Let it Snow
Yesterday WWDC Apple formerly announced Snow Leopard, the latest iteration of Mac OS X. Marking something of a departure from previous updates, the focus of Snow Leopard will be on performance enhancement rather than new features.
“We have delivered more than a thousand new features to OS X in just seven years and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for thousands more,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.”
Perfection is currently manifest as built-in support for Microsoft Exchange, a new “set of technologies” called Grand Central, which will enhance multicore processing, increased support for 64-bit computing to take advantage of the theoretical limit of 16TB of RAM, QuickTime X and OpenCL (Open Compute Library), which will leverage the power of modern GPUs for “general-purpose computing”.
Before you rush to the new Apple Store in Pacific Centre Mall to pick-up your copy, Snow Leopard is not scheduled to ship until next year*, and Apple are careful to state that “[a]ll features are subject to change”.
So while we have to wait, my interest is certainly piqued and viewed alongside the recent postings for Cocoa programmers to join the Pro Apps development team (here and here), there would seem to be exciting times ahead.
*Which is probably a good things as at today’s prices, you’ll need to start saving for all that RAM now.
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