Schiller to Demo Snow Leopard at Macworld?

[bignumbers]

No.

Snow Leopard will not ship significantly early. There's far more to be written in the underlying frameworks. This is a major OS upgrade from the internals perspective. It's not even done enough for developers to seriously play with yet. Most likely it'll ship 2-4 weeks after WWDC (the date for which hasn't been announced, usually June).

I'm sure there will be a demo of performance improvements, and perhaps some new (minor) features shown.

I am curious if we'll have hardware announcements at the show, or if they'll come every following Tuesday in January like we had last year. We're due for the Mac Mini, Apple TV, and MacPro. (And the XServe too I guess.)

 

[Sky Blue]

I refuse to use anything that Microsoft makes. Why would I have had to suffer through Entourage, anyway?

Pay who work with Macs and Exchange have to use Entourage.

 

[thm2@law.george]

Cost of Snow Leopard?

Do we have a feel for whether 10.6 is going to be a full-on $129 upgrade? It's the first time they've concentrated on things under the hood, rather than new features. I'm curious if they're going to sell it the same way; it may be kind of a hard sell.

 

[econoline06]

I just hope that they do something about support for 3rd party hardware like Bluetooth Stereo Headsets, Expresscard adapter for eSATA etc.

I have a 64-bit Vista machine and it downloads and installs drivers for literally everything that I throw at it - obscure serial cards to bleeding edge wireless and everything in between. And all of them are reliable - haven't gotten a crash/hang/slowdown in a year.

The story with Leopard is different - 3rd party drivers are for the most part non-existent and when they exist they are very poor quality - case in point being Silicon Image eSATA Expresscards causing me several crashes. The wonderful Sony Bluetooth Stereo headset that works absolutely great with my Blackberry and Vista x64 - Leopard just has to be restarted to even keep getting the choppy sound.

Even if they invested a fraction of the amount of money they spend on ads they do defaming Vista into making more quality drivers available for 3rd party hardware - that would do great things for Apple

I bring this up because Snow Leopard is going to be true fully 64-bit kernel - and whatever existing drivers for 3rd party hardware exist - they aren't going to work, making the worse situation hopeless.

ok then.

 

[thouts]

Gotta be honest I don't know what you just said BUT I do remember a story here somewhere when the new mbp's came out (pretty sure on the front page) that said something about the possibility of running them together. Thats the only reason why I brought it up...said something about new software would be needed.

https://www.macrumors.com/2008/10/22/macbook-pros-nvidia-chipsets-can-support-dual-gpu-and-8gb-ram/

 

[funkyp56]

I can easily see Snow Leopard not even running on Core Duo machines.

I'd rather they make it entirely 64-bit and wipe the 32-bit code completely.

That I would be ok with....but come on with all the different Apple models from late 07 and 08 to just not be able to use those things would really suck.

 

[econoline06]

Do we have a feel for whether 10.6 is going to be a full-on $129 upgrade? It's the first time they've concentrated on things under the hood, rather than new features. I'm curious if they're going to sell it the same way; it may be kind of a hard sell.

From what I've heard others say, most of us are are bit irritated that 10.5 didn't have these improvements to begin with! So to charge $129 would be a bit much, IMO it should be a FREE update, that will never happen though.

 

[funkyp56]

Do we have a feel for whether 10.6 is going to be a full-on $129 upgrade? It's the first time they've concentrated on things under the hood, rather than new features. I'm curious if they're going to sell it the same way; it may be kind of a hard sell.

$79 for owners of 10.5
$129 for full version?

 

[skellener]

Snow Leopard is almost the first "real - full " release of OS X. Finally! Gutted carbon out like a fish! Amen! Fairwell "Adobe creakware". After all, it was only put in there mainly for Adobe, MS and the non-existent Macromedia. Finally we'll be free of the crud legacy code. On to a cleaner, more rock solid future. People may bitch and moan that Snow Leopard isn't much, but I'm looking forward to it.

 

[milo]

$79 for owners of 10.5
$129 for full version?

Some sort of "half price" number would seem to make the most sense. If the price is too high many people will feel that it's a ripoff and I'd bet it would end up pirated more than other versions.

 

[Djcyder]

I'm hoping for the unibody 17" MBP. They've had time to set up factories to produce them, right?

