Snow Leopard in about a year...

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/apple-previews-os-x-snow-leopard-scheduled-to-ship-in-about-a/

Looks like OS X 10.6 is not all that far away. Seems to be a small upgrade as the name suggests.

 

Probably going to be like Apple's version of SP1.

 

LOL it's a service pack.

EDIT: Lithus beat me to it.

 

Will be interesting to see what changes they actually make. And I hope thats not the name they finally go with.

 

I wonder if they're going to charge their usual $129 for the upgrade, considering the lack of new features... I kind of doubt it, but they'll probably charge something.

 

It seems there will be new features, just not headline consumer features like Time Machine, Expose, etc. Exchange support, a new QT, better multi-core support are the type of features that will be included. That makes it much more than a service pack which in reality is just MS rolling up all of the security fixes into a ball.

You must remember that versions like 10.5.2 are the SP type updates while 10.5 to 10.6 is like XP to Vista. This time next year is inline with Apple's (and MS for that matter) normal ~2 year OS life cycle.

**EDIT** I will agree though that this is more like 98 to Me, although hopefully it turns out better.

 

Isn't this a bit like the upgrade from 10.1 to 10.2? I can't check the details right now, but I believe they had not charged the full price for that.

 

Maybe they'll charge less for the upgrade this time .

 

I thought that Snow Leopard was just a rumour and I'm a little surprised by its announcement, not so much because of the timing but rather from the point of view that Leopard has been so good (IMO) that it would be hard to really beat it so soon by a major OS release, especially when there's really no competition out there for Leopard (Yes I'm looking at you Vista and Linux).

 

No competition? The past and present market share says that you are 95% wrong.

 

I was more referring to "competition" in terms of the product strength (not market share) and to my own user experience having used all three of the OSes (I have to admit; Linux very briefly). In that scope and IMO, yes there is no competition.

To me market share is not indicative of a products superiority. There are way more Fords than Porsches out there.

 

very well said, a lot of the times, market share is completely skewed by many different things, since Apple is offering a overall package that no other company can even come close to, what are you comparing it too?

glad to see that they are already previewing some new things, and it sounds like they are really going after the important details like keeping it all as stable as possible, there are lots of little things I could see coming with the next installment,

I was extremely glad to see the update of .Mac, especially as a current subscriber (if you can really call it that ^_^), 20gb of hosting space will be wonderful.

 

Vista SP1 brought a lot more to the table than simple updates. I was running XP on my HP (that shipped with Vista) for speed. But with Vista SP1 and driver updates from nvidia, Vista now runs faster than XP on the same machine. Everything from boot time to how good my games run.. SP1 is how Vista should have shipped.

Now we can say the same for Leopard. "Snow Leopard" will be to Leopard what SP1 was to Vista. The bad thing is that this IS Apple we are discussing so we can all sleep at night knowing they will charge $129 for the equivalent of what Microsoft has brought out in the form of free updates for Vista over the last year.

 

ehh...im too cheap to pay for it

 

i disagree, Apple's minor updates tend to be much more substantial than Microsoft's Service Packs, what was a major update in Vista SP1? now take a look at the updates in 10.5.1, 5.2, 5.3. they are much more direct and substantial.

I highly doubt Apple will release a 10.6 version without some significant changes.

 

And what did 10.5.1, 10.5.2, and 10.5.3 bring? Other than changing Stacks to what it should have been to begin with, nothing visible.

Vista SP1 combined with driver updates took Vista above XP in speed. It also brought DirectX 10.1 support. It improved stability and speed dramatically. I can't even begin to tell you how much better my games run now. I was running XP for them but now they all run better in Vista.

Judging based on that and Apple's statements, Snow Leopard is going to be what Leopard should have been and it should be free. Just as SP1 is what Vista should have been and IS free.

 

Ok, this hasn't been mentioned yet, but am I the only person that thinks that Snow Leopard is quite possibly the stupidest name they could have possibly chosen? Why not, like, Cougar or Ocelot or something? I guess the update isn't substantial enough to warrant a name like "Lion", but still, Snow Leopard? Really? His Jobsness hath disappointed me.

 

To be fair Sauron, I don't think needing a service pack to bring the performance of your new OS up to the level of a 7 year old OS is anything to write home about.

10.5.1, .2, and .3 have all brought better overall improved performance and most would say that as of 10.5.2, Leopard is where it should be in much less time than Vista took to ship SP1.

I'm not trying to bash Vista or anything, but the whole service pack argument gets old rather quickly. The added features that have already been announced make it much bigger than any Windows service pack.

I will agree though that Snow Leopard does seem like a small update like the early iterations of OS X, and hope that the cost is not the usual $129.

