Mac OS X 'Snow Leopard' to Focus on Performance, Quality

[Kelson]

Wow...stupidity abounds....

This whole no new features thing is because there aren't any gimmicky apps coming like Dashboard, Spaces, Time Machine, etc. There is nothing that appeals on a "Wow" level with your average user. (Read: Most of the idiot posters on here.)

1. Entirely new Javascript Engine that is 53% faster. That is a feature.

2. OpenCL, this has huge potential to provide massive performance increases for certain types of applications.

3. "Grand Central" is another huge improvement to the OS. Leopard provides "good enough" threading support for the current generation. However, it would be complete crap for a 32 core system. (2 8-Core Nehalem chips)

If we end up seeing Quartz 2D Extreme, ZFS, significant SSE4 optimizations, RI, that would be a huge selling point in my mind.

A bunch of you get all excited about the new Penryn systems that offered a 5-8% increase in performance....going out buying new systems, etc.

If Snow Leopard provides a 10% improvement in performance that I can get for 129$, that is well worth it, as it gives me another year of life on my current hardware.

Another benefit to all of the optimization and improvements in the underlying frameworks, which are not marketable features, is improvement in all of the third party applications.

Snow Leopard is really providing Apple the opportunity to get the underlying foundation as optimized as possible to build OS XI, which will have the big whiz-bang features to compete with Windows 7 (expected 2010).

To those of you complaining this is a service pack or should be a 10.5.x release, you are ignorant. You really have no idea what you are talking about and sound as idiotic as the people acting like 350 bug fixes is a lot. The OS X code base is tens of millions of lines of code. There are thousands of bugs, discovered and undiscovered. Each new fix has the potential to introduce a new defect. Most of these you will never experience, but they are there, that is the reality of software. If this shocks you, it's because you have no experience with large scale software development. Go back to fiddling around with your application that is all of 25k lines of code.

I can't wait to buy a brand new Clarksfield based MacBook Pro next year, and if it doesn't come with Snow Leopard, I'll be first in line to buy it at retail. The stated goals of this version are exactly what I want to see in new versions of an Operating System.

- K

 

[aLoC]

does anyone know if there will be a video of that Bertrand guy talking about Snow Leopard?

He does the "State of the Mac OS X Union" every year, and usually it's not available except to download some time later for ADC members.

But maybe this year since WWDC was sold out they will offer up the sessions for sale in iTunes (?).

 

[peestandingup]

He does the "State of the Mac OS X Union" every year, and usually it's not available except to download some time later for ADC members.

But maybe this year since WWDC was sold out they will offer up the sessions for sale in iTunes (?).

Well, IMO they should have at least worked it in to main keynote, even just a bit of it. I mean, it was all iPhone stuff, which is great, but at WWDC you'd expect them to talk about OS X/Mac.

 

[Quillz]

Well, IMO they should have at least worked it in to main keynote, even just a bit of it. I mean, it was all iPhone stuff, which is great, but at WWDC you'd expect them to talk about OS X/Mac.

Technically speaking, they talked a great deal about OS X on the iPhone. And why not? The 3G iPhone is being released a month from now, as is the 2.0 firmware update. Snow Leopard is at least a year away. Wouldn't it make more sense to talk about the upcoming iPhone release then Snow Leopard? Any information given out today is likely to change in a year's time.

 

[mosx]

Sorry, I didn't see the part where they said it was $129. Please, enlighten me where they claimed that.

Oh please

This is APPLE we're talking about. To believe they would price any product appropriately is foolish.

Snow Leopard will be the full $129.

But it wouldn't surprise me if Apple managed some way to try to increase the price even. I can easily see Jobs on stage "the cost of everything is going up..." then announcing a $149 price tage.

Nobody should fool themselves into believing this will be any less than a $129 upgrade.

 

[Mac Maven]

Oh lighten up people...

Let's look at the facts. Press release says focusing on speed/stability, not on new features. Gives some information, wow sounds real exciting... intangible performance numbers... better sign an NDA for this bad boy before we show off how much more stable it is!! NOT.

The demo is under NDA for a reason... and I bet they won't even reveal everything in this first demo...

Apple has a history of saying "we won't do this" and then doing it (think video iPod). They have a history of being very secretive. Leopard's new interface wasn't shown until a few months before release, etc.

Windows 7 is targeting late 2009 for release of its MultiTouch operating system. This is targeting June 2009-ish...

Rumors have been circulating about a multi-touch tablet, or even a multi-touch iMac...

There is no way Apple is going to let MS beat them to market with a MultiTouch OS and computer system. You can bet "Snow Leopard" will be:

- Leopard with stability/speed improvements as a focus
- Leopard with MultiTouch technology integrated throughout the entire OS
- Other than MultiTouch, doubtful there will be any new features like spaces/time machine

If Snow Leopard is NOT multi-touch, Windows 7 will be the first Multitouch OS on market... and lets be honest, what are the chances of that?

Zero.

"Snow Leopard", the world's first multitouch OS.

