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

[BlueRevolution]

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?

As far as I know, any version of OS X can upgrade to any other (subsequent) version of OS X.

 

[t0mat0]

A possible date for the diary: Apple is releasing Q1 2009 earnings, and will have a conference call discussing the first fiscal quarter financial results Q1 '2009, a week Wednesday on January 21, 2009 2pm PST, 5pm EST (~10pm BST?)
Webcast available: here

Q3 2008 article from macrumors here (the good old "future product transition" Apple's take here
Q4 2008 info from macrumors here (showing that the "iPhone was responsible for 39% of the company's revenues in Q4 2008
"). Apple's take here

seekingalpha.com will have a transcript out soon - you can usually get the audio soon after the call is over.
Will Apple do another event in January/early February? Link added for reference...

Snow Leopard Theme
Macrumors' sources indicate

Apple will apparently use Snow Leopard's release to tweak the overall user interface for Mac OS X and unify it across applications. Exact details of the theme changes have not been made public, as the current developer seeds for Snow Leopard still retain Apple's existing Aqua theme. The new theme will likely involve tweaks to the existing design and perhaps a "flattening" of Aqua in-line with Apple's iTunes and iPhoto interface elements.

The codename for the new interface is said to be "Marble" -- though that seems likely to be an internal codename only. John Gruber had also hinted at such changes in a pre-Macworld prediction piece and had independently heard the codename "Marble". Apple's Snow Leopard is rumored to be released as early as the first quarter of 2009.

image courtesy of AppleInsider article here

Edit: VentureBeat does a better comparison here

More like iTunes of new, (I'd imagine the changes made for Genius etc are more akin to what Snow Leopard might bring potentially, than keep strong on Aqua). Or, alternatively, check out iLife 09, iWork 09, and iLife.com... AppleInsider artile with pictures here If anyone has iLife.com acecss they could get better shots. But hen the Snow Leopard theme would then match online (would MobileMe get an update?) e.g. simplistically, here
26,000 articles on google marble "snow leopard" as of the 14th January. No doubt that'll rise...

You'll still be able to get & running Windows 7 on it, if you prefer...

Apple drops Mac from Mac OS X Leopard ... here and Macrumors picks up on it here

 

[hacksaw-C87]

Wow, that was a seriously detailed thread. I'm stuck in a dilemma now; I'd really like to purchase a Mac and I'm currently waiting for iLife 09 to come pre-installed so I don't have to shipping. I'm now not sure whether I should wait for SL. I know that if it comes out a week after I purchase then I'll be not-very-happy but I'd probably still want to get it. What do you think the chances are of Apple running a scheme similar to the one they are currently running for those who bought Macs just before the release of iLife/iWork 09 for SL? Would be a nice welcome to a new Mac user, although I'm thinking it's probably asking a bit too much.

 

[Sky Blue]

Wow, that was a seriously detailed thread. I'm stuck in a dilemma now; I'd really like to purchase a Mac and I'm currently waiting for iLife 09 to come pre-installed so I don't have to shipping. I'm now not sure whether I should wait for SL. I know that if it comes out a week after I purchase then I'll be not-very-happy but I'd probably still want to get it. What do you think the chances are of Apple running a scheme similar to the one they are currently running for those who bought Macs just before the release of iLife/iWork 09 for SL? Would be a nice welcome to a new Mac user, although I'm thinking it's probably asking a bit too much.

No chance 10.6 comes out before March, probably not until the summer.

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Wow, that was a seriously detailed thread. I'm stuck in a dilemma now; I'd really like to purchase a Mac and I'm currently waiting for iLife 09 to come pre-installed so I don't have to shipping. I'm now not sure whether I should wait for SL. I know that if it comes out a week after I purchase then I'll be not-very-happy but I'd probably still want to get it. What do you think the chances are of Apple running a scheme similar to the one they are currently running for those who bought Macs just before the release of iLife/iWork 09 for SL? Would be a nice welcome to a new Mac user, although I'm thinking it's probably asking a bit too much.

In the past there is usually a buffer zone between purchase and release of a new OS X for a free upgrade. Example: Any Mac purchase within a month of the new OS X will get a free upgrade.

 

[t0mat0]

9to5mac points out there's Snow Leopard on the torrents...
Is 10a222 the most recent? At your own risk... Nothing back about any dramatic changes thus far.

