MacRumors

Apple has seeded a new version of Snow Leopard (Build 10A190) to developers this morning. Last night they had emailed ADC members that a preview build of Snow Leopard was made available to them, but the download links were not live until this morning.

Snow Leopard is the codename for the next major revision of Mac OS X. Apple has said that they would be focusing on 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.

Update: Seed Notes reveal some changes including Multicore enhancements and partially rewritten Cocoa Finder.

Apple has seeded iPhone 2.2 Firmware Beta 2 and has fully enabled Google Street View. We had previously reported that Beta 1 of iPhone 2.2 had hidden APIs related to the Street View for Google Maps, but was not enabled.

Apple seeded iPhone 2.2 Firmware Beta 2 to developers tonight. The seed notes also indicated that Line-in audio accessories are now supported in the SDK.

Update: iPhoneYap has posted a gallery.

Luke from iFixit.com was kind enough to test out a new NVIDIA-based MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM (two 4GB chips) to see if the earlier reports were true. NVIDIA representatives had stated that the new chipsets used in the MacBook and MacBook Pro could support up to 8GB of RAM. Previous generation MacBook Pros could only reliably support up to 4GB of memory.

Preliminary results show that while the new MacBook Pro did recognize the entire 8GB of RAM, during actual usage, the computer appeared to be limited to 4GB:

The machine would hit an invisible wall at 4GB and act like it had run out of memory. In the larger screenshot, two instances of Parallels can be seen (both set to 2GB of RAM). The second instance, however, only occupies a small portion of RAM expected. It's unclear why this limitation exists, as Mac OS X is able to use more than 4GB on Apple's Mac Pro. As a result, MacBook and MacBook Pro owners should not expect to be able to upgrade to 8GB of RAM at this time.

iFixit has posted a disassembly guide for the new MacBook Pros including RAM replacement and will post updates about these results after further testing.

Update: More results.

Apple has publicly posted in their HotNews feed that they are opposing a proposal (Proposition 8) that seeks to eliminate the right to same-sex marriage in the state of California. Apple has also donated $100,000 to the "No to 8" campaign:

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a persons fundamental rights including the right to marry should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Proposition 8 is on the California ballot for the November 4th vote. We typically avoid political news stories on MacRumors. Besides (generally) being off-topic, the debates surrounding an individual's belief in politics can often degenerate into very heated discussions. Due to this, we are keeping this story's discussion thread in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. While anyone can read the discussion thread, only forum members with more than 100 forum posts will be able to post new replies. Please keep the discussion civil.

Discussion thread has been closed.

InformationWeek points out a few new Apple patent applications that were just published which describe technologies that will likely appear in Apple's Snow Leopard (10.6) operating system.

Snow Leopard promises to deliver improved Multi-Core processor and Mac graphics processor unit (GPU) support to applications. While all of Apple's Macs have moved to Multi-Core processors over the past few years, applications have been slow to take full advantage of the multiple cores due to the complexity involved. Similarly, most of Apple's Macs ship with advanced GPUs for improved graphical performance and these specialized processors could also be tapped for general computing purposes. With Snow Leopard, developers should be able to more easily take advantage of this existing hardware to improve the performance of their applications.

The patent application called Data Parallel Computing on Multiple Processors describes methods to accomplish the distribution of these tasks:

A method and an apparatus that allocate one or more physical compute devices such as CPUs or GPUs attached to a host processing unit running an application for executing one or more threads of the application are described.

In the patent application itself, the inventors describe that some of the GPUs may be connected in Scalable Link Interface (SLI) or CrossFire configurations. These terms describe the simultaneous use of dual GPUs as we have discussed recently.

InformationWeek points out that some of the inventors listed have previously worked at ATI. The patent documents also publish details under the "OpenCU" label:

This document describes an embodiment of an architecture, referred to as OpenCU (Compute Units), for parallel computing. The OpenCU architecture enables a data and thread parallel computing model and allows users to view a GPU or a CPU (single-or multi-core) as a data parallel compute device. The OpenCU specification describes an API and a programming language that can be used to create and manage parallel programs.

