[babybearbear]

The future soon

Creating an operating system is as much a social exercise as a technological one. Creating a platform, even more so. All of Snow Leopard's considerable technical achievements are not just designed to benefit users; they're also intended to goad, persuade, and otherwise herd developers in the direction that Apple feels will be most beneficial for the future of the platform.

...

In Snow Leopard, developers stand to reap the biggest benefits thanks to an impressive set of new technologies, many of which cover areas previously unaddressed in Mac OS X. Apple clearly feels that the future of the platform depends on much better utilization of computing resources, and is doing everything it can to make it easy for developers to move in this direction


Though it's obvious that Snow Leopard includes fewer external features than its predecessor, I'd wager that it has just as many, if not more internal changes than Leopard. This, I fear, means that the initial release of Snow Leopard will likely suffer the typical 10.x.0 bugs. There have already been reports of new bugs introduced to existing APIs in Snow Leopard. This is the exact opposite of Snow Leopard's implied promise to users and developers that it would concentrate on making existing features faster and more robust without introducing new functionality and the accompanying new bugs.

...


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.

Full 23-page detailed review here:
Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard: the Ars Technica review - Ars Technica

[LinuxSucks]

yes, and immediately, right off the bat, there are already cries of driver woes for many BBoM users.

Along with 32-bit/64-bit confusion among the IT noobs, even when OS X is said to be the most noob-friendly OS in the market.

What a nice way to start off with SL.

[babybearbear]

Originally Posted by LinuxSucks

yes, and immediately, right off the bat, there are already cries of driver woes for many BBoM users.

Along with 32-bit/64-bit confusion among the IT noobs, even when OS X is said to be the most noob-friendly OS in the market.

What a nice way to start off with SL.

Windows will be worse

[LinuxSucks]

oh really?

Last i remember, many Windows 98 device drivers still install and work fine in Windows 7, with some even bypassing the need to install under compatibility mode.

In contrast, i don't see OS 9 drivers working under OS X 10.2, let alone 10.6.

[babybearbear]

Originally Posted by LinuxSucks

oh really?

Last i remember, many Windows 98 device drivers still install and work fine in Windows 7, with some even bypassing the need to install under compatibility mode.

In contrast, i don't see OS 9 drivers working under OS X 10.2, let alone 10.6.

We'll see in Oct 2009

[power666]

Originally Posted by LinuxSucks

Along with 32-bit/64-bit confusion among the IT noobs, even when OS X is said to be the most noob-friendly OS in the market.

Not really. On the application side of things, 64 bit support has been in place since 10.4 for command line applications and 10.5 for graphical based ones. Yeah, OS X 10.4 and 10.5 had a 32 bit kernel but allowed for 64 bit applications. Apple was planning the whole 64 bit transition since the beginning of OS X.

OS X 10.6 brings a 64 bit kernel and thus the need for new drivers. Due to the expected lack of 64 bit drivers for many peripherals, Apple set many machines to default to the 32 bit kernel even if the hardware supported the 64 bit kernel.

Originally Posted by LinuxSucks

Last i remember, many Windows 98 device drivers still install and work fine in Windows 7, with some even bypassing the need to install under compatibility mode.

In contrast, i don't see OS 9 drivers working under OS X 10.2, let alone 10.6.

A better comparison would be a driver designed for 32 bit Windows NT 4 for Alpha working on Windows 7 64 bit. Or Windows 3.1 to Windows 7 64 bit.

Apple made a transition between hardware since OS 9 (PowerPC only) and OS X 10.6 (Intel only). Additionally, Apple made a total break in OS design from 9 to 10.0. No drivers were to work on both versions simultaneously. Additionally, OS 9 application support was dropped back in OS 10.5 for all machines. Intel based machines couldn't even run OS 9 applications under OS 10.4.

[Lyfeforce]

Drivers are the responsibility of the hardware manufacturers. OS programmers may opt to include generic drivers but it has never been a pre-requisite.

[NextGen_Gamer]

Originally Posted by power666

Not really. On the application side of things, 64 bit support has been in place since 10.4 for command line applications and 10.5 for graphical based ones. Yeah, OS X 10.4 and 10.5 had a 32 bit kernel but allowed for 64 bit applications. Apple was planning the whole 64 bit transition since the beginning of OS X.

OS X 10.6 brings a 64 bit kernel and thus the need for new drivers. Due to the expected lack of 64 bit drivers for many peripherals, Apple set many machines to default to the 32 bit kernel even if the hardware supported the 64 bit kernel.

Yeah, by default "Snow Leopard" boots with a 32-bit kernel, but if you hold down the "6" and "4" keys (get it, 64?) while booting it will instead use the 64-bit kernel. I don't have any benchmarks to run, but I can say that general application performance feels the exact same between the two kernels. Programs like iTunes, Safari, and iPhoto all start-up and perform the same, coming out of sleep mode takes the same amount of time, etc. And that is exactly what Apple said it would be like: the vast majority of applications would perform the same using the 32-bit kernel, which is why Apple still boots into it by default. As far as driver incompatibilities go, I haven't experienced any problems at all by booting into the 64-bit kernel, but then I wouldn't expect to on a notebook product like the MacBook Pro.