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

[Catfish_Man]

=> 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."

The last bit of this is incorrect.

 

[t0mat0]

The last bit of this is incorrect.

Any chance you can expand on this?

In other news:

AppleInsider Apple's Snow Leopard to include location, multi-touch tools article says:

Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system will include tools borrowed from the iPhone that let developers determine the geographical location of Macs, as well as extend additional support for multi-touch to their apps, AppleInsider has learned.

People familiar with the latest pre-release distributions of the next-gen OS say the software now includes the CoreLocation framework previously available via the iPhone SDK, which will allow Mac applications to identify the current latitude and longitude of the Macs on which they're running.

Since Macs don't include GPS technology like the iPhone 3G, CoreLocation will utilize a Mac's existing networking hardware to triangulate the system's location in a manner similar to the way the original iPhone was able to use the technology ti emulate a true global positioning signal.

Meanwhile, those same people say that developers writing applications for Snow Leopard will also gain access to a new set of Cocoa-based programing interfaces for leveraging the multi-touch features of the latest MacBooks and MacBook Pros within their applications.

AppleInsider first revealed plans for the new multi-touch framework in a an article from last June titled "Five undisclosed features of Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard."

The report noted that the framework would "consist of code libraries and functions that ordinary developers can use to enhance their applications with the same multi-touch capabilities currently available in Apple-born apps like Safari and iPhoto, and do so with ease."

Word of the new location tools in Snow Leopard comes on the heels of an announcement by Google that it will soon deliver its own software that will let iPhones and Macs broadcast their location information over the Internet.

With Google's Latitude recently announced for the iPhone, it makes a lot of sense that this will be seen in the OS.

Apparently "In previous builds that were leaked to a few torrent sites online, readers found that Snow Leopard may offer 4 finger gestures to older Macbooks and Macbook Pros which currently don’t support the full multi-touch gesture swipes."

Quicktime X

Will Apple remove the silly Quicktime <-> Quicktime Pro divide, and put the Pro and more features in the standard Snow Leopard release?
With the touting of Quicktime X, it might be possible. roughlydrafted.com notes here and macrumors.com notes here that the previous Pro related links have gone in the current build.

"Apple has long reserved several additional features for QuickTime Pro that are not available in the standard QuickTime Player. Some of these features include editing (cut, copy, paste), exporting to different codecs, and saving web QuickTime movies to hard drive. In a standard Mac OS X installation, these features are dimmed out in the QuickTime Player application"

"In the latest Snow Leopard builds, however, all features are reported to be fully enabled. In addition, the "Buy QuickTime Pro" and "Registration" links have been completely eliminated as menu options and the registration control panel also removed from the System Preferences.

These changes suggest that Apple may finally be incorporating all the Pro features into the standard QuickTime installation. Apple has announced that it would be revamping QuickTime in Snow Leopard with the introduction of QuickTime X. Apple will be incorporating technology from the iPhone into QuickTime X to optimize support for modern audio and video formats."

OpenCL demo by AMD
At SIGGRAPH Asia, AMD did apparently their 1st public demo of OpenCL - link to video here


ZFS
roughlydrafted.com's up to date take on ZFS

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server to pioneer ZFS ahead of desktop

In Snow Leopard Server, sources familiar with the new software say Apple will not only include the latest build of ZFS for Mac OS X but will also expose ZFS features within the graphical Disk Utility, making it easier to set up ZFS storage pools and file systems without resorting to command line utilities. The Finder also needs to be made fully ZFS savvy, as does any other software that makes assumptions about the underlying file system.

The Finder and Disk Utility app used by the desktop and server versions of Mac OS X have always been identical. Even so, Apple may initially keep full ZFS support associated with its server product, because server users have a greater practical need for the features related to ZFS, and also have the support resources to handle working with the new system. A similar thing happened when Apple released its IP over Firewire implementation, which was first incorporated into Mac OS X Server before being added to the desktop version in a later free update....

While ZFS support has made major headway on the Mac since the initial release of Leopard, there's still a long way to go before non-technical users can make real use of its new features. That will likely result in Apple focusing its development efforts to make ZFS practical initially to its server audience. That is reflected in the company's Snow Leopard marketing, which only mentions ZFS features in relation to Snow Leopard Server in "business critical server deployments." More technically-savvy desktop users will likely be able to begin experimenting with the new file system on the Snow Leopard desktop however.