The "Apple Confidential"-labeled document (pdf) is publicly available for those more technically inclined.

MacMiniColo.net, an internet hosting company that has a vested interest in Apple's Mac mini computers, has published a "State of the Mac mini" report in which they claim that they have heard that a new Mac mini is on the way. Specifically, they believe (with some certainty) that it will gain the following specs:

- A new Mini DisplayPort
- Increase in max RAM to 4GB
- SATA Optical drive (instead of ATA/IDE)

MacMiniColo.net certainly has a financial interest in the continuation of the Mac mini and, as a result, may be in the position to have heard about its fate. The hosting company also dispels the notion that the Mac mini is selling poorly and believes that the mini is still a very popular model both for businesses and consumers.

A recent report has raised the question about the fate of the low end Apple Mac, with claims that the model has already stopped shipping to retailers. This report, however, was in contrast to recent claims (March 2008) that at least one more model is on the way. According to our Buyer's Guide, the Mac mini has not been updated for 444 days.

Apple has posted a new iPhone developer agreement as previously promised. One of the developer agreements has been posted publicly, though another is only available to registered developers. The new agreement appears to limit what is considered "confidential information" primarily to Apple's pre-release software:

You agree that any Apple pre-release software (including related documentation and materials) and any information disclosed by Apple to you in connection with Apple Events or Paid Content (defined below) will be considered and referred to as Apple Confidential Information.

Apple also restricts "Apple Events" and "Paid Content" which appears to include premium content such as WWDC (which has always been under Non Disclosure). The change is intended to allow the publication of iPhone tutorials, books and collaboration that had previously been restricted by Apple's original agreement.

Meanwhile there have been some mixed reports that Apple has already seeded iPhone 2.2 Firmware Beta 2. If not available now, it appears the update will be available soon for iPhone developers.

iPhone 2.2 Beta 1 had included frameworks for a number of new features including Google Street View and Japanese Emoji icons.

Update: Apple also opened official developer forums at http://devforums.apple.com/.

Apple has started developer seeding and testing of the next update to their Mac OS X operating system. Mac OS X 10.5.6 (9G21) was seeded to developers this morning and offers the usual laundry list of bug fixes and improvements across a variety of services.

The new update appears to move notebook trackpad preferences into its own preference pane in the control panel, just like on new laptops. However, the update does not bring the newly-introduced 4-finger multi-touch gestures to existing Apple multi-touch laptops.

There are also no hints or indications of Blu-ray support. While there were some early rumors that 10.5.6 might incorporate Blu-Ray support, recent comments by Apple executives indicate support is not coming soon.

Recently leaked roadmaps from VR-Zone indicate that Intel will be updating their mobile processors in Q2 2009. Digitimes pinpoints the updates for April.

The company will launch two processors along with the new platform, the Core 2 Duo T9900 and P8800.

These new processors will top out at 3.06GHz and likely be suitable for use in Apple's notebook line. The current MacBook Pro tops out at 2.8GHz.

However, shortly after their release, Intel will be migrating from the Montevina platform to Calpella in Q3 2009. This shift marks the move to the Nehalem (Core i7) based architecture which we've previously described. Nehalem is said to represent a major jump in performance due to many underlying changes in technology.

Gizmodo spoke with NVIDIA representatives who confirmed a few interesting tidbits about the NVIDIA chipsets and GPUs that are found in the new MacBook Pro.

First of all, the new MacBook Pros are capable of switching from discrete to integrated GPUs "on-the-fly" without logging out. This should not come as much of a surprise, as there exists support for this real-time switching in Windows. So if and when Apple updates the drivers for the MacBook Pro, on-the-fly could be enabled. The benefit to this, of course, is when you move from word processing to playing a game, the GPU could switch from one to the other automatically without requiring a log-out.

More interesting, however, is the that the NVIDIA chipsets are capable of running both integrated and discrete GPUs simultaneously which would offer a large performance boost. There had been some debate about this capability before. Some of the confusion lies in NVIDIA's naming convention.

