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

[capoditutti]

Anybody taken a second to think...?

Intel have adopted, and are largely succeeding in staying ahead of AMD because of the Tick-Tock strategy. Maybe Apple is doing something similar with its OS releases. Releasing a new feature-set one period, and then optimizing for current generation sytems in the next cycle, and so forth and so on. It ties in with their major partner's chip strategy, so they're always able to claim to be the fastest on that hardware - same as they demo'd with the iPhone 3G and it's download speeds V other 3G phones V WiFi..

I'll say one thing for Mr Jobs - he gets the necessary done well. In a world where everyone is rushing to mimic and undercut and everthing else, we can still rely on to give us stuff that is polished and fantastically capable in what it CLAIMS to do, not just inundated by stuff we can POTENTIALLY make use of with a few evening classes e.g. in Windows Mobile 6.1 101 lol haha!

 

[aptenergy]

Say, has this been posted already?

http://orchardspy.com/

Look how small all those apps are.

Ah, I didn't notice that. You're right, though - they are way smaller.

I'm guessing every bundle is compressed and uncompressed on the fly?

 

[gnasher729]

ZFS
For business-critical server deployments, Snow Leopard Server adds read and write support for the high-performance, 128-bit ZFS file system, which includes advanced features such as storage pooling, data redundancy, automatic error correction, dynamic volume expansion, and snapshots.


But this footnote does not give confidence:

"All features on this page are subject to change."

Well, what do you expect them to say? Something like "We guarantee one hundred percent that Snow Leopard contains all these features. If Sun loses their ZFS patent suit, and (can't remember the companies name) gets all the rights, we will pay them whatever amount of money they want for ZFS, even if it costs us any penny we have in the bank. "

 

[drsmithy]

Dropping support for other architectures did not help the NT kernel get more efficient did it?

NT is still actively developed and supported on at least three (or four, depending on how you count) architectures. x86, x86-64, Itanium and PPC (XBox 360). Those are just the ones normal people can get their hands on - it's almost certainly tested on additional architectures internally at Microsoft.

There's also nothing wrong with the "efficiency" of the NT kernel.

 

[gnasher729]

What good is 4 cores and terabytes of memory when the simple task of uncompressing a very large zipped file renders the OS completely unresponsive and useless for the arduous long duration of that process?

I had problems with file related tasks sometimes taking long time. Time machine backups were really, really slow and the computer completely unresponsive. I threw out the WD 250 GB hard drive, replaced it with a Hitachi 250 GB hard drive, and everything works fine now.

 

[yellow]

IF you had the call, what would ya pick instead?

Hmm.. Leopard 10.5.8?

Frankly I was quite disappointed when Leopard was first introduced. I felt like it was rushed to the shelves and all the issues with it initially were covered up by the Apple PR Spin machine. This "optimization" should have been included in the original version. This "optimization" should be free. It should DEFINITELY not be $129.

There are some attractive and ambitious 'features' under the hood, and I look forward to those.
But.. maybe that should be left to a REAL 10.6 release?

10.6 Tabby?

 

[sammy2066]

I'm not paying $129 for such a lousy incremental upgrade like 10.6 .... Apple charges for features that are standard in most other OS'es. It touts stuff like Exchange support, support for 16GB RAM and more stability. WTF Apple??

If you consider the new iPhone, stuff like 3G, Contacts Search, Exchange Support, Bulk Mail Management are all touted as features??? A scientific calculator is one of the features. .. really Apple???

Apple is in the business of conning people with substandard hardware and software these days. I'm seriously starting to lose faith in them.

 

[Erasmus]

OK, well I am seriously impressed.

GPU accelerated apps is HUGE!!! And hopefully it will mean Apple will keep at the top of the game in terms of graphics cards. I don't expect Apple to put enthusiast desktop cards in MBPs, but it would be nice if they could at least keep with the absolute top of the line mobile performance cards, and maybe push into the enthusiast mobile lines. Especially as the TDPs come down with smaller and smaller die sizes, efficiency increases as GPUs go multicore, and multi GPU scaling gets towards 100%, where really, considering what they do, is where they should be.

