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June 4, 2008

speculation

Rumored ‘Snow Leopard’ may supposedly be the cat’s meow, possibly without the roar (perhaps)

Posted Jun. 4, ’08, 2:13 PM PT by Dan Pourhadi
Category | Apple » Speculation

snowleopard_question.jpgThe rumors are coming! The rumors are coming!

And not just any rumors, either—actual Mac rumors, something we haven’t had much of in a long, long—long long long long—time. iPhone rat bastard hogging all the spotlight, acting all fancy with its SDKs and “leaked” photos. Apple still makes the Mac, people, and it’s a damn good product too.

That’s why I tip my hat to our friends at TUAW and Ars Technica for fanning the flames (they didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world’s been turning) of Mac rumordom leading up to next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

These latest rumors—which I’ve been instructed to firmly present as speculation—suggest Apple may actually debut the next major revision to Mac OS X, 10.6, allegedly dubbed “Snow Leopard,” at WWDC, where they will purportedly offer a pre-release seed to developers.

Why presumedly pick a cat with such a similar name, instead of something totally different like, say, Bobcat, or Siamese? The blog duo claims the simple addition of “Snow” is to ostensibly downplay the perception of majorness of the next major update: instead of it being a flashy, leap-frog release with a bunch of Big Awesome Features like the past point-upgrades, “Snow Leopard” is theoretically going to be more of a maintenance build—focused more on improving what’s already in OS X, instead of just adding more. Which, frankly, sounds brilliant: OS X’s feature set is pretty awesome as-is…wouldn’t it be great if the stuff already there worked a whole lot better, faster, and more like it’s supposed to? Answer: Yes.

TUAW and Ars also say Apple will potentially drop support for PPC Macs with the update, leaving you non-transitionists in the dark, and that the actual market release for Snow Leopard will possibly be soon—January of ‘09.

Check out the two pieces for more, and judge the rumors for yourself—real? Not real? Good? Bad? Vanilla? Chocolate? Let us know.


12 Comments

Andre Da Costa said:

Looks like the Apple feature gravy train has finally reached its zenith. How unfortunate. Possibly 10.6 will follow in the footsteps of 10.1 and cost new users transitioning from Tiger for Intel $129 and Leopard (10.5) users $19.95. Mr. Jobs, tune up the RDF, because you are gonna need it badly to explain this one.

June 4, 2008 2:36 PM
Dave-O said:

I hope they're wrong about PPC support. If you aren't adding new features, how hard can it be to maintain support for the still-viable PPC? I'd understand if they were introducing something snazzy a la Spotlight or Time Machine.

Hopefully they'll take a good hard look at security. Do library randomization right, configure the sandbox more rigorously, turn the firewall on, etc.

It remains to be seen how Apple can sell this. There will be a lot of complaints that people bought this system already and Apple is just working out bugs. Maybe it will cost less than Leopard did. I suspect changes to the developer tools and API that make for incompatibilities with Leopard.

June 4, 2008 2:56 PM
Goobimama said:

Must say you got me all rattled up! :)

June 4, 2008 3:32 PM
Anonymous said:

If 10.6 is to just make OSX more stable and secure, does that mean will will be paying to 'fix' 10.5? just a thought

June 4, 2008 5:11 PM
Anonymous said:

Or this possibility. Drop PPC support and gain the ability to run Windows apps 'natively'. Only one big feature but it would be a biggie.

June 4, 2008 8:44 PM
Missing_DLL Author Profile Page said:

Are we paying for a maintenance upgrade equivalent to a Windows service pack update? By naming it 10.6 is the only way they can get money for this, which is a bit sad. As said, RDF must be set to high or else this is going to affect the stock price of apple shares.

June 5, 2008 2:29 AM
James Madley said:

@Andre Da Costa

Mac OS X 10.1 was a free update. It didn't cost anything. If 10.6 is like 10.1 then it too will cost nothing.

On the topic of this being a Leopard "fix", in some ways yes but according to all the reports I've read, PowerPC is likely to be axed. If that's true then it should be smaller and more optimised.

Hopefully they don't dump G5 and 32 bit support though, or Rosetta.

June 5, 2008 3:47 AM
Shoaf said:

IF they were to drop PPC support this "soon", I think it's pretty gentle to do it with a release that's more about making the existing feature set "better" rather than "more".

(This coming from someone using a G5 PowerMac with no plans to upgrade the hardware for the foreseeable future.)

Regarding the naming scheme: it's already been mentioned elsewhere, but naming it something like 10.5.5 would fit more with the minor security/bug fixes that show up in Software Update... but as mentioned above, 10.6 sounds like pimping more major features. If they really are calling it Snow Leopard, then I suppose that's the best compromise between the two?

June 5, 2008 6:38 AM
RonFezoo7 said:

Couldn't apple be opening themselves up to a huge class-action lawsuit by not supporting PPC macs?

The feds require any company (that is, a company that is still alive and well and doing business in the US) to offer support for a product for a minimum of seven years from the date of that product being discontinued.

The last PPC computer were a line of powerbooks introduced in October of 2005. Apple's forced obsolescence of PPC Macs by making them non-compatible with "Snow Leopard" would put Apple in a grey area legally with respects to violating that seven-year law.

Likewise, we know what the strategy of forced/planned obsolescence did for the US Auto Makers in the 70s. It was a strategy that just about put them out of business.

Apple should definitely think twice before they make millions of Mac user's PPC computers obsolete.

June 5, 2008 8:18 AM
Chris said:

@RonFezoo7: How would comingjout with an operating system update make PPC Macs obsolete. If you didn't notice, G3's aren't exactly obsolete simply because Leopard doesn't support them.

That law prevents companies from making a product that stops working after a short period of time, forcing them to buy a newer one. Apple would break the law if, after the release of 10.6, all of the PPC Macs stopped being able to run OS X at all be it 10.0 or 10.5). The PowerMac G4 (466Mhz) I'm writing this on isn't obsolete just because it can't run Leopard - it runs Tiger quite well.

Your example is like saying Chevy breaks the law for the cars it built two years ago that can't run on E85. Just because the older product can't run the newest, shiniest update doesn't mean it's obsolete.

June 5, 2008 7:44 PM
Jarro said:

Am I the only one who sees the naming of 10.6 as Snow Leopard causing much confusion? "What OS are you running? Leopard. Leopard or Snow Leopard? Yeah, that one."

With 10.6 being Snow Leopard, would that mean 10.7 would be Bondi Leopard. 10.8=Flower Power Leopard?

June 5, 2008 9:01 PM
Johannes said:

Why is everyone talking about "Snow Leopard" as if it were an official code name???

Some website put a survey on the "maybe" name of 10.6 into one of its post. "Snow Leopard" wasn't even the one that has been chosen by the majority of visitors.

Here is the link .

Does this make it an official Apple product code-name. I strongly doubt it!

June 6, 2008 12:12 AM

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