Apple previews OS X Snow Leopard: scheduled to ship "in about a year"

The next iteration of OS X was mentioned early on during today's WWDC 2008 keynote, but little was said afterwards. Thankfully, Apple hasn't left us completely out to dry, as a recent release gives a few clues as to what Snow Leopard has in store. First and foremost, the OS isn't expected to ship until about this time next year, and just as predicted, it will be more evolutionary than revolutionary. Specifically, it will "enhance the performance of OS X and set a new standard for quality... rather than focusing primarily on new features." Still, we do know that it'll play nice with Microsoft Exchange 2007 from the get-go, provide "unrivaled support for multi-core processors" with a new technology dubbed Grand Central, extend support "for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL)," and raise the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM. Heck, you'll even find QuickTime X in there. Yeah, we love those new features, but we can honestly say we're looking forward to a nice round of polishing.

Update: Looks like some more solid info has been posted to Apple's page. Head here for more on Snow Leopard desktop and Snow Leopard server (which will include iCal Server 2, 128-bit ZFS support, Podcast Producer 2, the first version of their Address Book server based on CardDAV, and more).

[LC @ Jun 9th 2008 4:24PM]

"Raise the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM."

Why not make it go up to the limit of 64 bit? Why keep it lower?

[Kaiser-Machead @ Jun 9th 2008 4:30PM]

??

OS X Leopard is 64-bit, but the disc also has the 32-bit version on there so you don't have to buy a separate disc for older 32-bit PPC and Core Duo Macs.

[Splunkster @ Jun 9th 2008 4:35PM]

Because no one on earth is going to have 16 exabytes of RAM, so it's clearly a non-issue.

[OnlyShawn @ Jun 9th 2008 4:55PM]

"i'll never need more than this 420mb hard drive"

[Tony Rayo @ Jun 9th 2008 5:11PM]

Exactly, we'll be on to 128-bit platforms way before anywhere close to that much ram could exist on one machine.

[Tony Rayo @ Jun 9th 2008 5:31PM]

*random* When true 128-bit processors exist (I do not believe there are any TRUE 128-bit processors, aka CPUs that natively process using 128 binary digits), you can enjoy up to 274,877,906,944 yottabytes of memory. Yes yottabytes is a real term/word (I couldn't think of anything higher off the top of my head).

[Tony Rayo @ Jun 9th 2008 5:52PM]

After doing some more research (sorry, I know NO one cares, but math pwns me), I found out that there is OFFICIALLY no other ISO-approved unit of measurement after yottabtye, however if you continue using my (limited) knowledge of latin, a 128-bit CPU could theoretically support 2048 wekabytes of memory.

Heh I am currently typing this post on a laptop with 2048 megabytes of memory, and just to drum this home to how big this is, a megabyte is 10 to the power of 6 while a wekabyte (which I think is a rather cool word), is 10 to the power of 30. Sorry, one year away from getting a master's degree and I don't want to forget stuff over the summer through the use of videogames and various forms of radiation like I normally do.

[Informed1 @ Jun 9th 2008 6:15PM]

You officially killed the replies to LC's comment with your mathematical jive. Congratulations. :)

[art vandelay @ Jun 9th 2008 8:56PM]

the spu processors on the cell cpu are 128 bit processors. unfortunately the ppu is still 64 bit, and the ppu is the guy that talks to memory.

[Jimmy S @ Jun 10th 2008 7:50PM]

One reason to not support a full 64bit address space is the amount of memory taken up by the page tables. Assuming each page is 4 kilobytes, then you are looking at 562,949,953,421,312 pages to keep track of. I don't know how big a page table entry is in OSX, but even if it were 1 byte, that is still over 500 terabytes of data.

By limiting this to 16TB of memory, you now only need a maximum of 4,294,967,296 pages. This is 131,072 times more efficient.

[John @ Jun 9th 2008 4:24PM]

Isn't snow leopard one of the characters in that new kung-fu panda movie?

[nxtiak @ Jun 9th 2008 4:28PM]

If you stay after the credits, there's a Snow Leopard Mac OSX preview.

