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Hey, what about the "imminent" 10.5.7 release? I'm still waiting!

Apr 21, 09 - 05:18 pm Comment from: Virus Free

Ok, place your bets.

Does Apple "bloat" Snow Leopard or not, requiring a new hardware purchase?

What possibly more features could OS X get? (I'm swamped as it is)

3D Finder like in iTunes or something new (yea or nay?)

Will the metadata exploit be finally fixed? (not just a app download warning)

Will Apple get Oracle to fix the exploit problems with Java reading a users hard drive using applets?

Outgoing firewall? (yea or nay)

How long will Snow Leopard be buggy? (6 months, a year?)

Will OS X run most Windows apps without Windows?

Apr 21, 09 - 05:18 pm Comment from: Davecc

Guess it's not so imminent.

Apr 21, 09 - 06:39 pm Comment from: It's About Time

Snow Leopard's improvements will be mostly under the hood to improve speed etc. Much less new features this time around, although from what I understand, more eye-candy for the sugar Mac addicts.

Apr 21, 09 - 06:59 pm Comment from: HMCIV

@Virus Free
"Bloat"? No. Leave PPCs out in the cold. Most likely.

Personally, I'm hoping for [hyper]active Virus Protection which will search the web for traces of Rob Enderle and Jim Cramer.

The big prize in Snow Leopard will be Grand Central, the core, system wide management of multiple processing cores. From Apple web site:
"More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today’s processors. Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems."

This is what I'm waiting for before buying any more hardware.

Apr 21, 09 - 08:24 pm Comment from: Virus Free

This is what I'm waiting for before buying any more hardware.

And what Microsoft is waiting to copy in Windows 7.

Apr 21, 09 - 09:12 pm Comment from: Predrag

Virus Free:

As well all know, OSX never needed significantly beefier hardware. In fact, people have Leopard running very efficiently on a G4 Cube (9-year old Mac), with a simple hack (just to allow it to actually install). The only recommended change to the Cube is a better video card that can support Core Image. I guess Snow Leopard unfortunately won't run on that Cube (nor on a G5 machines).

Feature set isn't expected to be much bigger than Leopard (hence just a slightly different cat).

As for running Windows without Windows, I doubt Apple is too interested in doing that. Crossover can do it with some success with some apps. Many won't work, and user just can't know which would and which would not. That simply isn't possible with Apple.

Why do you always use the term "seed" when referring to the distribution of software to developers? It seems to me like a very odd term to use and not one that I have ever heard used during my long history within the software development world--other than here.

"Ok, place your bets.

Does Apple "bloat" Snow Leopard or not, requiring a new hardware purchase?"

---

Huh? That's your bet? You've obviously never heard of SL.

Apr 22, 09 - 06:02 am Comment from: Roger Knights

"The big prize in Snow Leopard will be Grand Central, the core, system wide management of multiple processing cores."

Not that I'm complaining, but few consumers need this extra oomph. Which makes me wonder, why has Apple invested so much in multi-core processing, when the payoff is so small? Here's an outside-the-box possibility: Maybe this feature isn't meant to benefit the consumer, but the enterprise. Could it be that Mac servers that could perform multi-core operations would be vastly superior at cloud-based virtualized tasks?

I'm fuzzy on the details--I trust someone who knows this topic well will debunk this speculation if it's wrong. But if it's possible, no wonder MSFT is worried. And no wonder Apple's stock has risen 50% (from 80 to 120), while MSFT's has performed relatively poorly. And no wonder Apple makes a fetish of secrecy.

Apple might be poised to deliver something insanely great. Here's hoping.

Apr 22, 09 - 08:24 am Comment from: KingMel

@Roger Knights
The multi-core focus of Grand Central may actually have much broader implications. Everyone would like to see mobile computing platforms pack more processing power without sacrificing battery life. Perhaps ultra-low power multi-core is the future for all mobile platforms, and Snow Leopard will enable Apple to provide that punch across the spectrum, from the iPod touch to the Mac Pro and Xserve.

Apr 22, 09 - 10:21 am Comment from: jtc

@HMCIV

HAHAHA we can only hope

@Roger Knights
"Not that I'm complaining, but few consumers need this extra oomph. Which makes me wonder, why has Apple invested so much in multi-core processing, when the payoff is so small?"

Two things. First, the future path to increased performance is now multi-core, not clock speeds. But, many software developers STILL aren't optimizing for multiple cores, 9 years after Apple's introduction of dual-processor Macs. The only way to keep advancing performance is add cores and create an architecture that makes it easy for developers to tap them. Second, as a professional photographer making heavy use of Aperture, I know what a difference more cores make for compute-intensive applications. My 8-core Mac Pro is 8 times faster than my dual-core Macbook Pro when batch-processing images in Aperture. Aperture is optimized for multi-core, and Apple obviously wants to bring this performance advantage to ALL apps, not just their own.