Apple's "Snow Leopard" Set To Pounce Next Year

Yesterday's big news at WWDC 2008 largely was centered on Apple's new iPhone, which included a number of new applications, faster speeds, and a $200 price drop. As this generated a lot of buzz, I don't consider this as groundbreaking as Apple's second announcement: We can expect OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard, about this time next year.

Apple only provided a demonstration to select developers yesterday, so information regarding this release was a little sketchy. However, Apple wasted no time in publishing their objectives for the client and server versions for the rest of us to see.

I'll be a little honest. When Steve Jobs demoed OSX 10.5 Leopard early last year, I wasn't as excited as I had been about past OSX releases. The only technology that really impressed me was Time Machine, as I didn't expect I would find much use out of many of the other technologies. It became clear to many users and pundits that Apple had been focusing in the incorporation of new features and "eye-candy" in order to sell copies of their new operating system.

I was an early adopter of OSX. I have been using OSX since the Cheetah (10.0) days, so I have seen it's growth first-hand. Most users will agree that even though the footprint of each installation has increased (10.0 and 10.1 shipped on 1 CD-ROM; 10.3 shipped on 3 CD-ROMs, and 10.4 shipped on DVD), that the code was written tighter, and performed faster. You didn't even need a benchmarking program to test this; the increase in performance was easily noticeable -- at least until the release of 10.5.

Leopard reversed that trend. A huge amount of animation ("eye-candy") was introduced in Leopard, and at a cost of performance. Many users complained that their computer performed slower than the prior release. In fact, it was once argued that if you didn't have an intel-core processor, you needn't bother upgrading to Leopard. Sound familiar? If I had a quarter for every article I read that said Vista was an abomination and an embarrassment to Microsoft, well -- I'd be on a beach somewhere drinking Mai Tai's instead of writing this.

Early reports on OSX Snow Leopard indicate that Apple is introducing a number of technologies "under the hood". This doesn't usually excite the consumer, but it excites computer geeks like myself. Recently published articles claim a "focus" on performance -- which I understand is partially true. What is true, is the technologies they will be introducing is going to set the stage to introduce technologies and features that were only science fiction a few years ago.

And it starts with performance. Although nothing is said yet about what chipsets the new release will support, many pundits feel that it will abandon the old PowerPC architecture. At the very least, nothing has been said to give the indication Apple is declaring PowerPC obsolete. Although, if they did, it would allow them to strip out all the archaic code, and ensure the OS would run natively.

What Apple is doing, is re-writing the OS to take advantage of multi-core systems. This idea isn't new, but my understanding of this is that this technology has not been fully exploited. Apple promises to introduce a new technology -- named Grand Central, which will take advantage of multi-core systems. The end result is simple: The more cores your computer has, the faster it will run.

Obviously this will mean anyone with a dual-core mac (or more) will notice a boost in performance. Those lucky to have quad-core (or 8-core) Mac Pro's will have machines that will perform at mind-bending speeds. Single-core users (mostly Power-PC users) likely wouldn't see a boost in performance. Which leads me to believe OSX 10.6 will abandon PowerPC support.

As many of you already know, OSX 10.5. Leopard is already running circles around Vista. Windows 7 is being designed to replace a problem OS, though it's release may be too late. OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard is going to deliver performance to PC users that will make Windows look dated. And Snow Leopard will likely come at a much nicer price: $129.

Apple began to introduce their intel-core chipsets about two and a half years ago, while completing the transition about 18 months ago. The question everyone is asking, is how many Power-PC users will there be in 2009? And how many of those users will be unwilling to invest in a new computer at that time?