Both OSes build on their predecessors too, adding more reliability and less new features

Sep 19, 2008 09:28 GMT  ·  By

On the cross-platform-based MacWindows, John Rizzo points out to a report saying that Microsoft has plans to roll out the seventh major incarnation of Windows in June, next year. As some of you may know, June 2009 is also the proposed launch date for Apple's own new OS, Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard. But a close launch date isn't the only thing the two OSes have in common.

“On Friday, InternetNews reported that Microsoft may be planning to ship Windows 7 in June of 2009, six months ahead of the announced schedule,” says Rizzo. “Perhaps not coincidentally, June 2009 is the 'approximate' month that Apple has said it would ship its next OS, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.” The author also mentions that Microsoft's "internal calendar" puts the date as June 3, 2009, while this past April, Bill Gates indicated that Windows 7 could come within a year. However, “a day later, Microsoft reinforced the January 2010 date,” the author notes.

Whether or not this is true, those who've sifted through the details regarding Snow Leopard should already know that Apple is planning to introduce a more efficient home tool, giving users valuable hard drive space for their music and photos, since it can (theoretically) handle up to 16TB of RAM. More RAM makes applications run faster, since the most part of their data can be kept in physical RAM instead of on your slow hard disk. "To accommodate the enormous amounts of memory being added to advanced hardware," Apple says Snow Leopard extends the 64-bit technology in Mac OS X.

Snow Leopard is also optimized for multicore processors, according to Apple. The OS taps into the vast computing power of graphic processing units (GPUs), while "Grand Central," a new set of technologies built into Snow Leopard, will make it much easier for developers to create programs that use multicore systems to their fullest. Apple assured fans that Mac OS X Snow Leopard will launch in approximately a year from its announcement in June.

Microsoft also has reasons to be excited about its upcoming Windows 7. The new OS promises to be far more reliable than Vista for two reasons:

1 – because it actually builds on Vista, on which Microsoft worked day and night to rid it of all the bugs; 2 – because, just like Apple, the Redmond company is more focused on improving their existing features, rather than adding new ones.

The only new user feature announced for Snow Leopard was Exchange support. Apple said that optimization for multiple processor cores and the ability to make use of graphics processors for general computing are the company's new focus.