SnowLeopard
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Snow Leopard soon to sport a new "marble" look?
Apple's been saying all along that Snow Leopard would be more about under-the-hood performance and stability enhancements than huge feature changes, so take this with a grain of salt, but AppleInsider claims that a forthcoming 10.6 developer beta could potentially feature a new UI codenamed "marble." The new appearance is said to be darker and sleeker than the current Unified / Aqua look, and speculation is rampant that the new scrollbars in the current versions of iTunes and iPhoto offer a peek into the future, along with the well-circulated mockup of the new QuickTime X player seen above. We'll see if Apple breaks with its plan to focus solely on the internals soon enough -- but for right now, we're wondering what your biggest gripes with the current OS X interface are, because we certainly know ours. What do you want fixed? Sound off!
Will Snow Leopard's UI be darker, slimmer?
We're just a few months away from WWDC (I guess, Apple hasn't announced dates yet, and the delay might stem from pinning down a release date for iPhone OS 3.0) but the speculation on Snow Leopard is in full swing. Developers have had builds of Snow Leopard for a while now, but according to AppleInsider there are some interface tweaks that have yet to be unveiled. VentureBeat posits the new look in Snow Leopard might already be in place with some apps -- take a look at the scroll bars and darker trim in iTunes 8 or iPhoto '09. This could be a harbinger of UI's to come, or it could be the sort of UI schizophrenia Apple has suffered from in the not-so-distant past. AppleInsider goes further, creating a mockup of what QuickTime in Snow Leopard might look like. To me, it looks a lot like Windows Vista. As always with Apple, we'll just have to wait until they show us to be certain. Even then it's a bit of a moving target. No doubt they will announce all the features and shiny new look of Snow Leopard to much fanfare, and there will be much rejoicing. [Via VentureBeat]
Leaked Snow Leopard screenshots and video show new Stacks, install options
We haven't seen too many Snow Leopard screenshots leak out, but it looks like a few more have finally surfaced, and they seem to show some interesting -- if minor -- interface enhancements. Most notably, Stacks now allows nested browsing, so if you click on a folder in the stack view, the old stack drops back and you can navigate the folder contents -- the old way just opened a Finder window. Other improvements include a Put Back menu item for accidentally-trashed items, a redesigned Keyboard Shortcuts prefpane that might encourage people to actually use it, and what looks like a welcome new installer option to only install printer drivers for printers that have been used with your machine. That alone should cut down on Snow Leopard's install size -- now if Apple would just figure out that we don't need 200 language packs by default, we'd be really getting somewhere. All the images in the gallery, and video of the new Stacks behavior after the break.Update: Flickr user Stellarolla pinged us to share one more shot showing some preset HDTV modes, check it after the break![Via AppleInsider]%Gallery-45884%
Rumor: Snow Leopard screenshots
There's a post up at World Of Apple today with what seems to be screenshots of interface changes in Snow Leopard build 10A261, which was released in February. Nothing major, but nice little improvements.For example, there's a re-designed Keyboard Shortcuts control pane that lets users define shortcuts as easily as restore the defaults. Another cool trick is the "Put Back" button available when browsing the contents of the trash from a Finder window. One click restores a previously doomed file to its former location. A stay of execution, if you will. I think that's pretty neat -- veteran Mac users may remember the similar "Put Away" feature, ???-Y, which has gone missing from Leopard (and Macenstein wants it back).However, I imagine most people will be more excited about an option to browse nested folders within a stack. The screenshot depicts a stack displayed in grid view, its parent (still in grid view) off in a corner.Unlike the ridiculous "enhancements" that George Lucas made to the original Star Wars movies, I'm looking forward to the tweaking Leopard will receive with version 10.6. [Via AppleInsider]
Rumor: Snow Leopard to include QuickTime Pro
At long last, Apple will (allegedly) stop charging customers for the "Pro" features of QuickTime by building them into Snow Leopard. Finally.You'll recall that Apple has been gradually increasing the options available to the free version of QuickTime, like full screen playback mode. Other features of the Pro version -- like simple editing and export options -- were unlocked with in a recent developer's build of Snow Leopard.Of course, this may be a way to let developers test all aspects of QuickTime, but we're hoping that's not the case. With the popularity of Apple's video editing software like iMovie and Final Cut, it seems that simple cut-and-paste should be free with QuickTime. Launching one of those apps just to complete a simple edit is overkill. Kind of like swatting a fly with a Buick.We've got our fingers crossed.
