Snow Leopard Early Next Year
Last week, Apple’s Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard spoke at LISA ‘08, about the evolution of Mac OS X from large servers to embedded platforms. In his presentation slides (PDF) Hubbard reveals that Apple’s next version of Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), will be shipping in the first quarter of 2009.
“When Apple first previewed Snow Leopard at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2008, they simply stated that Snow Leopard would ship “in about a year” from the announcement. A Q1 release would deliver it earlier than most had expected and makes it conceivable that we could see a demo or announcement at Macworld San Francisco 2009,” Arnold Kim explains for MacRumors.
Snow Leopard, as we’ve explained before, will focus primarily on performance under the hood. Rather than take this release to introduce new features to the operating system, Apple is refining the code and making sure that OS X’s base architecture is perfect. Additionally, added support for multi-core processors and GPU gaming is a major focus for Apple. While a lot of hardware currently offers such high-end performance, unless a machine’s operating system can exploit the power, it will go relatively unused. With Snow Leopard, Apple is hoping to change that.
Quad-Core iMacs in January
Digitimes is reporting that Apple is planning to move all of its all-in-one iMac machines to be powered by quad-core Intel chips. This would keep the iMacs extremely competitive within the market as they could increase power and keep costs relatively low.
Intel will launch the Core 2 Quad Q8200s (2.33GHz/4MB L2), Core 2 Quad Q9400s (2.66GHz/6MB L2) and Core 2 Quad Q9550s (2.83GHz/12MB L2) with prices at US$245, US$320 and US$369, respectively in thousand-unit tray quantities. These CPUs will have the same specifications as standard CPUs with the same model number, but will see their TDP drop from 95W to 65W.
These chips would significantly increase the speed and improve performance while at the same time cutting costs for Apple. As Electronista explains, “The 2.33GHz, 2.66GHz and 2.83GHz chips cost $245, $320 and $369 in large batches, according to the report.”
Currently, Apple’s iMacs use a dual-core setup, which for an all-in-one machines makes sense. However, the iMac in general still lacks in terms of serious multi-tasking power and processing performance. A move to desktop class processors could make the machine appeal to a much broader range of users. Apple would need to restructure the way cooling works on the iMacs though. The Core 2 Duo chips that are used now produce low power and low heat, which the iMac’s casing depends on.
