ServersApple Leaps Forward With Snow Leopard

Apple Leaps Forward With Snow Leopard

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SAN FRANCISCO — Perhaps it was too much to expect CEO Steve Jobs to come bounding out
on stage like Sportacus from the
kids show “LazyTown,” but the Apple faithful still got quite a few
surprises
at the opening of its Worldwide
Developer Conference
.

Apple unveiled the latest upgrade to Mac OS and its many new features, as well as new MacBook Pro notebooks.

The show opened with another amusing commercial featuring actor John Hodgeman in his
usual self-effacing “I’m a PC” role. As usual, PC was his hapless self in filming a
“commercial” for WWDC attendees. “I want to wish you a week with some innovation, but not
too much please.”

Cut, retake

“You’ve already sold a billion iPhone apps, isn’t that enough already?”

Cut, retake.

After 60 failed takes, Justin “I’m a Mac” Long shows up and tells everyone to have
fun.

Let it snow

The big news on the OS front was a preview of Snow Leopard, the next generation of Mac
OS X due out this September. Bertrand Serlet, senior vice president of software
engineering at Apple, took a few minutes to bash Windows before diving into Snow
Leopard’s features.

Windows Vista took most of the scorn, but Windows 7 didn’t escape unharmed.
“Fundamentally, it’s just another version of Windows Vista,” he said.

“The challenge we set for ourselves is to build a better Leopard,” he continued,
referring to Mac OS X 10.5, the current operating system. That meant three changes:
improvements of existing features, new technologies, and support for Microsoft
Exchange.

The install is 45 percent faster than the previous versions and thanks to compression,
will save 6GB of space. Support for Asian languages comes through the trackpad on the
MacBook, which will let users draw the character rather than type.

Apple promised Safari 4, the latest edition of its Web browser, would far out-perform existing browsers, but on Snow Leopard it would be even faster. Also, if a plug-in crashes, it won’t take down the whole browser. It just fails to operate in its own little window, but the browser itself remains running.

QuickTime 10 has been rewritten for a 50 percent improvement in performance and has
features like video editing, where you can crop video from both the front and back end to trim down a long video to just a clip.

Snow Leopard will support auto discovery of Exchange servers, so all apps that use
Exchange will recognize it. Also, the QuickLook feature allows for viewing Office
documents, even if it’s not installed. Apple’s iCal calendar program and Exchange are now fully integrated, making it possible to drag a contact from Exchange, dropping it into iCal, and a meeting can be set.

Serlet then gave the news everyone wanted: Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard, will ship in
September as a $29 upgrade for existing Leopard users. A “family pack” for up to five
Macs will sell for $49. He also said a near-final version would be available today for
developers to certify and validate their applications.

Continue reading this article on InternetNews.com

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