So, Snow Leopard is going to be a (?much?) smaller install than "standard" Leopard? And use less RAM? This is also very cool. This is one place where Apple could really stick it to Apple. I can just see an Apple ad: Mac is spring cleaning his already clean and clutter free house, while PC continues to gather useless clutter and crap...

Better CPU usage is also awesome. As has been said before, single core computing is pretty much dead now. When Snow Leopard comes out in a year's time, dual core processing will be sliding out the door, with probably even the Macbook either already having a quad core processor, or about to get one. Helping developers write applications for what is very soon to be mainstream is a good move for Apple. Anyway, in say 3 years, quad processing will be out of fashion anyway.

I don't care so much about Quicktime, although I really think it's about time Apple made Quicktime Pro a free part of the OS. Neither do I care about that Microsoft Exchange thing.

What would be really cool is if these new GPU and CPU improvements do not require reprogramming of existing apps, but I suppose that would be too much to ask for.

 

[gnasher729]

My guess is that the installer will become smarter and only copy the code you need. I've always wondered why they don't do that now. Makes sense to have both PPC and Intel on the DVD but why copy both to the user's computer?

First: Why not? Safari is 68 MB. Of those 68 MB, there is about 1.5MB x86 code and 1.5MB PowerPC code. Compare that to the cost of hard drive space (like £50 for a 500 GB external drive).

Second: It is much safer if everyone has exactly the same applications. Lets say you removed x86 code from an application. Then you upgrade to a new computer. And then you start complaining why your application didn't get any faster (because it runs emulated PowerPC code, and it does that because someone deleted all the Intel code).

Third: Whenever you play around with things there is the chance of messing it up. There is always the chance that removing PowerPC code messes up something in some subtle way. Why take that risk?

Fourth: Your hard drive is usable on any computer. You can take a Time Machine backup of your computer and install it on any other computer. Why would you want to destroy that feature?

 

[AidenShaw]

SMP == Symmetric Multiprocessing
NUMA == Non-Uniform Memory Architecture

Modern multi-core Macs are small SMP machines. Nehalem with Quickpath makes a small NUMA box.

Even the Power Macintosh G4 (Digital Audio) was a multi-core SMP system. (Two sockets, one core per socket.) Any Core Duo or Core 2 Duo is also SMP multi-core, even with a single socket. Even hyper-threaded single core Pentium 4 chips are SMP.

A single socket single chip Nehalem is not NUMA, since all the cores have the same access to the integrated memory controller. Multi-socket Nehalems will be NUMA.

 

[pilotError]

I'm amazed at some of the responses to Snow Leopard.

We will have received close to 2 years worth of updates for the original $129 (I think I paid $99 on the street).

MS charged $250 - $350 depending on what version you buy. Plus the money for any of the added features that come free in OS X.

I don't think it was all that bad a deal.

The problem consumers will have with it, is that they won't see an immediate benefit from 10.6 in the way of eye candy or features. It certainly looks targeted at the Corporate / Education world.

The developers on here see the big picture, I'm just not sure that everyone else does.

It's been a fun couple of years to be a Mac user.

 

[Quillz]

Hmm.. Leopard 10.5.8?

Frankly I was quite disappointed when Leopard was first introduced. I felt like it was rushed to the shelves and all the issues with it initially were covered up by the Apple PR Spin machine. This "optimization" should have been included in the original version. This "optimization" should be free. It should DEFINITELY not be $129.

There are some attractive and ambitious 'features' under the hood, and I look forward to those.
But.. maybe that should be left to a REAL 10.6 release?

10.6 Tabby?

So, a real 10.6 release to you would be one that adds more needless features? Frankly, after doing some more research, I'm convinced that 10.6 is arguably one of the biggest and most significant OS X releases ever. This is the release that is finally going to give us our money's worth. We've spent so much on fast, stable hardware. Snow Leopard will now finally (attempt) to get the software actually taking advantage of the dual cores, etc. Leopard brought the features. Now Snow Leopard brings the performance.

 

[avkills]

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.

Uhhh, Hibernation on Windows takes power also. Really you should not be turning your OS X machine off all the time unless you plan on not using it for a extended period. Sleeping really does not use that much energy.

