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Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - What, Where, When, Why & How much
- Thread starter t0mat0
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Why stop at multi-touch...
Fairly quiet on the Apple front ( though the wait for i7, MWSF, and Christmas &Black Friday isn't too bad - they are not too far away).
Gizmodo on another gesture based system here (which is a rehash of an Engadget article here)
Gorilla arms meets Minority Report's technology advisor's input (video interaction 2 minutes in), meets a Tosca K&D string soundtrack, meets Bill Bailey doing Kraftwerk impressions. MIT project page here . G-speak isn't exactly new, here's a CBS News article from 2005. Underkoffler, Minority Report, Spielberg: here
Where it gets useful? With haptics, it would be even better i'd imagine. The body's senses can be fooled. Would a Multitouch enabled Snow Leopard be moddable for more 3D based input? Wait and see... (edit - Leopard can take it currently afaik).
I'd imagine this would be more useful if you could do it with your elbow to wrist resting on a desk.
Nehalem article in NYT
Article here with regards testing Nehalem aka Core i7 chips.
1984 + 25 Years = ~ January 2009
2 & a bit weeks after MWSF (MWSF 2009 = 5-9 Jan 2009)
El Reg's 1st article here (courtesy of the MR thread here)
Snow Leopard iPhone aside
iPhone becomes a wireless skinnable number keypad for your Mac. Gizmodo article here. What's to stop other programs using an iPhone app as an accessory for the program, that adds UI functionality?
Fairly quiet on the Apple front ( though the wait for i7, MWSF, and Christmas &Black Friday isn't too bad - they are not too far away).
Gizmodo on another gesture based system here (which is a rehash of an Engadget article here)
Gorilla arms meets Minority Report's technology advisor's input (video interaction 2 minutes in), meets a Tosca K&D string soundtrack, meets Bill Bailey doing Kraftwerk impressions. MIT project page here . G-speak isn't exactly new, here's a CBS News article from 2005. Underkoffler, Minority Report, Spielberg: here
Where it gets useful? With haptics, it would be even better i'd imagine. The body's senses can be fooled. Would a Multitouch enabled Snow Leopard be moddable for more 3D based input? Wait and see... (edit - Leopard can take it currently afaik).
I'd imagine this would be more useful if you could do it with your elbow to wrist resting on a desk.
Nehalem article in NYT
Article here with regards testing Nehalem aka Core i7 chips.
1984 + 25 Years = ~ January 2009
2 & a bit weeks after MWSF (MWSF 2009 = 5-9 Jan 2009)
El Reg's 1st article here (courtesy of the MR thread here)
Snow Leopard iPhone aside
iPhone becomes a wireless skinnable number keypad for your Mac. Gizmodo article here. What's to stop other programs using an iPhone app as an accessory for the program, that adds UI functionality?
Attachments
uhm, i really dont want to indulge in debates or anything, but seriously, hes plainly talking about the politically mature consumer (in german we have a better word 'mündig' which ultimatively refers to kant, btw). and as that, he seems to understand that side far enough.
for your subtle comment, i best direct you to this site. (i mean, dont get me wrong, i usually sit in front of my osx-system and ask myself: 'why? why doesnt windows achieve these things?' but lets face it, apple is a die-hard capitalist just as microsoft, if not worse, but they do it more subtle.)
Jan - April release of Snow Leopard?
Release alongside Windows 7..... Or maybe a bit earlier...
Jordan Hubbard (Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies) spoke at LISA 2008 last week. (Presumably Kim getting the scoop on the front page today, as the papers became available to all from this Wednesday here Presentation slides as a pdf here).
The Large Installation System Administration Conference is aimed at engineers, sysadmins and the like (macrumors)
John spoke about the evolution of Mac OS .
Been with Apple since 2001 (Wiki profile) starting as manager of BSD tech group, Director of UNIX tech since 2005, and Director of Engineering of UNIX Tech since late 2007. SOme interview background and his own description of what those roles entail
He's done a fair few of these UNIX talks, e.g. here so why would he have that date there? One slide in particular is relevant - A 1st quarter (Q1) 2009 target date for 10.6 Snow Leopard.
