Good article. However, there is always the fear that Apple may be using the cover of “improving the fundamentals” to basically port the old OS from a multiple chip environment to a single Intel environment. I dont think this is what Apple is doing, but without more information it is impossible to tell.

I will also second RoughlyDrafted, but would recommend reading it with a large grain of salt, because Dan can tend to be far too forgiving to Apple at times.

One “feature” that will be visible only to programmers is resolution independence. I suspect that part of the fat being removed are all the bit map graphics. Although there are steps toward this in Tiger and Leopard, it was not touted. This is a major step towards supporting the higher resolution displays that are coming. I bet this is sold as support for such displays rather than the geeky resolution independence. This feature can be implemented in such a way that all a programmer needs to do is swap the graphics used by the program.

I must admit when I saw the fruition of the ‘top secret’ features for Leopard, I was beginning to think the well was running a little dry. In fact, aside from occasional use of Spotlight and QuickLook, in my workflow I haven’t had a lot of use for the whiz-bang features introduced since Tiger. So while I get the need to entice users to upgrade, sometimes these features have come at the expense of improved performance, stability and UI refinement.

I’m pleased Apple are finally taking a breather from feature creep and going through a refinement process. I’m guessing it won’t be a free upgrade, but I think the Apple marketing machine will spin it as the lithe OS for the future you need to have. And if it delivers, I’m happy to pay for it. Plus who knows, maybe we’ll see a few new, ahem, ‘Top Secret’ features pop up as well…

Looking forward to seeing Macs in enterprise. Snow Leopard will be a large step in this direction.

Roughly Drafted’s editor/publisher, Daniel Eran Dilger, is an occasional guest on the tech show, and I always find his stuff thought-provoking. I’m happy to recommend his writings.

Peace,
Gene

go to
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/
and look at multiple articles on what this guy sees as myths about Snow Leopard. I tend to agree with him.

There will be plenty of features with Snow Leopard. Of course, as with any new release, some of the new additions won’t be features to some of us if we don’t use them. (Like exchange for example).

However, if Apple really can clean up Snow Leopard and combine a lot of stuff that we see on the iPhone, slim stuff down, make things faster, I’m buying. MS is so far behind right now Apple has time to tighten things up, make things better and gain more of an audience from the PC only buyers in the past.

I’m getting ready to use my iPhone in the corporate world (company is PC’s only and are embracing the iPhone version 2). When I can do that with Snow Leopard on my laptop…….happy days ahead.

Gene,

Is Snow Leopard really for Mac notebooks and desktops, or is it for iPhone and its children? Yes, I’m sure Snow Leopard will run nicely on Intel Macs, but who is the real beneficiary here? Lacking new features, I’m sure I’ll wait to upgrade until I buy new hardware.

I do find it amusing that some folks are speculating that Apple’s new nifty, trimmed-down OS will destroy Windows 7 due to the excessive bloat (as opposed to mere bloat) of the latter. I do believe the mighty beast MS is toppling from its feet and will need new management to right itself, but it’s going to take more than a single Mac OS number release to finish it off.

Maybe two?