The Register has a roundup of articles on the Marble UI here.
IT seems lots of stuff moving to "X". The X factor if you will. (Sorry). Mac OSX now OS X, OS X iPhone, and in Snow Leopard, Quicktime X (of which sweet FA has come out to my knowledge).

At a guess, Quicktime X is about being able to create audio and video, not only play audio and video.
Roughlydrafted's take:

In Snow Leopard, there will be another example of trickle down tech from the iPhone: QuickTime X (as in ten, not ex). Apple already performed a major overhaul of its flagship media architecture in QuickTime 7, adding support for modern audio and video codecs and ridding it of a lot of old legacy from the media architecture’s early 90s origins. However, QuickTime is still a complex assortment of software components, designed to work with media in nearly any codec imaginable and support everything from simple playback to complex media authoring. It is essentially an operating system for media.

When Apple developed media services for the iPhone, it started fresh with a pared down set of objectives. The iPhone is designed only to play music and video; it doesn’t need to edit or author it. Further, the iPhone uses specialized hardware that allows it to efficiently decompress H.264 video and AAC or MP3 audio; it doesn’t need to play any random files users can scrounge up on the web in archaic or non-standard formats. By limiting the iPhone to playback of modern codecs, Apple could create a really tight, highly efficient subset of QuickTime that performed well on mobile hardware while being conservative with its battery use.

Snow Leopard will make use of that same mobile-optimized playback software when playing any media that uses modern codecs. That gives desktop Macs the same highly efficient playback performance while still allowing them to fall back to the standard QuickTime routines when playing older codecs or anything requiring proprietary plugins. The marketing name for this iPhone-derived boost is QuickTime X.

It's:

a streamlined, next-generation platform that advances modern media and Internet standards...features optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback, making it ideal for any application that needs to play media content.

The most recent developer build still on Aqua currently apparently.

OS Server
As osnews.com points out, it's the 10th anniversary for OS X Server (announced January 5th, 1999 - the same MWSF expo that brought the iBook if memory serves correctly.

A "new server OS offering" - proclaimed as combinng “the proven strength of Unix with the simplicity of Macintosh” as osnews.com puts it.
In those heady days, it required "64MB of RAM, a 1GB hard drive and a CD-ROM drive and supported all Power Macintosh G3 systems but was specifically optimized (and marketed) for Apple’s new blue and white G3s, also announced at Macworld 1999."

From the article it mentions that it shipped in March, for $499, instead of the “estimated” $999 mentioned in the keynote. Apparently

"Mac OS X Server 1.0 was not the direct precursor to the desktop variant of Mac OS X; both were developed alongside one another, but would share improvements. Several Mac OS X developer preview releases were released over the course of 1999, and as soon as Mac OS X 10.0 was released early 2000, version numbering schemes between Mac OS X' client and server variants were synchronised.

The rest is history, as they say."

With ZFS billed (subject to change etc etc) for OS X Snow Leopard, it's the other side to the Snow Leopard OS coin.

Edit - 10A250 is apparently out per AppleInsider, with 10A246 the stable version.
They leave a tidbit about expecting more information next month about Snow Leopard.

 

[Catfish_Man]

I could see the appeal of torrenting 10.5 or earlier seeds, but unless you're a developer torrenting 10.6 seeds is going to be really really boring.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

New article on AppleInsider about security enhancements in Snow Leopard. Looks like Apple's improving Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) by adding dyld (Mac OS X's dynamic library loader and linker) to the list of programs loaded in a random part of memory. This is a huge improvement, as it greatly reduces the available attack vectors.

 

[t0mat0]

Thanks for the link wrldwzrd89
To recap his series thus far:

Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: the future of 64-bit apps
Road to Snow Leopard: twice the RAM, half the price, 64-bits
Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: 64-bits, Santa Rosa, and more
Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: 64-bit security
Windows 7 versus Snow Lopeard - Competitive origins


Gestures in Snow Leopard
9to5mac says:

According to one of our readers, older MacBooks and MacBook Pros are going to be able to use the four finger gestures. Who said no new features in Snow Leopard?! Oh, and a special version (64-bit?) of Flash according to Mr. Five finger discount.

