MacRumors

Ars Technica's John Siracusa has posted an exhaustive review of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that delves deep into some of the technical changes behind Apple's latest operating system. The 23 page review covers topics that were previously covered under developer non disclosure agreements.

Siracusa covers technical topics such as Grand Central, OpenCL, as well as the typical user interface tweaks. They also explain why Mac OS X 10.6 does not boot into 64-bit mode and why you shouldn't really care:

If it makes you feel better to know that your kernel is operating more efficiently, and that, were you to actually have 96GB of RAM installed, you would not risk starving the kernel of address space, and if you don't have any 32-bit drivers that you absolutely need to use, then by all means, boot into the 64-bit kernel.

For everyone else, my advice is to be glad that K64 will be ready and waiting for you when you eventually do need it -- and please do encourage all the vendors that make kernel extensions that you care about to add K64 support as soon as possible.

Siracusa also explains that many of the underlying changes in Snow Leopard are to push developers into the right path for the future of Mac OS X, and the $29 price is meant to help drive user adoption. He also speculates that Snow Leopard is a prelude to radical new features in the next revision of Mac OS X.

As for the future, it's tempting to view Snow Leopard as the "tick" in a new Intel-style "tick-tock" release strategy for Mac OS X: radical new features in version 10.7 followed by more Snow-Leopard-style refinements in 10.8, and so on, alternating between "feature" and "refinement" releases. Apple has not even hinted that they're considering this type of plan, but I think there's a lot to recommend it.

CrunchGear reports that invitations for Apple's September 9th media event have been issued. Apple has chosen "It's only rock and roll, but we like it," a take on the Rolling Stones song "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (But I Like It)," as the tag line for the event.

The event will be held at 10:00 AM Pacific Time at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the site of several previous Apple September media events.

The date of the event was first pinpointed two weeks ago, following an earlier report that the event would be scheduled for some time on the week of September 7th.

The Huffington Post reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is investigating possible illegal insider trading of shares of Apple stock. Insider trading, or the buying and selling of stock by those with access to information not held by the general public, is closely regulated by the SEC.

Notably, the SEC is requesting information from brokers on trades made during four separate time periods, suggesting that there may be multiple suspected violations of insider trading regulations. Wall Street sources point to three probable areas of interest for the SEC:

--Whether anyone got an illegal lead on precisely how sales were faring on key items in Apple's highly successful Ipod product line.

--Whether anyone was given a precise insight into the health of the company's co-founder and CEO, Steve Jobs, a cancer survivor who took a six-month leave of absence last January and then received a liver transplant. Subsequent questions about the viability of his health then led to a great deal of volatility in Apple's shares.

--Whether anyone had exact knowledge of when specific releases would be made by the company with regard to Jobs' health or Ipod sales and pretty much of an awareness, as well, as to what those announcements would say.

The report cites one trader who noted that "it almost looked at times like the buyers and sellers were working at the company." Consequently, the SEC is looking to obtain information on the names of brokerage clients who traded in Apple stock during the time periods in question and who may have had access to non-public information about the company.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster today issued a note to clients this morning offering his team's thoughts on 14 "unanswered questions" about Apple. Several of his more revealing comments relate to the iPhone, which Munster feels will see its reach broadened to multiple carriers in the U.S. sometime within the next year.

Munster points to data from France, where Apple was forced by the courts to adopt a multi-carrier model, as an indication that Apple will rapidly transition its distribution model to multi-carrier agreements wherever possible, suggesting that such a change may occur in the U.S. next summer during the next probable iPhone refresh.

By way of example, for various reasons the company moved from an exclusive relationship with French wireless carrier Orange to a multi-carrier model. In France, the company now enjoys dramatically higher market share (in the 40 percent range vs. about 15 percent in ROW) than in countries with exclusive carrier agreements (such as AT&T in the U.S. where the iPhone has market share in the mid-teens). We believe Apple is seeing the increased unit sell-through more than offset the slightly (~10 percent) deteriorated economics per unit involved in non-exclusive agreements.

The report also suggests that Apple is unlikely to ever offer a low-cost phone model to compete with "rudimentary $10 models", citing the App Store as a key component to Apple's success in the mobile phone market and the near certainty that Apple would not be able to create a profitable low-cost phone still capable of running those applications.

