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Mac OS X 'Snow Leopard' Features and Parallel Computing

shiseiryu1 said:
I totally agree with this statement. If there aren't any real new features except to add speed and stability, that's a service pack (and should be free).
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No, a service pack is bug fixes.

Rewriting and adding completely new APIs for parallel and GPU-based computing is not a service pack.

I immediately upgraded to Leopard when it came out, but if Apple tries to "sell" me a bunch of software/bug fixes that should be done anyways, I'm definitely going to pass on 10.6 (just out of principle).
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Out of principle, huh? It's funny how people will drop a few hundred dollars on a faster processor that gives their system an overall speed increase of maybe 5-10%. A CPU increase that costs Intel almost nothing to do.

But when a team of developers work hard to make APIs that give huge speed increases and capabilities you couldn't have before, that "should be free."

It's fine if you don't think it gives you value for your money and thus don't want to pay for it, but don't insult our intelligence by proclaiming it is a service pack or should be free.
 
Eric S. said:
As I replied to you on another thread, this does not necessarily mean anything for the final release. It only makes sense that they wouldn't go to the effort of creating installation disks for both architectures for the "preview," since it's just a demonstration and not supporting the customer base.

Have you seen the screenshots at http://orchardspy.com/ ? Why would they include universal binaries if PPC had been dropped? My guess is that there's been on official word on this because Apple has yet to make a final decision.
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At the contrary, it means everything. Universal Binary can be x86 and x86_64 only.

Remember Leopard Beta? It drops support for G3 and some G4, at the end they were still not supported...

And you think that people will only debug the Intel version and not the PPC just a year before it's released ? Sorry to break your dreams ...
 
Mr.damien said:
At the contrary, it means everything. Universal Binary can be x86 and x86_64 only.
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Are you sure about that? Shouldn't an app that includes 32 and 64 bit intel versions be listed as "intel"? Universal is defined as having both intel and PPC versions, changing it to mean something else would be a nightmare.

It sure looks like those apps are universal (including PPC code).
 
Eric S. said:
As I replied to you on another thread, this does not necessarily mean anything for the final release. It only makes sense that they wouldn't go to the effort of creating installation disks for both architectures for the "preview," since it's just a demonstration and not supporting the customer base.

Have you seen the screenshots at http://orchardspy.com/ ? Why would they include universal binaries if PPC had been dropped? My guess is that there's been on official word on this because Apple has yet to make a final decision.
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No, it makes no sense that the preview build would be Intel only if they were still going to support PPC. Remember the Leopard preview builds? Here are the requirements:

an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 or G5 processor

Sorry guys, looks like PowerPC is dead. Judging from the screenshots, 32-bit Core Duo is at least still supported.
 
Mr.damien said:
At the contrary, it means everything. Universal Binary can be x86 and x86_64 only.

Remember Leopard Beta? It drops support for G3 and some G4, at the end they were still not supported...

And you think that people will only debug the Intel version and not the PPC just a year before it's released ? Sorry to break your dreams ...
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Well, I predicted when Classic support was dropped in Leopard that 10.6 would drop all PPC support. And since it's now a year away, I don't really care. You're probably right, but I still think we haven't heard any official word.
 
parallel computing = chaining 2 macs together?

does that mean i could finally hook up 2 mac mini easily and get increased power?
 
Bring the 10.6 in Apple!

iBunny said:
I cant wait for 10.6
And I am willing to pay $129 for it. More performance? Why would you not want to pay for it. :D
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Certainly, I'd pay for 10.6 upgrade simply it will perform better on existing systems. So far, all the OS X update have not been serious about taking advantage of Intel Core based architecture, or GPU, rather it was more on eye candy stuff. Apple is doing the right thing to refocus on its core value, the OS X. Once when the fundamental gets improved, the 10.6 would scale much better, also it will be the better OS to suit future multi-core platforms.
 
since 10.6 not a "patch" nor security fix, yet not exactly a full blown system upgrade-they may charge a nominal upgrade fee-of say, $50-Most of us can handle that with out too much whining
 
VanNess said:
You know, the truth is, this iPhone stuff is really really sucking us dry. When WWDC came up, we wanted to have a blow-you-away new version of OS X that would make Leopard look ancient, like OS 9 or something. Come to think of it, Leopard looks a little like OS 9 anyway...

