Apple to drop new Snow Leopard beta on developers

[AppleInsider]

Apple sometime this week is expected to tap its developers to begin testing a new pre-release copy of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, signaling a clear acceleration of the beta test process.

The Cupertino-based company issued the first external build of next-gen operating system back in June of last year but did not follow up a new distribution for more than four months. Since then, new builds have arrived every four to six weeks, on average.

Now, people familiar with the matter say Apple is gearing up to provide developers with a second build of Snow Leopard during the month of April, three weeks or so after offering up build 10A314 near the top of the month.

The target build for this week's release is said to be Mac OS X 10.6 build 10A335, which of course is always subject to change. Again, there are rumors that this new build may include some much anticipated visual tweaks to the Mac OS X interface but given that those rumors did not materialize last time, it may be safe to assume that June's Worldwide Developers Conference may be the more likely forum for these disclosures.

It's also rumored that the new Snow Leopard will incorporate a pre-release build of Apple Remote Desktop 3.3. This maintenance release to the remote administration software reportedly goes by the code-name "Hook" and was commissioned with the primary purpose of delivering compatibility with Snow Leopard, though it will also include a number of bug fixes.

Apple last provided its third-party developers with a new build of Snow Leopard on April 1st, encouraging them to focus their attention on delivering 64-bit compatibility in their third party kernel extensions.

While previewing Snow Leopard last June for the first time, the Mac maker stated that it hoped to release the software approximately one year later. However, the most recent estimates from those familiar with beta tests have suggested an August date may be more likely.

[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

God hath spoken

Is it snappier?

I think we're probably looking at FC releases in July (late) and a release to manufacturing in June for a Sept delivery.

[gmcalpin]

Please don't quote the entire article. For the love of God.

[themoonisdown09]

Originally Posted by gmcalpin

Please don't quote the entire article. For the love of God.

Even more so if you're the first poster.

[OriginalG]

Originally Posted by themoonisdown09

Even more so if you're the first poster.

Especially if you're going to make 10k posts, it can get annoying.

[walshbj]

Originally Posted by OriginalG

Especially if you're going to make 10k posts, it can get annoying.

It's a pain to scroll past all that on an iPhone.

[tpf1952]

So glad we asked if the new OS was snappier. Bummer if it isn't.

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by walshbj

It's a pain to scroll past all that on an iPhone.

Hmmmm never thought about "the iPod/iPhone effect" to forum browsing.

I'm amazed that Apple's kept the leaks to a minimum. Sniffle...no Thinksecret means that most people are obeying their NDA. Bastids.

[uni]

Originally Posted by iStink

that was interesting

Ban this idiot.

[sapporobabyrtrns]

Is this another one since the 19th? I just got one.

[teckstud]

Will it matter whether you have quad core or dual core? I hear it's optimized for quad and the next MacBooks are all going quad. Is this true? Where's CoreWhore when u need him?

[8CoreWhore]

It's known that Snow Leopard will only work on Intel Mac's, but does anyone know if there are limits within the Intel Mac family? For instance - will Grand Central, etc work with early Intel Mac's and all the graphics cards installed back then? I like to think my late 2006 2.16 Core2Duo with ATi graphics card will get new life breathed into it from 10.6 Oh- @teckstud, I don't know. My understanding is it takes advantage of the processing power that graphics cards have - so you don't need 4 cores... it's besides the point. What I want to know is will SL take advantage of all of the graphics cards...
[edit to reflect 10.6 instead of 10.7]

[hmurchison]

Originally Posted by 8CoreWhore

It's known that Snow Leopard will only work on Intel Mac's, but does anyone know if there are limits within the Intel Mac family? For instance - will Grand Central, etc work with early Intel Mac's and all the graphics cards installed back then? I like to think my late 2006 2.16 Core2Duo with ATi graphics card will get new life breathed into it from 10.7 Oh- @teckstud, I don't know. My understanding is it takes advantage of the processing power that graphics cards have - so you don't need 4 cores... it's besides the point. What I want to know is will SL take advantage of all of the graphics cards...

The only limits I can think of would be the first gen Core Duo 32-bit only Intel chips. Assuming we see the rise of 64-bit only apps they would be locked out.

Grand Central really doesn't care of you have 2 cores or 4 cores or 8 cores. Like many modern schedulers it scales up and scales down according to available compute resources.

[Morky]

Originally Posted by 8CoreWhore

It's known that Snow Leopard will only work on Intel Mac's, but does anyone know if there are limits within the Intel Mac family? For instance - will Grand Central, etc work with early Intel Mac's and all the graphics cards installed back then? I like to think my late 2006 2.16 Core2Duo with ATi graphics card will get new life breathed into it from 10.7 Oh- @teckstud, I don't know. My understanding is it takes advantage of the processing power that graphics cards have - so you don't need 4 cores... it's besides the point. What I want to know is will SL take advantage of all of the graphics cards...