Snow Leopard gets hip to CoreLocation and multitouch
We're in the Q1 2009, folks, and while we'd love to believe that the release of Snow Leopard is imminent, it looks like all we'll have to be sustained by is rumors and innuendo for the time being. According to "insiders" at, well, Apple Insider, the eagerly awaited operating system will be taking some cues from the iPhone, adding both CoreLocation and opening up the multitouch trackpad to third-party developers. Since MacBooks don't currently have GPS, we're guessing CoreLocation will be powered by Skyhook's WiFi-positioning service, but anything can happen down the line. With all the buzz over Google Latitude making its way onto all manner of devices, including the G1, select Blackberrys, and (someday!) the iPhone and iPod touch. With Mac sales being particularly laptop-heavy lately, it looks like location awareness is shaping up to be the must-have functionality of the coming year. Fabulous, darling. Fabulous.
Snow Leopard to include location and multi-touch SDK tools?
AppleInsider claims that Snow Leopard will include developer hooks that will determine a Mac's geographical location and provide additional multi-touch support for Mac laptops with glass trackpads. While Macs don't typically come with GPS built-in, the location determination feature will work similarly to the original iPhone and iPod touch: Using triangulation between several known WiFi locations, a technique introduced by a company called Skyhook. There are tools you can purchase to take advantage of Skyhook positioning today, but Snow Leopard will give developers the option of including them in any application. Similarly, Cory mentioned some time ago that betas of Firefox 3 already take advantage of multi-touch gestures. AppleInsider's source claims the framework has been planned for inclusion since June. The two sets of developer hooks will bring Mac OS X closer to its sibling platform, the iPhone. MacDailyNews claims it's a union that will produce a "MacBook touch," for which prototypes they claim exist today. [Via MacDailyNews.]
'Marble' to be the next look-and-feel for Mac OS X?
Snow Leopard, the next major version of Mac OS X, will include minor tweaks to the user interface, according to MacRumors' Arnold Kim. "The new theme will likely involve tweaks to the existing design and perhaps a 'flattening' of Aqua in-line with Apple's iTunes and iPhoto interface elements," Kim writes. AppleInsider's Kate Marsal posted a screenshot of some controls purported to be part of the new interface, dubbed "Marble." It's unclear where the screenshot came from, as Kim writes that development builds have so far used Leopard's version of the Aqua theme. They could easily be Photoshopped screenshots of iPhoto or iTunes, so take that with a grain of salt. Daring Fireball's John Gruber wrote that Marble was the codename for the new interface scheme in his Macworld predictions roundup, but said later he was wrong when it was not announced during the keynote. He wagered that the look would feature "iTunes-style scrollbars everywhere, darker window chrome, and a light-text-on-dark-background menu bar." Snow Leopard is rumored to be released before the end of March.
Leaked Snow Leopard image potentially indicates a 32 / 64-bit divide
Apple's said it's taking a break from adding flashy features to OS X to focus on the foundations and stability of the system with Snow Leopard, and this latest leaked screenshot might indicate that those foundations are moving to 64 bits -- it shows System Preferences saying it needs to restart in 32-bit mode to open the Network panel. That's certainly interesting, given the rumors that Apple's dropping support for non-Intel machines and maybe even 32-bit Intel processors with this release, but it could also just mean that whoever took this screenshot doesn't have a 64-bit-friendly version of that preference pane installed. (We're guessing the latter, since there are a lot of 32-bit only Core Duo Intel Macs out there.) Restarting apps to change modes seems pretty clunky, though -- shades of System 7 and the 32-bit Enabler, for the olds -- so we're hoping Apple's got a more elegant solution in the works. Macworld's just around the corner, we're sure we'll hear more from Steve Phil soon.
