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).
posted Jun 9th 2008 4:21PM
"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?
??
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.
Because no one on earth is going to have 16 exabytes of RAM, so it's clearly a non-issue.
"i'll never need more than this 420mb hard drive"
Exactly, we'll be on to 128-bit platforms way before anywhere close to that much ram could exist on one machine.
*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).
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.
You officially killed the replies to LC's comment with your mathematical jive. Congratulations. :)
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.
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.
Isn't snow leopard one of the characters in that new kung-fu panda movie?
If you stay after the credits, there's a Snow Leopard Mac OSX preview.
yah, the Snow Leopard is the villain whom the Panda (dragon warrior) must battle.
Dreamworks vs. Disney/Pixar.
does this mean we go back to "snow" white iMacs? I'm confused.
*sees clak and iEye jumping in joy*
Where *is* clack? I haven't seen him...
I bet clak is pissing his pants at all this good news.
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.
Wow, the Mac has GPS in it?
It seems you have roamed into the wrong story.
Hopefully they are not charging for this release. Windows calls these "service packs"
I believe everyone here knows what a service pack is.
LC; not Jobs.
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.
@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.
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...
@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.
@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.
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 =)
If only they still made Ubuntu for PowerPC...
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...
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
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.
$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?
I meant if you have leopard then they might let you pay less... maybe? It could happen.
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.
iPhone-Centric-Posts = More AD Revenue
/seriously
Woah okay, still no mention about PPC support. Yes or no?
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.
I meant G4 Powerbooks* woops
>"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.
Isn't Grand Central a type of service owned by Google?
It is, but just because it's the same name, it's a different company :)
Have fun with your new service pack.
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.
The "READ" link isn't working for me.
@friko
Yeah noticed that too. Amazing how many comments there are for a article nobody can read in full.
Ha. Read an article in full.
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
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.
Nothing is as good as pie.
except cake... and not the one that is a lie. home made cake thats full of chocolaty goodness.
I assume this minor OS update will be free like Microsoft's are??
Apple needs a Mac OS X App Store and a Macbook touch.
So basically Apple is acknowledging that there are issues with Mac OS X 10.5 but instead of addressing them as 10.5.x updates they'll just release a new version of the OS and charge people money for it. They might include like 2 new features to it so that it seems like a legit thing to do.
Yes, I'll most definitely pirate it :)
Again, what makes you think that 10.6 will be chargeable? Historically, Apple has release free versions of their OS (e.g. OS X 10.1) to address issues in the product. I honestly doubt that this will be the same, although I also doubt that it will cost the usual $129. I'm expecting a nominal fee.
Will it be a free update to existing Leopard users? If not then, then it would be a douche move on the part of apple to actually make people pay $129USD for what amounts to a "Service Pack" If they have to charge for for it, at least charge something resonable.
Reading the title of this post made me think it was a witty OS X-esque Christmas release play on words.
It wasn't.
The next OS should be called Possum. Or Octopus.
"The new Apple Possum..."
"The new Apple Octopus..."
I'll go for Octopus.
Heh, I like the fact that the previous post had a first post of "
Oh, and BTW Engadget, congrats for the non-apple post". Don't goat them =p.
Hmm back on topic though I haven't heard much of OpenCL but it sounds interesting (loaths DirectX over OpenGL so maybe this will do something along the lines of coding).
Hey folks, let's not get wrapped up on this quite yet, we have a *few* months to go before this takes off. Let's see what develops over the next 9-12 months.
I just want Mail (or even Entourage) to support RPC over HTTP. PLEASE!!!
I'm amazed at how so many Mac owners (and I am one) are duped by everything Apple come out with. Yes, the PC fanboys are almost as annoying as their Mac equivalents, but I for one am starting to feel fleeced as it seems I have to pay a fortune for some new software upgrade or other, often when the improvements constitute little more than a 'service pack'. For an OS, Leopard still seems extremely new to me and next year sounds a little too early for it to be old technology.
I'm happy to pay a premium for better hardware and software, but not when I'm going to have to pay that same premium again the following year.
No one's said you'll to pay for this yet. Hang out until MacWorld in January - I suspect that things like this will be much clearer by then. In the meantime, I will just say that 10.1 was a free release, so a precedent for free updates has already been set.
Wake me up when then say "ZFS, tabbed finder, transparent menus (options), and advanced time machine options plz"
The idea is to optimize the speed of the OS. Besides ZFS, the extra features would only slow everything down, especially transparency since most Macs don't have a dedicated GPU.
The only Macs that don't have discrete graphics are the Macbook and Mac Mini. The iMac, Macbook Pro and Mac Pro all have graphics cards.
Also, transparency, at least in its current form on Leopard, has not slowed down my Macbook. It seems that doing an overwrite install caused more issues, but a clean install didn't do any ill to my old GMA 950. The Time Machine graphic actually works well on it too.
I should have been more clear. I believe, most Macs in terms of volume as opposed to number of Mac models.
Jobs is so thinly sick, Apple really should start looking for new salesman.
Is it me or is Steve Jobs looking a bit frail?
He has cancer.
@ mamooth
i'll take his place.
The only thing that could excite me about snow leopard is full PC availability.