It will probably be a new option in system preferences to enable multi-touch if you have a multi-touch display or platform... for those sticking with normal screens, it will just be Leopard with all the speed/stability improvements... which sound pretty noteworthy and are more than welcome.

Don't be suprised if none of that comes to pass. People who have hoped in the past for secret OS features that go beyond what was pre-announced have almost always been very disappointed at release.

 

[MShock]

This just occurred to me. By optimizing Mac OS X and adding ZFS, it seems Apple will be opening up development and support for more enterprise based clients. This is good because it fosters an ecosystem of interlinked devices dependent on Apple for years to come. Second, this only helps the individual consumer user quite a bit. 2 reasons: 1.) support and ease of integration with Windows dominated systems, particularly on university campuses just to name a place. The result, universities can begin to weed off Microsoft and transition to Apple as licenses expire and Apple's MobileMe matures. 2.) allows for an increased ease of use of personal computers syncing in the work space. For example, I had to do a mod to Windows Server 2000 at my last internship to link 10.4. Converting to ZFS and still being able to do the same without a mod will be a dramatic improvement and blow Microsoft way.

On that note, Windows 7 may be touch oriented, but no one wants touch in a laptop. Seriously, who would use it? That is why Snow Leopard is a good to compete, because it will not be useless, adding dumb features no one cares about like touch support. It will be were even the consumer soccer mom can see stability and end user improvements. Hence my argument that even the GUI on leopard needs some help, and they should redesign to be more tabular like white/blue +black/grey like on sony.com and use the translucency introduced in the iPhone menus. That catches people's eyes.

 

[aLoC]

Would touch even make sense on a desktop computer? It's not like you hold it in your hand. And the power of mouse and keyboard are nothing to sneeze at.

 

[Quillz]

On that note, Windows 7 may be touch oriented, but no one wants touch in a laptop. Seriously, who would use it?

I didn't realize you became the spokesperson for the 6 billion people on the planet.

 

[peestandingup]

Technically speaking, they talked a great deal about OS X on the iPhone. And why not? The 3G iPhone is being released a month from now, as is the 2.0 firmware update. Snow Leopard is at least a year away. Wouldn't it make more sense to talk about the upcoming iPhone release then Snow Leopard? Any information given out today is likely to change in a year's time.

I didnt say "they shouldnt have focused on iPhone". Just saying they could have at the very least talked about SL in a bit more detail instead of just mentioning it.

Yes, I know iPhone is based on OS X, which is why I said "OS X/Mac", as in Macintosh OS X.

 

[Fukui]

Read and write support for ZFS is a most significant feature. This alone, would make the upgrade worthwhile.

Yes, but is it bootable!

 

[Mr Ikasu]

I don't know if its been said but my gut feeling is that this will be a free upgrade, similar to 10.1

It seems that without any major end user features they would have a tough job selling it as anything other than this. The whole Snow *Leopard* thing will also make it seem similar in peoples minds.

Of course there is plenty of time for them to add some cool new features that will draw the punters in but it seems this is really just planning for the future and making sure OS X will be usable on newer multi core systems.

 

[bigwig]

I find it amusing they're adding ZFS, but still haven't gotten case-sensitive HFS to work.

 

[Santabean2000]

This whole no new features thing is because there aren't any gimmicky apps coming like Dashboard, Spaces, Time Machine, etc. There is nothing that appeals on a "Wow" level with your average user. (Read: Most of the idiot posters on here.)

1. Entirely new Javascript Engine that is 53% faster. That is a feature.

2. OpenCL, this has huge potential to provide massive performance increases for certain types of applications.

3. "Grand Central" is another huge improvement to the OS. Leopard provides "good enough" threading support for the current generation. However, it would be complete crap for a 32 core system. (2 8-Core Nehalem chips)

If we end up seeing Quartz 2D Extreme, ZFS, significant SSE4 optimizations, RI, that would be a huge selling point in my mind.

A bunch of you get all excited about the new Penryn systems that offered a 5-8% increase in performance....going out buying new systems, etc.

If Snow Leopard provides a 10% improvement in performance that I can get for 129$, that is well worth it, as it gives me another year of life on my current hardware.

Another benefit to all of the optimization and improvements in the underlying frameworks, which are not marketable features, is improvement in all of the third party applications.

Snow Leopard is really providing Apple the opportunity to get the underlying foundation as optimized as possible to build OS XI, which will have the big whiz-bang features to compete with Windows 7 (expected 2010).

To those of you complaining this is a service pack or should be a 10.5.x release, you are ignorant. You really have no idea what you are talking about and sound as idiotic as the people acting like 350 bug fixes is a lot. The OS X code base is tens of millions of lines of code. There are thousands of bugs, discovered and undiscovered. Each new fix has the potential to introduce a new defect. Most of these you will never experience, but they are there, that is the reality of software. If this shocks you, it's because you have no experience with large scale software development. Go back to fiddling around with your application that is all of 25k lines of code.

