Snow Leopard screenshots emerge, reveal Web App functionality
By Paul Miller 
posted June 21st 2008 6:46PM
posted June 21st 2008 6:46PM
[Thanks, John]
posted June 21st 2008 6:46PM
powered by gdgt
Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard
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Thanks OziD that really helps out.
Just for the record I am 16
you can already do this in osx usinf fluid...you can change the browsing agent to the iphone safari and run iphone web apps. whats more, you can set these as a menu bar item, its pretty damn cool. i have iphone versions of gmail, facebook, bank of america, and seeqpod (for music downloading) running in my menu bar. check it out if youre interested, even if safari 4.0 allows for this, i doubt theyll let you change the browsing agent or let you put it in the menu bar. i wont be using this feature as long as i have FLUID.
a few more snow leopard screens:
http://orchardspy.com/
I think that these Snow Leopard improvements are exceptional.. the best being 64-Bit & the Quicktime X. Apple has gone by us with a lot of Safari excitement& hints. On the next,next OS X I think Safari will have some pretty funky,overall features.
Well, 64-bit support will make things run a bit faster at the expense of needing more memory, but I'd argue that Grand Central and whatever they are doing to the memory manager is (potentially) more important. The expectation is to deliver more performance with current and future generation multi-core computers and making better use of the resources available. My only reservation, and therefore only saying "potentially", is that I don't know what, if anything, the developer will need to do to take advantage of this. I'm all for anything that makes better use of the hardware resources that I've bought, including the GPU if OpenCL can be used much.
lol the Apfeltalk feature : Psystar klont Xserve!
I'm largely inclined to agree with both sides of this discussion since both have their merits. Snow Leopard, against my initial expectations, looks like it could be the defining release of OS X. New features are generally nice but since Apple has already packed OS X full of them, a release that delivers pure performance and stability is something to be welcomed. As best as I can tell at the moment, the core components of the OS X foundations are going to be overhauled and that's clearly something that a "Service Pack" does not deliver (confession: I did initially think that 10.6 was a Service Pack equivalent until more information came out). So, this is going to be a big release.
But I do tend to agree with Darkroom on this - how do you market this? Regardless of how much work has been done by Apple, this is effectively 10.5+, as far as the general public are concerned. With no new features, with the exception of Exchange support, how do you advertise this without having to resort to a load of bar charts? The perceived value of this release is not going to be as high as previous releases, except to those who know what's happened, and therefore Apple can't charge the usual fee.
Incidentally, I really applaud this departure. Bill Gates is quoted as saying that Microsoft always works on new features rather than bug fixes because you can't sell bug fixes. Apple's trying something different here and it will be interesting to see whether Bill is proven correct.
What is all the fuss about? Leopard & Tiger are both great OS. The way I see it is if you have a 64 bit Intel Mac then you will have a choice in a bout a year to upgrade to Snow Leopard and have the benefit of true 64 bit support. Clean code, and smaller more efficient footprint. Or you could decide not to upgrade.
I have 4 macs, ranging from G3 PPC's to a MacPro, I am not retireing the G3's anytime soon because Tiger is still awesome & supported. I may move the Mac Pro to Snow Leopard simply to get the most from 64 bit, and that I would pay for.
The question about whether to upgrade or not could be decided by whether applications have to be compiled against the 10.6 Cocoa APIs in order to take advantage of the new low-level features to deliver the performance boost. If so then I'd expect 10.6-only applications to appear and that will likely be the deciding factor, assuming that you want to run any of them.
Why is there one menu item at the bottom in German?? i.e. Druken instead of Print. Fake me thinks.
Well, we know the feature is genuine so I'm inclined to put this down to localisation not being complete yet in the test versions of Safari 4. I could be wrong, but I believe Cocoa defaults to the primary language (usually English) if a localised version of a string is not available for the user's system language.
>>Oh please. Mac OS X was the first OS to have GUI hardware-acceleration. Vista Aero and Compiz/Fusion didn't come along until years later.
---------
Um, No...
1) Actually Windows 3.x and OS/2 were the first to have hardware acceleration with the IBM 8514. 2D acceleration was in Video cards was built around the Win16/Win32 GDI functions for the next decade.
2) OS X - Today STILL DOES NOT HAVE 3D hardware acceleration if you want to be accurate. They use a 3D surface for the composer, and that is it. In contrast
3) Vista is the first commercial OS that fully uses true 3D hardware acceleration, as it uses the GPU (back to DirectX7) for everything from font drawing to bitmap decompression to even some GDI/GDI+ drawing features, and WPF is designed around 3D hardware acceleration. Plus the Composer like OS X (Except Vista has a real Vector composer, not just a bitmap/texture composer.)
