Apple today previewed Mac OS X Snow Leopard, which builds on the incredible success of OS X Leopard and is the next major version of the world’s most advanced operating system. Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation. Snow Leopard is optimized for multi-core processors, taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), enables breakthrough amounts of RAM and features a new, modern media platform with QuickTime(R) X. Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in about a year.
“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”
Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named “Grand Central,” making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthering OS X’s lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.
Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone(TM), Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari(R) with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.*
For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal(R) and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.
*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection and other factors. Benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test on an iMac(R) 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo system running Mac OS X Snow Leopard, with 2GB of RAM.
Source: Apple Inc.
@ChrissyOne
“Only someone too dumb to get a driver’s license and too ugly to have any friends would spend time on a Mac site typing such things.”
Well, they’re frightened, aren’t they?
The writing’s on the wall for the boys and girls at Redmond.
Oops, I’ve just realized I’ve written a cliche, so I’ll make it a genuine quotation:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN
This is the interpretation of the thing: MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
27: TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
28: PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.
The simple fact is that Microsoft never produced anything of any real quality and never cared about quality. It’s complacent, and its profits are based on monopolies and “good enough will do”.
Windows CE is a feeble joke. Windows on the desktop is a bloated mess. They now tell customers they’re lucky enough to have a “choice” between versions. That means you get to “choose” the insecure and outdated one or the even more bloated and slow one with the baked-in DRM. No thanks.
Leopard has a little of its own legacy baggage, including that awful HFS+ filesystem, which NeXTSTEP never used and which is necessary for the legacy Mac OS stuff that had to be forced into OS X so that Office and Photoshop could be ported. But it’s basically a world-class system and is promised to get leaner and better with Snow Leopard. Nobody else has got anything like the Cocoa frameworks:
From Win32 to Cocoa
This is the third part of a four-part series describing how one developer became disillusioned with the Windows platform and was reinvigorated by the bright lights of Mac OS X.
http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/microsoft-learn-from-apple-III.ars
MS is selling sub-standard trash. Apple has a world-class operating system that’ll scale on everything from a iPod Touch to an XServe. The iPhone looks set to become the leading smartphone worldwide, not just in quality of conception and execution but also in sales.
Of course the Microsloth trolls are frightened of Apple. They’re damn terrified by it. And meanwhile, at the low end, on ultra-mobile PCs, OEMs are becoming interested in using Linux distros, since XP runs poorly on these devices, Vista doesn’t run at all, and the OEMs, anyway, don’t want to pay Microsoft exorbitant licensing fees on low-cost equipment with slim profit margins.
All Redmond’s got left is bile and lies.
Snow Leopard will be a landmark release of OS X.
The technologies that Apple have announced will take OS X soooo far ahead of M$ they might as well give up and go home.
OpenCL, QTX and Grand Central are so big it will be a new benchmark in performance for media production applications. Apple will be able to deliver unprecedented performance on the desktop in a developer friendly way.
These aren’t patched these are features that will shake M$ to its foundations. It will also scare the shit out of Autodesk as FCStudio will be able to deliver Flame beating performance at desktop prices.
Eat this Ballmer…
First of all, C1: don’t sit on the fence, say what you really think.
Secondly: a series of patches??
Tell me, No Upgrade For You, what does your village do for an idiot when you go on vacation? Or when they put you in that circus wagon and roll you around the Mid-West with all the other members of the freak-show (like The Boy Who Dances Like A Monkey)?.
It sounds to me like Snow Leopard is the foundation for the new era of extreme multi-core processing: you need to remember that we are only three generations away from an Intel architecture that will – in its server form – have 32 cores (Sandy Bridge née Gesher).
Now, in the just-good-enough world of mediocrity that is Microsoft, they’d probably just fob you off with Windows Server 2010 (or whatever it’ll be called) and spend their time trying to build more sub-standard technologies to lock you in to their world of Imagination Not Included computing, rather than try and develop an optimised OS.