I can't wait to buy a brand new Clarksfield based MacBook Pro next year, and if it doesn't come with Snow Leopard, I'll be first in line to buy it at retail. The stated goals of this version are exactly what I want to see in new versions of an Operating System.

- K

And breathe...

 

[alFR]

1. Anyone wanting Native support for Exchange and sync to their mac will glady ante up.

Damn right. I was hoping for it in 10.5.4 along with the iPhone/Exchange sync....

2. The only group with 4+ cores is Mac Pro users.

For now.

3. Most of Apple's products don't have a "real gpu" in the context of unified shaders and the ability to do GPGPU type work. The Mac Pros have some nice cards, and even the new MBPs with the 8600 mobile are good, but thats about it. Everything else isn't worth much in terms of accelerating work like video encoding.

For now.

However you see it in your mind, the fact of the matter is that Microsoft gives us its "speed and stability" updates for free, while Apple is charging us.

Wow, being prescient must be pretty useful. Can you tell me this weekend's winning lottery numbers please?

 

[propropro]

Sse4??

And what about omptimizations for Penryn's SSE4? this alone would make a 30-40% speed bump in video performance according to tests..

 

[slackpacker]

Let me restate this -

OS X will be the first Mainstream OS to truly support Multiple Cores.


Snow Leopard is feature for feature of what I wanted Apple to do. It sounds awesome.

 

[kamiboy]

I regularly unzip and unrar large (20GB+) files while burning a DVD, watching video, and browsing with no noticeable lag.

In two years of use I've seen two kernel panics. I run everything under the sun, usually simultaneously on dual 24" screens.

You can manually Sleep a Mac.

What is your Mac? Do you have several HDD's? And I don't want to sleep anything, because it is still using power, I want hibernation, which macs can do, but only of they are running out of juice.

The slightest HDD heavy task (unzipping, Parity checking) renders Safari completely useless with the beachball of death. And programs like VLC and OSXMBC regulary crash my Mac in a way where I have to hold down the power button to turn them off, both on my old MacBook and my newer MacBook Pro. Overall I am very frustrated with OS X. My ancient XP crap machine at work seems to perform better when handed similar tasks and has never crashed and is a lot less glitchy or quirky.

It really breaks my heart to think that I want to recommend everyone to switch to Mac but can't because deep down I know that it is not any better than Linux or wincrap, only different. I so want it to be better, that is why it hurts me so much every time OS X does something I think it should do better.

 

[Simmerl]

Say, has this been posted already?

http://orchardspy.com/

Look how small all those apps are.

 

[Admonitor]

IT THE RUMORS ARE TRUE, APPLE SHOULD NOT CHARGE ANYTHING FOR THE UPGRADE (only performance right?)..... GO APPLE... it's about time to get ahead from Microsoft

Charging nothing would not put them "ahead" of Microsoft, rather it would put them level with them - Microsoft don't charge for Service Packs, which is what this seems to be by in large.

 

[Ti_Poussin]

I don't understand people bashing this news. I'm REALLY happy about it, this is exactly what I wanted Apple to do. OS X since Tiger was less stable and Leopard is even worst. X.2 have been the strongest of all for me, 286 days of uptime. So yes, it's about time to finish the polishing of the code.

For those who think there's nothing new in Snow Leopard, I have two thing:
- OpenCL and Grand Central are a freaking good news, it's a developer nightmare out there as right now for coding applications without it. Maybe you don't see the challenging level of coding something like this, but it's way beyond just coding a cute GUI. This and OpenMPI that's now built-in into OS X since a few release are indicating Apple as one hell of OS for future CPU.

- Wait and see, I thing they didn't show us all they got, and speed boost is alway welcome in my book.

So this is why I'm more then please to see this, I was losing faith in Apple with Leopard, hoping for this for 2 years now. WOwowowow, sorry make me happy.

 

[Manic Mouse]

Charging nothing would not put them "ahead" of Microsoft, rather it would put them level with them - Microsoft don't charge for Service Packs, which is what this seems to be by in large.

Service packs don't add anything new to the OS, like Grand Central, so I don't see the comparison. Had SP3 for XP added Direct X 10 support or something you'd have a point.

 

[Admonitor]

Service packs don't add anything new to the OS, like Grand Central, so I don't see the comparison. Had SP3 for XP added Direct X 10 support or something you'd have a point.

Along with performance enhancements, Service Pack 2 brought in new features like Security Centre, new firewall, additional wi-fi support, bluetooth functionality. Are those not new features?

 

[Manic Mouse]

Along with performance enhancements, Service Pack 2 brought in new features like Security Centre, new firewall, additional wi-fi support, bluetooth functionality. Are those not new features?

I would guess so!!

We shall see how much (or if) Apple charge for 10.6. I suspect they may not charge though...

 

[teknikal90]

i agree, snow leopard should be free, as they are essentially fixing the mistakes that theyve done.
harshly said, but essentially true.
or at least alot cheaper than the leopard disc.