NVIDIA advertises two features under the marketing name "Hybrid SLI". The two features are:

Hybrid Power - which allows your to switch from one GPU to the other for better performance vs battery life. Apple's MacBook Pros do support this feature but presently require you to log out.
GeForce Boost - this is the feature that allows both GPUs to run simultaneously to provide even better performance (and presumably, even less battery life).

According to this most recent statement by NVIDIA representatives, the MacBook Pro's hardware is capable of both, but will need specific software support to be written by Apple.

Finally, NVIDIA confirms another interesting tidbit that had been circulating already. These new chipsets officially support 8GB of RAM. Prior to this, it appears MacBook Pros were limited to 4GB of RAM. This would be a welcome change for those who use their MacBook Pros for memory intensive tasks. This being said, we haven't yet heard of anyone who has successfully installed 8GB of RAM in their new MacBook Pro.

A NYTimes blog article by John Markoff (via AppleInsider) claims that Apple may already be testing a netbook-sized device. Markoff recaps Jobs' statements from yesterday's financial conference but adds this tidbit in an update to the article:

That would seem to confirm findings that a search engine company shared with me on condition that I not reveal its name: The company spotted Web visits from an unannounced Apple product with a display somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Is it the iPhone 3.0 or the NetMac 1.0?

We're not sure what to make of this information. Had it was presented by someone other than the New York Times' John Markoff, we may have simply dismissed it.

Web user-agent identifications are easy to falsify. In fact, in many browsers users can enter whatever identifying string they would like. Similarly, display resolution is a self reported Javascript statistic from the user's browser.

No specific information is provided by Markoff and a quick perusal of our own web logs have not revealed anything noteworthy. Still, it would not be surprising that unannounced Apple products would be tested on live websites, though it's unclear how much identifying information Apple would include in such a device.

During yesterday's conference call, Apple revealed that iPhone was responsible for 39% of the company's revenues in Q4 2008. Due to Apple's decision to report iPhone earnings as subscription revenue over 24 months, however, these numbers are not reflected in the $1.14 billion net profit and $7.9 billion in revenue reported yesterday. If they had been included, this would represent an additional $3.8 billion in revenue and an additional $1.3 billion in net income.

As noted by many, the size of this number is remarkable for a product that has been on the market for only 15 months. Steve Jobs highlighted the significance of the numbers by putting Apple's iPhone sales into perspective:

- Apple sold more iPhones than RIM sold Blackberries in Q4 2008
- In terms of revenue, Apple is now #3 amongst mobile phone vendors behind Nokia and Samsung and beating out Sony Ericsson which falls at #4.

When questioned about Apple's plans for the future in face of increasing iPhone competition, Jobs suggested that they would continue to aggressively price the iPhone and make ongoing improvements:

Well, I think we have to be the best and I think we have to not leave a price umbrella underneath us, and we are working very hard to fulfill both of those goals.

Apple seeded a new version of QuickTime 7.6 to developers yesterday. The latest build is available for Mac OS X and Windows and asks developers to test AAC encoding/playback, Multichannel encoding, Apple Lossless playback/encoding as well as MPEG-1 playback/encoding.

With recent news that the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros appear to have hardware based H.264 decoding, readers are going to be naturally interested to see if the latest QuickTime beta might include such support for older Macs.

The latest seed, however, shows no drop in CPU usage when decoding 1080p QuickTime streams on a previous generation MacBook Pro. It's still not clear if Apple will incorporate support for H.264 hardware decoding on older Macs, many of which contain GPUs capable of some level of H.264 support.

AT&T today posted their 3Q earnings with strong wireless division gains lead by 2.4 million iPhone 3G activations in the quarter, 40% of which were new AT&T subscribers. Adjusted earnings dipped slightly due to the subsidies placed on the iPhone 3G and hurricane related expenses.

AT&T highly values iPhone and other smartphone subscribers due to their lucrative data plans that have "significantly higher [average revenue per user] and lower churn than postpaid subscriber average."

Yesterday Apple reported that they had sold the 10 millionth iPhone last quarter. This beat Apple's self-imposed goal of reaching this milestone by the end of calendar year 2008.