The we realized we didn't have a clue where to go with the next OS X because everywhere at Apple it's just iPhone this and iPhone that. "Grand Central" and "Open CL?" That stuff's been sitting on the shelf for months now. We could've pushed it out the door yesterday.

So we gave Bertrand a little speech to memorize for WWDC about "pushing the pause button" because, you know, Bertrand is French. Truth is, he doesn't understand a word of English. So we just give him this stuff to say and told him it's a lot of technobabble about how great the next OS X is gonna be and so on and he's smiling and thinks it's all good. Worked like a charm.

But damn, we couldn't even come up with a new name, that's how bad it's gotten. It's been so god damn busy here with MobileMe and iPhone 2.0 and all of that junk. So finally someone says how about "Snow" Leopard? What the hell is a Snow Leopard anyway? Then we figured out that we would have to throw all the developers here a bone, so we pressed a bunch of "Snow" Leopard preview DVD's. It's basically all the same stuff. We couldn't even come up with a new design for the DVD cover, so we just splashed on some old Leopard purple and hoped nobody would pay attention and ask something like, "hey, where's the snow?"


Somebody in marketing told me this morning that we're gonna focus on the teen market with this next release. Lot of money there, lots of switchers. So we're gonna put in a white Leopard soft toy in the box. I saw a prototype yesterday. Gotta admit, it's cute as hell. Kids will love it. We're gonna sell a ton of these.

Gotta go. Another iPhone progress report meeting. Attendance mandatory.
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An interesting post, cynical, but interesting!

I agree to a point... I WAS expecting more, but I'm justa ol'school Fanboy. :D
 
Eric S. said:
Acknowledging that this is all total speculation, wouldn't that require Apple to sell a separate "upgrade" disk and "install" disk? I mean, how does Apple know if you're already running Leopard? Have they ever done something like that before? And would the "upgrade" disk refuse to install on a blank disk or partition, but require an already installed Leopard system? I think they wouldn't want these complications, and would just set a single price, whatever it is, for the release.
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Couldn't it be combined on one DVD and let the computer decide what it needs?

I agree Apple wouldn't want to confuse anybody...
 
One problem with that is that it would probably be really easy to crack.

I'd expect they'd just have a single install DVD and they'd give it at a discounted price to people who provide some sort of Leopard proof-of-purchase. Isn't that what they did with 10.1?
 
hayesk said:
Out of principle, huh? It's funny how people will drop a few hundred dollars on a faster processor that gives their system an overall speed increase of maybe 5-10%. A CPU increase that costs Intel almost nothing to do.

But when a team of developers work hard to make APIs that give huge speed increases and capabilities you couldn't have before, that "should be free."

It's fine if you don't think it gives you value for your money and thus don't want to pay for it, but don't insult our intelligence by proclaiming it is a service pack or should be free.
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Larger market share = surplus profits = should give back to consumers in form of cheaper prices. But I guess if you would ask Steve, he'd say "There is no such thing as surplus profit cuz it goes in my pocket (fiendish laugh)" LOL :p
 
jettredmont said:
There's a MacBreak Tech show specifically on ZFS, to start: Zulu Foxtrot Sierra.

The main end-user advantage is that ZFS can enable a Drobo-style hard disk array where you can add another disk and it all just appears as a single volume. For example, if you have a 250GB ZFS volume, and pop a new 500GB drive into your box, you can have a single 750GB ZFS volume.

