Not all Mac users will purr over Snow Leopard despite refinements
It turned out Apple previewed the next version of the Mac operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, at WWDC after all and validated the most improbable of last week’s rumors – that it will focus on system speed and stability while offering no snazzy new features.
Apple’s history could make Snow Leopard a tough sell, regardless of its advantages. Apple has conditioned us to expect lots of features with each iteration of Mac OS X. According to Apple’s own count, OS X 10.4 Tiger had 200 new features. Leopard boasted 300.
Yet the promise of fewer upgrade headaches and better performance on existing hardware combined with some deft marketing could have many of the Mac faithful opening their wallets in “about a year” when Snow Leopard arrives.
The ultimate issue may be the price. Some think Apple should give it away for free, but I don’t see that happening. Even without new features, OS X 10.6 will require the full attention of many Apple engineers over the next year. Apple will charge for it.
But even the most devoted Mac users likely will balk at paying Apple’s customary $129 upgrade tax. A generous Apple might charge $20 or $30, but I think $50 is probable – and fair.
We might even see tiered pricing, with current Leopard 10.5 users paying $50 and those upgrading from earlier versions paying the full $129.
Among those most resistant to paying anything more than a token upgrade fee will be Mac users who have labeled Leopard “unstable” and buggy. Such people say a “maintenance release” is just what OS X needs.
No doubt, Leopard has had its share of problems, but I don’t think its bugs are significantly worse than those of previous OS X versions.
Presumably Apple will weed out some nagging OS X issues in 10.6, but the overriding goal will be to optimize it for Intel Macs and create a foundation for features we’ll see in OS X 10.7 and beyond.
Some other thoughts on Snow Leopard and what has surfaced this week:
Why not in the keynote? One would think that a WWDC keynote would be the perfect time to publicly announce the next version of OS X. Yet Jobs and other Apple officials only spoke of 10.6 after the keynote.
Did Jobs feel Snow Leopard’s less flashy ambitions not worth mentioning? Or did he just want to keep the spotlight firmly focused on the iPhone?
Whatever the reason, it was darn weird. I’d bet most of the developers in the audience gladly would have sacrificed one of those tedious iPhone app demos for a brief overview of Snow Leopard.
No PPC support The HardMac Web site had a screenshot from the Developer Preview yesterday showing “an Intel processor” as one of the system requirements. As rumored, Mac OS X 10.6 will not run on PowerPC-based Macs.
While a few will decry the dropped support for PPC Macs -- less than three years after Apple switched to Intel chips -- it’s the right move. In fact, it appears Snow Leopard will shed most or all of the PPC code that keeps the OS more bloated than necessary.
From the Snow Leopard page on Apple’s Web site: “Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.”
Grand Central Snow Leopard’s speed enhancements will derive primarily from “Grand Central” a new technology that will better harness the power of the multiple CPU cores present in all Macs. My 8-core Mac Pro is salivating over this one.
Open CL Another performance booster, OpenCL will exploit the largely unused computing power of graphics processors. No one has spelled this out, but I’m guessing Macs with dedicated graphics cards (MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, iMac) will benefit from this far more than those that use one of Intel’s integrated graphics chipsets (MacBook, MacBook Air, Mac Mini).
QuickTime X Apple’s multimedia QuickTime framework will get an overhaul in OS X 10.6 as well. Dubbed QuickTime X, it will feature “optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback,” according to Apple’s Snow Leopard page.
64-bit support Apple plans to extend 64-bit support in OS X 10.6 to permit the use of up to 16 terabytes of memory. That’s 16,000 gigabytes of RAM, folks. Few home users today need more than 3 or 4 GB of memory, and fewer still could afford whatever terabyte RAM modules might cost. Scientists with access to federal grant money can get excited, though.
Exchange support In a move apparently aimed at enterprise customers, Snow Leopard will include support for Microsoft Exchange 2007, building it in to such apps as Mail, Address Book and iCal.
Comments
Hi David,
Re: Why not in the keynote?
This is going to be a pretty boring answer, but I'm fairly certain Snow Leopard wasn't in the publicized keynote because Apple doesn't publicly talk about unreleased products, except when they're imminently ready for release, or when they have to (such as when their hand was forced with the original iPhone announcement by the FCC filings).
-Krishen
Posted by: Krishen | June 12, 2008 10:36 AM
I take that back-- I didn't realize Apple had a Snow Leopard web page. The fact that they're publishing anything at all about it long before its release is a bit surprising.
Given this, I'm going to guess Snow Leopard wasn't mentioned so that the message about iPhone 3G rollout & app store wasn't diluted.
Posted by: Krishen | June 12, 2008 10:46 AM
"Why not in the keynote?"
Probably because there will be another WWDC and another keynote between now and Snow Leopard's release date.
