[PeopleLikeFrank]

... and that's about it for now. They're going to be showing off a bit for devs at WWDC, but didn't have anything at the keynote. We might find out some more info as the week progresses.

[Janichsan]

Quote

We might find out some more info as the week progresses.

Or right now.

Apple has released a ...er... press release concerning Snow Leopard. No huge new features, mainly performance boosts.

EDIT: Woah, now it's gone again. But Macworld has at least some of the info on their site.

But two very interesting sounding new technologies at the OS's core: OpenCL (which appears to be so revolutionary, you can't even find it on Google – yet) and Quicktime X.

[teflon]

Well, I applaud them for taking the step to half acknowledge that they need to stop and fix all those things which theyve done wrong. And Im looking forward to everything integrating much better (But not to the inevitable fall out which will be that the Dock will control, practically, everything. Id prefer separate processes thank you).

I also like how theyve half realised that quicktime right now sucks. Needs to be faster and much much more open. Im talking actual format support.

I am, however, slightly disappointed that they will be charging top dollar for this, as evidenced by calling it 10.6. Yes, developing their OS is expensive etc. etc. etc. but I personally feel that for this particular release, a knock down price would be much more appropriate.

and I was right that it wouldnt be January 2009. Not to mention theres nothing on dropping PPC support.

[charmin]

I presume we're assuming that OpenCL isn't the same OpenCL that's all over the Internet? I don't see why that couldn't be part of 10.6 - already runs on Darwin, and supports PPC/Intel. Maybe security is about to be a 'big thing' for Apple?

Edit: Spaz post can be ignored:

Quote

Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard."

[Janichsan]

charmin, on June 9th 2008, 11:59 PM, said:

I presume we're assuming that OpenCL isn't the same OpenCL that's all over the Internet?

I suppose not. I couldn't find anything about that OpenCL that Apple describes - not on Google, not on Wikipedia. That must be really something new or very obscure.

Interestingly, on Apple's official Snow Leopard page (yes, there is one!!), it's not called "Open Computing Language", but "Open Compute Library". Hmmm...

[charmin]

I for one think that Snow Leopard will be awesome. I'm really look forward to Apple spending a whole year on tightening up the OS and the performance increases, not decreases, we can look forward to. Specifically, better multi-core support is going to be great for games and hopefully video playback*.

* I'm currently under the impression that either QuickTime doesn't use both cores well, or is just bloatware and VLC doesn't use both cores well. Either way, my iMac can't play high bitrate 1080p content because there isn't a well optimised media player on the Mac**, and an update like this might be the kick up the arse it needs.

** Looks like XBMC for Leopard is faster than any other player I've tried so far, even if it's unstable.

[Tesseract]

Janichsan, on June 10th 2008, 06:37 AM, said:

Apple has released a ...er... press release concerning Snow Leopard. No huge new features, mainly performance boosts.

EDIT: Woah, now it's gone again.

Here 'tis.

[Thain Esh Kelch]

Well, I for one is looking extremely forward to 10.6... I believe it is something needed, and will give us an incredible optimized system.. OpenCL and Quicktime X sounds awesome!

[AussieMacGamer]

Now all they need is to roll out a DirectX Conversion Kit for windows games developers, and there set. I don't really want to have to pay for this, though it does sound exactly what OS X needs.




But cmon', Snow Leopard is the stupidest name ever concieved.

[teflon]

but snow leopards are incredibly cool animals.
watch a documentary on them, its truly amazing.

[the Battle Cat]

AussieMacGamer, on June 10th 2008, 05:16 AM, said:

But cmon', Snow Leopard is the stupidest name ever concieved.

I have an uncle who is a snow leopard. He could unzip your skin in 3 seconds with just one claw, pack you in snow for spring, then bound into a tree and wait for your mom to come looking for you.

[mattw]

Better use of multiple CPU cores, making use of GPU power and a overhaul of Quicktime sound great. That could really improve the value of a Mac Pro. I really hope that Apple also spend lots of time optimizing Mac OS X's OpenGL. We need better performance, features and reliability. Hopefully then we won't keep having situations where a new point release of OS X is required to run a new game because it a feature isn't supported or the performance would be unacceptable.

