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Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - What, Where, When, Why & How much

Roundup of MWSF rumours SL showing that not much more has surfaced. Techradar has a 3 page summary here. Interesting to see afaik that they haven't had teaser posters. Yet the posters are there.

Anyone care to share their release date prediction prior to the keynote (which seems to have been given a better setting now Jobs has given a public update on his health)

Info on Snow Leopard known prior to MWSF keynote tomorrow:

Changes, updates to new Macs to be able to get more from Snow Leopard. From a rumored NVIDIA GeForce 9400M (MCP79) graphics chipset for the Mac Mini, iMac going quad core, etc.
(Interestingly, Seth Weintraub (link) at computerwold.com has the Mac Pro slated as getting a Core i7 update (see server versus non-server CPU debate)

I'd imagine Apple could add some tidbits from showing updates in iLife (Garageband, iMovie, iPhoto, iWeb...) or iWork (Keynote, Numbers, Pages) specific to 10.6. E.g. the rumors of iMovie going more to the cloud is an interesting possibility, if you link it in with the capabilities the v3 iPhone may have in ~6 months. If you could add video editing via an iPhone app, that would be pretty amazing.
Will editability of Pages and Numbers documents come?

As mentioned, there are a lot of pieces touching on Snow Leopard, but with no real extra content really. The most interesting news being that Parallels Desktop 4.0 now has experimental support for Snow Leopard apparently (VMWare's take on Snow Leopard here).
 
Yup. Based on what I've read in this thread and in other places, I think it WILL be released early, but not as early as Apple originally hoped. I'm guessing the week of March 29 - April 4. Apple was originally aiming for a much earlier February 8 - 14 release (or possibly earlier than that), but issues with some of the features they're implementing (such as updated graphics card drivers to take full advantage of GPGPU capabilities) will force the release date back.
 
t0mat0 said:
Anyone care to share their release date prediction prior to the keynote?
Click to expand...

Late March. I know Apple have done a large amount of internal testing in December since the last beta. I expect to see another beta in the next couple of weeks.
 
Sky Blue said:
Late March. I know Apple have done a large amount of internal testing in December since the last beta. I expect to see another beta in the next couple of weeks.
Click to expand...

Release date might be tomorrow:

MB604LL/A - K20,BEST - USA
MB942Z/A - MB942 RETAIL -INT
MB943Z/A - MB943 FAMILY PACK - INT
MB946LL/A - MB946 MEDIA SET
MB966Z/A - MB966 RETAIL - INT
MB967Z/A - MBB967 RETAIL FAMILY PACK -INT
MB971LL/A - MB971 MEDIA SET
MB976Z.A - MB975 UP TO DATE - INT
MB997Z/A - MB997 RETAIL - INT
MB998Z/A - MB998 RETAIL FAMILY PACK - INT

posted over at appleinsider by a good source based on past info.
 
Well we know now. The keynote is already up to watch.

No information on Snow Leopard that I saw. Steady progress with iLife and iWork, and the MBP 17 inch (8GB RAM max)
(150 million on Facebook. 75 million on daily. If Facebook gives tags, but also face recognition to a picture, that's a huge outsourcing of tagging!) Coverflow for video. Video stabilisation? Sounds like that'll need a fast Mac and OS...

They might get a bad wrap, for not enough, or not enough wow or booom, but they've added some decent features, that people will use daily. Always scope to add more, as iWork has shown.

Time to get the count down timer out for WWDC? :D
Roughly Drafted's response to MWSF - pretty spot on.

They did a muted, not blowing the whole bag of tricks. Didn't mention SL - read into that what you will...
But lets not forget - the iPhone 3G keynote - people said that sucked. And boy, did the 3G bring it with software and subtle hardware updates.

Some reaction:

Good overview from gizmodo here. Interesting piece here on the iPhoto domain.

Forbes article here [On lack of Snow Leopard info] "Apple is clearly saving its meatier product announcements for another date."

eweek's point about a Snow Leopard release date: Would Apple bundle Leopard and announce at MWSF, if SL was coming soon?

Charles Arthur's take "The biggest absence however was Snow Leopard"

Whilst a few are howling about not seeing Snow Leopard, it might be worth the wait. It may have been wise to not demo Snow Leopard. Let Microsoft have their time with Windows 7 beta being demoed. Rather than have all of a day's worth of press, release when it's optimal perhaps

(If the battery is unreachable, what about the Hard drive, memory for the 17 inch?)

The last point? Tony Bennett. Deliberate song choice. And fitting/appropriate.
Tony Bennett singing "The best is yet to come". Think about it...
If that isn't Apple saying be patient, what is?

