Quiet Snow Leopard changes

A number of important changes are being brought to Mac OS X Snow Leopard that have not been well-publicized, a new report notes. Even though Apple has described the forthcoming operating system as an attempt to refine Leopard rather than make dramatic changes, it should for instance introduce a comprehensive multi-touch framework, which will help developers implement commands currently coded exclusively by Apple.

More crucial may be a dramatic shrinking in the size needed for OS functions, possibly related to cutting out duplicate localization, and to the implementation of "resolution independence," which replaces bitmaps with vectors that can handle any desktop size. The Utilities folder is expected to fall from 468MB to 112, for example, while Mail will be cut from 287MB to 91.

Apple is also improving its handling of text, implementing features from Microsoft Word such as auto-correction and smart replacement, for instance by substituting "TM" with the trademark symbol.

In terms of ZFS support, the filesystem will be usable in both the client and Server forms of the OS, in read and write modes; it will not, however, be in a position to replace HFS+ completely. Benefits of ZFS are said to include pooling, redundancy, snapshots, error correction and dynamic volume expansion.

by MacNN Staff