Mac OS X 10.6 Build 10A261 – Yet More New Stuff Found

Following yesterday's Snow Leopard screenshot tour (so to speak), Mac-focused sites picked up on World of Apple's findings, discussing them with their visitors. Some, however, decided to dig a little deeper in the latest Snow Leopard build, to reveal more hidden stuff. Here it is!

The folks at Neowin have posted new Snow Leopard tidbits “hot on the tails of World of Apple's screenshots of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard,” citing an anonymous source (probably a developer) that was able to confirm the new findings. Those include:

Rosetta is now optional - “In the Mac OS X installer, you are given the option to leave it out of your install. This will save a significant amount of disk space,” the source says.

PPC support still on - “the applications (drastically reduced in size) still support the legacy PowerPC processor, as well as multiple languages,” according to the tester. Seemingly, the space reductions are coming from somewhere else, says the source.

The site throws these in as “more interesting bits of information:”

- there is no longer a MobileMe screen in the welcome wizard upon first boot
- there's still no option to install to ZFS
- read and write support for ZFS and NTFS filesystems is not available
- almost all applications are 64-bit now with the exception of iTunes.

While not all of these findings are mind-blowing, Apple is expected to unveil a few surprises with the actual introduction of the new OS version. After all, what's a keynote address aimed at launching Snow Leopard with everyone being aware of the OS' underpinnings?

The source also points out that Apple is likely not focusing on consumer-based features in Snow Leopard, but rather on speed and stability. The assertion couldn't be truer. However, Apple itself has confirmed that OS X 10.6 is less about new features, and more about speed and performance, but we can still expect the Mac maker to throw in a couple of new things, whether these are UI changes, or even new bundled apps.