Not defined is this is early 2008 models, or models prior to this. macblogz's take here

Nothing like getting your latest news from a user called "snow leopard tester!" ... Add as much salt as needed -

Mon, 01/19/2009 - 09:29 — snow leopard tester! (not verified)
well, i downloaded it, and it didn't contain any malware. It gives you 4 finger multitouch for the older mbp's early 2008, even though i hacked it in leopard. It also contains flash out of the box, pretty nice i guess, finder isn't very stable, half the preference panes are still in 32 bit, furthermore not all the applications are in 64-bit yet. Also, updating it in snow leopard doesn't seem to do anything because it didn't start downloading the latest version. Furthermore the theme is changed very slightly, and that's mostly it. It's also faster than leopard if, but will be even faster since not everything is 64bit yet, and can take advantage of that.

Side tangent: http://i.gizmodo.com/5134406/apple-desktop-keyboard-with-iphone-dock-concept-makes-perfect-sense
Picture below.
Desktop keyboard that can take an iPhone.
Hehe. Hopefully someone can point to a thought of using iPhone/tablet for this prior to this thread?

Snow Leopard more open beta?

Seth Weintraub here ( a link that consistently wouldn't load on iPhone...) so text below:

I've heard some rumbling that Apple might be starting a public seeding of Snow Leopard - like Microsoft is doing with Windows 7 - starting in either late January or early February. People who aren't registered Apple developers will be able to download the DVD image and try out the new OS and at the same time they'd be able to send back some helpful feedback to Apple.

Q1 2009 results in 2 days - Macrumors thread here

Something on Parallel computing from hardwarezone.com. Not read yet, but put up for perusement, here
Cheers for the feedback, useful feedback is always useful If you want to save the thread and get a notification if there's an update, click on the thread tools button at the top of the page near the top right of the page. Thread rating system's there too.

Saturday January 24th 2009, Macintosh’s 25th Anniversary. So an event would need a week's notice? Have a bash on the 27th?

 

[techfreak85]

wow t0mat0, thank you so much for all your hard work! U really should be paid. haha
kudos!

 

[t0mat0]

Another day, another article:

"Windows 7 versus Snow Lopeard - Competitive origins" here (admittedly a bit of a cop-out as he's done the back history up to SL and 7, then done a "same time, same place" pause for the next article...)

From engadget (macrumors thread )
The white plastic polycarbonate MacBook has got a bump. You now get 2.0GHz C2D CPU, 1,066MHz FSB, 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory standard (up from 1GB, though the unibody is DDR3),a FW400 for your non-aluminum troubles, and integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics.
as Engadget mentions: "Getting ready for Snow Leopard's OpenCL GPU support are we Apple?" I.e. Apple bringing their most basic laptop, the MacBook, in line with the OpenCL GPU requirements, for Snow Leopard "apparently".

The bumped MacBook is available state-side, but the UK bump is different. More info [URL="http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/01/21/apple-macbook-update-skips-the-uk/"]here. Wil it get a bump from the Intel GMA X3100? We await Apple feedback. The 9400M is the same chip that was rumoured to be being paired up with an Atom chip, Ion style. Acoording to the Steve Jobs keynote, they’re 5x faster than what Apple has been using in the past.

OpenCL link from Khronos Group here[/UR] The actual spec pdf is [URL="http://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/specs/opencl-1.0.29.pdf"]here. Basically you need an OpenCL device to do OpenCL. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M can do OpenCL.
NVIDIA page here
http://sg.nvidia.com/object/io_1228881548061.html?_templateId=320

“NVIDIA will continue to be very active in the OpenCL working group to drive the evolution of the specification and will support OpenCL on all its platforms, providing developers an additional way to tap into the awesome computational power of our GPUs.”

What does this all mean? Well, CUDA got Mathematica getting 10-100% performance boosts. (NVIDIA pushing the NVIDIA Tesla Personal Supercomputer at SC0 (Can have up to 4 Tesla GPUs in a single system, delivering up to 4 Teraflops)...

Apple's 25th anniversary, and user interfaces here
Sidenote: Another date for the diary: Mobile World Congress February 16-19

Financials
seekingalpha.com transcript of the earnings call:

Bill Fearnley - FTN Midwest
And, if I could switch gears and just get a product update from you as well. Any additional thoughts here on Snow Leopard? You've talked about it in the past. Any updates there on what you might have for a timeline? And if you're not prepared to give a timeline, any thoughts on progress in the development versus your expectations there?

Tim Cook
No comments to share today. Yeah, we're very excited about the next release, but we do not have a specific launch date to announce today.

.

