Apple rolls out new iPhone, new notebooks, and a new OS

Jake Widman
Tuesday, 09 June 2009 04:12

IT Industry - Strategy

The other eagerly awaited news at the WWDC was the tour of Snow Leopard, the next version of Mac OS X, first announced at WWDC 2008.

Otherwise known as OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard has always been described as primarily a performance enhancement rather than an upgrade that would introduce a lot of new features. (A clue is that the name is a variety of Leopard rather than a whole new cat.)

The rewrite is aimed at Intel Macs -- it's the first version of the OS not to support the older PowerPC architecture.

It's supposedly 45 percent faster to install than the existing Leopard and requires 6 GB less disk space.

Almost all "system applications," such as the Finder, Mail, Safari, iCal, and iChat, have been rewritten in 64-bit code for improved performance. The 64-bit code can also support up to 16 terabytes of RAM. Yes, terabytes.

Another new technology is Grand Central Dispatch, which manages the distribution of processor tasks among multiple cores. This not only increases the efficiency of Apple's own software but makes it easier for developers to write their applications to take advantage of multicore systems.

Likewise, the new OpenCL enables applications to draw on the power of graphics processors for any general purpose.

And Snow Leopard also provides built-in support for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, meaning that Mail, iCal, and Address Book can access the services provided by Exchange.

Snow Leopard will be available in September. An upgrade from Leopard will cost US$29 for a single machine and $49 for a family pack, while an upgrade from previous versions of the OS will cost the standard $129.

For what didn't happen, see Page 4.