**EDIT** Redline, I think it speaks to the nature of the update. It is a small update compared to Tiger or Leopard. Plus they gotta stretch out those cat names.

 

OS X LOLcat, please!

But yeah, it seems a pretty minor update. I might go for it though, since I never did get Leopard .

 

That doesn't make it any less stupid sounding....Just sayin'.

And a LOLcat version of OS X sounds nice. If they made one, do you think they would make Finder any less...isolating? I mean, I really do like Leopard, but Finder pretty much kills it for me, so even on a machine where I don't game and thus don't need a flavour of Windows, I'd still go Windows. Just because I find Explorer that much better than Finder. Though, if you compare versions of Windows, Explorer in Vista is not as good as XP, which might explain why I am so tempted to pick up a MacBook now.

 

Future Snow Leoperd have GPU power processing support for day to day applications ? AppleInsider said it does. Anyone can explain it?

 

From what I read on Apple's webpage, OpenCL allows the graphics card's power to be used for general computing tasks when its not used for other things. We'll probably know more as we get closer to its release .

 

ThanX .....Gpu have nice processing power but it does nothing other than Graphic stuff,So this move will take advantage of idle GPU

 

I think they really have the right idea with this, and are really looking at the larger picture here, Stevesy has a overall picture of what should be accomplished it would seem.

bring on the efficiency.

I think the next step after that is bringing development to the masses, they have already done it to some extent with things like Applescript and Automator, not to mention providing free SDK's, but wouldn't it be amazing if they could bring down the technicalities of development so consumers could build onto their OS to suit their own needs, just like large corporations, and especially big Film/Visual Effects studios, already do today. that is where I see the future going, at least my own future with computing.

who's with me?

 

obviously more than a service pack, but a small upgrade compared to leopard or tiger...

i think they might have chosen the (still unforgivable) name of "snow leopard" to really punch in the fact that this isn't going to be so much about new features. its just the evolution of leopard.

also, i am curious when this thing is coming out... leopard isn't even a year old yet. if snow leopard comes out in 2 - 4 months, it will be released and leopard won't even see a birthday. honestly, it IS a little bit fast. but they are obviously working hard. the few features that they are including seem to be very forward thinking, and they will probably end up charging half price for snow leopard anyway.

 

i would expect to see it ready to go no earlier than 1 year from now, but it would be cooler if they started moving double time on their OS version updates.

 

Did they show a preview of Snow Leopard during the WWDC keynote? I could have swore that I read somewhere that they did, but the keynote at the Apple site didn't include it at all...

 

Bertrand Serlet demo-ed Snow Leopard at an after-lunch keynote, so its not with Steve Jobs. Doesn't seem they talked too much yet, anyway.

 

And neither would charging $130 for an incremental OS update. Charging anything at all will leave a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths, except those whose mouths are constantly stuck on the Apple corporate teat.

 

Great idea, but they'd have to write decent drivers first...

 

Considering how long OpenGL has been around, and Apple still hasn't gotten it right, I can only imagine the potential disaster of an entirely new system.

 

More whining...

 

edit: didn't read title, one year from today... not so bad. still that means leopard (an excellent OS) gets tossed after 1.5 years.

but as long as they do the prices fairly, moving forward is fine. they will need to offer Snow Leopard pretty cheap for people who already bought Leopard.

I guess as a stand-alone copy, it could go for the normal OS price.

 

I agree, but I think it is clear that while Snow Leopard may not be the major updates Tiger and Leopard were, it will be much more significant that SP1 was to Vista. I will say though that from what we have seen so far, $130 would be a bit on the high side. Although, don't forget what a retail copy of Vista runs either.

Roughly 2 years is the normal OS cycle for both MS and Apple. Leopard was late and Vista was just horribly late. So it is inline with the early end of the cycle.

 

I swear I will hesitate to buy it just because of the name. I hope they don't change a whole lot so I'm not tempted.

 

they would hardly be tossing Leopard, just like Leopard they will just be building upon what they have already released, and what they have released already is very strong so I really don't expect anything but good things from a new release.

 

That's what they said about Tiger--->Leopard, and we all know how well that turned out. However, give Apple props for at least trying to address the issues, though they seem to be suffering from "ATI Syndrome" when each new release fixes one thing but breaks something else.

 

Heh, I kinda like the name. But I'm a pushover really.

Honestly, I love the idea for this release. Reduce the footprint, streamline everything, boost up the 64-bit support, native Exchange support, introduce a few (more background type) features like OpenCL - basically, just continue to work on an already great OS, instead of continually pushing forward for innovation's sake and introducing buggy features that just frustrate the end user. Sure, they'll probably charge (hopefully not the full $129, maybe more like $59 or $79?), but if you don't want to pay for it...then don't! They won't be dropping Leopard support anytime soon I'm sure, and if you find the added features/etc to not be worth the price tag, this certainly seems like a "skippable" iteration of OS X.

