Apple to drop new Snow Leopard beta on developers
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.
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.
Comments
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.
Please don't quote the entire article. For the love of God.
Even more so if you're the first poster.
Even more so if you're the first poster.
Especially if you're going to make 10k posts, it can get annoying.
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.
...
that was interesting
lol people can't take jokes. Jee wiz
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.
that was interesting
Ban this idiot.
[edit to reflect 10.6 instead of 10.7]
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.
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.
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?
Anyone know?
Nobody knows 100% until Apple begins marketing SL and tells the public what is going to be in it.
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
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
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.
- 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.