You're getting Grand Central confused with OpenCL. They are completely different things, but both intended to increase performance. Grand Central IIRC will allow developers to easily spread processes to multiple CPU cores (or do it completely transparently for a single threaded app), where OpenCL is standard API for graphics cards that will make it easier for programmers to take advantage of them.

[GregAlexander]

Originally Posted by Morky

where OpenCL is standard API for graphics cards that will make it easier for programmers to take advantage of them.

Same question applies though.
Will his older Intel Mac work?
Will my 2yo MacBook Pro be able to use its graphics card effectively with OpenCL?
What about my friends original MBP (Core 1 Duo)?

Anyone know?

[uni]

Originally Posted by GregAlexander

Anyone know?

Nobody knows 100% until Apple begins marketing SL and tells the public what is going to be in it.

[al_bundy]

Originally Posted by GregAlexander

Same question applies though.
Will his older Intel Mac work?
Will my 2yo MacBook Pro be able to use its graphics card effectively with OpenCL?
What about my friends original MBP (Core 1 Duo)?

Anyone know?

probably depends on the exact graphics card

desktop card usually get good support from ati and nvidia with years of driver updates. intel is pretty bad. laptop cards are also OK, but not as good as desktop cards.

unless apple writes their own drivers, it depends on what they worked out with Nvidia and AMD

[i386]

With Windows 7 going RC in May, Apple can now show off what's on offer in terms of new UI bling and features. I like the fact or I'm under the impression that there's more changes under the hood than outward appearances. Also I do welcome a new Finder but it will be another while before we see use of Grand Central throughout the majority of Apps.

btw After SL release we'll all be bitchin' and moanin' for Adobe to bring out CS5 to take advantage of this new multi-core hardware and API we'll have

[PG4G]

Morky, you are correct - Grand Central and Open CL are very different technologies.

Grand Central = Core Management
OpenCL = dynamic language to leverage Graphics cards as additional CPUs

It is important to note, however, Grand Central also manages the cores of a GPU as well as CPU's.

[shadow]

My expectations for the older hardware:

• SL will work on all Intel hardware.
• Don't expect major boos by OpenCL on old harware, it may not be supported for your card at all. If you have 2 cores, no matter Core 2 or not, minor to modest improvement could be expected in some cases.
• The future hardware released along or after SL will get the major speed advantages (the latest Mac Pros notwithstanding).
• SL will incorporate a number of non-OpenCL or Grand Central related improvements, most importantly, a new Finder. SL-only apps will be able to take advantage of multithreaded UI and file-system related API improvements, among others.
• Don't expect to see 64-bit only applications for a while.

As far as I know, OpenCL libraries could fall back to CPU processing unless explicitly instructed by the app not to do so. This should mean that the majority of the code will work. More than a decade back a floating point unit was not present on all processors (it was a separate co-processor at first). Very few pieces of software were refusing to run if no FPU was found. The situation could be similar now. Keep in mind, however, that the number of apps that will take direct advantage of OpenCL (that is, not through the underlying Frameworks and built in libraries) will be close to none initially. Then Apple will start to move it's own apps but they will support wider range of hardware. It will take another 2 years until OpenCL gets wider use. If your MBP is 2+ years old now, by that time you will want to upgrade anyway.

The bottom line: SL underlying technologies are a strong base for the future, but will be perceived more like an evolutionary improvement, because they need several pieces to come together to make the leap. The process will spread among several years, with gradual improvements of the underlying technologies and Apple's Frameworks and libraries along the way.

[ascii]

I am hoping Snow Leopard will include a 64-bit version of nasm. Leopard only includes a 32-bit version.

[Saxo]

Originally Posted by i386

btw After SL release we'll all be bitchin' and moanin' for Adobe to bring out CS5 to take advantage of this new multi-core hardware and API we'll have

No way... Adobe has just discovered the existence of Mac OS X and Cocoa

[Saxo]

Originally Posted by ascii

I am hoping Snow Leopard will include a 64-bit version of nasm. Leopard only includes a 32-bit version.

Everything should be in 64 bit in Snow Leopard, as far as I understood. Let's hope so

[applefave]

Originally Posted by i386

btw After SL release we'll all be bitchin' and moanin' for Adobe to bring out CS5 to take advantage of this new multi-core hardware and API we'll have

Yeah! I love adobe.. CS5 would be great!!

[shadow]

Originally Posted by applefave

Yeah! I love adobe.. CS5 would be great!!

If you want to see OpenCL aware and Grand Central friendly implementation, look forward for CS11.