Munster also sees the success of the iPhone 3GS, beyond that of Apple's expectations, as being due to two primary factors: 1) The success of the App Store, both in its applications themselves and in the cross-promotional "free advertising" the iPhone has received from high-profile companies promoting their iPhone applications, and 2) The fact that the smartphone industry has positioned the iPhone as the "gold standard", whereby competitors trying to emulate the iPhone experience are actually promoting the iPhone platform instead of their own products.

On the topic of iTunes Store video content, Munster sees Apple looking to modernize its offerings within the next year, entering likely lengthy negotiations to revamp arrangements currently limiting the amount of content and the allowed periods of availability. Apple would be looking to offer a monthly package of video content designed to replace a customer's cable bill, and may launch the service alongside upgraded Apple TV software and/or hardware.

We continue to believe that Apple will eventually offer a monthly subscription for iTunes TV shows accessible on Apple TV, iPods, iPhones, and Macs/PCs. Apple could leverage its deep library of content with many network and cable channel content owners to provide unlimited access to a sub-library of its TV shows for a standard monthly fee ($30 to $40 per month). Such a product would effectively replace a consumer's monthly cable bill (~$85/month) and offer access to current and older episodes of select shows on select channels. While timing on the launch of such a product is very uncertain given the negotiations that would need to take place, Apple may work to launch it simultaneously with a new version of Apple TV, or updated Apple TV software within the next year.

With the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard, we're getting our first look at the possibilities behind Snow Leopard's OpenCL technology. OpenCL is a framework that allows applications to more easily harness the power of multiple GPUs and CPUs found in your computer. This would allow powerful graphics cards (GPUs) to do more general processing and could improve application performance substantially.

Unfortunately, there have been few apps that have been released that properly demonstrate the potential of OpenCL. Forum user J the Ninja, however, points to a recently released OpenCL Benchmark application that tests the speed of the various OpenCL capable devices in your Mac. This includes both CPUs and GPUs. The current list of OpenCL supported GPUs include:

- NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 9600M GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce GT 120, GeForce GT 130, GeForce GTX 285, GeForce 8800 GT, GeForce 8800 GS, Quadro FX 4800, Quadro FX5600
- ATI Radeon 4850, Radeon 4870

The benchmark runs on each device showing the relative performance. Most interesting is that for owners of high end MacBook Pros which contain both 9400M and 9600M GT graphics cards, both GPUs can be used at any time by OpenCL. In contrast, both of these GPUs can not be used for general graphics processing and requires a Mac OS X logout to switch from one to another.

In this particular example, the benchmark performance of the user's MacBook Pro CPU and two discrete GPUs were as follows (smaller numbers faster):

GeForce 9600M GT: 2.805 seconds
GeForce 9400M: 3.081 seconds
Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.40GHz: 15.459 seconds

Combining all three processors at once could theoretically deliver substantial performance improvements to the right application.

Finally, another floating point benchmark application called AO Bench has also been ported to OpenCL and can also show the difference between CPU and GPU performance in some configurations.

MacUser provides an in-depth look at one useful new feature in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: Wake On Demand.

[Wake On Demand] is Apple's name for a new networking feature that lets a Snow Leopard Mac go to sleep while a networked base station continues to broadcast Bonjour messages about the services the sleeping computer offers. The base station essentially acts as a proxy for the slumbering Mac. Advertised Bonjour services includes file sharing, screen sharing, iTunes library sharing, and printer sharing among others.

Prior to Snow Leopard, you would have to make your Mac never go to sleep if you wanted it to provide file or print sharing services at any time. This new feature will wake your Mac over Ethernet or even Wi-Fi networks.

There is a specific combination of hardware that is required to accomplish these tasks, however. Apple says you need an AirPort Extreme Base Station (2007 or more recent) or Time Capsule (2008 or more recent) with the latest firmware. MacUser found that in order to wake your Mac by Wi-Fi alone, you would need a 2009 Mac. To see if your Mac supports this 'Wake on Wireless' option, you can look at your System Profiler.

Apple details how this could be used to offer full-time support for iTunes Sharing, Printer Sharing, Back to My Mac, and more. Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard was officially launched today.

Update: Readers are finding the requirements are less strict than thought. There has been success with older Macs for the Wireless Wake feature and the use of an Airport Express.

