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Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) Due in 1st Quarter of 2009?

Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard spoke at LISA '08 last week. LISA (or Large Installation System Administration Conference) is a technical conference targeted at engineers and system administrators. This year's conference invited Apple's Jordan Hubbard to speak about the evolution of Mac OS X from large servers to embedded platforms. While technical readers may find the content of Hubbard's presentation slides (PDF) quite interesting, the most surprising revelation is a more specific target date for Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): 1st Quarter 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.

Apple has said that they would be focusing on both quality and performance in Snow Leopard. In particular, Apple has made it clear that there will be efforts to improve support for multi-core processors and GPU processing. These improvements will help developers more efficiently use these capabilities that already ship in Macs.

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46 months ago
Interesting. Snow Leopard @ MacWorld? I'm game. Probably won't be that soon, but I can dream can't I?
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46 months ago
I guess we know now what the focus of MacWorld Expo is giong to be. I predict a March ship date.
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46 months ago
Looks like they don't release things on leap years... Wonder why?
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46 months ago
It's a MacRumors tradition that we see the absolute worst in every rumor, so before anyone else gets there...

It may not be cheap. It may not run on PPC processor machines. Like Leopard, it might be fragile on release. It may mess with your apps and your setup, it may be disappointing to many and it may just be late.

OK, we've got that out of the way. ;)
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46 months ago
It's more likely that this guy just got his facts wrong. I would hope that if he WAS privy to inside information, like the dev schedule of OS X, he would be a bit more discerning regarding what he put out there in the public for everyone to see.

Don't get me wrong though, I'd love to see 10.6 released Q1 '09.
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46 months ago
I doubt it'll be Q1 of 2009 - there is still a tonne of stuff that needs be added - the latest build of it was not feature complete, so I doubt they'll push out another release before Christmas and start pushing the RTM out to the cd stampers in February to aim for the end of the quarter. I have a feeling it will be 'finished' then but won't be released until after. As with any software company, there is a release date and a revenue release date.
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46 months ago
Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom
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46 months ago

Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom


Far from it. Apple has decided that adding OS level features at the same time as adding major UI features is the fastest way to a trainwreck of an operating system and is taking it one step at a time.

Besides, I think that increased performance and that oh so wonderful Exchange support are more than enough for me. I'd like to ditch Entourage like a hot potato!
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46 months ago

Basically the same OS but better, faster, and more secure?! Wow, what a great departure from the way our friends do it in Redmond.

I can wait, but I'll be in line at the nearest Apple Store on day one to get a copy (family pack).

LanPhantom


Actually that's inaccurate as M$ is pretty much doing the same thing with Windows 7. Its unfair to say what you said IMHO. And I have 4 Macs BTW so yeah I'm an OS X fanboy.
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46 months ago
wow, now this would be great. i would love to see snow leopard at macword. at least we should here more about it then
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