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This article or section contains information about scheduled or expected future software. Information about it may change as the software release approaches and more information becomes available.
Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard"
Part of the Mac OS X family
Screenshot of Mac OS X v10.6 "Snow Leopard"
Developer
Apple Inc.
Website apple.com/macosx/
Releases
Release date September 2009 (info)
Preview version 10.6 (Build 10A432) (August 12, 2009) (info)
Source model Closed source (with open source components)
License APSL and Apple EULA
Kernel type 64-bit Hybrid kernel
Update method Apple Software Update
Platform support x86, x86-64
Support status
Private Beta for Registered Developers
Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" is the next operating system by Apple. Apple's CEO Steve Jobs first announced Snow Leopard at WWDC on June 8 of 2008, and it was privately demonstrated to developers by Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Bertrand Serlet. A first public demonstration was given on WWDC 2009 by Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller and Serlet. [1] Snow Leopard will ship in September 2009 and an upgrade will be available for existing Leopard users for $29, or up to five computers with the family pack at $49. For a qualifying computer bought after June 8, 2009, the upgrade will cost $10 (with proof of purchase). Tiger users may upgrade by purchasing the Mac Box Set, a single package which will include Snow Leopard, iLife '09, and iWork '09.
The update to Mac OS X will focus on improving performance, efficiency and reducing its overall memory footprint, rather than new end-user features. This will also be the first Mac OS release dating back to System 7.1.2 that does not support the PowerPC architecture as Apple now intends to focus on its current line of Intel-based products
[img width=800 height=500]http://iwebnews.fr/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/picture-11.png[/img]
System requirements
Apple states the following basic Snow Leopard system requirements, although, for some specific applications such as QuickTime H.264 hardware acceleration support and OpenCL, a supported GPU processor is required (Nvidia 9400M or greater):[2]
Mac computer with an Intel processor (IA32 processors such as "Core Solo" and "Core Duo" will be limited to 32-bit; later x86-64 architecture processors will be able to operate in 64-bit mode)
1 GB of RAM
5 GB of free disk space
DVD drive (also accessible via Remote Disc) or external USB or Firewire hard disk drive for installation
Snow Leopard does not support PowerPC-based Macs (e.g., Power Macs, PowerBooks, iBooks, iMacs (G3-G5), all eMacs, and the G4 Mac Mini).
[edit]Changes and improvements
Apple has stated that Mac OS X "Snow Leopard" will include the following changes and improvements:
[edit]Refinements to the user interface
Without any major overhauls to the existing Leopard interface, Apple has re-written the Finder in Cocoa to take advantage of other new process improvements in Snow Leopard. These include:
Stacks will allow viewing a subfolder without launching Finder. Stacks have also been modified to include scroll-bars for folders with many files.[3]
Contextual menus which come out of Dock icons now have more options and have a new look, with a semi-transparent charcoal background and white type.
Exposé can now display all windows for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock.
Faster PDF and JPEG Icon refreshes.
Selection of columned text in PDF documents by analyzing the page layout.
Faster startup, shutdown, installation, Time Machine backup and connection establishment.
Smaller OS footprint on disk.[4]
[edit]Support for Microsoft Exchange
Mac OS X Snow Leopard will include out-of-the-box support for connecting to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers for access through Mail, Address Book, and iCal. This will make Mac OS X systems the first operating system to be bundled with Microsoft Exchange 2007 support across the range, as Microsoft Windows as of now requires the purchase of Microsoft Office Outlook.
[edit]64-bit addressing
Mac OS X Snow Leopard and most Mac OS 10.6 built-in applications have been rebuilt to leverage the 64-bit addressing space (excluding iTunes and DVD Player applications[5]), since Apple has started shipping each Mac as a 64-bit system. Snow Leopard supports up to 16 terabytes of RAM.
Performance should improve due to significant reduction of TLB flushes given the larger address space.[6]
[edit]Grand Central Dispatch
Grand Central Dispatch utilizes multiple processor cores now in every new Macintosh for more efficient performance. Due to the technical difficulties involved in making multi-core-optimized applications, the majority of applications do not effectively utilize multiple processor cores. As a result, processing power often goes unutilized. Grand Central Dispatch includes APIs to help programmers efficiently utilize these cores for parallel programming.
Grand Central Dispatch shifts thread handling focus to itself rather than leaving it to specific applications to distribute jobs evenly across cores and clears up unused memory created by inactive or old threads to achieve maximum performance. Apple is also releasing APIs for Grand Central Dispatch for developers to use in their applications and also to analyze specific blocks of code running on Grand Central Dispatch. [7]
Implementation of a new C and Objective C language feature named "Blocks" facilitate creation of code that will easily optimize to take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch. [8] [9]
[edit]OpenCL
OpenCL (Open Computing Language) addresses the power of graphics processing units to leverage them in any application, and not just for graphics-intensive applications like 3D games. OpenCL automatically optimizes for the kind of graphics processor in the Mac, adjusting itself to the available processing power. OpenCL provides consistent numeric precision and accuracy, fixing a problem that has hampered GPU-based programming in the past.
OpenCL is a C-based programming language with a structure that is already familiar to Mac OS X programmers, who can use Xcode developer tools to adapt their programs to work with OpenCL. Only the most process intensive parts of the application need to be written in OpenCL C without affecting the rest of the code. Apple has released OpenCL as an open standard that has been supported by AMD, Intel, and Nvidia.[10]
It serves a similar purpose to Nvidia's C for CUDA and Microsoft's future Direct3D 11 compute shaders.
It only works with the following Mac GPU's: NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GTS, Geforce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130 and ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870.[2]
[edit]QuickTime X
QuickTime X, the next version of QuickTime player, builds on the media technologies in Mac OS X, such as Core Audio, Core Video, and Core Animation, to deliver enhanced playback, greater efficiency, and higher quality. Apple has redesigned the QuickTime user interface to resemble the current QuickTime full-screen view, where the entire window plays only the video and all controls including the title bar fade in and out as needed.
QuickTime X supports HTTP live streaming. Unlike other streaming technologies, HTTP live streaming uses HTTP as opposed to a more specialized protocol. Thus, QuickTime X streams audio and video using any web server instead of a special streaming server, and it works reliably with common firewall and wireless router settings. HTTP live streaming is designed for mobility and can dynamically adjust movie playback quality to match the available speed of wired or wireless networks.
QuickTime X uses Mac OS X technologies such as Cocoa, Grand Central Dispatch, and 64-bit computing to deliver higher performance and enables QuickTime Player to launch up to 2.8x faster than QuickTime. QuickTime X also takes advantage of ColorSync to provide high-quality color reproduction.[10]
[edit]Common Unix Printing System
CUPS (the printing system in Mac OS X and Linux) will be updated to version 1.4 which provides improved driver, networking, and Kerberos support along with many performance improvements. CUPS 1.4 is also the first implementation of the Internet Printing Protocol version 2.1.