[MightySlugMan]

10.6 website is up as well

http://www.apple.com...sx/snowleopard/

Sounds great on paper. Now if the mini and Macbook got cheap-o gfx cards (not integrated junk), then Apple's low end comps would be a true bargain.

[Sneaky Snake]

Anybody read about there new RAM thing. It appears that there claiming that the Mac Pro will be able to hold 16 TB of RAM here's the quote

Quote

To accommodate the enormous amounts of memory being added to advanced hardware, Snow Leopard extends the 64-bit technology in Mac OS X to support breakthrough amounts of RAM — up to a theoretical 16TB, or 500 times more than what is possible today (16 TB divided by 500 is 32 gb, the current limit for the Mac Pro). More RAM makes applications run faster, because more of their data can be kept in the very fast physical RAM instead of on the much slower hard disk.

-Snake

[Sneaky Snake]

the Battle Cat, on June 10th 2008, 10:32 AM, said:

I have an uncle who is a snow leopard. He could unzip your skin in 3 seconds with just one claw, pack you in snow for spring, then bound into a tree and wait for your mom to come looking for you.

What kind of cats were your parents?

[charmin]

I don't think they're implying you'll ever fit 16TB in a Pro - aside from the obvious problems (a lack of 4TB strips, finite money in the world...), I expect the motherboard might be limiting in some regard. Unfortunately, they also gave us the OS-wide 64-bit support spiel for Leopard, and if they're still peddling it, they obviously didn't make the support very complete. I thought they already had 64-bit memory addressing licked.

[Sneaky Snake]

charmin, on June 10th 2008, 06:31 PM, said:

I don't think they're implying you'll ever fit 16TB in a Pro - aside from the obvious problems (a lack of 4TB strips, finite money in the world...), I expect the motherboard might be limiting in some regard. Unfortunately, they also gave us the OS-wide 64-bit support spiel for Leopard, and if they're still peddling it, they obviously didn't make the support very complete. I thought they already had 64-bit memory addressing licked.

Ya, i'm pretty sure there not gonna have that either unless 1 TB sticks magically appear and they double the RAM slots. But they do say "break through amounts of RAM" so maybe it'll be able to hold double the RAM it does now or something, i dunno


-Snake

[BenRoethig]

charmin, on June 10th 2008, 05:31 PM, said:

I don't think they're implying you'll ever fit 16TB in a Pro - aside from the obvious problems (a lack of 4TB strips, finite money in the world...), I expect the motherboard might be limiting in some regard. Unfortunately, they also gave us the OS-wide 64-bit support spiel for Leopard, and if they're still peddling it, they obviously didn't make the support very complete. I thought they already had 64-bit memory addressing licked.

Right. What they did do is to set things up for future versions of OS. We're using more than 30 times more memory than we did 10 ten years ago. Ten years from now a Terrabyte of RAM for a high end system might be possible.

[bobbob]

Janichsan, on June 9th 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

OpenCL (which appears to be so revolutionary, you can't even find it on Google – yet)

CUDA and CTM did it long before, so it's not revolutionary. About the only thing you can say it evolves is maybe providing a single front-end for different brands of GPUs. If ATI and nVidia had cared, they could have both provided back-ends for either CUDA or CTM instead of competing.

Quote

and Quicktime X

Considering how awful Quicktime is for anything but easy development of horrible backends and crapware video players, this should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Maybe, just maybe, they'll get something easier but as capable as DirectShow (or Windows LiveShow 2008TM Pro Enterprise Team Edition, whatever it's being called today), but probably it'll still suck monkey balls for codec quality and performance like usual. I want PureVideo HD and Avivo HD, dammit.

[Eric5h5]

They're not claiming the Mac Pro could hold 16TB of RAM, they're just saying it would support 16TB if it were possible. Note the use of the word "theoretical".

--Eric