[Harley3k @ Jun 9th 2008 4:50PM]

yah, the Snow Leopard is the villain whom the Panda (dragon warrior) must battle.

Dreamworks vs. Disney/Pixar.

[mabhatter @ Jun 9th 2008 10:55PM]

does this mean we go back to "snow" white iMacs? I'm confused.

[Aguiluz @ Jun 9th 2008 4:24PM]

*sees clak and iEye jumping in joy*

[J L @ Jun 9th 2008 4:38PM]

Where *is* clack? I haven't seen him...

[Striker @ Jun 9th 2008 5:36PM]

I bet clak is pissing his pants at all this good news.

[Kris @ Jun 9th 2008 4:27PM]

Hopefully they are not charging for this release. Windows calls these "service packs"

[LC @ Jun 9th 2008 4:28PM]

I believe everyone here knows what a service pack is.

[Steve Jones @ Jun 9th 2008 4:52PM]

LC; not Jobs.

[Will @ Jun 9th 2008 4:59PM]

Sorry if I'm missing something, but which recent service pack increased stability and polish? Vista SP1 or XP SP3? I'd been under the impression that they both caused pretty significant problems for a lot of people.

[Mark @ Jun 9th 2008 7:13PM]

@Will: nope, vista sp1 hasn't caused issues for most people(there have been a very limited few, but then look at how many there were when apple released leopard) and has made the operating system MUCH more functional, stable, and fast. As evidence of this, I've left this comp running vista sp1 on for a couple months straight now and it's still performing perfectly.

[Richy @ Jun 10th 2008 4:23AM]

So, completely re-engineering an OS core is just a service pack? By that rationale, Windows NT was 'just a service pack'.

If you know nothing about software design, don't pretend that you do...

[Kris @ Jun 10th 2008 1:01PM]

@Richy, they are not "re-engineering" anything and don't make assumptions about things you don't know (I development software and games for a living). They're making slight improvements and adding support for ZFS. That's it.

Snow Leopard is a service pack. They are providing as much as Microsoft provides in their service pack so I hope they're not charging their usual $130 _or_ haven't announced the best parts about the OS.

[Kelmon @ Jun 11th 2008 7:01AM]

@Kris

Actually, that's not true. As best we understand for the moment, this release is about re-engineering the underpinnings of Mac OS X with a new dispatcher (i.e. Grand Central), memory management (no buzzword for that, that I've heard) and even changing where processing takes place (i.e. OpenCL). We know that 10.6 Server will use ZFS and it seems likely that this release will also see the death of HFS+ on the client as well, although that final statement is based solely on supposition. So, yes, I think this release is entirely about re-engineering, and there's nothing slight about the changes being made. The problem here is that it's all beneath the surface and it will be a hard sell to customers without front-end functionality. So here's hoping that this update will be free, or damned close to it.

[Snitch @ Jun 9th 2008 4:27PM]

So is GPS going to be free, how it was meant to be??? cause some carriers have a habit of charging people for GPS use.

[nxtiak @ Jun 9th 2008 4:28PM]

Wow, the Mac has GPS in it?

[Erik @ Jun 13th 2008 8:20PM]

It seems you have roamed into the wrong story.

[Kaiser-Machead @ Jun 9th 2008 4:28PM]

Is anyone else hoping that QT finally has all of its "Pro" functions as standard? Hopefully it's no heavier on the resources than Leopard. My PowerMac G4 MDD is actually running surprisingly good with 10.5.3, and I plan on keeping it a great deal longer as I upgrade a few components (namely the procs and graphics). But with a cap of 2GB of RAM, I'd rather not have OS X Fat Cat bogging it down. Here's to hoping that 10.6.0 does not have the dreaded WIFI DROPOUT WHICH MAKES LAPTOP USAGE A PAIN IN THE ASS.

Here's to hoping =)

[Striker @ Jun 9th 2008 5:38PM]

If only they still made Ubuntu for PowerPC...