THe slide shown on front page is slide 5. It's the 1st slide after the "Let's start with a quick history". It's his 1st slide after the intro slides of what he'll be talking about. Note it's the same in both slide 5 & 6. So it's not like it was later on in the presentation and he missed it. Q1 gives 4 months leeway, with leeway anyway to slip if necessary. As previously mentioned, MWSF 09 isn't that far away anyhow, so we'll know more soon enough.
LWMLAF stands for.. well, It's so high it's embarrassing apparently... (Level Windows Makes Laughable Attempts at Following?)
And yes, that Dr Evil slide is as it was in the presentation.
Up till now, we've only had WWDC 2008's Snow Leopard will ship "in about a year" (making that around June, for WWDC 2009).
So i'd say a demo is a given at WWDC, and they could do a separate shin dig giving a week's notice to the press (and have a bit more to say than the iPod one for the nanos they did fairly recently). Could they release by MWSF? Probably more likely to announce, and give a shipping date. By getting it out early, at least it wouldn't be clashing with the expected 3rd version of iPhone announced/released come WWDC 2009.
14 months meaning start of Q1, 14+ meaning within the range (arn. Apple mentions a quarter/month, it somehow seems to usually mean the last possible date of that timeframe
From an under-promise, over-deliver situation, I wonder if Apple will have to confirm/deny this release date. It looks like they're going to release post-Nehalem, at the same or later than a Mac Pro refresh. Interesting to see Larrabee down as 2009...
Release alongside Windows 7..... Or maybe a bit earlier...
Jordan Hubbard (Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies) spoke at LISA 2008 last week. (Presumably Kim getting the scoop on the front page today, as the papers became available to all from this Wednesday here Presentation slides as a pdf here).
The Large Installation System Administration Conference is aimed at engineers, sysadmins and the like (macrumors)
John spoke about the evolution of Mac OS .
Been with Apple since 2001 (Wiki profile) starting as manager of BSD tech group, Director of UNIX tech since 2005, and Director of Engineering of UNIX Tech since late 2007. SOme interview background and his own description of what those roles entail
He's done a fair few of these UNIX talks, e.g. here so why would he have that date there? One slide in particular is relevant - A 1st quarter (Q1) 2009 target date for 10.6 Snow Leopard.
THe slide shown on front page is slide 5. It's the 1st slide after the "Let's start with a quick history". It's his 1st slide after the intro slides of what he'll be talking about. Note it's the same in both slide 5 & 6. So it's not like it was later on in the presentation and he missed it. Q1 gives 4 months leeway, with leeway anyway to slip if necessary. As previously mentioned, MWSF 09 isn't that far away anyhow, so we'll know more soon enough.
LWMLAF stands for.. well, It's so high it's embarrassing apparently... (Level Windows Makes Laughable Attempts at Following?)
And yes, that Dr Evil slide is as it was in the presentation.
Up till now, we've only had WWDC 2008's Snow Leopard will ship "in about a year" (making that around June, for WWDC 2009).
So i'd say a demo is a given at WWDC, and they could do a separate shin dig giving a week's notice to the press (and have a bit more to say than the iPod one for the nanos they did fairly recently). Could they release by MWSF? Probably more likely to announce, and give a shipping date. By getting it out early, at least it wouldn't be clashing with the expected 3rd version of iPhone announced/released come WWDC 2009.
14 months meaning start of Q1, 14+ meaning within the range (arn. Apple mentions a quarter/month, it somehow seems to usually mean the last possible date of that timeframe
From an under-promise, over-deliver situation, I wonder if Apple will have to confirm/deny this release date. It looks like they're going to release post-Nehalem, at the same or later than a Mac Pro refresh. Interesting to see Larrabee down as 2009...Attachments
Why so serious?
Just because you like to write 1-2 sentence comments, doesn't mean there isn't room for longer ones eh? Check the thread! Blue Velvet stickied a while back. Yes, this one story went front page (is Kim's after all, but this thread is intended to cover SL comprehensively.
Why not copy and paste? Because there's already that story on that thread, relevantly linked. You can read it. Here, you get here a link to the pdf, a link to LISA, a link to an article with Hubbert, his background and job title in his words, a description of the slides, slide numbers (which in the case of did he forget/get wrong, is important), and a review of the posts so far from the original thread.
