Snow Leopard Improvements Announced and That Should Be Added by Apple

Good stuff:) As a leopard on pc user I agree with the osx on pc from apple idea. I mean we already run vanilla leopard, why not sell it to us and make some money:)

I agree with everything you said except for using OS X on a non-apple machine. It is not that saying that is blasphemy it is that is it not realistic. Apple makes about 50% of its profit margin from selling hardware+software. So you are saying that Apple should give up 50% of it's profits to make "an easier upgrade of your system’s hardware" and increase market share. They would have to sell about 7 times the amount of software that they are currently selling to make up the lose that they would suffer due to lost hardware sales. That means they would have to capture about 56% of the world computer market just to break even doing things your way. I think you can see that is just not realistic.

If Apple makes Snow Leopard suitable for any hardware it's gonna be a revolution!The Mac OS users gonna take not 10 but 20% from the market only in 1 year.
The point is that the target group of Apple is not whole world, but value customers who know what wants and where to find it.

I think 20% in any reasonable period of time is not likely. NO ONE has ever taken that big a bite out of Windows that quickly (it took Apple about 10 years to grow from 3% to about 8%).

However, let's say you're right and Apple doubles market share from 10% to 20% by selling software separately. Now, let's do some math. They get $129 for selling the software. Software sales are typically around 70%. Let's say their average computer price is around $1500 with roughly 30% margins. Therefore, they need to sell AT LEAST 5 software licenses for every hardware sale lost. So, if even 1/5 of their current customers choose to buy just the software to run on generic hardware, then increasing market share from 10% to 20% is a break-even AT BEST.

So why should Apple take on the risk and added support costs when even the most wild-eyed estimates don't show them as having any benefit?

Agree except for the PC bit! I love my mac's because the hardware AND software work so well together. Open the software to the dodgy hardware the dark side uses and we will eventually end up where windows is, software hacked to support poorly designed hardware. There goes all your performance gains. No thanks.

The argument that the OS will suffer on PC hardware is false. Anyone that has played with a hackintosh will attest that the OS runs just fine on no apple hardware.

The transition will not mean that I will stop buying apple machines. It will mean that I will be able to install OS X on my parents machine and my sisters machine. Once I do that (and other people do as well) it will be a given that their next machines will be MAC's

First of all, "precious disk space"? says who? Disk space is cheap. Where did Apple say they were going to reduce app footprints? Making an OS international is far more important than saving disk space. How would Apple save disk space? If anything, apps will be slightly larger for a while. Not just Universal, but also 32-bit and 64-bit, so 4-way binaries instead of just 2-way binaries.

As for memory footprint, 64-bit apps take up slightly MORE RAM than a 32-bit counterpart.

Most Apple applications are already in Cocoa. the single major holdout is the Finder.


What exactly is "gaming support"? OpenGL is already there. Fast graphics cards? already there. The only thing keeping gaming development from the Mac is games developers.

As for that tired old argument of running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware? One of the main reasons that the Mac experience is stable and fast is that Mac OS X doesn't have to support a gazillion different hardware configs. Apple has to support only those machines which it ships. And all those machines it ships use standard PC parts. There's really no such thing as "standard hardware configs" out there. There are LOTS of configs out there. That's one of the big problems.

Do you really think it's worth it to make the Mac OS X experience worse in order to get people to switch to a "superior" experience? Does that even make sense?

The argument that is tired is the one saying that there are millions of hardware configs out there and blah blah blah.

It is REALLY simple.

Apple says we support:
This chipset(s)
These graphics chips
These network cards...

The manfacturer (Dell/HP...) builds machines to these specs or includes drivers written for OS X

End user who builds a machine (I would like to be able to build a specialty mac) picks hardware that is supported. This is not a stretch because anyone now with a mac faces this EXACT situation when we want to upgrade to a faster USB... faster graphics or whatever.

So again that argument is old and VERY tired.

Firstly, don't get too carried away on the 64-bit point. There is not necessarily a speed increase and your comment about "currently active tasks inside the much faster RAM memory" is a bit misleading. Yes, things will be faster, but only at the cost of all that extra RAM and few machines today have room for that RAM (Mac Pro?). People reading this may think it applies to their existing iMac/Macbook.

Total agreement with you otherwise until your "last point". Apple will never (at least as long as SJ is in charge) license the OS or bless it's use on non-Apple h/w. Frankly I wouldn't want them to. OS X benefits from the limited and standardized h/w it runs on. I don't want a bloated monster like Vista (not a slam on MS, but they have a helluva job to support the PC hardware market).

