Mac OS X Snow Leopard to Roar on Sept. 19

At the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2009 in San Francisco, Apple demoed its next Mac OS X 10.6 dubbed as Snow Leopard and announced its shipping date. For existing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard users, Apple offers Snow Leopard upgrade option for $29 (Rs. 1,400 approx.) and the family-pack for up to five licenses for $49 (Rs. 2,400 approx.). However, the Snow Leopard will work only on Intel based Macs and not the PowerPC based systems.

Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of Software Engineering for Apple, gave a quick snapshot of technologies incorporated in Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Last year, at the WWDC 2008, Serlet mentioned that Apple has pushed pause button on new features and has focused on optimizing the Mac OS X operating system.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard features multi-core processor support for improved multi-threading through a feature called Grand Central Dispatch for MacBooks, iMacs and Mac Pros.

All native applications like Mail, Quicktime, Finder and Safari have been coded entirely for 64-bit support for minimal load times, faster applications and overall smooth performance. Quite a majority of the OS X codebase has been rewritten to increase the system-wide performance speed.



Serlet mentioned that due to rewritten codebase, the OS gets installed 45 percent faster and actually saves space. Snow Leopard also brings support for OpenCL that will allow general purpose graphics processing unit (GPGPU) acceleration even in non-graphical apps and whenever required for graphics intensive tasks. Developers can tap the potential of OpenCL and make the best of GPU besides gaming and 3D modeling.

Apple has also made improvements in Safari 4 web browser that features improved JavaScript performance and Apple's famous CoverFlow. Safari 4 features new 'Crash Resistance feature that keeps the browser working even if a tab crashes since each tab now has different process like in Google Chrome. Check out our Safari 4 Beta first look (Windows) that has imprints of Safari 4 browser.

Snow Leopard finally brings long awaited support for Microsoft Exchange, thereby seamlessly integrating it with Mail, Contacts and iCal.

Snow Leopard screenshots have been leaked a couple of times on the web in the past. Many of those showed new QuickTime Interface. The new version of QuickTime has been rewritten entirely into Cocoa programming language and gets new interface lift. Like old QuickTime Pro versions, quick video editing is possible with the iMovie style visual timeline. The new Quicktime player supports hardware acceleration, HTTP streaming to work on any web server and has new shiny icon.

The new Expose allows showing up all the associated icons by holding on a respective icon on the dock. This is similar to Stacks but Expose shows full previews and users can bring files to the OS X dock with the spring-loaded folder system.

Snow Leopard also brings handwriting recognition which can be used with MacBook Pro and MacBook Air's multi-touch trackpad for writing words and letters.

Snow Leopard will come pre-installed in every new Mac sold after October, while the users who buy Mac system after June 8 can upgrade their system with Snow Leopard for $ 9.95 (Rs. 478 approx) under 'Up-to-Date' program. For Mac OS X Tiger users on Intel-based Macs, Apple offers a Mac Box set that includes Mac OS X Snow Leopard, iLife '09 and iWork '09 for a suggested price of $169 (Rs. 8,160 approx.) while family pack will cost $229 (Rs. 11,000 approx.).