Wo betide actually giving primary sources, eh?
Microsofts Warped GPU CPU logic?
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/11/29/microsoft-graphics-cpu-warped
WARP 10 - Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform 10 is reported to be put into Windows 7.
The goals of WARP are in the MSDN page.
A core i7 3.0GHz "running Direct3D 10 Crysis at 800x600 with all the quality settings on their lowest settings" got an average frame rate of 7.36fps.
Is this one of the problems an OS manufacturer has when they don't have control of the hardware, like Apple has? I'd say so.
I looked at the pdf of john (or jordan?) Hubbard's presentation. Nice read, but a lot of the slides had info cut off the bottom.
I would like to see more "live" content. (Is that a good way to say it?)
Like, for example, when you minimize a window, or a movie, etc... it sits down in the dock, but it only shows a screenshot of the app. It should be live, and you should be able to see what's going on even from the dock. And not just in the dock. For example, today I was downloading the new Linux Ubuntu distro (which is great, by the way) in Transmission, and when I hit the COMMAND+TAB hotkey, I noticed that the little KB/s counter wasn't live. It was just a freeze-shot of the count it read when I did the hotkey.
I would also like to see better control for PC-based mice. I hate the acceleration in OS X Leopard, it's just so unusable, it forced me to pick up a copy of SteerMouse to use my Logitech G5 Laser.
Finally, I would also like to see drag-n-dropping directly from the on-desktop Spotlight results. I shouldn't have to hit "Show All"- starting up the Finder- to drag the item around.
Just my two cents.
Like, for example, when you minimize a window, or a movie, etc... it sits down in the dock, but it only shows a screenshot of the app. It should be live, and you should be able to see what's going on even from the dock. And not just in the dock. For example, today I was downloading the new Linux Ubuntu distro (which is great, by the way) in Transmission, and when I hit the COMMAND+TAB hotkey, I noticed that the little KB/s counter wasn't live. It was just a freeze-shot of the count it read when I did the hotkey.
I would also like to see better control for PC-based mice. I hate the acceleration in OS X Leopard, it's just so unusable, it forced me to pick up a copy of SteerMouse to use my Logitech G5 Laser.
Finally, I would also like to see drag-n-dropping directly from the on-desktop Spotlight results. I shouldn't have to hit "Show All"- starting up the Finder- to drag the item around.
Just my two cents.
OpenCL a month away from completion as a specification hopefully
I believe they might be bringing the first idea in to an extent -live preview/mini thumnail of a movie that's playing. As for acceleration for mice, I think there are hacks around it - if you google it i'd imagine there is something (i have a vague recollection there was something on it here on the boards).
Supercomputing 08
Whilst Dell is expanding collaboration with NVidia regarding CUDA - (from what I gather from someone at SC 08 ) the Khronos group has has an technical briefing on the upcoming OpenCL specification (that will most likely be implemented in Snow Leopard) MR article here.
Original post on Khronos group here.
"OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a language for programming heterogeneous data and task parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs." Wiki As an API - (application programming interface) it can help those developing Mac programs to utilise the capabilities of GPU and multi-core CPUs. 6 months for a standard is pretty quick - leaving aside a month to check legalities, it should be complete.
Apple may have had extensive work done with AMD, NVidia, Intel etc prior to getting the Khronos Group involvement, which might explain the speed of getting it ready, having ironed some problems out behind closed doors beforehand, but a lots gone into it since June. NVidia and AMD and the other members of the "Compute Working Group" have vested interests (and at least NVidia has been doing talks at sc 08) so we might hear more on it (e.g. SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in December ~10-13 ("Version 1.0 of OpenCL is currently scheduled to be released in early December at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in Singapore.")
Presumably OpenCL implementation is built on LLVM (longer post herefrom page 3) and Clang compiler - if it is, Apple's work on this side would also help a good deal speedwise.
EDIT - stand corrected - Clang might nor be ready, but Apple's improvements with LLVM should still have an effect.