Let’s face it, it took them seven years to develop Vista and now the CEO is wandering around telling people that – if they want – they can up/down/sidegrade (delete according to your personal prejudice) to XP and that’s a great thing.
But – in the Think Different world – you get a break from the hamster-wheel of feature development and instead a major focus on making the operating system ready for computers that have several dozen cores, access to many terabytes of RAM whilst managing petabyte and exabyte volumes of data on 4TB+ disks.
In addition, you get the ability on suitably equipped desktops and laptops to off-load certain routines to your GPU card/chipset from within the OS as well.
Tell me, what’s worse? Paying $129 for 10.6 which makes over 20 million multi-core Macs (15.7 million already in circulation) snappier and provides the foundation for the future. Or purchasing a new $499 WInDell POS Imagination Not Included box and then having to install an operating system that was developed in the last century over the top of Vista???
Also, I’ll lay dollars to doughnuts that OS X Server 10.6 will let you use more than 16GB of memory out of the box, just as it currently does with 10.5. Microsoft feel that if you want to use that much memory, you should pay an uplift over the standard license for WIndows Server? And yet the Windows dittoheads in the corporate world just nod and hand over the money like the sheep they are.
If QT X is so much more efficient will this mean machine being able to play higher def video than before? Will it mean say that Apple TV could be upgraded to play 1080p?
Personally unless the improvements are really drastic I probably won’t feel the need to upgrade at the typical price, something slightly lower would be fine though. Although, that said, it could depend on how well my machine lasts and how close I feel to a hardware upgrade at the time.
“They will crumble like shale before you.”
That was a good laugh. Are you really as socially retarded as your writing suggests?
“OpenCL, QTX and Grand Central are so big it will be a new benchmark in performance for media production applications.”
Except these features have existed in Windows for years. I guess you never get to hear about technology until Steve copies it.
I just want to be able to afford all 16 TB of RAM for my iMac…
It happens like clockwork. There is an Apple event, and the day after the bitching and whining starts. Jobs could announce the end of poverty and a cure for cancer, and people would still complain.
To all the trolls who are jumping to conclusions, how about we get some more information about Snow Leopard before bashing it? It may not have any new features, but this is how things evolve. Things improve by not standing still. This is a lesson Microsoft has never learned, and look where they are today. Dealing with the mess that is Vista.
Listening to Microsoft trolls is like listening to a rape victim defend her attacker.
“But – in the Think Different world – you get a break from the hamster-wheel of feature development and instead a major focus on making the operating system ready for computers that have several dozen cores, access to many terabytes of RAM whilst managing petabyte and exabyte volumes of data on 4TB+ disks.”
Or you can buy Windows which has done this for years.
Terabytes of Ram: First supported on Windows in 2001
Terabytes of Disk: Windows has supported 256TB per volume since 2003.
Dozens of cores: Windows supported 8 cores a decade ago. 64 cores in 2003.
CUDA (OpenCL equivalent) in Feb 2007.
It must be frustraiting knowing you’re going to wait years, or in some cases decades for Mac OS X to catch up with Windows.
Actually for some fanboys it’s just blissful ignorance. You don’t even know these technologies already exist until Steve “Invents” them for you and you just fall for the Snow Job that they’re new.
I struggle to see why you think fixing the kernel to do what it should have always done is progress and a major update.
Wait, weren’t you all bashing Microsoft for Windows 7 when they said they were not going to add many features, and instead focus on stability, security, and speed?
“To all the trolls who are jumping to conclusions, how about we get some more information about Snow Leopard before bashing it? It may not have any new features, but this is how things evolve”
Ha Ha Ha. That’s how things evolve? No new features. That sounds more like the way things stagnate.
And you’re all angry at the “Trolls” for pointing out that you’ve been had and are getting nothing more than a set of patches and features that have existed in Windows and Linux for years in your next release a year from now?