“The best is yet to come and, babe, won't it be fine?
You think you've seen the sun but you ain't seen it shine”

“Wait till the warm-up's underway
Wait till our lips have met
Wait till you see that sunshine day
You ain't seen nothin' yet!”

Macintosh's 25th birthday ~January 14th. iMac, Mac mini, and a demo of the OS perhaps?

Oh wait - Jobs ain't that sentimental...
A nice graphic to ponder, while we await more Mac rumors... here
 
t0mat0 said:
Tony Bennett singing "The best is yet to come". Think about it...
If that isn't Apple saying be patient, what is?
Click to expand...

Obviously if you don't have much good to report now, you say that better stuff is coming. :cool:

Macintosh's 25th birthday ~January 14th. iMac, Mac mini, and a demo of the OS perhaps?
Click to expand...

Um, wouldn't the media invites need to have gone out already?
 
Eric S. said:
Um, wouldn't the media invites need to have gone out already?
Click to expand...

"It's the 25th anniversary of the Apple Macintosh, but Steve Jobs' eyes are dry. At the company headquarters in Silicon Valley, where he was presenting a set of new laptops to the press last October, I mentioned the birthday to him. Jobs recoiled at any suggestion of nostalgia. "I don't think about that," he said. "When I got back here in 1997, I was looking for more room, and I found an archive of old Macs and other stuff. I said, 'Get it away!' and I shipped all that **** off to Stanford. If you look backward in this business, you'll be crushed. You have to look forward."

WIth MWSF done, does that make the possibility of the number of correct, detailed rumours going up, or down?

Maybe they don't have much good to report now, because they're working on better stuff for later?
Everything being neutral in the Buyer's Guide except:
Mac Pro - Delays a CPU issue? Debates as to whether it would go Core i7, or stick it out for a Xeon Core i7
iMac - again, awaiting a CPU possibly, and then like the mythical updated mini can be announced.
iPhone - no bump as yet - general expectations to announce/release update come WWDC
Snow Leopard - Still needing work, with a release cycle to the developers not indicating anything soon...
Xserves - being a case of potentially linking in with a CPU cycle, and SNow Leopard launch)
LCDs - A lesser case of the Mac mini in terms of refresh - found the wait was the newer screens coming through
 
Okay, I really don't have the attention span to read through 7 pages of posts, but I do want to weigh in on Snow Leopard a bit.

I won't be buying it. I don't think a lot of people will be. Why? It offers nothing tangible. Developers will have a field day, and I suppose I'll upgrade if some app essential to my workflow requires it, but normal people will have trouble understanding why they should shell out $100 for a more efficient OS that offers them nothing new. I have 2 gigs of memory in this machine, default configuration, and it's plenty for my purposes. Maybe Snow Leopard will let Safari load in one bounce instead of two, but really, I don't think I'll see much improvement. It may run faster, but I have yet to see any noticeable slowdowns on this computer.

I think Snow Leopard is going to be a disappointment in terms of sales. They should have just waited another year and added something more tangible. Even the similar name to Leopard makes it seem like a patch or update rather than a whole new operating system.
 
BlueRevolution said:
Okay, I really don't have the attention span to read through 7 pages of posts, but I do want to weigh in on Snow Leopard a bit.

I won't be buying it. I don't think a lot of people will be. Why? It offers nothing tangible. Developers will have a field day, and I suppose I'll upgrade if some app essential to my workflow requires it, but normal people will have trouble understanding why they should shell out $100 for a more efficient OS that offers them nothing new. I have 2 gigs of memory in this machine, default configuration, and it's plenty for my purposes. Maybe Snow Leopard will let Safari load in one bounce instead of two, but really, I don't think I'll see much improvement. It may run faster, but I have yet to see any noticeable slowdowns on this computer.

I think Snow Leopard is going to be a disappointment in terms of sales. They should have just waited another year and added something more tangible. Even the similar name to Leopard makes it seem like a patch or update rather than a whole new operating system.
Click to expand...
Dare I say it, but you make a good point. I would not be surprised if more than 75% of Snow Leopard users are users who got it with their new Mac. Heck, that may be generous... Maybe a more accurate figure would be 90%.
 
BlueRevolution said:
Okay, I really don't have the attention span to read through 7 pages of posts, but I do want to weigh in on Snow Leopard a bit.

I won't be buying it. I don't think a lot of people will be. Why? It offers nothing tangible. Developers will have a field day, and I suppose I'll upgrade if some app essential to my workflow requires it, but normal people will have trouble understanding why they should shell out $100 for a more efficient OS that offers them nothing new. I have 2 gigs of memory in this machine, default configuration, and it's plenty for my purposes. Maybe Snow Leopard will let Safari load in one bounce instead of two, but really, I don't think I'll see much improvement. It may run faster, but I have yet to see any noticeable slowdowns on this computer.