The "real" benefits, though, are sexy only to developers and geeks. It's a nice file system and offers many features which developers could take advantage of. Like much of Snow Leopard, it's not necessarily a selling point, but it enables developers to make their own selling points on top of it.
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In addition to VASTLY improved input/output performance on the system. When I saw mobile me debut, and Schiller talk about the "cloud in the sky", I saw ZFS as the underlying layer. It saves data in much smaller quantities when something is added or subtracted from the data, which means more disk space. This also is great for performance on processors, which in turn means better battery life for mobile devices, and the way it handles data makes it excellent for syncing devices which is dead on for Apple's strategy. I really think they will include this on the SL client, but don't want to get hopes up.
 
Bertmg said:
Isn't their slogan "think different". after all? :apple::apple::D:D
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When was the last time you saw that slogan used in one of their ads, or anywhere else for that matter? They haven't used it in years. You might as well chide them for not providing "the power to be your best".

At the very least I can tell you they have not used it:
* when the PowerMac G5 was released.
* when the PowerBook G4 17" and 12" were released.
* by the time the iPod silhouette ads were introduced; the only iPod ads with that old slogan were the original Jeff Goldblum dancing ad, and the Rip/Mix/Burn concert ad.
* any time since they switched from Garamond to Myriad.

Seriously, people have to drop that as a mantra/weapon.
 
Earendil said:
Plenty of time for that...

1. It shows Apple cares about bloat, and about improving things as time goes on at a level the average person doesn't even understand.

~Tyler
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Think - why is Apple caring about bloat and footprint when they are so vastly more efficient than Vista? There have been rumors about sub $800 notebooks. For those it matters a lot...
 
wheezy said:
So, I just scanned the article on Wikipedia about ZFS...
So how exactly does it benefit the average, normal end user?
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It offers more to the person who runs a server or a data center but to the averave user who only has one disk drive about the only thing it offers is the end-to-end checksum. It will be able to detect and tell you about data errors no mater what the cause, faulty drive, controller or RAM. In addition ZFS has a Time machine-like feature where old versions of files can be recovered.

If you are a "normal user" who, like me hapens to have a pile of data and needs a bunch of disk drives then ZFS can help more. It can make all my drive looks like one big "pool" of storage. Making disk storage act like RAM. When you add RAM to a Mac you don't have to decide which SIMM sticks will be used for Photoshop and which for the OS and which for Safari. No, you just add more RAM and the system puts it to best use. Same for disks. I'd like to just "add more disk" and have the system put it to best use. ZFS can help.

Look at the "drobo" It is a little RAID box. I'd like to see Apple use ZFS to manage storage like Drobo does. But for that Apple would have to write some software on top of ZFS.
 
I think Snow Leopard is being designed to take advantage of Nehalem and, more importantly, larrabee.
 
See you next year in the snow ...

Eric S. said:
Acknowledging that this is all total speculation, wouldn't that require Apple to sell a separate "upgrade" disk and "install" disk? I mean, how does Apple know if you're already running Leopard? Have they ever done something like that before? And would the "upgrade" disk refuse to install on a blank disk or partition, but require an already installed Leopard system? I think they wouldn't want these complications, and would just set a single price, whatever it is, for the release.
Click to expand...

Maybe you could just send your original Leopard Disks and they would put snow over them and send them back for a smaller fee? :D Pricing is one year away, anyway ...

I'm afraid I'm skipping Leo too, too late to catch the iPhone craze, too little time. And, as a dev, I dig and admire what Apple is doing, so I'll wait for the Snow (and Nehalem) ...

And as a Java dev, all I can say is to all those that said: "Java 6 is not important", "why worry if it is only for 64-bits Intels?" ... Well, I'll be running optimized (Snow) Leopard with my optimized Java next year :p (I know, I'm mean ...)
 
ppc_michael said:
I wonder if this signifies huge breakthroughs (GUI/experience-wise) coming in 10.7? Perhaps Apple is solidifying "normal computer stuff" to get ready for new innovative ideas?
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Snow Leopard provides the future roadmap for all the features on the road ahead. This is the mile stone, guys. :D
 
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