14 DAY TRIAL // When was the last time you heard Apple releasing one of its products and saying that it would not add any new features compared with the last version? If you were prepared to say never, think again. That time was when it announced the release of Snow Leopard, the future addition to its family of OSes bearing cat monikers.
And when it said that, it really meant it. Snow Leopard will not be an OS X version boasting a whole roundup of new features created just so all Leopard users would want to get their hands on it and install it on their Macs. This time, Apple only wants to deliver the best OS experience ever on the Mac platform.
What are the things that will make Apple’s wish reality? As I already said in a previous article, the announced additions that you will definitely notice when running Snow Leopard on your Mac will be Grand Central, the application footprint overall reduced, extended 64-bit technology, OpenCL, applications rewritten using Cocoa, enhanced multimedia playback capabilities and support for modern codecs on the QuickTime X platform, and out of the box Microsoft Exchange support.
Apple revealed these to the public so that everyone could make their own idea on the potential behind the Snow Leopard OS X release. However, in the meantime, Apple seeded Snow Leopard builds to developers and, despite the NDA they have to follow, some juicy details have leaked on the web for everyone to pick up and add to the already impressive list of Snow Leopard additions and improvements.
Another source of information, as usual, is the rumor machine that also worked in our favor. Although the info we’ve managed to get this way is not as certain as that available from developers already using seeds of Snow Leopard, some of these rumors already have an aura of certainty around them.
Therefore, because Apple has not yet released a more in-depth list of improvements in Snow Leopard, the rumors will still make the list and, hopefully, some of them, if not all, will also end-up as real additions into the next OS X release.
The 10.5.7 Rumors
Let us first start moving through the list of 10.5.7 rumors and then pay a visit to the Snow Leopard ones. First, the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Build 9J56 hinted at the inclusion of the Bluetooth 3.0 standard. This could mean that Apple is already setting it up as the OS to come on the Bluetooth 3.0-enabled Macs that will be available all around Apple stores.
Another build, specifically Mac OS X 10.5.7 Build 9J39, is said to have brought updated speech support system, as well as improvements to Mail signatures, USB drivers, iChat encryption, and the System Profiler's ability to properly show information on Mini DisplayPort adapters.
The Mac OS X 10.5.7 Build 10A286 featured an improved version of QuickTime Player, which now has a "minimal UI" that will prove to be an important addition to a better playback experience, and Safari 4 Beta as the new default browser (this way, replacing the previously available Safari 4 developer preview).
Other improvements made available in this seed were a Cocoa makeover for good old Finder, a makeover that includes the Get Info window, the Desktop, and Finder’s Contextual Menus.
The Snow Leopard Improvements
These are some of the improvements you were aware of if you are one of the developers receiving the Snow Leopard seeds on your Mac. Having covered them, let’s head over to the rumor land as I’ve promised above.
Although the rumor machine usually delivers all kinds of sci-fi like pieces of information (some more credible than others), in this case, only one subject managed to catch my attention: the new Quicktime Player that will be made available in Snow Leopard.
As rumors say, the Snow Leopard version of QuickTime will allow its users to easily share any of their video files with other people by quickly uploading it to Google’s video service YouTube.
The only things the user will need for that to happen will be their YouTube username and password. After the user enters their YouTube account details in the dialog displayed by QuickTime, the player will take care of all the other things related to this task, such as the video file’s conversion to a video format suited for online video sharing.
Another, more interesting, rumor says that Apple might finally stop charging Mac users for QuickTime’s Pro by incorporating it directly into Snow Leopard. This rumor is sustained by the fact that a number of Pro features (export and editing) are reported to be unlocked in some of the Snow Leopard developer seeds.
Previously seeded Snow Leopard builds also came with a number of over 100 other fixes and improvements, including fixing the color corruption issue, the issue where the computer may wake after Sleep enabled, the problem with AFP C Client and searches, the Mail signature synching issue, the issue with FSCatalogSearch loops and AFP X Client, the problem with CFNetwork FileProtocol and WebArchive, and the issue with HFS and Magneto-Optical Disk.
The above improvements / rumors are the ones that complete the list of additions already announced by Apple. Do you have knowledge of other fixes and / or tweaks to be included in OS X Snow Leopard? What is your take on the OS X 10.5.7 improvements made available by Apple through the development seeds? Share your opinions with us and the other readers in the comments.