Put Leopard on a diet while waiting for Snow Leopard to be released
We've all been there; we've all had that sickening feeling that comes from seeing "Macintosh HD" with less than 1 GB of available space. If you're staring at your Finder wondering where you can find some additional space without having to swap out the hard drive or buying a new Mac altogether Computerworld is here to help. They have an article up on the many ways it is possible to get rid of unnecessary files in Leopard as well as disable features you may not be using all in an effort to slim down and speed up your Mac while you wait for Snow Leopard.Many of the tips involve using software that we have previously mentioned, some of which are free and others are not. The list of tools used include such gems as Xslimmer for removing PowerPC compatibility, Monolingual for stripping out languages that are non-native to you, as well as DiskInventoryX for getting a graphical representation of where all your hard drive space went. The article also discusses improving performance by disabling 3D effects that use up GPU cycles for those users who prefer fast to pretty as well as increasing the amount of RAM installed in your system.While Snow Leopard may still be some time away the tips provided are a great collection of steps that can be completed to help any Mac squeeze out some better performance and additional hard drive space. If you have any tips that aren't mentioned add them to the comments!Finder icon courtesy of FHKE's Flickr stream
Apple turns next operating system's 3D prowess up to 11
Apple, not shy of shaking things up in the interface department, has been sitting on its laurels since the release of OS X earlier this decade. Sure, iPod changed the way we think about music and iPhone has completely turned the mobile phone industry around, but the Mac OS has been relatively static in terms of how users navigate within the environment since the release of 10.0. The good news, however, is that Apple is working on a way to change the way we interact with our systems. MacRumors has uncovered information on a patent titled "Multi-Dimensional Desktop" which depicts a three-dimensional environment that looks somewhat like viewing a room from one end. The interface has methods for literally stacking files and minimized windows on top of one another as well as for dragging interface items along the multiple surfaces. An interface such as this would be fairly performance-intensive and the ratification of OpenCL along with the impending release of Snow Leopard could be just the shoes that need to drop for this to become a reality. There is no guarantee that this will ever be seen outside of Cupertino or the PTO, but if Apple does implement this interface design it would bring a whole new meaning to the term "wallpaper." Click the read link for an additional image from the patent application.[Via Engadget]
OpenCL 1.0 ratified; is Snow Leopard now ready for launch?
There's been quiet anticipation for the last 6 months for OpenCL (Open Computing Language), which is an Application Programming Interface standard allowing developers to take advantage of the power of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) in parallel with multi-core processors. The result? Applications become much faster and responsive. Apple announced in June that support for OpenCL would be built into Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). The Khronos Group, an industry consortium that creates open-standard, royalty-free APIs, put OpenCL on the fast track as a result, and announced yesterday that OpenCL 1.0 has been ratified by all of the consortium members. Now that OpenCL has been officially blessed by the members of the consortium, could Snow Leopard be close behind? There has been speculation that the latest iteration of Mac OS X could be released as soon as Macworld Expo 2009 in early January. Snow Leopard, along with an announcement of quad-core iMacs, could throw a little fire into what is becoming an increasing chilly Expo. TUAW is attending Macworld Expo 2009 in force this year, so stay tuned for the latest news about Snow Leopard.
MacFUSE updated to 2.0 now includes 64-bit and Snow Leopard support
MacFUSE is awesome. It allows you to mount a remote server's filesystem, view your iTunes library in Finder, read from and write to NTFS hard drives, and much more! With all of this functionality crammed into a free product one would think it could not get any better. Amazingly, it has.The latest version of MacFUSE was released yesterday and with it comes several new features, including 64-bit support for Leopard systems with 64-bit processors, experimental support for the impending release of Mac OS X 10.6 (AKA Snow Leopard), and even a new preference pane that eases the installation and upgrade procedure of MacFUSE. The preference pane is a GUI for the Install/Update Engine introduced in version 1.7 for the purpose of providing developers a simpler mechanism for distributing MacFUSE with their FUSE filesystem packages. More information about what is included can be found in the project's changelog.MacFUSE is a free download and, unlike the previous release, includes support for 10.4 and 10.5 in the same package.[via Lifehacker]
OpenCL 1.0 spec released, GPUs everywhere to get a workout
How time flies -- it was just a few weeks ago that the OpenCL spec was finalized and sent out for final legal review, and now it's here and ready to go. Over 20 partner companies (including AMD, NVIDIA, and, somewhat surprisingly, Intel) have signed on to the parallel programming standard originally proposed by Apple as part of Snow Leopard, and the final spec should allow apps to tap into multi-core CPUs, GPUs, DSPs and even variants of the Cell chip for everything from raw number crunching to interfacing with OpenGL. Sounds hot -- now we'll just have to see how Microsoft counters with the GPU acceleration expected to be built into Windows 7.