OS X Leopard to this day only uses the 3D GPU for a surface and textures for the bitmap windows. For Core animation and other 'Core' features it uses Intel SSE functions to try to speed up GUI processing, no video card dependance. (This is why you can STILL run Pear PC in a Virtual Window and get the same animations and GUI effects)
I swear the Mac fanbois believe all the crap Apple Marketing pretends is real. I actually wish OS X did do what the fanbois think it does, but it just doesn't.
Here is another fanboi Mac myth: OS X is NOT 64bit. It is still a 32bit OS with a 32bit kernel, it only enables 64bit memory space for applications but takes advantage of NONE of the other 64bit features, unlike a native Linux 64 or Vista x64 that are REAL 64bit OSes.
Do all Mac users think Apple invented everything? If so I can provide a list of about 100 things you use every 'minute' of the day that are Microsoft GUI design technologies that are throughout the OS X interface.
Apple is the ultimate copy machine company, from the original Lisa/Mac GUI to even their 'multi-touch' that is copied directly from a TED conference several years ago - which is why the TED people to this day are shocked at the audacity that Apple would try to patent the multi-touch gesturing, as it was demoed to the IT world years before Apple used it. Apple even copied the 'made up' gestures that the presenter at TED literally made up before the conference as 'examples' of how to use multi-touch, expecting people to further the concepts and were shocked Apple even kept the made up gesture ideas in the iPhone interface.
Then if you ever want to talk OS architecture or anything 'technical' the OS X people will yell OS X = BSD = Great, and have no freaking clue what BSD is, how OS X uses a BSD kernel API concept and how OS X is NOT BSD. That is when you run and don't even try to talk kernel features concepts as they are just filled with Marketing slogans form the Apple bumpersticker marketing and have NO FReAKING CLUE...
I am really tired of the 'Snow Jobs' mentality of OS X being the greatest, the first, the blah blah, when NONE of it is true, so knock it off you insane fanatics...
Does it even matter?
I like OSX more than windows.
its personal preference.
you can go on all day about how apple wasnt the first, isnt the best,
has never been the best,
trying to confuse people who dont understand all the terms,
and people will still like OSX more.
sure, some are fanboys,
but some peope actually do like OSX more.
snow leopard, btw, is 64 bit.
if you want to talk copying,
see how microsoft got their first break.
bill gates worked for jobs.
yes, apple has copied things,
but dont pretend microsoft is innocent in that field.
I'm an Apple fanboy but you do have some great points so kudos to you.
sure, nothings truly invented by Apple first. But they are always the one to successfully innovate & implement the new technologies. Floppy Disk, CD-ROM, USB, Built-in Wireless, etc? Great, Vista is the first commercial OS to take full advantage of 3D rendering, but wtf does it matter? It sucks.
Do all Mac users think Apple invented everything? If so I can provide a list of about 100 things(NEEDS CITATION) you use every 'minute' of the day that are Microsoft GUI design technologies that are throughout the OS X interface.
Apple is the ultimate copy machine company(NEEDS CITATION), from the original Lisa/Mac GUI(NEEDS CITATION) to even their 'multi-touch' that is copied directly from a TED conference several years ago - which is why the TED people to this day are shocked at the audacity that Apple would try to patent the multi-touch gesturing(NEEDS CITATION), as it was demoed to the IT world years before Apple used it(YOUTUBE.COM - TED). Apple even copied the 'made up' gestures that the presenter at TED literally made up before the conference as 'examples' of how to use multi-touch(YOUTUBE.COM - TED), expecting people to further the concepts and were shocked Apple even kept the made up gesture ideas in the iPhone interface(NEEDS CITATION).
Then if you ever want to talk OS architecture or anything 'technical' the OS X people will yell OS X = BSD = Great, and have no freaking clue what BSD is(NEEDS CITATION), how OS X uses a BSD kernel API concept(NEEDS CITATION) and how OS X is NOT BSD. That is when you run and don't even try to talk kernel features concepts as they are just filled with Marketing slogans form the Apple bumpersticker marketing and have NO FReAKING CLUE...
I am really tired of the 'Snow Jobs' mentality of OS X being the greatest, the first, the blah blah, when NONE of it is true(NEEDS CITATION), so knock it off you insane fanatics...
-------
While you make some good arguments, I have flagged where you need citations to support the claims you make. Also, you use extreme words like EVERY, ALL, THE ULTIMATE. Granted they have appropriated things, but all artists do and there is no way not to. We are a victim of our experience and perception and the subconcious is an amazingly powerful tool. Many of apples current features are appropriations. E.G. Coverflow. Apple will buy out the company and use their technology. They pass it on the to consumer at no extra charge. itunes = free music management. Also, whether or not they included coverflow into leopard would not have affected the price. also, think about Dashboard widgets.
