Apple Gives Developers a Preview of Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Archive notice: This article was originally published on June 10, 2008. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.

Rather than focusing primarily on new features, Snow Leopard will improve the performance of OS X, set a new standard for quality and establish the foundation for future OS X innovations. Snow Leopard is optimized for multicore processors, taps the enormous computing power of computers with graphics processing units (GPUs), enables the use of unprecedented amounts of RAM and includes a new, modern media platform with QuickTime X. Snow Leopard includes built-in support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 and is scheduled to ship in approximately one year. “We have delivered more than 1,000 new features in OS X in just seven years, and Snow Leopard lays the foundation for another 1,000 new features,” said Bertrand Serlet, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “In our continuing effort to deliver the best user experience, we have hit the pause button on new features to focus entirely on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system.” Snow Leopard provides unparalleled support for multicore processors with a new technology code-named “Grand Central.” This technology makes it easier for developers to create programs that make full use of the performance potential of multicore Macs. Snow Leopard extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which allows any application to tap the enormous gigaflop performance previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and is intended as an open standard. Extending OS X’s lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the theoretical system-memory limit for software to 16 TB of RAM. First introduced in iPhone OS X, QuickTime X is used in Snow Leopard, supporting modern audio and video formats and providing extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari with what Apple described as the fastest implementation of JavaScript to date. It increases speed by up to 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications more responsive. For the first time, OS X provides native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in the OS X applications Mail, iCal and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.