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Snow Leopard to ship in first quarter of 2009?

updated 09:35 am EST, Wed November 19, 2008

Snow Leopard in Q1 2009


The next major release of Mac OS X is scheduled to arrive before many were anticipating, according to a recent Apple presentation. When Mac OS X Snow Leopard was announced at WWDC '08, it was stated that it would take "about a year" to bring the update to market. At last week's Large Installation System Administration (LISA) conference however, Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies, Jordan Hubbard, is said to have announced that Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) will ship in the first quarter of 2009, several months ahead of public expectation.

The short turnaround may be possible due to the focus of the OS, which is on performance and security upgrades rather than any significant feature additions. A number of changes have been confirmed though, such as a rewritten Cocoa-based finder, HFS+ file compression, and improved support for Microsoft Exchange in Mail, iCal and Address Book. If released in January, Snow Leopard could also coincide with the 2009 Macworld Expo, and possibly quad-core iMacs.


by MacNN Staff

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 Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, Apple

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  1. simdude

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jun 2004

    +6
    11/19, 09:48am | report spam | Reply |

    PowerPC gone

    Does anyone remember if this version will drop PowerPC support?

  1. gambit-7

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Feb 2001

    +3
    11/19, 09:55am | report spam | Reply |

    No PPC

    No PPC support in Snow Leopard.

  1. Guest

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Nov 1999

    -1
    11/19, 10:22am | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Re; No PPC

    Unless you work directly for Apple, you have no clue other than baseless rumors for insinuating that PowerPC support will be dropped.

    Methinks you are simply guessing based off of what you've heard, morphing that into an, "I know for sure" kind-of-thing just so IF PowerPC support is dropped, you can turn around and say, "See? Told you so!"

    My point is that you don't know for sure, and trying to make it look like you know for sure isn't helping anyone.

    "No PowerPC support" is only a rumor, not an etched-in-stone fact.

  1. vasic

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: May 2005

    +2
    11/19, 10:37am | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Apple said it often

    Ever since Snow Leopard was announced, SJ and others from Apple kept repeating that it will only work on Intel machines. There was to be no PPC support.

    As rumours go, this one is pretty much rock solid, coming from the CEO himself. So, Guest, I'd say, it probably helps everyone not to have unrealistic expectations about PPC support. Then again, until this is released, nothing will be etched in stone.

  1. paulc

    Junior Member

    Joined: Aug 2000

    +3
    11/19, 11:42am | report spam | Reply |

    Hope...

    that the new Nehlam (i7, Gainstown) MacPros suppsedly on track for early 09 will now come with Snow Leopard.

  1. TomSawyer

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Jan 2008

    +1
    11/19, 11:43am | report spam | Reply |

    Did Hubbard say

    FISCAL or CALENDAR Q1? Since Apple's fiscal year begins in July Q1 this could imply July/August/September which would be right on track with earlier estimations. I'd love to see an Intel specific OS (hopefully leaner and quicker) in calendar Q1...this would imply that developers were really getting the "big cat" series down and upcoming features can be added with even greater efficiency.

  1. testudo

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Aug 2001

    -1
    11/19, 12:58pm | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Re: did hubbard

    First, only the accountants talk in terms of FY. A tech person never would.

    Second, Apple's fiscal year ends in Sept. So Q1 is NOW! Its coming out for XMas!

  1. mjtomlin

    Fresh-Faced Recruit

    Joined: Oct 1999

    +4
    11/19, 01:14pm | report spam | Reply |

    Snow Leopard

    "FISCAL or CALENDAR Q1?"

    I'm sure the implication was the calendar year, not fiscal year. Otherwise, that would place the release at the end of the year, around now, Fiscal Q1 is Oct. - Dec., which would be almost 18 months from WWDC08. Besides all of that, the article says, "...is said to have announced...", which tells me that someone else said that Jordan Hubbard announced it, not that it came from the "horses mouth".

    "SJ and others from Apple kept repeating that it will only work on Intel machines"

    They have in fact stressed that the Developer Previews of Snow Leopard are in fact Intel only, but there has been no mention of the final version. The assumption that Snow Leopard will be Intel only was born out of the claim that it will have a smaller footprint. People took that as meaning removal of the PowerPPC code. However, a smaller footprint has nothing to do with the size of an install disk, the footprint refers to the amount of data actually installed onto a system. There are a lot of things that can happen during an installation to reduce the footprint of the OS including, compression, localization, non-universal binaries on fixed disks, etc.

    A more reliable clue would be the advent of the iPhone SDK. It being released for Intel only, surely gives the rumor a bit more factual foundation and shows that Apple may have decided that supporting more than two platforms at a time is simply a waste of time and not worth the effort. Regardless of what happens, Apple was very smart moving to OS X. Its ability to rapidly move from one platform/CPU to another, sure has given Apple a lot of room to play.

  1. Feathers

    Grizzled Veteran

    Joined: Oct 1999

    +2
    11/19, 01:27pm | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Burn Factor

    "...Apple has no reason to annoy their large professional G5 base;..." - Chas_m

    Er...hate to say it but historically Apple don't give a rats a** about legacy users of any kind. It's a simple case of keep up or get left behind. I'm speaking of 20 years experience of this Apple burn factor.

  1. Feathers

    Grizzled Veteran

    Joined: Oct 1999

    0
    11/19, 01:31pm | report spam | (1 reply) Reply |

    Burn Factor II

    Another example of the "Burn Factor" is the extremely strained relationship that now exists between Apple and Adobe (where once Apple depended upon its Photoshop credentials) to the extent that it would not surprise me if (within the next couple of years) Adobe finally abandoned MacOS versions completely.

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