 

[Ramashalanka]

Slightly off topic, but could someone please point me to any speculation on 10.7. I can't find anything other than trackpad stuff and humor related to possible names. When they say "Taking a break from adding new features" (this thread does a great job discussing the new features that they are adding), what are the new features that are they not adding to snow leopard?

 

[t0mat0]

Slightly off topic, but could someone please point me to any speculation on 10.7. I can't find anything other than trackpad stuff and humor related to possible names. When they say "Taking a break from adding new features" (this thread does a great job discussing the new features that they are adding), what are the new features that are they not adding to snow leopard?

It's a way away (if it's a 12 to 18 month cycle, then its >2 years away).

https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-495943.html

http://innerdaemon.wordpress.com/2009/01/05/macworld-rumor-mac-os-x-107-sabertooth-is-the-cloud-os/

http://lowendmac.com/ed/royal/09sr/mac-windows-road-ahead.html

In terms of features lacking in Snow Leopard, take your pick - this thread helps point out what it might have. E.g. Lack of ZFS for the normal non-server Snow Leopard edition.
or articles like this

 

[t0mat0]

Another day, another article:

"Windows 7 versus Snow Lopeard - Competitive origins" here (admittedly a bit of a cop-out as he's done the back history up to SL and 7, then done a "same time, same place" pause for the next article...)

From engadget (macrumors thread )
The white plastic polycarbonate MacBook has got a bump. You now get 2.0GHz C2D CPU, 1,066MHz FSB, 2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM memory standard (up from 1GB, though the unibody is DDR3),a FW400 for your non-aluminum troubles, and integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics.
as Engadget mentions: "Getting ready for Snow Leopard's OpenCL GPU support are we Apple?" I.e. Apple bringing their most basic laptop, the MacBook, in line with the OpenCL GPU requirements, for Snow Leopard "apparently".

The bumped MacBook is available state-side, but the UK bump is different. More info [URL="http://www.electricpig.co.uk/2009/01/21/apple-macbook-update-skips-the-uk/"]here. Wil it get a bump from the Intel GMA X3100? We await Apple feedback. The 9400M is the same chip that was rumoured to be being paired up with an Atom chip, Ion style. Acoording to the Steve Jobs keynote, they’re 5x faster than what Apple has been using in the past.

OpenCL link from Khronos Group here[/UR] The actual spec pdf is [URL="http://www.khronos.org/registry/cl/specs/opencl-1.0.29.pdf"]here. Basically you need an OpenCL device to do OpenCL. NVIDIA GeForce 9400M can do OpenCL.
NVIDIA page here
http://sg.nvidia.com/object/io_1228881548061.html?_templateId=320

“NVIDIA will continue to be very active in the OpenCL working group to drive the evolution of the specification and will support OpenCL on all its platforms, providing developers an additional way to tap into the awesome computational power of our GPUs.”

What does this all mean? Well, CUDA got Mathematica getting 10-100% performance boosts. (NVIDIA pushing the NVIDIA Tesla Personal Supercomputer at SC0 (Can have up to 4 Tesla GPUs in a single system, delivering up to 4 Teraflops)...

Apple's 25th anniversary, and user interfaces here
Sidenote: Another date for the diary: Mobile World Congress February 16-19

Roughlydrafted.com
Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard: Microsoft's comeback plan including Daniel's take on the Windows 7 taskbar. Interesting point that users will have to sign up to Live to get access to what were in Vista, XP, free software (Hotmail, Messenger, etc). I think it's worth checking out the Windows 7 engineering blog every so often, as they are pretty articulate in the work they're doing. Pretty sincere, but at some point it gets a touch of the Borg.
Like a good rumor crack dealer, the article leaves us with the promise of better to come: Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Apple ups the ante (which may or may not be a rehash of 10 big new features in Snow Leopard)

The next segment will look at major features Apple is sneaking into Snow Leopard, along with other big differences in strategy between the two companies and their upcoming operating system releases.

@Ramashalanka - As far as I know - ZFS hasn't been committed to for Snow Leopard, just Snow Leopard server possibly. The article shows no proof of any change to that I could see on quick skim through. However, the roughlydrafted article above, iI just noticed has both pegged for ZFS. Not too sure what to make of that yet.

 

[rye9]

I was curious on what people predict to be the life of Snow Leopard. Tiger lasted about 2.5 years and Leopard seems to have lived only 1.5 years... Do you think Snow Leopard will last as long as tiger or quickly be replaced by 10.7?