Posted by: Steve W | June 12, 2008 10:53 AM
They probably thought it was too early. Steve's pitches excel when there are new features to demo, but if all he could say was, "Look, iCal opens twice as fast!", it would have gotten old pretty fast.
I would like to see the Snow Leopard video hit the air, though.
Posted by: Paul Greatbatch | June 12, 2008 11:05 AM
Actually WWDC is exactly the venue where Apple first talks about new, unreleased OSes even if the release date is not firm. The keynote usually contains such information.
Posted by: Adam | June 12, 2008 11:32 AM
They did hand out a developer's preview of Snow Leopard. You will hear more about this as details trickle out over time but the NDA is pretty strict. However, I will say the speed improvements are stunning. The entire system utilizes the core OS technologies (Image core, animation core, etc) so it is super small and blindingly fast. The basic operating system (without libraries, etc) would fit on a floppy disk. The engineering coming out of Cupertino these days is amazing.
Posted by: dave | June 12, 2008 11:52 AM
NEWS FLASH!
Scientists make a stunning discovery: It's impossible to please all the people all of the time! People were stunned and amazed at this announcement as it destroyed all previously conceived notions!
Posted by: DWalla | June 12, 2008 12:17 PM
Apple didn't want Snow Leopard to be overwhelmed by all the iPhone news, and didn't want Snow Leopard to dilute the iPhone news.
Open CL? You mean OpenGL?
Posted by: Mike Bentley | June 12, 2008 12:20 PM
EVERY new version of OS X is made for one reason and one reason alone: To make the hardware they are “currently” selling more attractive to buyers than the hardware they were selling “last year”. It’s about selling new boxes.
If last year’s customers want to upgrade, that’s OK… but it’s nowhere near being a motivating factor.
Proof: Macs “last” between five and eight years, on average*, yet anyone with hardware older than four years rarely gets invited to the party.
* (Some lemons die soon, some tanks last a decade or more. Both get web pages written about them.)
Posted by: Gerald | June 12, 2008 12:38 PM
I think another reason Apple did not make a big deal about Snow Leopard is the media. Apple has been very good at keeping their products in the news. So they tend to dribble out information slowly these days and that way they are always in the news. Good marketing sells products...
Posted by: Greg | June 12, 2008 2:11 PM
@Mike B.:
Perhaps I should have clarified. Despite the similar name OpenCL is not OpenGL, but a new technology. The name stands for Open Computing Language. You can read a bit more about it on Apple's Snow Leopard page.
Posted by: Dave Zeiler | June 12, 2008 2:28 PM
@Krishen
I think you mean that Apple generally doesn't talk about unreleased products publicly, but given that they need to discuss 10.6 with developers (who will presumably honor the NDA, although some won't), details will leak out. They know this.
No, the reason Snow Leopard was given short shrift was that the keynote was ALL about Apple's push into mobile. Other than the new hardware, there was only a bit of new information from what they told us at the SDK release. (And basically, the details of the hardware had all been leaked, so there wasn't much new info there, either.) The keynote was essentially repetitious, but that repetition served a purpose: to hammer home that the iPhone is a completely new PLATFORM. The hardware is secondary to this. As someone else put it, the software platform is the steak, the iPhone 3G is the sizzle. People focused on the hardware are missing the point.
Posted by: Marcos El Malo | June 12, 2008 2:57 PM
Jobs talks about upcoming FEATURES in the keynotes. The NDA-ed sessions are where Apple engineers disclose upcoming technology changes. No new features means nothing for Steve to talk about.
Posted by: John | June 12, 2008 3:48 PM
At this point it's not official that PPC support is dropped. Has apple made an official announcement?
While it seems that way because the preview release is intel only, Apple did the exact same thing with the first 10.5 betas, only to add PPC support later.
Also, the 10.6 preview build contains universal versions of all included apps - why would they include the PPC code in new builds of those if the plan is to dump PPC? And yes, those are new builds, they have new dates and version numbers.
Sure, it doesn't look good for PPC, and the preview release seems to indicate that it may be dropped, but it's irresponsible to report that PPC is dead based on nothing more than speculation.
Posted by: mike | June 13, 2008 10:56 AM
Who cares if Apple charges full price for Snow Leopard.
Family Pack is $199 list and $180 from Amazon so that is only $36 per Mac for my 5 Macs. Thirty-six bucks is very reasonable.
If you don't have 5 Macs, then buy some more so you can reduce the per unit cost of the upgrade.
Posted by: Dave Barnes | June 13, 2008 11:58 AM
under your 64 bit support category, you got the number wrong. 16 terabytes does not equal 16,000 GB. 16,000 is an approximate measurement. The true amount of RAM in 16 terabytes is 16384 GB.
Posted by: Bryce Campbell | June 16, 2008 3:27 PM