Why is it that everyone keeps saying that Steve Jobs does not want to license the Mac OS? If you know anything and you don't assume Steve Jobs is a HUGE LIAR then you know this is not the case. He killed the Clones for OTHER reasons when he came back. Watch the vid. (do a search for (Steve Jobs S Bomb)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maIgu_7oLm0

"This should mean that, if Apple’s new OS becomes the default OS of a large number of people, the loss experienced by the Cupertino-based company due to the low hardware sells should be covered, if not surpassed, by the OS sells. "

This is just plain not going to happen, nor should it. Let's say the average Mac system is $1,000. Gross margins are in the mid-30's. They can then sell software for $100 with gross margins in the 70% range. They need to sell 5 software boxes for every hardware sale lost. If (as is likely to happen), Apple loses half of their market to clones dropping from 8% to 4%, the total OS X market share would have to be 20% for this to even be a break even for Apple. And that even assumes that 30% cost of sales for the software is enough to cover all the additional R&D and support needed to cover a wide market.

I just don't see Mac OS X jumping to 20% any time soon. What would happen is exactly what happened last time - cloners would take away business that Apple would have had anyway and Apple would lose a fortune.

(This probably understates the risk to Apple. If consumers can put OS X on a $300 Dell, Apple is going to have to cut drastically cut prices on their hardware - so they'd need to sell far more OS licenses to make up for it. It just isn't going to happen.

Please explain Microsoft Exchange support. How does it help the iPhone? Will an Exchange server run on Snow Panther? Not clear at all to me what is being done. Am I the only one missing what this does?

Running this OS on an Intel machine would be a big challenge. It would be frustrating and wasteful to put together patches to make nonstandard hardware work on the Mac OS I can understand why Apple wouldn't want this to happen - at least from that point of view.

I'm just guessing but Apple probably thinks the support issues concerning all the "bargain basement" hardware Snow Leopard would face would be prohibitively expensive. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it did well on all the pc hardware out there.

Having OS X on the PC is problematic. Anyone on the InsanelyMac forums will tell you that. And even with Apple's support if it ever came to that, you can't expect Apple to support EVERY bit of hardware out there. Then of course you lose optimisations on the hardware because the OS doesn't integrate especially with Macs because Apple have to make it an OS-for-All like Microsoft has to with Windows.

And then you'd all complain that OS X has gone to the dogs. And I'll be there to remind you who suggested OS X for PCs on a reputable news channel in the first place. ;-)

Are you on drugs? Or just that naive?

You said it yourself, there is no malware. Second, companies choose to write for DirectX, which is why those games aren't on the Mac. Third, Apple is printing money on hardware sales just so people can run OSX.

Why don't you just say what you really want, "I want Apple to rewrite Windows so Windows doesn't suck?"

i personally dont agree with the editor. the more people use mac, the more likely people are going to start making spyware/viruses for mac. the main reason why pcs have all these spyware and no company can guarantee complete elimination is because everyone uses a pc, and by hacking it, the programmer can obtain the most data and information. why put the mac at risk?
also. i really hope osx will never be allowed to be installed on any other computer other than apple itself. this ruins the beauty of mac and apple. imagine seeing leopard on a crappy ugly dell/acer/hp/whatever company is out there, that totally ruins the class of the people who actually use macs.
lastly, im also not so sure about gaming. surely we know that our beloved macs can run any game out there way better than windows can, for example world of warcraft. the graphics and speed is simply amazing. however, unless we ask all the gaming companies to develop their game like spore was developed, mac shall never ever be able to play .exe games. im sure we all know why.
steve jobs really did a good job making this amazing machine, by integrating beauty and simplicity, i hope whoever takes his place will not destroy this.

Again a tired argument.. "There are no mac virus's because of Market share."
NO... Wrong... try again.

Many of the virus script kiddies out there want attention! The first person to make a splash with a true mac virus is going to make a HUGE splash.

Now I am going to say this as plainly as I can... if someone out there thinks they can make a virus for a MAC DO IT!

It has not happened because of lack of ability... If the ability existed it would have happened.

Your third and last thing is a huge headache waiting to happen. An OSX strength is Apple's control of hardware and operating system. It's a package made to work together. Even then it has a few problems, but not nearly to the extent of the other operating system that runs on just about any hardware it's customers can build or buy. What surprises me isn't that it throws up a blue screen of death every now and again. I'm surprised, seeing some of the systems running it, that XP and Vista are able to run at all.

Apple has the right idea. Keep controls tight and hold the headaches to keep the quality of user experience high.

JJ

I really hope this means gaming might become more open and easier to fin on the new os x os from apple e.g steam

This would be great as i have partitioned my hard drive just so i can play steam when i'm away from my pc.

One point on the desire for more gaming support from Apple. The issue here is not under Apple's control: Almost all games written for the PC use a PC-only technolgy (DirectX). DirectX allows devlopers to write to the computer screen without directly referring to each PC's actual hardware (game cards, memory locations, etc.). Thus developers can write one program that runs on (almost) any Windows machine. DirectX is a huge benefit to devlopers of Windows games.

Unfortunately it's extremely difficult and time consuming to translate the DirectX commands to commands that the Macintosh recognizes. So most developers will just ignore the Macintosh platform.

