Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Unless you've been living under a rock the last few days, you probably know Apple just (briefly) announced the next version of OS X, calling it 10.6 Snow Leopard.

In a break with past releases and announcements, they have said they are not focusing on "features". The press release says:

Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will enhance the performance os OS X, set a new standard for quality, and lay the foundation for future OS X innovation.
...
In our continued effort to deliver the best user experience, we hit the pause button on new features to focus on perfecting the world's most advanced operating system.

While Apple says they are not working on features, it seems more accurate to say they are not not working on too many user features.


Foundation
In past releases, OS X has been in a state of flux with important API's changing or being replaced. This has made OS X a bit of a moving target for developers. It appears with OS X 10.5 Leopard and OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Apple is attempting to settle things down now that they have things close to where they want them. New API's will surely be added and changes will be made, but it seems likely they will avoid the wholesale changes of the past.


Grand Central (Multi-Core CPU Utilization)
OS X has always been multiprocessor aware, but it Apple seems to be reacting to the CPU industry's effort to focus on multiple cores instead of individual processor clock speed. Now that the GHz Wars have all but ended, the efficient use of multiple processors and multiple cores is the primary method to improve performance.

If Apple has made the process of programming for and utilizing multiple processors easier to implement (or nearly automatic), this will be a huge deal and a major advantage. If they have created methods to more efficiently use multiple processors at an OS level, this will be nice (especially if they are rewriting OS X to be more reentrant allowing multiple "in flight" OS calls).

NY Times Article and Interview with Steve Jobs

“The way the processor industry is going is to add more and more cores, but nobody knows how to program those things,” he said. “I mean, two, yeah; four, not really; eight, forget it.”

Apple, he claimed, has made a parallel-programming breakthrough.

OpenCL (GPU Utilization)
It appears Apple is pushing a new, open standard to allow general purpose use of the GPU. If Apple can make general use of the fast GPU's sitting idle much of the time, this will be a major performance enhancement. If they can make this GPU utilization mostly automatic for the everyday developer, it could be a significant coup.

It will be interesting to see if this has anything to do with LLVM for which Apple has long been suspected of having a special use. They are already using it in OpenGL.

CNET Article and Interview with Nvidia's CEO

"Apple knows a lot about CUDA," Huang said, implying the company might be ready to formally embrace Nvidia's technology to make it easier to exploit graphics chips inside Macs. Apple's implementation "won't be called CUDA, but it will be called something else," Huang said in an interview here at Nvidia's headquarters on Wednesday.

From the NYT

“Basically it lets you use graphics processors to do computation,” he (Jobs) said. “It’s way beyond what Nvidia or anyone else has, and it’s really simple.”

64 Bit
This is a no-brainer for Apple. By using a larger address space, they engage in some "future-proofing", while giving some RAM hungry apps some breathing room. Being able to address 16TB of physical RAM is nice now, but it will be am absolute requirement soon. As with hard drive space and closet space, more is better.


QuickTime X
Apple is learning from every project they implement. In creating the iPhone, they apparently worked to make QuickTime more efficient, and QucikTime X Mac (and Windows?) users will benefit from that.

It is fascinating to imagine if this might be interwoven with OpenCL. It seems generally like a good idea to offload audio and video media processing to the GPU when possible.

Apple's Press Release

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. (emphasis added)

Exchange 2007 Support
By adding Exchange support into OS X for use in Mail, Address Book, and Calendar, Apple will remove one of the single biggest obstacles to selling Mac's into business and the enterprise in particular. It seems Apple realizes continued growth will require some level of business adoption, and this one feature will go a long way towards enabling those sales.


Mobile Me
"Exchange for the rest of us" is Apple's tag line for Mobile Me which will replace .Mac . This seems to largely apply to iPhone users, but the features will be nice for Mac (and Windows?) users too. Mobile Me will sychronize and give users access to their contact and calendar along with their Mobile Me e-mail, all through a jazzy Web 2.0 Javascript interface blurring the lines between local apps and web apps.


SquirrelFish (Javascript Engine)
The Webkit team has been working on a new, faster JavaScript engine for Safari called SquirrelFish. This will provide a major performance boost and runs the SunSpider benchmark 1.6 times faster.

Obviously, Apple's new Mobile Me platform and web sites in general will provide a better experience with a faster JavaScript engine. More of the application-like features of the web sites we all use require JavaScript, so this could be a big help.