...


Just like Vista was a skippable iteration of Windows. ^_^

 

At the moment, I would consider this a very minimal upgrade for the consumer, but possibly pretty big for developers. Remember, they've only just announced it, there's lots of opportunities to announce more additions and improvements to Snow Leopard later.

Hopefully they fix up more of Safari's "issues" with Safari 4!

 

Sam you should get leopard before you start talking about things that arent even out yet.

jk

 

I'm not avoiding Leopard, I can't afford it, dude .

 

An Apple forum is about the only place I can think of where you can get an argument out of hoping that the price of something will go down.

 

The projected release of 10.6 reminds one of the first three iterances of OSX:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_os_x#Versions

Back then, I suppose, OSX was still "learning to walk", due to the huge transition in progress. Starting with Panther, the upgrades started taking longer.

What's "wrong" today, such that we've got another swift upgrade? From 10.1 to 10.3, it was a matter of maturation, of improving on the clumsiness of previous versions.

*Today*, it seems, there is *another* sort of "clumsiness" in question----today, Apple seems to be struggling, not because they're taking a huge step with their OS (as they did with 10.1-10.3); but because they don't know what to do with their *priorities*. *Today's* clumsiness is due to the emphasis on iPhone/iTunes stuff. That doesn't speak too well for the future of the *Macintosh*.

 

they did just that with Tiger>Leopard, how can you say that Leopard isn't completely building off of the fantastic things they did with Tiger? Tiger was what brought Apple back into the real world, Leopard is what is convincing millions of people to move to a Mac.

Hopefully Snow Leopard will be what shines the light for all the hardcore people. They went after the normal user with Leopard, now they are going after the nerds, and it is a great idea, haha.

 

why is this always being referred to as 10.6? Not once has Apple referred to Snow Leopard as 10.6, have they, not in the Keynote, not online, I am really wondering if this will actually be a 10.6 release.

 

Tiger did far more for Apple than Leopard ever will. The move to Intel processors brought Apple into the "real world" as you put it.

After two years of development, Leopard is not overwhelming. Many of the welcome features were balanced by stuff Apple left out (Bluetooth & SMS Call functions), had working but broke in later OS updates (Time Machine), or bugs from Tiger that were expected to be fixed but weren't (Airport disconnects).

Apple needs to take a look and start re-focusing its efforts on what it was that made it popular in the first place - its software. Perhaps Snow Leopard will be that. I hope it is.

 

The main difference is that Microsoft made it clear from the start that SP1 would bring Vista up to snuff. They also provided it for free.

Apple released Leopard and it hasn't been good for a lot of people. Now they're going to basically bring Leopard to where it should have been and most likely going to charge $129 for it.

Apple is the only company that can get away with charging their customers for everything while everyone else gives away equivalent updates and features.

 

whiny whiny. why don't i feel the same overbearing pessimism about all of this? I feel like apple is doing great with leopard. the fact that it wasn't as important as tiger doesn't really matter. its a great step forward, and its faster than tiger too. all the common bugs have been fixed as of 10.5.3. Leopard is really stable.

IMO - We don't know enough about snow leopard to criticize it so strongly... I mean, they didn't mention a price tag, they are just showing us what they are working on. As far as I can tell- people are getting upset because apple is working on clever new ideas such as openCL, and a new more streamlined version of leopard...

 

Do you mean to suggest that Vista pre-SP1 and Leopard are comparable in terms of finished/polished products? I'm sorry but that's laughable.

 

just to be clear, and like with every OS, those are not really common issues, millions of people are entirely unawair of those "issues" and have had no problems with them. Same goes for XP, Vista, it is amazing how much people can "learn" about something using the internet, and document it as the absolute end all truth.

Leopard is absolutely overwhelming in my opinion, walk into any Apple retail store and find someone that has never used a Mac before looking around, someone gives them a 30 second tour of Leopard and their eyes light up. There are a huge number of very substantial features of Leopard that are actually interesting to the AVERAGE CONSUMER, not the people pissing about on the internet trying to learn every abstract detail, and that says a lot, something the motivates them to actually use their computer for more than checking some social networking sites, and actually spending their time doing something interesting. God for bid a company actually tries to make something the people can actually legitimately get excited about.

I honestly don't believe there is a better OS available right now, in terms of the overall package that Leopard offers, and that is what is actually important, not random details, and people whining about issues they are having on the internet instead of getting off their ass and getting the problem taken care of by simply talking with the company that produced it.