Sounds like a position shift from saying it'll be in both versions. Anyhow, at least the release notes for build 10A261 introduce Microsoft Exchange support.

 

[Eric S.]

With Google's Latitude recently announced for the iPhone, it makes a lot of sense that this will be seen in the OS.

I certainly hope there will be a way to disable it then.

 

[Catfish_Man]

Any chance you can expand on this?

As has been leaked earlier, that's not what grand central is. I'm sure they are working on vectorizing more stuff, but it's not part of GCD.

 

[catbus999]

Interesting clue about "when"

Check out the top of page 27 of Wiley's Spring catalog for an interesting (possibly leaked) release date for Snow Leopard http://lp.wileypub.com/tech/catalogs). If I'm reading this right, they're talking June 22nd.

 

[sidewinder]

"Learning Mac OS X Snow Leopard" from Apress is due to be released in June as well.

http://apress.com/book/view/9781430219460

Amazon says it will be available June 15th...

S-

 

[PeteB]

NOTE: Amazon and other online publishers will often publish projected publication dates for books that are based on future technology.

I've ordered books on that basis before and the release date has been delayed because the book simply hasn't been published when Amazon think it was.

The June date is most probably simply a placeholder (they're working on the same information as we have). Don't think for a second that Amazon (or any other online retailer) have release schedule information that we don't.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Two new interesting SL-related articles on AppleInsider:

Mac OS X Snow Leopard Server to pioneer ZFS ahead of desktop
Apple's Snow Leopard to load printer drivers on demand

The first change is not at all unexpected, given that, as stated in the linked article, Apple's done this sort of thing before. The second, on the other hand, is welcome - who wants tons of printer drivers installed for printers they never use?

 

[Sky Blue]

Had a play with 261 yesterday, it's coming a long nicely. Still think it's closer to the beta than the finished product.

 

[Peace]

Had a play with 261 yesterday, it's coming a long nicely. Still think it's closer to the beta than the finished product.

I agree and I play with it daily. But I also believe they are leaving parts out on purpose in order to not give away non-released products coming out before June.

But other than that I can say I have at least 7 bugs registered with radar.

 

[spongex101]

I got the newer beta too, But after I re-boot when it says I should restart...It dosen't load the installer, It just goes to normal leopard , and when I boot from the CD, It also just goes to leopard. Anyway to fix it?

 

[t0mat0]

Macosrumors has a piece on Snow Leopard. Nothing amazing, linked for posterity.
I thought they'd already apparently had a first look at Snow Leopard running on Nehalem & Gainestown hardware.
Only things potentially verifiable:
"Boot-up...cut almost in half under Snow Leopard"
"Extremely hardware-intensive applications like Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Motion and Photoshop CS4 all ran substantially faster across the board and via a simple debugging tool to be released alongside the Snow Leopard version of Xcode/Developer Tools that allowed our hands-on team to tell when OpenCL was in use, it became quite clear that all sorts of things other than visibly obvious graphics functions were being offloaded to the graphics processor."

Sounds like their source embargoes potentially are linked to embargoes on Nehalem benchmarks. Potentially. IF it's kosher.

I'd imagine there will be more sources come March, when Gainestown gets more official.

Snow Leopard Server pointers
Ruminations from roughlydrafted.com about PNS - Push Notification Systems here Some of the info below - it's hard to verify this really, but it seems to be an initial attempt to flesh out some info from the different features talked about on the Apple Snow Leopard server page

Feature tweaks, additions
Making the front page here, but pretty small fry news, is "Put Back" - the option to restore any file put into the trash, back to their original locations with a simple "Put Back" command and also "Stacks Folder Navigation" - to be able to click on a folder in Stacks, with this opening the new folder in Stacks so you can quickly navigate in and out of folders in Stacks.

Snow Leopard Server tweaks
Daniel talks about Snow Leopard server scalability & performance
here

Improvements to email services

SL Server will use Dovecot for POP and IMAP email services (to help handle "more uses [sic], better data reliability, and new features including automatic "self healing" data corruption detection and repair, according to people familiar with Apple's plans."

