Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 12 May 2009 10:50
Opinion and Analysis
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The latest developer release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard is a significant milestone. Apple has told developers they can expect no further changes to the application programming interfaces (API).
APIs determine how programs interact with facilities provided by the operating system. Once an API has been frozen, developers can work on software that uses it safe in the knowledge that whatever internal changes are made by Apple, the interface will remain the same.
Snow Leopard build 10A354 includes a version of Grand Central with alterations to the API for the software designed to make it easier for programmers to exploit multi-core hardware.
Traditionally, developers have had to do much of the work needed to make their software run on multiple cores. Consequently, it isn't unusual to see one core running at capacity while another is under-utilised.
Apple claims that Grand Central "makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems."
Snow Leopard will also include OpenCL, a cross-platform technology that will allow developers to tap the spare processing power of modern graphics chips for non-graphical but calculation-intensive applications.
According to various reports, Apple told developers that no further API changes are planned for Mac OS X 10.6. This should take any remaining brakes off the development of applications taking advantage of Snow Leopard's new features.
What else is new in Snow Leopard? Please
read on.