Much like M$s bull Apple is claiming polish and stability for 10.6 and the question is why couldn't that be delivered in 10.5 ?
Nice to see an updated GUI and at least tigers level of PC networking and printer sharing capabilities.
"...Apple is claiming polish and stability for 10.6 and the question is why couldn't that be delivered in 10.5 ?"
Because of all the other stuff they were working on putting into 10.5.
Remember, compared to 10.4, there were quite a few under-the-hood tidyings-up and additions as well as the flashy new consumer features (Core Animation being an example of where the two intersected). Snow Leopard is them taking the opportunity to continue cleaning up and optimizing their code and making everything behind the scenes as orderly as they like to make it look up front, now that they have some time to breathe instead of frantically working towards "feature" releases.
I agree, though, that they'd better not charge as much as a regular upgrade, if they charge anything, because most people are guaranteed not to see as much value in code optimization as they do in being able to actually do cool new things with their Mac.
Apple is, and has always affirmed, that it is a hardware company, not a software company. They write good software to enhance their hardware.
As long as they stick to that premise, you're not likely to see a version of Mac OS X for the PC.
And to the retort "but they released iTunes for the PC", their thinking there was to sell more iPods. Again, writing good software to sell more hardware.
Agreed. I almost wish that they'd skipped the 10.5 release and gone directly to 10.6, complete with the associated delay. However, I also love a lot of the new features in 10.5 so I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't say that its plus-points make up for the negatives. Still, assuming that they do a good job with 10.6, it should make for a very impressive OS.
Better be cheap.
You know, I had this whole thing about how engadget is apple's spokesboard and all, and....I just don't have the stomach for it anymore.
Instead I'll wish all of you dedicated Mac users well on your expensive service pack.j
Cheers.
Steve Ballmer's reaction to the Snow Leopard announcement
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/9694/snowleopardballmergc3.jpg
G5's are 64 bit (I dual boot a completely 64 bit Gentoo on my G5). There have been 64 bit IBM PPC's for very long time. If 64 bits capability is the only requirement, all G5's are set.
can you spell all-our-engineers-are-busy-with-iphone-so-we-dont-really-have-anyone-to-work-on-macosx-now ? and the friggin thing still doesn't have a basic flash, like all the competition, rendering the camera useless 80% of the time!! geeez
"Specifically, it will "enhance the performance of OS X and set a new standard for quality... rather than focusing primarily on new features.""
Sounds like a service pack to me. Also sounds like Apple is admitting issues with Leopard.
Whatever, crap happens with OS launches. So long as Apple doesn't charge for their "service pack".
As if that's going to happen =P
While it "sounds" like a Service Pack, the details show that major plumbing works are going on. A Service Pack tends to be bug fixes and tweaks, whereas 10.6 appears to be overhauling core OS functionality, like the dispatcher and memory management. That's definitely outside of what a Service Pack delivers. The problem is, its damned hard to explain this to the layman so that they both "get it" and are excited by it, so marketing this thing is going to be very difficult, assuming that a charge will be involved. If you can't show new applications, or whizzy changes in the GUI, what do you show? I'd hate to be the marketing guys trying to sell this... Best they'll be able to do is show charts of how much faster it is, or something. *Snore*
I heard earlier today that it has Reco 7.1 with cruizeware availability right away. TALK ABOUT REVOLUTION!!!! Q.
Really, all the comments here about 'just a service pack' a ridiculously wide of the mark. I'm presuming these commenters have very little idea about software/system architecture and design...
Any muppet can add 'features' to an OS. It's really no different from writing an application. Time Machine, Cover Flow etc. come under this heading.
Re-architecting the core of an OS is an entirely different matter. This is big stuff. Really big. Designing stuff like this takes lots of very very clever people. Developing and testing this is also a big deal. ZFS, removing Carbon, full 64-bit compatibility, removing PPC and optimising x86 code all come under this heading.
This kind of thing is comparable to moving from System 9 to OS X, or DOS/Win95 to Win NT (well, if they'd done it properly and got rid of the Win32 APIs).
I repeat: this kind of thing IS NOT A SERVICE PACK. This is defining the core and direction of OS X for the next 10 years. This is important.
/rant.
Eh? I agree with the sentiments of your post, but I believe the removal of Carbon and PowerPC support are still rumor only, and hopefully completely false. Given that developer copies of the OS are available now we should get some confirmation of whether those rumors are true or not pretty soon. That said, 64-bit Carbon was pulled pretty late in the day with Leopard so anything could happen between now and next year. Still, at least about 1-years worth of hands-on testing looks to be available. That in itself is cause for celebration.
Just a quick correction: OpenCL is actually called 'OpenCL (Open Compute Library)' according to the Apple site.
Sorry, I couldn't resist... this is the first thing I thought of when I saw that picture...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58638411@N00/2569899919/
I wonder what they mean when they say that Quicktime X that is supposed to support 'all modern codecs.'
hmmm...when I think 'modern codecs,' I think Blu-ray Disc playback...
Hey I posted a video of snow leopard and some of its new features. I think it may be the only video of it being previewed; go check it out, who knows how long it will be there for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knYecgPHlPw