Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" to Focus on Performance

Rather than adding new features, Snow Leopard will focus on performance and perfection according to an Apple press release issued late yesterday. Bertrand Serlet, Apple's senior vice president of Software Engineering, described Snow Leopard to developers attending the WWDC08.

According to Apple,

Snow Leopard delivers unrivaled support for multi-core processors with a new technology code-named "Grand Central" making it easy for developers to create programs that take full advantage of the power of multi-core Macs. Snow Leopard further extends support for modern hardware with Open Computing Language (OpenCL), which lets any application tap into the vast gigaflops of GPU computing power previously available only to graphics applications. OpenCL is based on the C programming language and has been proposed as an open standard. Furthering OS X's lead in 64-bit technology, Snow Leopard raises the software limit on system memory up to a theoretical 16TB of RAM.

Using media technology pioneered in OS X iPhone, Snow Leopard introduces QuickTime X, which optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback. Snow Leopard also includes Safari with the fastest implementation of JavaScript ever, increasing performance by 53 percent, making Web 2.0 applications feel more responsive.

For the first time, OS X includes native support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in OS X applications Mail, iCal and Address Book, making it even easier to integrate Macs into organizations of any size.

Snow Leopard is scheduled to ship in about a year. [Bill Fox]