OpenCL spec gets finalized, Snow Leopard says "purrrr"
It's just taken a relatively short six months, but it looks like the team behind the Open Computing Language (or OpenCL) have already delivered the final spec for the standard, which puts it right on track for inclusion in OS X Snow Leopard. In fact, the team credits Apple with helping them meet the "impossible deadline," with Intel's Tim Mattson saying that Apple's decision to "support it in Snow Leopard was a huge plus to us," even if it forced them to "divorce our families" and left them "almost dead." The standard itself, which allows for greater leveraging of GPUs and other hardware, isn't quite ready to be implemented just yet, however, as it still has to go through the final stage of being vetted by all 20 partner companies for patent issues and whatnot. Once that's done, which will take a "minimum" of 30 days, they'll release the actual spec and begin the usual round demos.[Via Ars Technica]
MacNN: Snow Leopard could ship 1Q 2009
Snow Leopard could ship as early as January, according to comments made by the director of Apple's Unix Technology Group. Jordan Hubbard said at the Large Installation System Administration conference last week that Mac OS X 10.6 will ship in the first quarter of 2009, according to MacNN. This primes the Macworld Expo rumor pump: Scheduled for January 5, Steve could debut new quad-core iMacs in addition to showing off this new version of the operating system. This is not to be confused with Mac OS X 10.5.6, a minor update, which could be available as soon as Friday.
Apple: Snow Leopard release in Q1 2009
Oops. Jordan Hubbard, Director of Apple's Unix Technology Group, made a boo boo. The slide above was pulled from the deck presented last week at the LISA (Large Installation System Administration) conference. Up until now, Apple had only been willing to say that OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard would be ready "in about a year" -- that was back in early June at WWDC. You just know that this will have Steve fuming given Apple's tight control over information. One thing is perfectly clear: the race is on for both Redmond (rumored to be shooting for a mid-2009 Windows 7 launch) and Cupertino, nobody wants to be second with their next gen OS release.[Via MacRumors]Read -- Presentation [Warning: PDF]
The Onion pits Snow Leopard against Windows 7, everyone wins
After that earlier piece on global e-waste, we thought you might want something to lighten the mood. Fortunately, The Onion is ready with a sardonic, blood-shot eye turned to the respective OS releases on the way from Cupertino and Redmond. Click on through for the full comparison while we pack up things from this lame, euro coffee shop. [Via Daring Fireball]
AI: 'Snow Leopard' to include rewritten Finder
AppleInsider claims that Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will feature (among other things) a Finder re-written entirely in Cocoa. The Finder has remained Carbon-based for the entire history of Mac OS X so far, but the long journey from those frameworks towards Cocoa seems to be reaching its end for Apple's homegrown apps. Test versions of the new Finder are being seeded to select developers in revisions of Snow Leopard with build numbers beginning with 10A. AppleInsider notes that seeds could be more broadly available to the developer community as early as tomorrow. As Ars Technica noted in June, Apple apps will also apparently come "wrapped" in Cocoa. Further deprecation of some Carbon APIs seems likely as well, but it's unclear yet as to how Snow Leopard's support for Carbon apps will differ from plain-ol' Leopard's. In addition to the Finder, improvements to support for Microsoft Exchange are expected for Mail, iCal, and Address Book. Also included is a new option for booting a Mac called ImageBoot. ImageBoot takes NetBoot a step further, allowing administrators to boot a workstation into Mac OS X directly from an image on a local disk.
Vista, OS X updates could bring significant SSD speed gains
It's been a real roller coaster ride of emotions with SSD. The once lauded (at least in our hearts) savior of all things computing has, in real life, provided us with lackluster and even controversial performance gains, while battery improvements haven't been revolutionary and the prices still aren't exactly wallet-friendly. Most of that is unlikely to change in the next couple of years, but there's still plenty to be fixed in the short term. Samsung is working with Microsoft to define optimum packet sizes and best practices for reading and writing files to SSD as a potential update for Windows Vista, which is particularly optimized to work best with traditional hard drives. Sun is also working to improve SSD support with its next-gen ZFS file system, which in addition to powering its Solaris OS should be making an appearance in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, at least in the server version. There's clearly still plenty of untapped potential in SSD, let's just hope the powers that be figure this stuff out sooner rather than later.[Via Mac Rumors]
