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OS X Snow Leopard Details
JD-1027 writes in to kick off a discussion of OS X Snow Leopard. Apple's stated goal: "Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard's enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality." The technologies: Grand Central to get better use of multiple processors and multicore chips, OpenCL to tap the power of the GPU, 64 bit so we can finally have our 16 TB of RAM, QuickTime X for optimized modern codec performance, and built in Exchange support in iCal, Address Book, and Apple Mail that most likely will help get Macs into corporate environments. We've previously discussed ZFS in the server version of Snow Leopard."
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Well, most users are comparing against Windows on a Dell, not Irix on an O2. "stability and performance" seem like luxuries in comparison.
Or so I've heard.
IRIX on an O2 as a pinnacle of stability?
Hahaha. IRIX back then was so buggy I'm amazed that the user experience was as good as it was.
jh
For a while there, I was thinking that perhaps Apple would merely *say* they wouldn't release many new features in Snow Leopard, but then turn around and at the last second release a feature-laden OS. But then I realized how hard it would be to do that. Too many third-party developers would have to be in the loop for this to work.
The idea would be to stop Redmond from using Apple as the R&D labs, as many suspect winds up being the case ("Start your photocopiers"), and deny MS even the opportunity to borrow for Windows 7.
The more I think about it though, the more obstacles I see to this. But it would be sweeeeet...
Okay, I guess I implied too much in my comment about paying $20. What I meant to say was that I can't imagine that Apple would roll out the release bandwagon as they did for both Leopard and Tiger (t-shirts, closing the Apple store for a couple of hours, etc.) for this particular release as they've stated that there are no features that would inspire my mom to want to upgrade immediately.
That said, Apple has done amazing things with every release of OSX and I look forward to Snow Leopard as much as every other release. I simply didn't read it as something that anyone should treat as a Really Big Deal, even to the point that Jobs barely mentioned it in the keynote, unlike Leopard that got its coming out party twice.
Therefore, if a 10.6 box just appeared in the Apple stores, but didn't get much mention, it would probably be missed by most. Sure it would be pre-installed on new machines, but where would be the hype to get everyone on it as quickly as possible? This is why I was thinking about the 10.0->10.1 upgrade; if this is the first Intel-only release, how would they sell a version that offers no new features, and is unavailable to everyone who doesn't haven an Intel machine? I, personally, wouldn't want to be in the marketing department trying to sell 10.6; if they just make it available as a download, they might ultimately save a lot of $$$ that would have been spent trying to market it, then explain it, correct the marketing, etc.
OS X Tiger isn't buggy, Leopard on the other hand is a steaming pile. I have constant problems with it, both at work and at home. Hell, iTunes, an app you think Apple would have put some effort into perfecting, manages to crash on a daily basis. I hit the little report button, but Steve is so obsessed with the iPhone it seems Leopard bugs are getting the cold shoulder.
Monstar L
Sure, the boosts in efficiency and stability will be welcome, but I for one am very excited about full Exchange support in iCal and Address Book. Heck, the Exchange support in Mail is a bit spotty as well, so touching that up would be great as well.
But what would really be great (and very much in line with the whole "embracing enterprise" thing) would be native support for Cisco IPsec VPN connections. As it stands, you have to use Cisco's own clunky client; if you could use the built-in client you could connect via a menubar icon. (Shimo does this pretty nicely, but it just became crippleware.)
It seems like an obvious addition, given the iPhone 2.0 OS is supposed to have it. Anyone know if it's on the docket for Snow Leopard?
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
But what would really be great (and very much in line with the whole "embracing enterprise" thing) would be native support for Cisco IPsec VPN connections. As it stands, you have to use Cisco's own clunky client; if you could use the built-in client you could connect via a menubar icon. (Shimo does this pretty nicely, but it just became crippleware.)
That, and it would also be nice if they'd refine and include the TUN/TAP driver. I understand that it's in the kernel code, but has never been part of a build. (At least not an officially released one.)I don't like NTFS either, but I do regularly run computers with all three OSs (Mac mostly for work (developer), Windows for home (WoW), and a Linux server). I think the slowest format is either HFS+ or ext3, I've certainly seen ext3 be quite slow. So long as you use the "quick" option for NTFS formats it is quite fast. Of course, with all the grahpic goodies everything on Macs seems slow, but it's also hard to time how long it takes.
And no, I'm not a switcheur nor a noob. I've used/owned Macs since System 7, I've been using Linux for 8 years now, and I started with DOS 5 on an 80286, and ran every Windows and Mac version from then to current.
XFS is a fast format, ext3 takes a few minutes depending on the size of the partition, and NTFS is a few seconds in quick mode. Quick format has been there for quite a while (even DOS) and without it I always assumed format was zeroing the partition, which is slow of course.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
To be fair, Leopard wasn't just about adding a few "shinies." In fact, they really only added coverflow, the dock thing, and the transparent menu bar. A lot more innovate features were included like webclips, stacks, updated finder, new front row, better ical and address book, nifty new ichat features, fixed airport menu, parental controls, preview, quick look, better security, spaces, better terminal, TIME MACHINE, full Unix certification, and a whole host of developer tools and under the hood stability improvements.
Apple didn't just add bling - they made the operating system more stable and fixed a lot of bugs. So, be fair - we didn't pay $120 for a new dock.
Full list of new features in Leopard: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html
or else!
I don't think its fair comparing NTFS to the Zune.
NTFS is an integral feature in win xp, which is an upgrade for most informed vista users.
As such ntfs is the future of the pc market.
The Zune, however, is to music players what the edsel was to automobiles.
When the comp usa's went belly up in my city and had their closeout sales, even the shelving units went before the piles of zunes left sitting in the middle of the empty salesfloors (I wish I had photos, it's not an exaggeration).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
And can you point to any standard??
Last time I was checking, only few applications were using Direct X 10. For any kind of productivity more or less everybody uses bunch of wrappers or some commercial library.
The whole point here that there is no standard. And M$ forces everybody to kiss PR ass of Direct X, though literally nobody directly uses it, except for hardware manufacturers (nVidia and ATI). Some proprietary half-arsed spec in .DOCX peppered with implementation details from actual version of Direct X (even is such document exists) hardly qualifies as standard to me.
On other side, Kronos group is something. They are slow on up-take, but generally deliver usable standards industry needs. They are vendor neutral what is also important.
Do not expect anything in particular from OpenCL. I'm pretty sure that it would try to appeal to wider audience - consequently it would be pretty dumb down. But still it would let any developer to access GPU chip. Knowing how Apple does things, with couple of extra objects in one's program and few extra checks on whether you can use GPU, many tasks would get a decent performance boost. It wouldn't be high-end nor exclusive - it would be something for wider audience.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I noticed that 10.5 seemingly has more stability problems than previous versions of OSX since 10.1. Is it unfair?
I don't know if it is unfair but it sure is incorrect. Did you use the Finder from 10.0 through 10.3? It got slightly more stable with 10.4 but it was only 10.5 that a network outage didn't take down most of the Finder.
OSX wasn't even usable until 10.2 and not really preferable until 10.3. (IMO)
Now I will say that 10.5.2 was the first point update that I thought caused tons of problems. I ended up having to reinstall Leopard from scratch and then apply the updates. I haven't had to do that since the old XP SP1 days.