 

[Catfish_Man]

Tiger lasted an unusually long time for two reasons; one is that Apple regards Tiger-for-Intel as a separate system from certain points of view (they've listed it as such at various WWDC presentations), and the other is that Leopard was delayed significantly.

 

[Eric S.]

And Leopard was delayed significantly because of the focus put on development of the first iPhone. When Leopard was released Apple stated that they wanted to shorten the time between future OS releases to between 12 and 18 months. So that's what to expect between 10.6 and 10.7.

 

[Ramashalanka]

t0mat0, thanks for your reply. Those few links are the most that I've seen yet.

It's a way away (if it's a 12 to 18 month cycle, then its >2 years away).

I agree, but I can still dream can't I? I'm more interested in the what possibililities than the when. The lowendmac link says:

Mac OS X 10.7 coming in January 2010

but surely Simon must mean 2011.

I certainly hope the cloud suggestion in the innderdaemon article is wrong. Seeing what they're doing with iWork would suggest anything will be supplemental to local software.

Re ZFS in the non-server version, as you link elsewhere, appleinsider guess that:

Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server will provide both read and write support

This thread of yours does a great job of discsussing what features Snow Leopard has. I'd be interested in any other thoughts from anyone of features lacking in Snow Leopard, assuming everything already suggested here is included. Some of the items in the list in the techradar article were a bit superficial at this stage. I'm sure many people have ideas, and I'd be interested.

 

[Eric S.]

New Apple Insider article on Snow Leopard:

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...mac_os_x_snow_leopard_apple_ups_the_ante.html

 

[t0mat0]

Mac Pro rumours, intersect Snow Leopard ones...

ZFS - I stand corrected - missed that Daniel was pushing that ZFS was Snow Leopard and Snow Leopard Server versions (compatible, even if we don't see the ZFS in the non-server OS at launch).


http://www.appleinsider.com/article...rger_role_in_future_versions_of_mac_os_x.html


Take this with your own level of skepticism:
http://macosrumors.com/2009/01/09/next-for-apple-mac-pros-and-xserves-based-on-intel-core-i7/
I don't have much experience of articles from the the macosrumours.com site - so if anyone can (with decent proof) give a current indication of their level of decent rumours, that'd be useful for anyone reading here... (their about page is here)
(It seems the site has a history... http://forums.appleinsider.com/showthread.php?threadid=65043 And ads, but then you can use your own ad blocker...)

There will apparently be an article to follow up potentially 27th/28th.

(e.g. in this article: "Snow Leopard, thanks to Grand Central and exhaustive Intel optimization efforts, ran common third party applications like Firefox and Adobe Media Player, VLC and Google Earth... at speeds which crushed all the other systems tested. [Windows Vista, Windows 7 beta with Mac OS 10.5.6, and an alpha build of Mac OS 10.6]"


The potential logic: Apple has Snow Leopard, it has a bunch of features to be slimmer, better, quicker. The Mac Pro will be the most powerful (excl. the XServe) to run Snow Leopard, and so Apple are likely to be wanting to announce/get out a Nehalem Mac Pro prior to a Snow Leopard announcement. Intel would be itching to show what the i7 can do.

The Gainestown Mac Pro thread cuurently on it's 18th page is here - Gainestown as currently the 2x Quad Core CPU Mac Pro is on "server" CPU, memory, etc, so is v. likely to follow the update route, and be waiting on the Nehalem ...CPU.

A slightly condensed version version below, the original is here:

Next for Apple: Mac Pros and Xserves based on Intel Core i7
January 9th, 2009 — By: admin

..."Rumors always keeps a close eye on the future — and the future of high-end Mac computing is right around the corner."

"It’s when you look at the rest of the specifications, then actually put these [Nehalem] chips to the test in benchmarks and real-world usage, that the Project Nehalem awesomesauce becomes truly apparent."

"A prototype Mac Pro with twin 2.93GHz Core i7 processors was made available to two of Rumors’ senior editors" - who've been working on a series of articles and reviews aparently, and currently under embargo for a week or so.

"For now, we can report on publicly known specs of the Core i7 platform and non-unique features of the hardware, which actually deviates quite a bit from Intel’s reference board for single-chip Nehalem systems."