Article on Open CL in HPCwire here
The launch party, did include presentations showing "dozens of projected slides revealing goals and sample code but, sadly, no live demonstration of the API in action" MacWorld.
Basically no demos or specs until the legal process has happened, so not sure if they'll have it in time for SIGGRAPH Asia (A taster here) - though they seem to have a worldwide launch slate down for it here. Wonder if all this puts PA Semi in another light?
I believe they might be bringing the first idea in to an extent -live preview/mini thumnail of a movie that's playing. As for acceleration for mice, I think there are hacks around it - if you google it i'd imagine there is something (i have a vague recollection there was something on it here on the boards).
Supercomputing 08
Whilst Dell is expanding collaboration with NVidia regarding CUDA - (from what I gather from someone at SC 08 ) the Khronos group has has an technical briefing on the upcoming OpenCL specification (that will most likely be implemented in Snow Leopard) MR article here.
Original post on Khronos group here.
"OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is a language for programming heterogeneous data and task parallel computing across GPUs and CPUs." Wiki As an API - (application programming interface) it can help those developing Mac programs to utilise the capabilities of GPU and multi-core CPUs. 6 months for a standard is pretty quick - leaving aside a month to check legalities, it should be complete.
Apple may have had extensive work done with AMD, NVidia, Intel etc prior to getting the Khronos Group involvement, which might explain the speed of getting it ready, having ironed some problems out behind closed doors beforehand, but a lots gone into it since June. NVidia and AMD and the other members of the "Compute Working Group" have vested interests (and at least NVidia has been doing talks at sc 08) so we might hear more on it (e.g. SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in December ~10-13 ("Version 1.0 of OpenCL is currently scheduled to be released in early December at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in Singapore.")
Presumably OpenCL implementation is built on LLVM (longer post herefrom page 3) and Clang compiler - if it is, Apple's work on this side would also help a good deal speedwise.
EDIT - stand corrected - Clang might nor be ready, but Apple's improvements with LLVM should still have an effect.
Article on Open CL in HPCwire here
The launch party, did include presentations showing "dozens of projected slides revealing goals and sample code but, sadly, no live demonstration of the API in action" MacWorld.
Basically no demos or specs until the legal process has happened, so not sure if they'll have it in time for SIGGRAPH Asia (A taster here) - though they seem to have a worldwide launch slate down for it here. Wonder if all this puts PA Semi in another light?
It seems unlikely to me that clang would be involved in OpenCL, since it won't be the default compiler for SL (it's not done yet). LLVM seems somewhat more likely, since you could use it to JIT to different hardware targets rather than writing a bunch of versions of the code like in Accelerate.framework(1). I suppose that comes down to a question of whether they have the resources and time to hand-code for each target, and whether data-based specialization(2) is as useful for OpenCL as it is for OpenGL.
1) They have, at least, scalar, altivec, and sse versions of Accelerate. I wouldn't be surprised if they had x86/x86-64/ppc/arm specific scalar versions of some functions as well. Very time and labor intensive.
2) the example given for OpenGL that I saw was that it has a bunch of things that need to be checked, like "is fog turned on"; in a static compiler, you'd have one version of the code, like this:
whereas with a specializing JIT you check whether fog is enabled, and compile either this:
or this
If fog is enabled later, you throw out your specialized version and compile a new one with the changed setting. It pays off nicely if you have a lot of conditions that don't change very often, but not so much if your code either doesn't have a lot of conditional behavior, or you change things frequently.
1) They have, at least, scalar, altivec, and sse versions of Accelerate. I wouldn't be surprised if they had x86/x86-64/ppc/arm specific scalar versions of some functions as well. Very time and labor intensive.
2) the example given for OpenGL that I saw was that it has a bunch of things that need to be checked, like "is fog turned on"; in a static compiler, you'd have one version of the code, like this:
Code:
if(fogEnabled) {
doFogThings();
} else {
doNonFogThings();
}whereas with a specializing JIT you check whether fog is enabled, and compile either this:
Code:
doFogThings();
Code:
doNonFogThings();If fog is enabled later, you throw out your specialized version and compile a new one with the changed setting. It pays off nicely if you have a lot of conditions that don't change very often, but not so much if your code either doesn't have a lot of conditional behavior, or you change things frequently.
