Category — Snow Leopard

Prince McLean, AppleInsider
Once past the fairly painless installation of the Windows 7 beta, Mac users will be struck with deja vu. This new version of Windows looks more like Mac OS X than any previous edition ever offered by Microsoft.

Exploring Windows 7 for Mac users
Exploring Windows 7 on the Mac: installation via Boot Camp
Exploring Windows 7 on the Mac: the Taskbar
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Prince McLean, AppleInsider
While Microsoft is working to refine its flagship operating system to be more palatable to a wide audience of PC users, Apple is working to keep Mac OS X a key attraction to Mac hardware to woo potential switchers and retain its loyal users. Here’s what’s known about Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Previous Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard segments

Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: competitive origins
Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Microsoft’s comeback plan
Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Apple ups the ante
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Prince McLean, AppleInsider

As the previous segment detailed, Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard aren’t competing directly; instead, each is part of competitive strategy to either grow the Mac user base at Microsoft’s expense, as Apple has been doing, or in Microsoft’s case, to stop the hemorrhaging market share losses and reclaim leadership of desktop operating system development.

Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: competitive origins
Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard: Microsoft’s comeback plan
Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Apple ups the ante
[Read more →]

Prince McLean, AppleInsider
The tech media is working to pit Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 7 release against Apple’s new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, but the two products aren’t really direct competitors.

The operating system most users end up with will depend upon what hardware they choose to buy, not the specific feature details of the software that system happens to run. History reveals that the hardware decision isn’t going to be based primarily upon features.

Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: competitive origins
Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard: Microsoft’s comeback plan
Windows 7 vs. Mac OS X Snow Leopard: Apple ups the ante
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[Read more →]

Daniel Eran Dilger

Two years ago, Apple teased Macworld Expo audiences with the line, “the first 30 years were just the beginning. Welcome to 2007.” Since then, the company has has regularly embarrassed naysayers by repeatedly reinventing itself and successfully adding major new lines of business, although the market has failed to recognize any net appreciation in the company over that period.
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Prince McLean, AppleInsider
Imagination Technologies has posted a series of job openings for OpenCL engineers, indicating that the open, general purpose GPU parallelism technology Apple spearheaded for use in Mac OS X Snow Leopard is destined to also play a significant role in boosting embedded graphics and video acceleration on the company’s future handheld products.

Imagination’s job postings include an OpenCL Compiler Senior Design Engineer, OpenCL Driver Design Engineer, and OpenCL Compiler Design Engineer. Each requests experience with “embedded real-time operating systems” as well as kernel and assembly language development skills, and indicate a focus on “software for current and next generation graphics hardware.”

AppleInsider | Future iPhones to wield OpenCL acceleration

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

NVIDIA, Apple’s new MacBook chipset partner, is working hard to provide seamless support for OpenCL, the cross platform API Apple developed for Snow Leopard to create a vendor neutral, open specification for parallel programming across any compliant GPU.

AppleInsider | NVIDIA pioneering OpenCL support on top of CUDA

Khronos: OpenCL

Prince McLean, AppleInsider

Build notes leaked on the web of a prerelease version of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard indicate that the software only supports enabling its new 64-bit kernel on certain machines, including the Xserve, Mac Pro, and MacBook Pro, but this does not mean Snow Leopard’s kernel will be limited to 32-bit operation on consumer machines.

Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard: 64-bit to the Kernel

Prince McLean, AppleInsider
According to developer build notes leaked on the web, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard’s new Finder and “almost all” other graphical apps will be delivered using Cocoa. Here’s why, and what benefit this additional use of Cocoa will provide to users.

Apple to sweeten Snow Leopard with more Cocoa

Prince McLean, Apple Insider
Snow Leopard’s across-the-board leap to 64-bits, from the kernel to all of its bundled apps, will make more memory available and boost performance. However, Apple will also need to manage its 64-bit lead and organize its developers. Here’s why.
Following the initial introduction to 64-bit computing leading up to Snow Leopard, a second segment outlining issues related to the amount of RAM that can be installed and actually used by the system, and a third segment examining how much memory a specific app can use and how performance will improve with 64-bit addressing, this fourth segment will look at how the market for 64-bit apps is unfolding and how Apple has pioneered 64-bits on the desktop.

Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard 1: 64-bits
2: 64-bits, Santa Rosa and the great PC swindle
3: Twice the RAM, half the price, 64-bits
4: the future of 64-bit apps

Prince McLean, Apple Insider
Snow Leopard’s across-the-board leap to 64-bits, from the kernel to all of its bundled apps, will do more than just make more memory available. It will also have a significant positive impact on performance system wide, even more than the same jump to 64-bits in Windows Vista. Here’s why.

Following the initial introduction to 64-bit computing leading up to Snow Leopard and a second segment outlining issues related to the amount of RAM that can be installed and actually used by the system, this third segment examines how much memory a specific app can use and how performance will improve with 64-bit addressing despite the additional overhead involved. A follow up segment will look at how the market for 64-bit apps is unfolding and how Apple is pioneering 64-bits on the desktop.

Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard 1: 64-bits
2: 64-bits, Santa Rosa and the great PC swindle
3: Twice the RAM, half the price, 64-bits
4: the future of 64-bit apps

Prince McLean, AppleInsider
Snow Leopard’s across-the-board leap to 64-bits, from the kernel to all of its bundled apps, will do more than just make more memory available. It also exposes a great PC swindle and highlights Apple’s lead in 64-bit computing. Here’s why.

Following the initial introduction to 64-bit computing leading up to Snow Leopard, this second segment takes a look at the issues related to the amount of RAM that can be installed and actually used by the system. Additional segments will examine how much memory a specific app can reserve for itself, how the OS gets faster with 64-bit addressing despite the additional overhead involved, how the market for 64-bit apps is unfolding, and how Apple is pioneering 64-bits on the desktop.

Road to Mac OS X Snow Leopard 1: 64-bits
2: 64-bits, Santa Rosa and the great PC swindle
3: Twice the RAM, half the price, 64-bits
4: the future of 64-bit apps

Prince McLean, AppleInsider
Next year’s 10.6 reference release of Mac OS X promises to deliver technology updates throughout the system without focusing on the customer-facing marketing features that typically sell a new operating system. Here’s a look at what those behind-the-scenes enhancements will mean to you, starting with new 64-bit support.

Road to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: 64-Bits
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