San Francisco (CA) – Apple kicked off its annual WWDC with a scathing attack against Vista and the nascent Windows 7. According to Phillip Schiller, Windows 7 is expected to include the same flawed technology that plagued Vista and earlier iterations of the OS, such as a registry file, DLLs and UACs.
Schiller explained that Apple has adopted a totally different approach its operating system, which will be taken to “new heights” with Snow Leopard (SL). He explained that SL will offer multiple refinements (1,000 projects), powerful new technology and Exchange support.
Leopard will also feature:
- 45 percent faster installation time
- 3D rendering for the Dock
- 6GB recover of disk space on upgrade
- File system compression
- Faster commom operations
- Faster mail access
- Stacks, scrolling support and folder “drilling”
- Windows “Expose” – or easily moving content beteween windows.
Apple also unveiled Safari 4, which allows plugins to safely crash without affecting the browswer. Safari 4, which was made available for download today, will apparently function “faster” in Snow Leopard.
In addition, Apple provided a sneak preview of QuickTime X, which will reportedly include hardware acceleration, HTTP streaming and color synchronization. Finally, Apple reps offered a detailed explanation of Open CL and Grand Central Station, both designed to help users take advantage of large amounts of RAM and 64-bit architecture.
Snow Leopard will be available to current Leopard users for $30 in Septmeber.
Apple adds:
“To create Snow Leopard, Apple engineers focused on perfecting the world’s most advanced operating system, refining 90 percent of the more than 1,000 projects in Mac OS X. Users will notice a more responsive Finder; Mail that loads messages 85 percent faster and conducts searches up to 90 percent faster; Time Machine with up to 50 percent faster initial backup; a Dock with Exposé integration; a 64-bit version of Safari 4 that boosts the performance of the Nitro JavaScript engine by up to 50 percent.
“For the first time, system applications including Finder, Mail, iCal, iChat and Safari are 64-bit and Snow Leopard’s support for 64-bit processors makes use of large amounts of RAM, increases performance, and improves security while remaining compatible with 32-bit applications. Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) provides a revolutionary new way for software to take advantage of multicore processors. GCD is integrated throughout Snow Leopard, from new system-wide APIs to high-level frameworks and programming language extensions, improving responsiveness across the system. OpenCL, a C-based open standard, allows developers to tap the incredible power of the graphics processing unit for tasks that go beyond graphics.”