Update 2: To clear up some confusion surrounding the Wake on Demand feature, readers should note that computers running earlier Mac OS X versions and connected via Ethernet can be awakened remotely using such third-party utilities as WakeOnLan, but Snow Leopard builds that functionality into the operating system and extends that ability to computers connected via Wi-Fi.

While the simple "Wake on Wireless" functionality appears to be available with any wireless router for compatible machines running Snow Leopard and can be triggered using utilities such as WakeOnLan, the Bonjour Sleep Proxy feature needed for the advanced functionalities of broadcasting information about the sleeping machine requires the use of an Apple AirPort or Time Capsule base station running firmware 7.4.2 or later.

Ars Technica reports that Apple resellers are currently reporting low stocks of most iPod models, and no additional shipments of the existing models are reported to be available. Additionally, resellers report that the stock-keeping units (SKUs) for all existing models have been classified as discontinued.

The current line of iPods is on its last legs, lending more evidence that an iPod refresh is just around the corner. Sources from Apple Authorized Resellers have confirmed to Ars that current stock is dwindling (if not completely gone in some cases) and that no more of the current models are coming in. Additionally, all current SKUs are being discontinued, with no word on when new models may arrive.

Apple has been rumored to be holding a music-focused media event on Wednesday, September 9th, at which many Apple followers expect the company to introduce new iPod models as it has done at similar September events in previous years.

A number of rumors have pointed to the inclusion of digital cameras in the iPod touch, iPod nano, and even the iPod classic lines, but there have been no claims of changes to Apple's diminutive iPod shuffle, which saw a complete design overhaul in March of this year.

In a blog post today, Microsoft Macintosh Business Unit senior product manager Mike Tedesco announces that Office 2008 has been tested with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and declared ready for use. Importantly, Tedesco also notes that most of the issues related to Office 2008's interaction with Apple's "Spaces" feature have been fixed in Snow Leopard through the combined efforts of Apple and Microsoft.

Q. Are there any differences with Office 2008 for Mac running on Snow Leopard vs. Leopard?
A. Office 2008 for Mac is Snow Leopard tested and ready! Best of all, with the launch of Snow Leopard, the bulk of the Word 2008 Spaces issues have been fixed after our collaborative efforts to address the problem.

The Spaces bugs present with Office 2008 and Leopard have been viewed as a significant usability issue for many users, but Microsoft has repeatedly placed responsibility for fixing the problems on Apple, citing Apple's implementation of Spaces as the root cause. Based on today's posting, it appears that the two companies have finally worked through the majority of the issues related to Spaces and Office 2008, although Tedesco's wording suggests that there may still be a lingering bug or two.

Apple's Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 officially launched today, though to much shorter lines than previous launches. Snow Leopard reviews started appearing a couple of days ago and most found it to be a worthy upgrade especially for the $30 upgrade price.

Apple has posted a number of support documents detailing changes and tips for the new Mac OS X operating system:

- Bootcamp 3.0 FAQ
- 10.6 Wake on Demand
- New Gamma Settings
- Incompatible Software
- Battery menu changes
- Printer and Scanner compatibility

Apple also provides a detailed list of changes found in Snow Leopard. More discussion and support can be found in our forums.

Snow Leopard is available online through our affiliate partner Amazon.

Last week, reports surfaced that Apple was investigating reports of "exploding" iPhones, spurred by publicity surrounding the case of a French teenager who had reportedly received an eye injury when the screen of his iPhone shattered. French news agency AFP reported earlier this week that additional claims of exploding iPhones had surfaced and that France's official consumer affairs agency had launched an investigation into the reports.

Despite claims to the contrary from those affected by the device failures, Apple claims that the incidents are not the result of any battery issues, but have instead been caused by excessive pressure on the iPhones' screens.

"To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits," the firm said in a statement to AFP.

"The iPhones with broken glass that we have analysed to date show that in all cases the glass cracked due to an external force that was applied to the iPhone," the company added.

Apple's sales director in France, Michel Coulomb, met with French consumer affairs minister Herve Novelli today to discuss the issue, and Novelli concurred with Apple's assessment regarding the cause of the failures.

"The first results show, according to Apple management, that the iPhones weren't damaged by a battery defect leading to an explosion, but that there had been a prior shock that cracked the screens," the minister said.

Novelli noted, however, that it remains to be seen whether blame for the cracked screens should be pinned on unreasonable force applied by users or a design flaw on the part of Apple.