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.
Speeeeeeeeeeeeeeed is what its all about
This will lay the groundwork for full multitouch using the multi core macs that will be standard with 4 GB of RAM in a few years. Then OS X 10.7 will come out before Windows 7 and it will be years ahead of windows 7. They are so far ahead, they can do what MSFT should have done when they had a big and growing OS lead. Apple won’t let it get as bloated as Windows has become…
Finally, I’ll be able to drop the useless Entourage. I have been dying to be able to do that for years.
Why they haven’t had exchange support before, I can’t understand. This is BIG!
I like this strategy! I feel like 10.5 has plenty of features, I doubt I use 25% of its available feature set. It’s time to go under the hood and optimize performance. Utilizing the GPU for general purpose computing and fully exploiting multiple cores will be a lot of work, but will pay off in the end for Apple and it customers.
If Apple can get OS X performance on par with Linux, it would probably be the end of Linux. (Windows is already toast!)
“goal of Snow Leopard will be to enhance the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation.”
Microsoft calls that a “Service Pack”. Presumably Snow Job Leopard will be free?
#1. they didn’t SAY they were dropping the PPC
#2. in about a year … June, not January
OK, the former lends a (likely) false sense of security for my G5. The latter gives me another six months to save up for an Intel-based replacement. It sounds like Jobs & Co. are taking a well-deserved breather to get a lot of things “fixed”. A chance they might have had to pass by, had Vista not sucked quite so amazingly.
@ OS X Snow Job:
Take your “I got done in the ass by buying Vista” anger and go home.
You don’t even own an Intel Mac, so piss off – PLEASE?
So about the time OS X is kicking butt on 64 bit processors, Windows 7 will still be stuck with separate 32 and 64 bit versions.
And enough with the “Service Pack” crap. Microsoft Service Packs are bug fixes. Snow Leopard is the next version of OS X.
P.S. You don’t have to upgrade.
So will it be snappier?
ZFS, maybe?
It doesn’t sound like they’re “dropping” PPC support, the technology being implemented passes them by (sigh). How else can they move forward, and do otherwise?
Hmm….I take it the usual OSX pricing model will be waived. £30 would have me opening my wallet, otherwise I think Leopard will do.
So, license the technology for Exchange, infiltrate the corporate world, crush Windows in the process.
“Snow Leopard is the next version of OS X.”
Which apparently does nothing more than fix some bugs and tune some existing code.
And Microsoft service packs add about the same amount of functionality as a full OS X release, so this isn’t even a service pack. it’s more like some small patches on the OS, fixing everything that should have not been broken in the original Snow Job Leopard.
prrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…
“So, license the technology for Exchange, infiltrate the corporate world, crush Windows in the process.”
So accept that Exchange is the dominant corporate mail system worldwide, add native support for it, sell a few more Macs, Go from 2.0% to 2.5% worldwide market share
@DizzyD
It’s more like this: “prrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”
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We all have to admit that Apple hardware and software quality has been slipping lately. Obviously the entire organization is stretched to its limits. Hopefully the Snow Leopard push will also be expanded to hardware and DFM principles.
For those of us who are Mac users on Windoze networks, the prospect of integrated Exchange support is great news.
@ Snow Leopard,
NO, we don’t ALL have to admit such stupid statements.
Which, BTW, aren’t true.
Again, go back to your Vista turd and tryu to polish it.
Hmmm…I’d watch out for 10.6 Server, because that is going to the thing that is going to come up on MSFT’s radar late in the game.
Here’s why?
16TB of address space is a pipe-dream at today’s RAM densities.
Even if you were to quadruple the amount of RAM that you can currently stick in an Xserve, you’d need 128 servers to take that much RAM.
However, could it be that Apple is going to use functionality that will exist in Intel’s processors from Nehalem onwards to allow companies and institutions to bind Xserve’s together over multiple 10GbE interfaces in such a way that each server’s RAM becomes part of a greater whole?
Now, 44-bit addressing starts to sense: corporates and scientific types could start creating applications (either commercial database apps or out-and-out, left-field research stuff) that can leverage an entire data centre of Xserves with no more effort than creating the same app for one Macintosh Pro.
Using that kind of technology, a data analysis that might have taken a week or more might now take a few hours. Which makes knowledge out of raw data in a way that creates a genuine possibility of a competitive differential advantage.
I don’t know how difficult this stuff is to implement in a Windows world, but I do know that when you start playing with more than 16GB of RAM in WIndows Server 2008, they start figuring out how they’re going to liberate you from your wallet and I’m pretty sure the same thing applies when you start using the cleverer versions of SQL Server.
So… It’ll be Snappier ?
In short, all it basically adds is better memory and processor management.
Feature said: “And Microsoft service packs add about the same amount of functionality as a full OS X release, so this isn’t even a service pack.”
Horsesh*t. Windows Service Packs are like a bunch of free OS X third-number upgrades all bundled together. Name me one new feature introduced in a service pack. And under-the-hood features don’t count, if you can even name those.
I swear, with the ignorance they show, Microsoft defenders deserve Windows.
——RM