I have no idea why unzipping a file renders Safari useless since the unzipping is done by the Finder app.

-mark

 

[mixel]

looking at the size reductions on: http://orchardspy.com/ it makes the current sizes seem pretty comical.

I mean, 13MB calculator always was comical.. Could it just be that now it doesn't install all the language files? Maybe it compresses the UB architecture you're not using too rather than leaving 2 full size binaries in each package? These are massive reductions. HUGE.. Crazy reductions.

I like it!

TBH I'm happy about a speed/maintenance release. I'm sure they'll add some little things here and there too, just nothing they feel the need to shout about. That's a good thing IMO, it already works. What new features do we actually need?

 

[yellow]

Now Snow Leopard brings the performance.

And a dumb name. It STILL should have been in Leopard to being with.

And let's face it, they will HAVE to introduce new features. End users are dumb as ****, and they won't pony up the cash if there's not some new feature that they just cannot live without.

 

[Quillz]

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.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 added so much to Windows XP that many cited it as "Windows 2004" or an entirely new version of Windows.

 

[MotleyPete]

I have no problem with the name, but it does sound like an album title that KISS would have used in the 80's.

I can't work out if that's a plus or a minus.

 

[maddogeco]

16 Tb of ram

im blown away by them suggesting 16 Tb of ram until i thought about the cost of running that. i plugged in a few numbers into my calculator and by buying the cheapest 2gb ram sticks off the apple AU site @ $719 each my ruff maths tell me that's $5752000 worth of ram that's if you had the 8000 slots needed


WOW

keep in mind that's very ruff maths (which i'm bad at) and by the time anyone would try it ram will be cheaper and come in bigger chip like the 8gb chip out now

 

[Mac Player]

looking at the size reductions on: http://orchardspy.com/ it makes the current sizes seem pretty comical.

I mean, 13MB calculator always was comical.. Could it just be that now it doesn't install all the language files? Maybe it compresses the UB architecture you're not using too rather than leaving 2 full size binaries in each package? These are massive reductions. HUGE.. Crazy reductions.

I like it!

My calculator is only 1.8 MB in size. No reductions for me.

 

[mixel]

My calculator is only 1.8 MB in size. No reductions for me.

Mine is after I used CleanApp to delete all my extranious languages too.. (well, 1.9MB here).. I wouldn't have bothered but did it just now after seeing those Snow Leopard grabs!

So funny if all they've done to massively reduce sizes is stop it from installing all the useless language support as default.

 

[drsmithy]

Let me restate this -

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

All mainstream OSes already "truly" support "Multiple Cores" - and they've been doing it for longer than OS X.

 

[logaut]

According what I've seen in WWDC keynote address would be pity if Apple is on the road to become just phone company.


Not just they shouln't drop PPC support, but they should use recently acquired PA Semi and go all the way with PPC.
(G5 is still great processor)

Anyway, buying Mac to be able to run Windows is the same like buying car to drive it around the garage.

 

[Manic Mouse]

According what I've seen in WWDC keynote address would be pity if Apple is on the road to become just phone company.


Not just they shouln't drop PPC support, but they should use recently acquired PA Semi and go all the way with PPC.
(G5 is still great processor)

Anyway, buying Mac to be able to run Windows is the same like buying car to drive it around the garage.

I'm pretty sure Apple did the right thing moving to x86, the Core and Core 2 architectures run rings around the G5. With Nehalem around the corner you would have to wonder where Apple would be had they stuck with PPC...

 

[Cloudane]

I love the Snow Leopard idea. Microsoft could learn a lot from this if it turns out well - less f***ing around trying to cram in a million new (and buggy) features and ending up with a complete mess like Vista, and just concentrate on polishing up what's already there for a little while.

I bet they'll come up with something new to get people to part with their hard-earned though.

 

[logaut]

I'm pretty sure Apple did the right thing moving to x86, the Core and Core 2 architectures run rings around the G5. With Nehalem around the corner you would have to wonder where Apple would be had they stuck with PPC...

Maybe they would have G6 or G7 already