Apple to drop new Snow Leopard beta on developers

Apple sometime this week is expected to tap its developers to begin testing a new pre-release copy of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, signaling a clear acceleration of the beta test process.
The Cupertino-based company issued the first external build of next-gen operating system back in June of last year but did not follow up a new distribution for more than four months. Since then, new builds have arrived every four to six weeks, on average.

Now, people familiar with the matter say Apple is gearing up to provide developers with a second build of Snow Leopard during the month of April, three weeks or so after offering up build 10A314 near the top of the month.

The target build for this week's release is said to be Mac OS X 10.6 build 10A335, which of course is always subject to change. Again, there are rumors that this new build may include some much anticipated visual tweaks to the Mac OS X interface but given that those rumors did not materialize last time, it may be safe to assume that June's Worldwide Developers Conference may be the more likely forum for these disclosures.

It's also rumored that the new Snow Leopard will incorporate a pre-release build of Apple Remote Desktop 3.3. This maintenance release to the remote administration software reportedly goes by the code-name "Hook" and was commissioned with the primary purpose of delivering compatibility with Snow Leopard, though it will also include a number of bug fixes.

Apple last provided its third-party developers with a new build of Snow Leopard on April 1st, encouraging them to focus their attention on delivering 64-bit compatibility in their third party kernel extensions.

While previewing Snow Leopard last June for the first time, the Mac maker stated that it hoped to release the software approximately one year later. However, the most recent estimates from those familiar with beta tests have suggested an August date may be more likely.

A Quantum Leap of Mac--Mac OS X 10.6 code named Snow Leopard

Release Date: 15, Jan, 2009 keywords: Apple, Mac OS X, Leopard (from apple.com)

Since 2001, Mac OS X has delivered more than a thousand innovative new features. With Snow Leopard, the next major version of the world’s most advanced operating system, Mac OS X changes more than its spots, it changes focus. Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality. Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users, and giving them back valuable hard drive space for their music and photos.

Microsoft Exchange Support Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 built into Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Mac OS X uses the Exchange Web Services protocol to provide access to Exchange Server 2007. Because Exchange is supported on your Mac and iPhone, you'll be able to use them anywhere with full access to your email,contacts, and calendar. Multicore "Grand Central,"a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard, brings unrivaled support for multicore systems to Mac OS X. More cores, not faster clock speeds, drive performance increases in today's processors. Grand Central takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. Grand Central also makes it much easier for developers to create programs that squeeze every last drop of power from multicore systems.

64-bit To accommodate the enormous amounts of memory being added to advanced hardware,Snow Leopard extends the 64-bit technology in Mac OS X to support breakthrough amounts of RAM — up to a theoretical 16TB, or 500 times more than what is possible today. More RAM makes applications run faster,because more of their data can be kept in the very fast physical RAM instead of on the much slower hard disk. Media and Internet Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone,Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, a streamlined, next- generation platform that advances modern media and Internet standards. QuickTime X features optimized support for modern codecs and more efficient media playback, making it ideal for any application that needs to play media content. Because Snow Leopard delivers the fastest implementation of JavaScript to date,web applications are more responsive. Safari runs JavaScript up to 53percent faster with Snow Leopard.

OpenCL

Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Computing Language),makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations per second, they're capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for general-purpose computing.

*Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection, and other factors. Benchmark based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test on a 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based iMac with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and 2GB of RAM.
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