"Vista is the first commercial OS to take full advantage of 3D rendering"
...and all of your computer resources
...and your wallet
Safari 4 is already available, you know, and it doesn't take too long to find it online and download. I got it for Windows, and the web application feature is "ok".
What's certain is that javascript is insanely fast now, making Gmail seem almost like a native app. :-D
Why are the commands (New Tab, Save as etc.) in English while the Print command is in German (Drucken)??
Fake or what?
What. Localisation hasn't been completed yet. Simple as that.
@ Kelmon,
Excellent point; I forget Gates had said that. Optimizations and cleaning up the code for future faster and more stable updates is also hard to market. That is why I think Apple choose to include the word Leopard in the name of the new OS X version and why they are advertising no new features when 10.6 has the most impressive features we have seen in OS X. While they want people who can upgrade to buy Snow Leopard, I think they don't care as much as previous builds and why they aren't going to focus on people with current Macs, hence the statement and similar name. By doing this now Apple saves a great deal of money of R&D on for 10.6 and makes it much, much easier to build a better OS in the future. Apple has always looked to the longterm, and this appears to be no exception.
Old News: Used it weeks ago with Safari 4 Developer Preview...
Next Step by Apple: Integrate Sync of WepApps with the iPhone !! :)
Thre is no Web Application without the Flash Player VM, seriously... you can't compare Google Docs to Buzzword.com
"10.0 was slow as shit, 10.1 was reworked from the ground up and was free."
10.1 was not reworked from the ground up. 10.0 was the first of it's kind and had tons of unoptimized code. 10.1 and many further releases took the existing strong foundation that was created in 10.0 and optimized it while also implementing further speed enhancing technologies.
screenshotS? next time at least link to screenshotS.
Is it me or its really 1 screenshot?
snow leopard: the official OS of the WILD BOYZ
tomo
Hm.. I like the idea, though tbh honest, unless they package more stuff in than just running the app in it's own process, we're just back at tabless browsing imo (with each browser running independently).
if they do stuff like the Prism guys are talking about (access to local storage, 3d acceleration etc.) then I can see the point in it, but still not 100% it's so earthshattering... I might just not be seeing the "light" so to speak...
and what about legal issues... would ie. Microsoft want Live mail running as a "local app"? And is it that interesting for that many apps... I mean suer you could run Gmail, Live Mail, etc. as an "app", which would probably be great. But how would stuff like, links & other websites work... if someone mails me a link, will it open a browser window? that will mean more loading & memory usage, but the benefit would be that if that browser window crashes it won't affect your "mail web app". Stuff like Google Docs is probably even more "relevant" as it would be more like a typical office application, but still without the speed gains, as it would still be the same Javascript engine running it.
OK as same can go with Vista this letter I am about to type from your reply is going to make a 360º turn and hit you in the face
Ok here we go, The "F" -keys aka function keys can be disabled easily.
Vista on the other hand, all we need is bloatware. I mean come on my face here, its quite ridiculous in my opinion.
Apple I think has an eye one everything here, good hardware as number one, two, appearances making the outcome of the mac attractive instead a cheap looking plastic box with cheap parts that wont last the day after you bought it or to be generous a week. Three, I can go on about it but you get the idea, okay, "Speed", sense the 8 cores has been out by Apple, I haven't notice an 8 core to come out the day Apple released it. prove me wrong I mean I don't like to make false accusations here. Lets not even go anywhere in the virus section because I don't want to get one. . . . . . wait I can't, thats right.
I am sure Apple has something up their sleeves to become once again a triumph to the consumers tasting. I am sure Windows 7 will be ooow awww with nifty features, but for what 15 minutes of fame? Lets get realistic here. Apple has the TV Tuner and all that you so called fake back there. But what can we benefit from it if we all get it for free anyways? Instead of taking $400 out of our wallets to get the best of the best which we only pay 100-120 for the best OS and there is only one not multiple operating systems to choose from that may or may not work for your computers requirements.
I am sure Apple has completed the Ram and multi-cores and has a wide range of employees like Microshit cough excuse me Microsoft employees. & what better way to express their new technology into one of those cool ads they do on tv with the white backgrounds and the two funny jokers lol jk but yeah I am for both sense I have both installed so far I only use Vista to play their latest games and Leopard for photography, graphic design, engineering, etc.... My only concern Is I wish Apple would go with the gaming a tad more then to wait longer after the pc versions come out.
Oh some say 2010 the internet will run dry or so they say 2010-2012 the world will end then any of this won't matter but yeah I don't see it happening as I am agnostic must see to believe.
My message to this Snow Leopard to conclude my lecture:
"In the next 90minutes, everything will be solved, by my penis - Family Guy" -
Instead of "primary are," I would use "are primarily."