I'm not thrilled about the 10.6 release when they are charging customers to upgrade that just got new computers.... but that's how it is I guess.
I plan to buy a family pack and get 5 Mac owners together so it's ~$40 a person to upgrade. That should be okay to do right?
I plan to buy a family pack and get 5 Mac owners together so it's ~$40 a person to upgrade. That should be okay to do right?
Mac OS X family pack is for people in the same home or people have mutliple macs in the same home...
Depends on your definition of "just got." I think usually Apple will give you the upgrade free if you bought a new computer within 30 days or so of its release. But 10.6 is months away, and I don't believe we'll see it at MWSF.
Sure, if they're all members of your immediate family.
Anyway, upgrades don't cost $200.Is that not seeing a preview, or not seeing a release around MWSF?
To be honest, some time between MWSF and WWDC would be an unneeded bonus - may as well get Snow Leopard once people have some Core i7 machines to actually us it on...
(Plus, if the user has tried Leopard e.g. on a Core i7, then they will likely be able to make the comparison of the the speed and functionality etc. between the two OSs.)
Would Apple want to have both Snow Leopard, and also iPhone v 3 announced/released at the same time (WWDC)?
http://mac.blorge.com/2008/11/24/opencl-whats-it-all-about/
Why would APple push OpenCL through in 6 months, if it wasn't a big part? A mighty rush otherwise...
http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/11/21/apple.opencl.trademark/
Not seeing a release. I'm sure we'll get a lot more information about it and probably a preview at MWSF, but I doubt it will be ready for general availability for a while yet.
Interesting tidbit regarding LLVM and OpenCL: I was browsing the llvm-dev archives today and noticed posts from two different companies (AMD and one other I don't recall) with job openings for LLVM engineers to work on OpenCL related things.
So, no idea if *Apple* is using LLVM for OpenCL, but it looks like a number of other people are.
So, no idea if *Apple* is using LLVM for OpenCL, but it looks like a number of other people are.
Depends on your definition of "just got." I think usually Apple will give you the upgrade free if you bought a new computer within 30 days or so of its release. But 10.6 is months away, and I don't believe we'll see it at MWSF.
Sure, if they're all members of your immediate family.
So over a month old and you're SOL. Sucks.
How does it not cost $200? Apple's website for Leopard says $130 single user and $200 for up to 5 users. I'm not buying a single user pack when I can split the family pack up between friends.
I know it's tempting but there's one other reason I recommend against the family pack, if you're going to split it the way you plan to: what if one of your buddies needs to reinstall, and you have the disk? Or, if your buddy has the disc, and YOU need to reinstall?
Family pack is for one household only, if you're going to break the EULA, might as well just buy one copy.
It's just like the people who complain that they just bought a Mac and a month later Apple introduced a new model. Do your research. Find out when new releases are expected. MacRumors and other Mac-oriented websites are full of information on Apple's likely strategy. If it's that important to you, wait. Everyone's in the same boat. I'm thinking of buying a new Macbook this week; I don't expect Apple to give me a free OS upgrade if 10.6 comes out next April, May, June.
^ Understood. But let's un-fanboy this for a sec. Before the iMac, the Mac Mini needed to move from Tiger to Leopard so that MobileMe would work. It's 4 months later and I gotta do the OS dance again. I don't "need" it but what good is an OS update if it isn't beneficial to the computer or the user.
Either way I read the EULA on the family pack and I won't be breaking it so I'm good to go. $40 per computer is fair.
Either way I read the EULA on the family pack and I won't be breaking it so I'm good to go. $40 per computer is fair.
"The Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that household. "
If you and your friends all live in the same house, then you're fine.
MobileMe works with Tiger. I have Tiger on my iBook G4; no problems using MobileMe.
If it's four months now, by the time 10.6 is out it will be 10 months, or 12. I don't believe it will be out in January, and even if it is there's no need to get it before 10.6.2 or so, when the initial kinks are ironed out. Upwards of a year between OS purchases is not unreasonable IMO. And like you say, you don't really need it. It looks like you waited until 10.5.4 to switch to Leopard anyway.