The obvious solution is for Apple to create a DirectX-to-Macintosh interpreter. But that would be very expensive, and we all know that the next release of DirectX from Microsoft would "accidently" do something that would break the translation. Then two things would happen: 1) Games on the Apple would get a reputation for not working; 2) Apple would get in a reverse-engineering arms race with Microsoft, which Microsoft would win due to the resources they could throw at the problem.

Come on, stop lying - and the end of the day Apple provides OpenGL which is the SAME thing as DirectX - so no, you don't have to write for the hardware in the case of MacOS X.

The problem with Apple is their implementation of OpenGL and and how it is always behind the times; heck, X3100 supports OpenGL 2.1 and yet it is crippled with OpenGL 1.2.

There are many more examples of this crippling.

Are you naive with the "let it be installed on all platforms" suggestion? Apple will never release their OS on non-Mac hardware. Their margins come from the hardware. The reason "it just works" is because they are not distributing their OS across a gazillion hardware configurations. They don't want to sell an OEM license for $30 a pop to the box makers; it would kill their margins and make it difficult to roll out OS updates as frequently due to the almost infinite variety of generic box hardware. It blows my mind that people keep bringing this same topic up over and over again.

Uh, these "improvements" were announced weeks ago, summarized over and over again.

About the wish list - whatever. If you're not a developer, nothing but a waste of bandwidth.

Apple is a HW company. Why do folks keep saying Mac OS X should run on non-Apple HW? Why not buy an Apple Mac and run Windows and Mac OS X on it? Isn't that the same thing? I keep saying that point is moot. I'm all for whatever gaming support Apple can offer, however, I'm not sure what Apple needs to do other than "developer support". I'm glad Apple is making "just enhancements" to Mac OS X. I think Apple and MS both need to hone the OSes they have and stop making completely new ones. It appears Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" has set some core internal stuff and Apple should be able to continue to improve this OS without having to rewrite and redo everything and make whole new GUI, etc. For MS, I really think they are sunk unless they make a whole new Windows--start fresh and throw out all pre-2008 code, and make a compatibility box for existing Windows apps to run in. Apple has done this several times with CPU changes, HW changes, OS changes, and now has a modern OS doing well without any baggage. Windows just seems to get more bloated. Granted I'm a Mac fan, but I think MS can make a good Windows if they would start fresh and get rid of old baggage and create a "modern" OS. Thanks!

"compatibility with any popular hardware architecture"

Buttressed with: "This will translate into an easier upgrade of your system’s hardware when needed"

I take it you haven't followed the roadmap of OS X.

Unlike Microsoft's OS roadmap, Apple's does not have dramatic new system requirements that make last year's machine look outdated. Leopard will even run on hardware that came out 7 years ago!

Aside from that, Apple is doing just fine with the "numbers" of adopters.

"This should mean that, if Apple’s new OS becomes the default OS of a large number of people, the loss experienced by the Cupertino-based company due to the low hardware sells should be covered, if not surpassed, by the OS sells."

Did you actually do the math on this? No, you didn't.

And just in the case you did... What amount did you figure for the added support fleet that Apple would have to hire just to support all of these new customers?

Are you kidding me? As a PC user, recently using Macs, can you IMAGINE the Microsoftization of Leopard if Cupertino went down the PC freindly avenue? The software-hardware conflicts? The problems, crashes, incompatibilities? The end solution would still be a limited hardware-type requirement for Snow Leopard, which, logically, is still just one-step to reaffirming Apple's wisdom in controling the hardware. requirments and sales. Not true that lower hardware sales would be met by more OS sales, as Apple's infrastructure support for Leopard-on-PC issues would have to increase exponentially (see why Linux is still at 1% of market). These past years, Apple hardware dropped in price along component price, so Apple has it very much right by controlling hardware access. And the macs just... work.

One thing you didn't mention: ZFS. What would ZFS do to the speed on our Macs.

As I understand that would improve speed and reliability drastically. Snow Leopard Server will have this. But as I understand that will not happen to the version our macs will run.

Any comments on that?

As far as mac os x on PC is concerned it is not going to happen, those who dream that stop dreaming about it, you know the reason , Apple will never want to be like Microsoft and sell OS to the hardware they dont know and have Driver incompatibility mess, Microsoft Indeed has higher Market Share , But the Quality is never as good as Apple , The big reason is They dont have their own hardware. Mac OS X is built For Apple Hardware The kernel is the main issue communication with the hardware, Mac OS X is not Built on PC hardware and is not Built for PC hardware , there is a difference of EFI and BIOS , well leaving all the tech stuff aside , Apple wont Port Mac OS X on PC because it is "MAC" OS X

Integrated Malware Protection , I think Apple is not gonna do that Either , guess why 1) Apple is not an anti virus company like Norton 2) Apple trusts its 3rd Party developers 3)Apple doesn't need it there are no viruses no real threat and moreover snow leopard is gonna make it much painful for virus developers incase they are trying

Gaming Support : MAC OS X is OPEN GL , What else you need, and any games that come for mac run as good as they run on a PC