I think Snow Leopard is going to be a disappointment in terms of sales. They should have just waited another year and added something more tangible. Even the similar name to Leopard makes it seem like a patch or update rather than a whole new operating system.
Click to expand...

Windows 7 thus far - A link to a pretty comprehensive review thus far here

Let's put it another way - with your current purposes, would that have run on your previous OS, with hardware a few years old?

It may not be so much as slow down on your current computer, as speed up on the new ones, running Snow Leopard by comparison, making your old one feel slower.


Will Snow Leopard have tweaked UI? Hints from iLife and iWork? Link here
Would Faces in iPhoto link with Contacts? Or something akin to the location map in iLife be linked to Contacts? A geographical representation of where your contacts live, work for example. Or... where they are in a geolocation system. I'd err on Apple not going too close to that currently, but it is possible i'd imagine.

It's interesting how seeing the products being announced from those not in sync with Apple's release cycles can up the bar held for what Snow Leopard should bring - Palm's Pre or Windows 7 for example. No... wait... Strike that...
Pre - showing potentially what can be done with CSS, js, HTML.
Windows 7 - Showing a better match to Leopard. It seems Microsoft, lumbering giant that it is seems to be at least saying on record it's going to right some it's wrongs (lots can be found at roughlydrafted.com ' s articles). Having said that, Ballmer's CES keynote was painful at times, truly. The man got introduced like he was in a boxing ring, (let's not forget he has an estimated wealth of $15 billion ... tbc
 
Stupid question: I have OS X 10.4.11 I really want to upgrade. Leopard should be a significant upgrade right? I am an average user, it would be silly for me to wait for Snow Leopard yes?

I want to upgrade asap and run windows in Bootcamp since a lot og software I use in my engineering curriculum is MS only.

Leopard will work right?

Thanks
 
Mac Box Set with Snow Leopard

I really want to upgrade to iLife '09 & iWork '09... but perhaps they will issue a Mac Box Set (single and family pack) as they do now, but that will include iLife+iWork+Snow Leopard... does anyone think that might be possible? that way I'd find upgrading plausible... any thoughts?
 
JohnnyOlbash said:
Stupid question: I have OS X 10.4.11 I really want to upgrade. Leopard should be a significant upgrade right? I am an average user, it would be silly for me to wait for Snow Leopard yes?

I want to upgrade asap and run windows in Bootcamp since a lot og software I use in my engineering curriculum is MS only.

Leopard will work right?

Thanks
Click to expand...

Sounds like you should update now. The only reason you might not want to is the price - $129 now, and maybe again for Snow Leopard. But SL likely won't be out for months, and there's no need to upgrade to it immediately when it comes out. If Leopard is useful to you now, get it.

What system are you running it on?
 
diazj3 said:
I really want to upgrade to iLife '09 & iWork '09... but perhaps they will issue a Mac Box Set (single and family pack) as they do now, but that will include iLife+iWork+Snow Leopard... does anyone think that might be possible? that way I'd find upgrading plausible... any thoughts?
Click to expand...

Try here
 
Eric S. said:
Sounds like you should update now. The only reason you might not want to is the price - $129 now, and maybe again for Snow Leopard. But SL likely won't be out for months, and there's no need to upgrade to it immediately when it comes out. If Leopard is useful to you now, get it.

What system are you running it on?
Click to expand...

I don't know a whole lot about it:eek: I just picked out the most expensive notebook I could afford before starting school.

Here's a screenshot of the "about this Mac"
Picture1-21.png
 
JohnnyOlbash said:
I don't know a whole lot about it:eek: I just picked out the most expensive notebook I could afford before starting school.

Here's a screenshot of the "about this Mac"
Click to expand...

Clicking on "More info" from "About This Mac" would tell you a lot more. But since it was the most expensive, I assume it's a Macbook Pro. :) And since its system bus is 667 MHz, it's probably about two years old. Leopard would be great on this system, especially as it has 4 GB RAM.
 
Eric S. said:
Sounds like you should update now. The only reason you might not want to is the price - $129 now, and maybe again for Snow Leopard. But SL likely won't be out for months, and there's no need to upgrade to it immediately when it comes out. If Leopard is useful to you now, get it.
Click to expand...


Wouldn't Leopard 10.5.x be a prerequisite to be able to upgrade to Snow Leopard? maybe this is a dumb idea, but since Snow Leopard won´t have much new features (since it's a "under the hood" upgrade aimed towards performance) ... or would they bundle both, the new features + the performance features into one ultimate upgrade?
 
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