Monday, August 24th 2009
Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Starts Shipping on Aug. 28
Apple's newest operating system, the OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard - one claimed to be the world's most advanced - starts shipping later this month, on 28th. The new OS is priced at US $29 (incl. shipping) for a single-user upgrade from Leopard, and $49 for 5-user family pack users. New Macs will bundle the OS, and it will also be available in bundles with iLife and iWork for $169 ($229 for 5-user family pack).
Snow Leopard brings in several major thru minor changes over its predecessor, more importantly, that it eliminates support for PowerPC-based Macs, supporting only those based on Intel x86. All major components will now support the x86-64 instruction set, to take advantage of large amounts of system memory. The OS also embraces OpenCL, which lets supporting applications tap the computing power of GPUs, while the OS itself is better optimised for multi-core/multi-threaded CPUs.
Notable application updates bundled with the OS include Safari 4 and Quicktime X. The former is one of the fastest web-browsers, while the latter supports GPU-acceleration for video playback. Apple Store and Amazon.com have started accepting orders for the OS, which will ship on the 28th. Both stores offer free shipping in the US.
Source:
MacNN
Snow Leopard brings in several major thru minor changes over its predecessor, more importantly, that it eliminates support for PowerPC-based Macs, supporting only those based on Intel x86. All major components will now support the x86-64 instruction set, to take advantage of large amounts of system memory. The OS also embraces OpenCL, which lets supporting applications tap the computing power of GPUs, while the OS itself is better optimised for multi-core/multi-threaded CPUs.
38 Comments on Apple OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard Starts Shipping on Aug. 28
Just wish my window's upgrades were as cheap. Remember when I upgraded from Vista premium 32bit to ultimate 64bit, that put me back about $200 at the time.
Microsoft needs to do the same thing with windows 7, just one OS with full features, instead of multiple OS.
But eh... They pretty much have a monopoly on Computer Gaming, so what are you going to do?
(not that I do it ....:D)
There are not many 64-bit apps on OS X either but it's easier for devs to switch because Leopard can run 64-bit apps. Snow Leopard gets a 64-bit kernel and 64-bit system apps(but it's not x64 only like I had thought). However, it still boots the 32-bit kernel by default, which means most users don't have to hunt for 64-bit drivers yet.
MS has always had 32 bit apps running on their x64 OS, what was your point lemonade?
There is no ened to make x64 versions of an application with low memory use (say, MSN, or firefox) so why should they when x86 works fine?they're still doing x86 and x64 at once, so its no different to say MS's first OS like that... XP-64.