Other benefits - Dovecot project's focus on security, IMAP specification compliance. From the web site: the software is
"using self optimizing, transparent indexing of mail folders that support modification by multiple concurrent users."
"also supports IMAP extensions including IDLE push notifications, and provides plugins for handling ACL support and quota limitations."

Apple can thus add on top of this, e.g. Daniel gives of "including support for server side email rules and vacation messages."

Improvements to Open Directory services

Again, for scalability, performance. Directory services
- used to manage users, groups, and devices on the network.
- used by Admins to set user permissions and establish policy for systems bound to their network domain, e.g. limit what software can be installed; default settings; preferences users see at login.

Apple uses OpenLDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) open source software and builds its own graphical admin tools & integration with other software packages included in Mac OS X Server (inc. MIT's Kerberos & Apple's own SASL Password Server for authentication). E.g. Leopard Server's Open Directory used OpenLDAP 2.3, Snow Leopard Server likely to move to a stable more up to date release e.g. 2.4.11 giving enhancements.

Snow Leopard Server's Address Book Server is reported in the article to not use LDAP, rather another system to "allow users on the network to share their personal and group contacts across multiple computers on the network." It's unclear in the article, but it seems Daniel's saying it'll make use of "extensions to WebDAV" protocol (CardDav spec) (with iCal Server using CalDAV to manage event data,

This enables Snow Leopard Server to support the rich contact records supported in Address Book without running into the schema limitations and security issues related to LDAP. Along with iCal Server and the mail services Apple provides using Dovecot, this will give Snow Leopard Server the integrated email, contacts, and calendar of Exchange without the cost of Exchange, or its steep resource demands related to its massive, specialized email database architecture.

Wiki Services, Remote Access Services
Details in the article. E.g. web-centric, iPhone friendly additional features

As said previously, the last bit of the article is how Snow Leopard Server will potentially be the most able to maximise on in some ways, the benefits from SL- being able to handle GBs and GBs of RAM, with Grand Central technology being able to potentially optimise performance on multiple-core and multiple-processor hardware.

Multifinger gestures
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/02/13/customizable-4-finger-gestures-planned-by-apple/

Seeding patterns

The most obvious one is the multiweek lull before announcing release date. A nice Arstechnia article here

Describing what they typically have seen, from past experience, of the seeding pattern with Apple:

Apple typically ramps up production in the last six weeks before shipping with "many seeds—like two a week." This constant seeding period continues for several weeks, and then is then typically followed by a sudden quiet period. Apple usually announces the ship date soon thereafter, and starts pressing CDs/DVDs (which in itself takes several weeks).

"If they follow the same pattern as Tiger, Panther, and Jaguar, we should start getting a lot of seeds soon, and then they'll need the 3-4 weeks to start pressing CDs," says one of our developer buds. For Leopard, the 3-4 week quiet period was August 25th -> September 20th, With 10.5 released October 26.

So not too useful, as you'd see the lull in May basically, 2 months away.

10.4 TIGER (From http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/02/7144.ars Seed count correct afaik)

6 builds, 5 in a 8 week period

30 Oct 2004 8A294
09 Dec 2004 8A323
07 Feb 2005 8A369
18 Feb 2005 8A385
25 Feb 2005 8A393
23 Mar 2005 8A420
31 Mar 2005 Gold Master
29 Apr 2005 Release


10.5 LEOPARD

? WWDC build
01 Sep 2006 9A241e
13 Oct 2006 9A283 Pictures Changes
10 Nov 2006 9A303
13 Dec 2006 9A321 (And ZFS mades its appearance)
19 Jan 2007 9A343
02 Mar 2007 9A377a Pictures
12 Apr 2007 APPLE ANNOUNCES LEOPARD WILL BE DELAYED UNTIL OCTOBER (Rather than June)
12 Apr 2007 9A410 (Client build) PICS
http://news.worldofapple.com/archives/2007/04/13/latest-mac-os-x-leopard-build-features-new-look/
02 Jul 2007 9A466 WWDC seedversion seeded to online ADC members Pictures
25 Jul 2007 9A499 http://news.worldofapple.com/archives/2007/08/03/detailed-look-at-latest-leopard-build-9a499/"]Pictures also here[/URL]
20 Aug 2007 9A500n
25 Aug 2007 9A527/9A528 (Client/Server)
20 Sep 2007 9A528d (After a 3-4 week absences of Leopard seeds)
21 Sep 2007 9A559 to ADC (2 issues listed) Pictures
26 Oct 2007 10.5 Officially released
27 Oct 2007 9A581 Final versions of Mac OS Leopard available to ADC members