Adobe is an excellent example what harm for the company and consumers a monopoly can do. If you want to see the next stage, look at Quark. Hope Adobe will put their acts together before they are f***ed off by a newcomer. Their huge portfolio will definitely help them, but does not help the end user.

[mcarling]

I expect that Snow Leopard will run on all Intel Macs. I expect that 10.7 will run only on Macs with 64-bit Intel chips i.e. Core 2 Duo and later.

[akhomerun]

Originally Posted by mcarling

I expect that Snow Leopard will run on all Intel Macs. I expect that 10.7 will run only on Macs with 64-bit Intel chips i.e. Core 2 Duo and later.

I don't agree with you. Macbooks with core duos came out in 2006. Plus, it doesn't seem bery hard to maintain a version of an OS for both 64 and 32 bit (Microsoft has done it for years as well as just about every Linux distribution).

Actually I wouldn't be surprised if Apple kept PowerPC support for a while, I would guess that Snow Leopard comes out for PowerPC even though the rumors suggest otherwise. Remember all Macs were PowerPC through 2005, that's only 4 years ago (and yeah that's long in the tech world but not long enough to drop support completely, think about institutions here).

[shadow]

The only reason I can see Apple dropping 32 bit Intel is new kernel.

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by shadow

The only reason I can see Apple dropping 32 bit Intel is new kernel.

Snow Leopard will have 32-bit and 64-bit kernels. SL will have to include both for all supported systems as having one driver work on 32-bit will require running the whole system in 32-bit. The 64-bit drivers should be written with 32-bit fallback support, so that shouldn't be an option.

To switch between kernels you hold down the 6 and 4 keys or the 3 and 2 keys at startup. So far, I think all but the Macs running the new 9400M chipsets have the ability to use the 64-bit kernel in SL. I think MS would have benefited from offering a similar setup for XP and Vista.

[shadow]

Originally Posted by solipsism

Snow Leopard will have 32-bit and 64-bit kernels. SL will have to include both for all supported systems as having one driver work on 32-bit will require running the whole system in 32-bit. The 64-bit drivers should be written with 32-bit fallback support, so that shouldn't be an option.

To switch between kernels you hold down the 6 and 4 keys or the 3 and 2 keys at startup. So far, I think all but the Macs running the new 9400M chipsets have the ability to use the 64-bit kernel in SL. I think MS would have benefited from offering a similar setup for XP and Vista.

I was talking about the versions after SL. Some posts suggest that the decision on backward compatibility is based solely on model release date. My point is that the major factor is the tradeoff between the development, QA and support work required and the percent of the installed base which will be left out of the loop.

Building 32/64 bit Cocoa apps is a checkbox in Xcode for 99.5% of the software. As sson as compilers support 32 bit this is not an issue.

If Apple decides to make substantial changes to the kernel code (which is very unlikely for the foreseeable future), there is little technical reason to drop 32-bit support. Well, when the hardware gets really old, it will add QA overhead. Changes in the kernel may require changes in the drivers and this may be not worth the effort for 32 bit drivers for the old hardware.

[skate71290]

can someone please upload the latest build to www.mac-torrents.com please (or somewhere similar) or tell me where i can dl it thanks, cant wait for snow leopard release, hope WWDC isn't going to all about the iPhone this year, like to see what Snow Leopard is really capable of

[solipsism]

Originally Posted by skate71290

can someone please upload the latest build to www.mac-torrents.com please (or somewhere similar) or tell me where i can dl it thanks, cant wait for snow leopard release, hope WWDC isn't going to all about the iPhone this year, like to see what Snow Leopard is really capable of

No, we can't. If you want Snow Leopard betas you can pay that $500 to be a developer or find it by it other means yourself. Welcome to AI.

[kaiwai]

Originally Posted by shadow

I was talking about the versions after SL. Some posts suggest that the decision on backward compatibility is based solely on model release date. My point is that the major factor is the tradeoff between the development, QA and support work required and the percent of the installed base which will be left out of the loop.

Building 32/64 bit Cocoa apps is a checkbox in Xcode for 99.5% of the software. As sson as compilers support 32 bit this is not an issue.

If Apple decides to make substantial changes to the kernel code (which is very unlikely for the foreseeable future), there is little technical reason to drop 32-bit support. Well, when the hardware gets really old, it will add QA overhead. Changes in the kernel may require changes in the drivers and this may be not worth the effort for 32 bit drivers for the old hardware.

32bit adds no overhead what so ever. Apple will keep 32bit around as long as people want it and there are applications that receive no benefit from being 64bit.

64bit does not automatically equal 'awesomeness'.

[Amorya]

Originally Posted by kaiwai

64bit does not automatically equal 'awesomeness'.

Quoted for truth. Sometimes it even slows things down!

Amorya