Getting a 2 i7 CPU design working, has been hard work, which has to be put in context of Apple's work on graphics as computation power: "sources at Infinite Loop say that this has been their most challenging project since the Mac Pro team was the PowerMac team and they brought the seminal G5 to market with far less help from IBM than they are now getting from Intel…."

"we can say this — Core i7 lives up to the hype, and with the help of Intel & nVIDIA, Apple has put together a machine that will easily rank among the best Core i7 workstations on the market."

They'll have their hands on a Nehalem XServe sometime soon apparently. Which I think could be rather spiffing. (Bringing GPU to the server market would be a great playif they could bring it off.)

"[the mid-December built Mac Pro] ...[to] say it’s fast would be an understatement, and the improvements are remarkable."

From the comments:

3 admin // Jan 10, 2009 at 4:07 am
"... yes, we were working with a build of which is after 10.5.6 but isn’t fully integrated into the 10.5.7 build tree either. From what we hear, a significant part of 10.5.7 will be drivers, hardware support and processor/platform optimizations centered around Nehalem — remember, Core i7 starts on the desktop but will also reach into the laptop space soon as well with dual and even quad-core, single-chip designs that also sport the triple-channel, DDR3-1066 based architecture which makes Core i7 so powerful.

We’re playing with a “late alpha” quality build of Snow Leopard (10.6) and although it will be a few more days before we get more hands-on time with that silver-and-black Nehalem beast of a Mac Pro prototype, we’re hoping to bring the two together as soon as possible to do comparative benchmarks. Precise numbers will probably get embargoed until closer to the announcement date (roughly six weeks out [NB this is a Jan 10 comment post], if memory serves, though that could shift either way depending on cost and availability ramping curves from Intel), but stopwatch/ballpark results ought to be available in a week or two at the outside with any luck.

In short…..yes, we are working with what is basically 10.5.6 plus a basic set of Nehalem optimizations. Grand Central, which is at the heart of Snow Leopard, does a far better job we’re told and comes pretty close, even in its present form, to the most optimized system in existence for Core i7 according to sources at Intel and Infinite Loop. So we would expect considerable improvements indeed out of 10.6."

A spring demo on the back of Mac Pro/iMac/mini launches?

If the above is true, then indications for when 10.5.7 is looming to be released would be an indication potentially.

"Concurrency happens. It just happens" Damnit msdn channel9 puts out some good stuff:
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Goin...opoulos-Concurrency-Coordination-and-the-CCR/


Windows 7
A run through of things to expect thus far here from howtogeek.com

Is Microsoft's beta push been a very successful idea? WIth complexity makingit harder to find edge cases of bugs, and a way to promptly see larger problems, how does it compare to Apple's development of Snow Leopard, and it's limited release to developers?
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/30/our-next-engineering-milestone.aspx


Quite quiet currently, so no posts. There should be a decent amount within a fortnight

Prince McLean new article - Exploring Windows 7 for Mac users

Off topic -> Quiet Snow Leopard days... And to think there's rumors afoot with QUALCOMM, their WiMax capabilities, and v3 iPhones...
http://gigaom.com/2005/08/11/qualcomm-to-acquire-flarion-for-600-million/ Wimax MBS etc
What ever did happen to MediaFLO... It's a rival to DVB-H. LAst time i checked there were several competing standards. Seems they could at least roll out videoconferencing onto wifi/ the cloud etc.

Macosrumors.com. Unreliable it seems but promoting a SL article
OK - there is apparently an upcoming macosrumors.com article (1st sneak peak at Snow Leopard (OS 10.6). From the mess of the last one, and the ambiguity/incorrectness of the previous recent ones seems to indicate more skepticism is required for their output.

i see your teraflop, raise you ~20 petaflops
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/02/supercomputer.html
There is a decent podcast on High Performance Computing (HPC) available from The Register (20/7/07 I think - so old, but interesting)

 

[t0mat0]

Heavy on the rumor, it's a macosrumor

Macosrumors talks about 10.5.7 (and some links to 10.6, Snow Leopard) here They're promising the "Sneek Peek" at Snow Leopard will be up later "today" (they're in a differnt time zone, so GMT will be late tonight i'd imagine)

Hopefully this will get thrashed out by all those people here who have way more knowledge than me, and can verify or dismiss with proof.