I second that. I'm not a 15" fan at all I use my Mac to entertain professionally and a 15 isn't going to cut it at all. I think we will see a new 17 and some other modest improvements nothing lighting to world on fire though. I don't anything major as Apple would call a press conference.

 

[alexbates]

Can't wait for Snow Leopard...

 

[richard.mac]

Schiller's the mannnnnnn… 'nuff said.

 

[ChrisA]

I hate to be a downer but isn't this really just going to be a side by side performance show of how much faster Snow Leopard is on an Intel Mac than Leopard is on the same machine?

That would be useless. For what most of Apple's current customers use their computers for faster is useless. I mean who nees to watch a 180 minute DVD in 20 minutes? And a faster OS will not make web pages download faster either.

The reason you have Snow Leopard is not to do today's jobs faster but to enable other types of applications. Given enough "compute power" you can do things like loose the track pad and have the little web cam watch your fingers or maybe finally get voice recognition working, no not for commands to cut and past text. That will never work but would it be nice if the Mac could answer your phone?

The trouble is that you can't demo those new kinds of applications so it might come down to a useless demo where they do video rendering in Final Cut Pro or something like that.

 

[Fidgetyrat]

You think 10.6 will let new MBP's use both graphics cards simultaneously?? That'd be neat.

Oh god I hope not. I can hardly keep my new Unibody under 100 Celsius when gaming, I can't imagine using BOTH cards.

 

[Djcyder]

Oh god I hope not. I can hardly keep my new Unibody under 100 Celsius when gaming, I can't imagine using BOTH cards.

using one card to drive the laptop display and the other card to drive another display would be "neater"

 

[skellener]

Some sort of "half price" number would seem to make the most sense.

I doubt that. It will be $129 for everyone same as usual.

 

[dr_lha]

And a faster OS will not make web pages download faster either.

These days web pages do a lot more than just "download", barely anything is static HTML any more, web pages are fully fledged (javascript) programs that take up plenty of CPU time, and its only going to get worse as time goes on and move stuff moves to the web as an application platform. Check out something like http://280slides.com, a full Powerpoint/Keynote clone done in a web browser.

Given how often Safari beachballs, I'd be very happy to see speed improvements.

 

[funkyp56]

Some sort of "half price" number would seem to make the most sense. If the price is too high many people will feel that it's a ripoff and I'd bet it would end up pirated more than other versions.

NO WAY

People will buy it. Pirates (borrow from a friend) will always be there, but apple fans are too damn loyal

 

[parapup]

ok then.

Yeah I know, it hurts fanbois, not necessary to express if it doesn't add to conversation - simple, eh?

 

[kolax]

From what I've heard others say, most of us are are bit irritated that 10.5 didn't have these improvements to begin with! So to charge $129 would be a bit much, IMO it should be a FREE update, that will never happen though.

Ignorant response!

The improvements in OS X is the evolution of the operating system. Just because they concentrated on improving things under the hood it should be free, yet if they added some new features, you'd be happy to pay for it?

Really, go educate yourself

 

[Le Big Mac]

1. iPhone sales numbers
2. Snow Leopard demo
3. Various speed/capacity bumps
4. New MBP with glossy screens
5. iLife '09
   "One more thing..."
6. Additional glossy ADC

All presented to mostly silent audience who is assured of "a lot more great products in the pipeline."

I realize that's not too exciting (no new products), but at least they could get on with these things. I'd be happy if they bump the imac and mac mini, and extend the ADC to 20 and 30 inch models. Not every announcement can be huge.

Oh, and a date for snow leopard.

 

[Catfish_Man]

The first technology, Grand Central, is designed to make better use of the Intel processors that sit inside the current range of Macs

Rather misleading way of putting it, although not technically wrong.

 

[Le Big Mac]

$79 for owners of 10.5
$129 for full version?

I hear you . . . maybe even less. Full upgrade for folks on 10.4, since they'd be getting 10.5 anyway. But based on reports thus far, I'd sit out Snow Leopard at $129 (or even with modest discount).

I might be looking at a price of $49 or so before jumping, absent some compelling additions.

 

[funkyp56]

Ignorant response!

The improvements in OS X is the evolution of the operating system. Just because they concentrated on improving things under the hood it should be free, yet if they added some new features, you'd be happy to pay for it?

Really, go educate yourself

guess it does not bother me either way, the company will pay for it.