10.5.x Leopard updates from here
26 Oct 2007 10.5.0 9A581
15 Nov 2007 10.5.1 9B18
11 Feb 2008 10.5.2 9C31
28 May 2008 10.5.3 9D34
30 Jun 2008 10.5.4 9E17
15 Sep 2008 10.5.5 9F33
15 Dec 2008 10.5.6 9G55


10.6 SNOW LEOPARD
09 Jun 2008 10A96
25 Oct 2008 10A190 and info
04 Dec 2008 10a222 Added a Dispatch Group API for Grand Central
04 Feb 2009 10A261 Pictures, info more pictures

10A190
Edit - will sort SL seed dates out.

 

[PaperQueen]

Bootleg version in Asia

Just received a tweet from a tech guru friend traveling in Bangkok. He found a bootleg version of Snow Leopard there. I’m too chicken to test the thing...can just imagine my MBP beginning to smoke while a voice says “This laptop will self destruct in five seconds......”

 

[t0mat0]

Don't need to go there to get a bootleg. As mentioned previously, some if not all of the builds have hit the p2p scene.

If you're joining the thread, you can browse the Apple Snow Leopard page (I still love the pun of Core Innovation), or maybe check out the techradar 21 point summary (There are umpteen echo chamber summary articles from different sites about Snow Leopard). Or just sit down, get yourself an autopager for Firefox perhaps, and have a browse of the thread.

It's pretty quiet on the rumor scene currently, so here's a question for developers - what do you think were the key new features for Leopard and Tiger, and when were they introduced to builds for that OS version during development before release?

 

[liketom]

This is the greatest thread ever on Macrumors,

i've just spent the past hour and a half reading it , and WOW


Thanks for all your hard work and effort t0mat0.

 

[Catfish_Man]

It's pretty quiet on the rumor scene currently, so here's a question for developers - what do you think were the key new features for Leopard and Tiger, and when were they introduced to builds for that OS version during development before release?

For Leopard,

Under the hood

dtrace (WWDC 06, with some significant limitations)
CoreText and related AppKit changes (WWDC 06)
new dyld (Didn't hear about this until a while after it was in, so dunno)
64 bit GUI support (WWDC 06, don't remember if it worked at all)
ObjC2 (WWDC 06, significantly broken, tons of changes at WWDC 07)
Core Animation (WWDC 06, but mostly broken, tons of changes at WWDC 07)
Widespread UTI support (Don't recall)
Common shared images in NSImage (fairly late)
IB3/Xcode 3 (WWDC 06)
Code Signing (Late-ish, if I remember right, but talked about at WWDC)
Lots of Core Data changes (WWDC 06?)
Scripting Bridge (Mentioned fairly early, I don't remember if it worked)
Calendar Store (WWDC 06)
Assorted smaller improvements like NSDockTile, NSPathControl, etc... (Mixed)
QTKit (probably completely broken or MIA at WWDC 06, but I don't remember)
FSEvents (WWDC 06)

User-visible

Time Machine (Didn't trust it enough to try it until after 10.5 was released)
Quick Look (WWDC 06)
UI Changes (Went through a ton of different attempts, first one at WWDC 07)
Spaces (WWDC 06, mostly broken)
Parental Controls (not sure. The underlying mechanism for this is neat though)

 

[t0mat0]

Apple, Nvidia, Intel

AppleInsider looks at the current Intel Nvidia spat (and is more copy from previous history telling articles than in depth look at the situation unfortunately ( though check AIs comments from forum members)).

Intel doesn't like people going with solutions other than their own.
With Intel's poor integrated graphics and cookie cutter chipset solutions, Apple has a potentially petulant Intel on it's hands -Apple is assumed to want to cherry pick CPUs and integrate with non-Intel components.
Which could cause problems with iMac and Mac Pro.