[Anton @ Jun 9th 2008 4:29PM]

iPhone-Centric-Posts = More AD Revenue

/seriously

[Dan @ Jun 9th 2008 4:29PM]

I've always defended apple from microsoft fanboys when they call os x releases "service packs", but with the information they are giving us, it sounds like apple is trying to charge us for a service pack. There better be more than they are letting on...

[Kaiser-Machead @ Jun 9th 2008 4:33PM]

Well it's a long way off, so I don't suppose they'd have much reason to divulge very much. Heck we're still only in .3 of Leopard. Maybe it'll have Final Cut Express as a built-in feature X-D

[Liam @ Jun 9th 2008 4:51PM]

The best improvements that the first few iterations of OS X had were speed and stability. It's been refined like that, but I have to say I find it odd that they're giving it it's own .x edition. Maybe Apple with have a change of heart and allow cheap upgrades?

LOL.

[Kaiser-Machead @ Jun 9th 2008 5:10PM]

$130 is expensive? If there's no new features, then it's a waste of money, but for an honest-to-whatever upgrade, that's not a bad price IMO. How much was any upgrade of Vista, provided you didn't have the opportunity to get a campus deal or likewise?

[Liam @ Jun 9th 2008 5:39PM]

I meant if you have leopard then they might let you pay less... maybe? It could happen.

[Kelmon @ Jun 11th 2008 7:10AM]

Where did you see they were charging for this release? They might do, but I'd be stunned if it is the usual $129. Personally, I've seen no mention of the price so I think you're jumping the gun a bit here. Wait until MacWorld 09.

[Ratspilf @ Jun 9th 2008 4:31PM]

Woah okay, still no mention about PPC support. Yes or no?

[Kaiser-Machead @ Jun 9th 2008 4:47PM]

They can't drop support for PPC just yet. Their PowerMac G5's are powerful enough to run Leopard and presumably this iteration of OS X, and seeing as how both the G5 and G4 PowerMacs were discontinued in 2005, cutting them out of the upgrade path this soon would be a really really bad move, and it would seriously hamper sales of their disc. I'd chance it to say that well over half of the current install base of Macs are still PowerPC, since G3's and G4's are still being used alongside G5's.

[Kaiser-Machead @ Jun 9th 2008 4:47PM]

I meant G4 Powerbooks* woops

[JKT @ Jun 10th 2008 12:40AM]

>"They can't drop support for PPC just yet."

Well, technically they *can* though I'm one of those who hopes they do not. While my company is moving on to Intel processors, we keep the previous generation Macs as an offsite fallback safety net. They are to run the same OS that the in-use Macs run. If we can't run Snow Leopard on the G5 backups, then we can't run it on the Intels. True, removing all that PPC code would tighten things up and smallify the OS, but man it'd cause some headaches too.

[Sean @ Jun 9th 2008 4:33PM]

Isn't Grand Central a type of service owned by Google?

[Josh @ Jun 10th 2008 3:37AM]

It is, but just because it's the same name, it's a different company :)

[Sudo @ Jun 9th 2008 4:37PM]

Have fun with your new service pack.

[Vanillacide @ Jun 9th 2008 5:13PM]

I'm waiting for a Vista Service Pack that increases stability and improves speed on my desktop PC, but look forward to the same on my MacBook Pro.

Bet Apple make it free to existing Leopard owners.

[friko @ Jun 9th 2008 4:40PM]

The "READ" link isn't working for me.

[kal326 @ Jun 9th 2008 5:10PM]

@friko
Yeah noticed that too. Amazing how many comments there are for a article nobody can read in full.

[Reader @ Jun 9th 2008 5:40PM]

Ha. Read an article in full.

[orky @ Jun 9th 2008 4:56PM]

Doesn't anyone else laugh when they see QT? Think of AOL days with QTpie

That would be the perfect name for the next QT version instead of X

[Striker @ Jun 9th 2008 5:40PM]

It would be a good name, if the next version of Quicktime doesn't suck balls, because the current Quicktime isn't nearly as good as pie.