But keep slurping that Kool Aid and pretending that an OS with nothing new is going to be revolutionary.
Keep convincing yourself that “No New Features” is a good thing.
Ha Ha Ha.
“MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN”
Sure, Apple is not a cult. Just when is God going to destroy the Great Satan Microsoft and lead His Chosen People to the Promised Market Domination?
Thank you apple for your self reflection. Unlike other software companies that get more bloated with features that are not marketed very well, you choose to look at your own code to see how to get more out with a smaller size.
Very Immense Sucky Traumatic Application
The level of moronic posts in this thread – mine excluded
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> – is probably an all-time MDN record.
OpenCL – if that can make your existing hardware ‘zippier’ when, for example, converting movies, then it will be a huge deal.
GrandCentral – making it possible to truly network your available machines into a giant computational server – that’s cool.
As for ‘no new features’ – want to bet ?
@ @ChrissyOne
No, but I play one on TV.
“As for ‘no new features’ – want to bet ?”
Slurp, Slup, This Kool Aid tastes good. No New Features, that’s Revolutionary. Soon everybody will be producing software upgrades with No New Features.
@C1….what is wrong about having sex with drugged livestock?
Its easier to get some tail that way….lol
Ha Ha Ha. That’s how things evolve? No new features. That sounds more like the way things stagnate.
I know, it’s hilarious, isn’t it? Mac users might have to wait 3 years (or 2 version) for new features. It’s insane to have to wait that long for new features! On windows, you only have to wait…
Oh… wait…
And you’re all angry at the “Trolls” for pointing out that you’ve been had and are getting nothing more than a set of patches and features that have existed in Windows and Linux for years in your next release a year from now?
Who’s angry? Don’t you even understand simple Projection? It’s when a person (or in your case, a child) looks for and exaggerates all their own faults in those around them in order to bring everyone else down to a level that the subject can them feel superior to. This makes it easy to cherry pick reality, choosing to ignore missing information that may balance an argument.
I mean, duh.
But keep slurping that Kool Aid and pretending that an OS with nothing new is going to be revolutionary.
And of course, what troll post would be complete without that good old, solid standby, “Kool Aid”. Nothing like a religious mass suicide reference to add validity to your computer technology argument. Bravo! What skill!!! What deft wit!!!
Keep convincing yourself that “No New Features” is a good thing.
Keep typing. You might get near something funny or smart some day.
ha ha ha, indeed.
-c
@ Buster
Oh hell, I forgot that Canadians read this… sorry! Nothing wrong with that!!!
;P
Its an IQ test. Once you have a customer base to whom you can sell an upgrade with no new features, you know you can sell them absolutely anything.
Customer: Hi, I’m wanting to look at Macs
Apple Store Employee: Great, now first let me ask you would you buy a software upgrade with no new features?
Customer: I guess so, if it comes in a box with an Apple logo on it.
Apple Store Employee: Sounds like you should become a member of our “Special” Mac buyers club.
Customer: Does that mean I’m special?
Apple Store Employee: It sure does, we even have a Olympics just for you.
“Who’s angry? Don’t you even understand simple Projection?”
Actually it’s standard cult member behavior when the members get disappointed. It’s a very well documented effect.
But keep it up. No New Features and you’re still defending it. How funny, how true to the pattern.
@ @ChrissyOne
Please provide links to this documentation.
I await your intelligent and informed reply.
I for one will get Snow Leopard when it comes out.
I work as a Software Engineer and dabble in Mac development. I have worked on code, hacked it into working, released it (to stay within time/budget), then have wished for the opportunity to go back and make the code Right instead of Hacked… it’s something every developer experiences.
I am seeing this as Apple taking a moment from it’s headlong rush into the future of computing, to clean up the software that is it’s foundation, to get rid of the hacks, to make things right, to optimize, enhance, etc. This is something I would have loved to do many times on projects I’ve worked on. I envy those Mac developers who are getting this opportunity.