Will Apple bite the lower profit margin bullet and spec out the higher end Macs with decent discrete graphics cards?
Will they be open to upgrading them with any compliant card, versus the CPU upgrade position (if upgrade is possible, you're limited to Intel).

It might be a storm in a teacup, but Intel didn't like GPU muscling in, especially as they don't have a decent product to offer to the market.

As an aside - would Apple use Snow Leopard to bring in new hardware that might bind Snow Leopard more closely to Apple only kit (i.e. Hackintoshes not able to replicate the hardware?)

Neowin.net covers more information here on 10A261 after the pictures for the current 10A261 seed were put up at World of Apple here.
Softpedia summarises Neowin's anonymous source:
- Rosetta is now optional
- PPC support still on - "the applications (drastically reduced in size) still support the legacy PowerPC processor"
- No longer a MobileMe screen in the welcome wizard upon first boot
- No available read and write support for ZFS and NTFS filesystems
- "Almost all applications are 64-bit now with the exception of iTunes"

With the new Safari 4 beta, it'll be interesting where they go with this. Hopefully HTML5 support will increase - seems to be in Apple's interests on several levels.

@LuisOrtega -
Day to day benefits will likely be seen with your Mac Pro. As for individual programs, i'd imagine it might be worthwhile waiting, like many others, to see what real life benchmarking brings up once the OS is released (e.g. for your CS3, and FCP Studio 2).
I'd say there was no fixed performance improvement - it will likely depend on what the spec of your Mac is, what you use it for, and with what programs. I'd imagine nearer the release, the builds will give a better impression of potential possible improvements.
The newer the machine, the more likely the improvement, as a rough rule of thumb i'd say. It's likely multiple cores will be used better, and also RAM (though Apple would say they're doing that a bit already). To what extent, it's not fully known. The hard drives won't likely see an improvement.
So basically - wait and see (till we get decent leaks/credible updates/released OS).

 

[sd2009]

SNOW LEOPARD FINDER?!?!?!!?

 

[Mal]

[snip tabbed Finder]

SNOW LEOPARD FINDER?!?!?!!?

I would love that.

jW

 

[t0mat0]

10.5.7 in the works

10.5.7 update info here

Apple "believed" to be passing 10.5.7 to the developer community to test.
Seen as a large maintenance, security, bug-fix update, until we know otherwise.

"In particular, Apple is said to be focusing on syncing issues that have plagued many of Leopard's standard, forward-facing apps, such as as Mail, AddressBook, and system preferences. A problem with Safari not accepting certain types of cookies will also reportedly be addressed."

Other components getting attention - "graphics drivers, Time Machine, printing services, screen sharing services, MobileMe syncing, AirPort services, text services, and iCal, those familiar with the software claim."

Details on previous 10.5.x are in an above post. So if 10.5.7 is goig to developers, and is then to the general public, does this indicate any timing changes to Snow Leopard?

 

[Eric S.]

So if 10.5.7 is goig to developers, and is then to the general public, does this indicate any timing changes to Snow Leopard?

I don't know why it would. I still expect we'll see at least 10.5.8 before Snow Leopard.

 

[iSimx]

SNOW LEOPARD FINDER?!?!?!!?

that would be such a cool feature. I'm always having so many finder windows everywhere and just to have them available on one windows would be really useful.

 

[valdore]

So if 10.5.7 is goig to developers, and is then to the general public, does this indicate any timing changes to Snow Leopard?

They'll still release updates to Leopard even after Snow Leopard comes out, as was done with Tiger for some time after the Leopard release.

 

[Eric S.]

They'll still release updates to Leopard even after Snow Leopard comes out, as was done with Tiger for some time after the Leopard release.

There was only one numbered update to Tiger released after Leopard and that came about two weeks after Leopard's release. That is the only instance that Apple ever released an update (aside from security updates) to a previous OS version, so it is not likely there will be any updates to Leopard once Snow Leopard comes out.

 

[Tallest Skil]

There was only one numbered update to Tiger released after Leopard and that came about two weeks after Leopard's release. That is the only instance that Apple ever released an update (aside from security updates) to a previous OS version, so it is not likely there will be any updates to Leopard once Snow Leopard comes out.

I thought that 10.4.10 came out after Leopard came out, as well.

Didn't it?