER."

I guess I really need someone to verify claim that if possible. BTW, I use my MacBook as my primary computer (I will get a Mac desktop soon). My main application usage is MS Office suite {mainly Entourage, Word and Excel}, Firefox and Safari to browse, iTunes, iPhoto and Adobe for pdf files.

Any advice would be appreciated. If I am asking this in the wrong thread, I apologize in advance. If there are other places to look for an answer, here or elsewhere, please let me know.
 
A Genius advised waiting as "Snow Leopard will be for Intel chipset machines only AND THEREFORE FASTER AND BETTER."
Click to expand...

A corrected version of that would be "Snow Leopard will very likely be for Intel processor machines only, and will be faster and better". There isn't much cause and effect relationship there.

I see no reason to wait, given that it won't be out until mid-next year or so.
 
madhatterj said:
I've been using Tiger since April '06 when the new MacBook was introduced - bought mine the first day they were sold at retail.

I am in a position of needing to upgrade to Leopard to use a piece of hardware I am purchasing. I have a 13.3" white MacBook with 2 GHz Intel Core Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM spinning a Western Digital 320GB hard drive.

... should I buy Leopard or wait for Snow Leopard? A Genius advised waiting as "Snow Leopard will be for Intel chipset machines only AND THEREFORE FASTER AND BETTER."

I guess I really need someone to verify claim that if possible. BTW, I use my MacBook as my primary computer (I will get a Mac desktop soon). My main application usage is MS Office suite {mainly Entourage, Word and Excel}, Firefox and Safari to browse, iTunes, iPhoto and Adobe for pdf files.
Click to expand...

More the merrier madhatterj :)
Happy to answer in this thread

May 16, 2006 I think the MacBook with Intel Core Duo processor got launched -
(according to Wiki)
I'd imagine that Leopard would run well, and as an OS it's bedded down pretty well now, i'm sure if you messaged a question in the MacBook thread you could get some views from users with MacBooks for your type running Leopard.

As for Snow Leopard giving advantages, i'd imagine the speed advantages are going to be larger for more powerful, and more up to date Intel machines, with the most advantage going to machines not even out yet (i.e. Core i7 Macs and beyond).
Will Snow Leopard run at the same rate on a machine that can handle Leopard? We're still waiting on that answer to an extent, as we won't see SL go Gold Master for over ~6 months, though if you can collar someone with a developers version they might have run it on a Core Dup MacBook and could tell you how it runs thus far.

How soon is "soon" for getting a Mac desktop, and what sort? I'm not sure if you could get a family licence for the Mac desktop and update your laptop while you're at it as a possibility. Could always do the same with Snow Leopard, but seriously isn't worth waiting >6 months for Snow Leopard. WWDC launch isn't set in stone (with the iPhone launch, Leopard was delayed for example). With the given usage stated, i'd imagine it's not too onerous, and Leopard on the MacBook should do pretty well imo, but i'd recommend making a new thread after searching macrumors in the MacBook section.

As for the Genius - I'd go with Catfish_Man -
Snow Leopard will be for Intel chipset machines only most likely
Snow Leopard will be fast, and in many ways be better
 
Thanks for the prompt responses t0mat0 and Catfish_Man. I will follow your suggestion and check the MacBook forums but I think you fellas (an assumption on my part) answered my question sufficiently to permit me to purchase Leopard today and wait on the more advanced machines you referred to. This MacBook was my first foray into the world of Apple, and as I like to tell anyone who asks, "i bought my last PC several years ago."

In the meantime, I'll keep my eye on this thread because it's just so good.

Thanks again.
 
Ramius said:
Look, I love my MacBook and OSX, but I'm starting to see why many people hate on Apple.

and

No, never do that. You as a customer should be able to demand fair treatment. And you should always judge a company by how they think and develop for their consumers.

This is a democratic world, this business. But if you start to think for the behalf of the company that makes products to you, it's starting to be awfully imperialistic.

The truth is, this is a system update, not a new system, and it should be free, cause it's still OSX. Windows Service Pack does much of the same as these updates do. They heavily reprogram stuff, improves performance, fixes loads of bugs and weaknesses, and adds new features. All for free. And with 90% market share or something like that, Windows has set a standard for this that Apple should follow.
Click to expand...

Wow, for someone who just "bought my first Mac ever," you should take some time and actually understand what you're talking about. Also, Microsoft has to regularly issue service packs because usually the initial product is so flawed.
 
2 way street iPhone and OS X

Text handling
Will the iPhone's text handling capabilities be put into Snow Leopard?
(Think Open Office's text prediction, autocorrection, auto-suggestion, tab completion)
AppleInsider MDN

Character recognition
But why not also throw in Chinese and Japanese glyph/symbol recognition, via the multitouch pad on laptops?
Again, where do desktops stand on this? Microsoft and Apple have this conundrum - why should people have to buy a multitouch display PC, to get multitouch?
Apple has it right in bringing multitouch to the pad. It could come to the mouse also. Or an intelligent mouse pad. A while to go I imagine.

tbc

Gesturetek - http://www.crunchgear.com/2008/11/12/watch-out-surface-gesturetek-is-straight-frontin/
on a macrumors thread back in January...
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/413947/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back