Main points
OS X 10.5.7
nearing beta phase (going out to 3rd party devs)
Focusing on on hardware support & bug fixes

Performance related changes came from "their sources" and "the associated reports in Apple’s internal “Radar” system as well as its fully closed change-logging & patch-commit notes"
=> Lots of new versions of drivers for existing graphics cards
=> Modest optimizations "for nearly all Intel Core-class processors which mostly focus around new “SSE” vector-processing techniques and code libraries borrowed from essentially finished Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) projects as part of its “Grand Central” optimization effort."
=> "New recent-model nVIDIA GPU drivers which should quash the outstanding bugs from the mysteriously pulled nVIDIA Graphics Update 2009 package and provide some framerate benefits for those games/applications which utilize the GPUs affected including the current Macbooks’/Macbook Pros’ dual GPU “pseudo-SLI” GeForce 9400M/9600M-GT graphics system and older Intel Macs with GeForce 7300GT or 8800GS cards…."

So grabbing some of the Snow Leopard work, and bringing it to 10.5.7

So fixing issues. (Which would be issues under 10.67 also presumably in the most part - so they're fixing both versions).

While the team that is dedicated to maintaining the OS X 10.5.x codebase (as well as carrying over whatever “completed” Snow Leopard projects may make sense to roll into the last 3-5 point updates remaining before reaching “end state” like 10.3.9 & 10.4.11) is still of significant size, and it handles quite a huge number of bug reports every day….many of the most talented and creative of Apple’s software developers — including some of its most efficient bug-squashers — were moved to the Snow Leopard team quite some time before last summer’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC).

As a result, over time the backlog of bug reports & suggested/submitted patches has slowly grown as the list of known issues in 10.5.6 has also bloated out to a degree unparalleled by nearly any previous build of Mac OS X.

So fixes, bug quashing.

10.5.7’s huge bevy of fixes and updated support code for the recently updated, nVIDIA-based laptop models will be very good news to many users affected by the issues in existing system software….but the really big deal of 10.5.7 isn’t for owners of existing Macs.

Like the recent v2.2.1 iDevice OS firmware release, 10.5.7 hides within it support code & drivers for new hardware — in this case, a “Nehalem” desktop Intel Core i7 processor/chipset based iMac shipping in the coming weeks, “Gainestown” Core i7 Xeon based Mac Pro & Xserve shipping around the end of March (additional details), and the next generation Macbook family (all three models including Air & Pro) which will move up to the mobile i7 architecture when it follows suit this summer….

Yes - they have been previously unreliable. But we're all (more or less) adults, so we can show where it's verifiably right/wrong.

Location Based Services
Whilst BT is offering a trial pocket concierge service running through their Openone wifi hotspots, Google has announced Google Lattitude

I'd imagine seeing this coming to integration for the v3 iPhone, but also within contacts for Snow Leopard potentially, going off the previous integration of Google services by Apple.

Lattitude allows you to see where your friends are and what they're up to?

Why is this crucial? Because you don't want LB finding fragmented. You want one unified system, that everyones using. Hence the problem with having different LBS trying to do similar social netowrking, or finding. By having it from Google, and linked in to the Snow Leopard OS / OS X iPhone potentially, you then get a level playing field - this could then get into the SDK, and be a tool apps can use.

Which means that there is finally the potential to pass the critical mass of numbers of users using a service, to make it usefu for other users to use. Using an iPhone / Mac makes you more likely to know others that use them too, and for your friends to have iPhones and Macs. Thus, you're social network is more likely to benefit from this.

Facebook didn't pick up on this, and it looks like Google might steal this, and Apple ride shotgun.

They've built fine-grained privacy controls right into the application. "

Everything about Latitude is opt-in. You not only control exactly who gets to see your location, but you also decide the location that they see. For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere — perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls . Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change the settings on a friend-by-friend basis. So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide. Everything is under your control and, of course, you can sign out of Latitude at any time. Check out this video to learn more about the privacy features.

It's available in 27 countries, with more soon.

Who can share? "If you have a mobile smartphone, visit google.com/latitude on your phone's web browser to download the latest version of Google Maps for mobile with Latitude. Latitude is available on Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile, and will be available on Android in the next few days. We expect it will be coming to the iPhone, through Google Mobile App, very soon."

Using a desktop, you "can visit google.com/latitude on your desktop or laptop to install the Latitude iGoogle gadget and share your location right from your computer. If you have Google Gears installed in your browser (you do by default if you use Google Chrome), you can automatically share your location; otherwise, manually set your location to let your friends know where you are."

