Apple to Unveil New Leopard OS in August

Max Fomitchev writes "Looks like Apple is going to reveal its new cool and fast Mac OS code-named 'Leopard' in the upcoming World Developer's Conference in August. Good news for Apple! And terrible news for Microsoft. If 'Leopard' is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient, in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."

Comments

More Speculation

[eldavojohn]

There's not a lot of meat to this article other than "here comes Leopard!" This tech blog seems to state the obvious and then say perhaps five times ... so I'll throw down some speculation as this article points out.

Way back in the day, Apple code named their boxes by color. From the aforementioned article:

Red Box (for those that don't remember), was said to be a compatibility environment where Windows apps ran on the Macintosh but did so within a separate Windows installation. Apple doesn't have to reverse engineer the Windows API (like WINE) to get this functionality and theoretically upset Microsoft. Rather, it could simply be based on a standard copy of Windows. Red Box would override Windows native interface when run on OS X and would incorporate OS X's Aqua user Interface in the place of the Windows UI. The software would then make the two environments (Mac and Windows) functionally seamless with one another. Unlike a virtual environment, the end result would be full compatibility while retaining both visual as well as functional usability for the Mac user.

So we can speculate that Leopard might not only be fast but also encourage a partitioned Windows installation using boot camp so that it can reference everything within Windows and run Windows apps flawlessly without having to reboot or (more importantly) reverse engineer Windows.

Again, this is just speculation, I've been expecting them to put 'red box' functionality in a release of OS X soon.

Re:More Speculation

[Anonymous Coward]

"It certainly makes a lot more sense for them to just use a Windows installation."

I have to post anonymously on this one...

But speaking to a well known Oh-Ess Ecks programmer, I asked him about the possibility of Wine noting that he would be the one to ask. He is very collegial with Microsoft and I've hung with him and one of M$'s top programmers as they have both bitched and moaned about the other's OSs (and the Microsoft guy actually made a few points I never thought about before that were on the money...I program Windows for a living but own a niche Mac support company that grew out of a mailing list I use to moderate...I can almost give up the Windows programming these days as my organization is starting to look like it needs centralized day to day leadership, but beyond that, I could care less what OS anyone else uses. I know how to use both and my Vaio is as much a part of me as my new Intelbook).

Getting to the point, talking to the guy and asking him about the possibility of using my Windows skills to port applications using WINE but with a translated front end on the Mac side. Pretty much, simply run the APIs of the apps I have created or have access to, and create new native front ends. Best of both worlds I thought (sorta like when I would create C++ backends and use VB to build the front end on the PC and Hypercard for the Mac -- I got pretty proficient at making certain DLLs could be recompiled as a XCMD simply by dropping it in the right compiler and letting the headers decide what to do with it).

His response was one of the most direct responses I've ever gotten about future plans without him saying anything. Claimed to have looked into WINE, had it running internally (this was a year back, when I was still planning on having to use an X86 emulator to do most of the work as I didn't think the Intel switchover was going to happen so quickly) and he said that while it was a good product, they weren't going to use 'compromised' APIs to do this. When asked if they had any plans to license or develop any of their own non-compromised APIs, he responded that there was no plans to license anything. It was a pretty strongly worded statement, especially when looking into the point by point claims and what was missing from my original query. And considering the last statement I received in this manner was positively prophetic looking back upon the email.

With Bootcamp and the new emphasis on Parallels and my knowledge of their staff, my best bet is that Apple is planning on leveraging Windows to their own needs, making it usable but a pain. Sort of like how their Bluetooth products refuse to work with the Windows side of the Intelbook and simple features that could have been added were ignored to ensure that you only got exactly what you needed to run Windows solidly in Bootcamp, but not with the trademark Apple Ease of Use.

Re:More Speculation

[ZachPruckowski]

I've known this for weeks as well, but when you get down to it, it's the discussion that matters. Sites like macrumors or digg (which had this story a week ago) have discussion ranging from "OMG!!1!! Teh Steveness!!" to "It'll have 4D graphics and ship two days after WWDC!!". On /. there will be discussion based on more reasonable features, and identify technical hurdles.

Re:More Speculation

[anethema]

I'd say mod parent up here because this is important.