See the Google Mobile blog for more details. Video of Latitude in action here.

 

[Sky Blue]

Anybody have any info on the 10A261 seed or are we still just copy and pasting articles from other sites with bad track records?

 

[t0mat0]

Anybody have any info on the 10A261 seed or are we still just copy and pasting articles from other sites with bad track records?

Try searching the front page Sky Blue If it's not good enough for you, i'm sure your time would be better spent on other pages within the forum. We should be able to put macosrumors.com's most recent article to the test. Specifically, we actually need time stamps on when macosrumors is publishing, versus others, like macitynet.it, who is reporting that Apple has seeded developers with 10A261 9with the prior version being build 10A222). Seeing as the site's Italian, the Google translation, is here

On a side note - wouldn't the 10.5.7 changes, incorporating possible 10.6 stuff, be why partly why they pulled the Nvidia update?
Rough translation below:

Apple sells to developers a new beta of Snow Leopard. Few clues on changes compared to previous versions, interface quite similar to Leopard, more stability and speed.

New preliminary version of Mac OS X "SnowLeopard". An updated beta of the next Apple operating system that adetta many - could see the light is very likely before the summer, was delivered at this time to the developers.

This is the release "10A261" and is the third version released officially to beta-testers and developers who have the opportunity to try to preview software (previous versions were labeled as "10A190" and "10A22"). Apple has made it known to the tester not to send bug reports and the location but to concentrate and try the printer driver, compatibility with third-party applications and Exchange support.

"SnowLeopard", remember, integrate support perMicrosoft Exchange 2007 in Mail, Address Book and iCal. Protocol Exchange Web Services provide access to Exchange Server 2007 allows you to use throughout your Mac and iPhone and have full access to e-mail, contacts and calendars. Among other innovations that we should see in futurosistema include full support 64bit technology (you can theoretically support up to 16 Terabytes of RAM), the new set of technologies "GrandCentral" (exploit multicore CPUs to optimize it for each level assigning tasks to multiple cores and processors), QuickTime X (codecmoderni support for more efficient and reproduction), OpenCL (exploitation of the GPU for demanding tasks).

The interface has not been revised and currently there are only small changes in System Preferences, have been resolved a few bugs in the Finder and little else. According to the sources of Macity the impression is that this release is more reliable than those previously distributed.

2008 06 09 - Mac OSX 10.6 Preview
2009 10 25 - Mac OSX 10.6 build 10A190 also here
2009 02 04 - Mac OS X 10.6 build 10A222 Seed
notes (Server version became a torrent and builds 10A190, 10A96 & WWDC '08 Developer Preview are/were available too, apparently)
2009 02 04 - Mac OS X 10.6 build 10A261

10.5.6 No real info as yet

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Sometimes, a little human help is needed with this sort of thing.

Apple sells to developers a new beta of Snow Leopard. Few clues on changes compared to previous versions, interface quite similar to Leopard, more stability and speed.

New preliminary version of Mac OS X "SnowLeopard". An updated beta of the next Apple operating system that adetta many - could see the light is very likely before the summer, was delivered at this time to the developers.

This is the release "10A261" and is the third version released officially to beta-testers and developers who have the opportunity to try to preview software (previous versions were labeled as "10A190" and "10A22"). Apple has made it known to the tester not to send bug reports and the location but to concentrate and try the printer driver, compatibility with third-party applications and Exchange support.

"SnowLeopard", remember, integrate support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in Mail, Address Book and iCal. Protocol Exchange Web Services provide access to Exchange Server 2007 allows you to use throughout your Mac and iPhone and have full access to e-mail, contacts and calendars. Among other innovations that we should see in the future system include full support 64bit technology (you can theoretically support up to 16 Terabytes of RAM), the new set of technologies "GrandCentral" (exploit multicore CPUs to optimize it for each level assigning tasks to multiple cores and processors), QuickTime X (modern codec support for more efficient and reproduction), OpenCL (exploitation of the GPU for demanding tasks).

The interface has not been revised and currently there are only small changes in System Preferences, have been resolved a few bugs in the Finder and little else. According to the sources of Macity the impression is that this release is more reliable than those previously distributed.

Bold for emphasis where I changed the parts that didn't quite translate.

 

[Sky Blue]

Try searching the front page Sky Blue

Try looking at the time stamp of my post above and the News post, Sherlock.

I still think the next seed will show show slight GUI changes.