Slashdot stories are almost always links to blogs which links to reprints of stories. Half of them are uninterestingly written or contain nearly no information. BUT

Even if there was no link, if it was just a headline: Apple to soon release OSX Leopard!...without even an article..it wouldnt matter because slashdot is about the discussion. I want to see what people think about leopard..i want to see people uncovering cool features that arent mentioned in most stories..i want beta testers to come forward and tell about their experiances...THIS is why slashdot is great. Much more interesting than sites with many stories, but no usable forum to speak of. (digg,etc)

That beeing said, I have no idea why anyone would subscribe. I just block ads and get the stories ad-free anyways. And as for seeing them early...who to discuss with..yourself?

Who writes this junk?

[vought]

I mean c'mon. A day's worth of submissions, and you can't do any better than information that's been on the street for over a week, rewritten by a fifth-grader?

If "Leopard" is really what it claims to be, i.e. fast and efficient in sharp contrast to slow and resource hungry Windows Vista, we certainly would see Apple's remarkable market share gain next year."

Maybe the reason fewer people are taking Slashdot seriously is because Slashdot doesn't seem to take itself seriously.

Hire a f-ing editor to check out and rewrite the most egregious but still post-worthy submissions. No, a real editor, not one of your friends.

Re:Stock Tip

[BasilBrush]

If I had a dollar for every new up and coming MP3 player that was supposed to be an iPod killer, I'd be able to buy an iPod.

Re:Huh? Wanna say that again?

[BasilBrush]

Last I checked Windows Vista is in Beta. So just how does anyone know how it's performance is at this time.

Well one could go with history and note the fact that EVERY new version of Windows has been a lot slower than the predecessor. Meanwhile every version of OS X has been faster than the predecessor.

we not told by the Apple folks that the marketshare was going to boom with the release of 10.0? Then again with 10.2 and so on? And then again when they went to Intel...

If you look at the unit sales of Macs from Apple quarterly reports, you'll see that they is usually significantly larger growth YoY that in the overall PC market. That means growing market share.

Of confirm it by looking at sites browser stats. This one shows Mac userbase doubling in 3 years.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp

in fact the market share has decreased since the release of 10.0...

I can see why you selected your username. But you'd do better if you didn't overreach yourself with your FUD.

Empty Article

[Kichigai Mentat]

Did anyone else notice that the article was practically empty? That it was maybe, at most, five hundred words? Sorry, correct that, I just ran it through a word processor: 240 words in the article, not counting title, byline, or advertising.

The article had NO MEANING. It was one of those things you say to your buddies while hanging around. "You know, if Leopard is as fast as Apple says so, MS could be in deep [insert colorful adjective here]." Then you're promptly shot down by your friends, reminding you that the masses have a "Crapple" frame of mind because their last experience with Mac OS was with the pizza-box LC IIs running System 7 from back when they were in high school, and they don't care any more.

Not only does this bode poorly for Slashdot's credibility as having important and accurate information, but what does this say about journalism in general, when this passes for a good article. Oh, wait, it's not even an article! It's a blog posting! Do we even know who this Max Fomitchev is? I've never heard of him. This place is slowly becoming a rumor mill full of dupes.

Come back when you've got an article from a credible source, no less than 500 words, with some real analysis, facts to back it up, and maybe a cool graphic or charts or something. Until then, stop wasting my time.

I Suspect...

[eno2001]

...that Apple moved to Intel to take advantage of Intel's new virtualization support in hardware. In nearly every case when using a hypervisor on top of such hardware (where there is a ring -1 for the hypervisor) the performance has beat native performance. Or put another way; using a hypervisor for virtualization provides you with virtualization with NO performance hit at all. If anything you get a performance boost. Apple, typically being quite a few steps ahead of the reast of the industry, is very likely going to use this so that you can run Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Vista, and any Linux distro simultaneously with the full performance of running natively. This is the first time in history when you really CAN get something for nothing!!! Not to mention they will likely make it so that you can set up ways to exchange data in a live fashion between VMs. No more incompatibility between OSes ever again. Leave it to Apple to come up with something like this.

Re:My feelings on OS X

[drgreg911]

I felt the same way until my Windows PC broke and I was forced to borrow and live with a PowerBook for a couple weeks. At first, I hated it, until I got over my Windows habits and started to get used to the new UI. I absolutely hated Apple products, but now I'm more efficient and can't live without 'em. In any case, my advice to anyone thinking about switching is to spend more than just an hour with the thing. Force yourself to use it for a few days and actually be honest enough to give a go at learning how it's supposed to work. It may not fit your needs better, but then again, it might. You'll never know if you only try it long enough to get frustrated or you go into the experience planning on hating it.