All Articles Tagged snow leopard

Apple Insider is theorizing that Apple’s long delayed, potentially dead iPhone Push Notification Service (PNS) may simply be waiting on the next release of Apple’s server, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard.

We all know the background already: Apple announced a PNS back at WWCD 2008 as a work around for some forms of multi-tasking. It would send status updates (numbered badges like Email, sound alarms and popups like Calendar) for things like IM and Twitter clients, but still wouldn’t do anything for streaming music apps, for example. Never-the-less, it’s September release window came and went, with the service disappearing from early betas, unseen and unheard from since. (Unless you’re one of those who believes the App Store icon is beta testing PNS already — and not too consistently if so).

Interestingly, Apple Insider goes into RIM’s and Microsoft’s push technology, the former using the carrier channel to push updates with SMS-like technology, the latter using specially formatted push emails to update calendars, tasks, etc. Apple, by contrast, is said to be using standards-based Instant Messenger technology (XMPP).

If Apple needs to make the PNS, you know, work before they release it, and Snow Leopard Server is providing the back-end needed for it to work, then a delay is certainly better than a disastrous release like MobileMe’s. We’ll need to see more, however, before we really know if Snow Leopard Server is really connected and, if so, whether or not we’ll really see PNS released with it, or if PNS is truly dead and Apple is investigating true multitasking for the iPhone.

So, we’re left with the age-old questions: Is Apple still planning on releasing PNS? And are we willing to wait for a rock-solid solution? Or do we just want real multi-tasking now?

We already knew that Apple’s next computer operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (estimated for delivery mid-2009) was leveraging some of the amazing work done by the iPhone team, including the highly optimized QuickTime X. Now Apple Insider brings word that things like CoreLocation and more Multi-Touch might be making their way back to the big desktop brother as well:

CoreLocation will utilize a Mac’s existing networking hardware to triangulate the system’s location in a manner similar to the way the original iPhone was able to use the technology to emulate a true global positioning signal. [...] Snow Leopard will also gain access to a new set of Cocoa-based programing interfaces for leveraging the multi-touch features of the latest MacBooks and MacBook Pros within their applications.

The synergy between Apple’s desktop and mobile OS X development really seems to not only be benefitting both platforms, and optimizing R&D’s bottom-line, but bouncing off each other in iterative splendor. Hopefully iPhone OS 3.0 can take a little back as well — I’m looking at you universal spotlight search!

Warning: We may get medium-geeky here for moment. Adjust your pocket-protectors accordingly.

Apple is using the iPhone to crack their way into the enterprise. No big surprise there. What is surprising, however, is just how Sun Tzu their being about it. How so?

Bottom line, for an end-user, the interface is the app. Sure, we recognize names like Exchange, ActiveSync, even BES, but for most typical users, firing up Outlook or switching on their Blackberry IS their email. They don’t see what’s going on programmatically behind the scenes, don’t care what protocol is hand-shaking and packetizing their data as it zips from server to server in its chaotic relay from sender to receiver. They just see their email, and they just know that it was there when they needed it.

Given that, Apple licensing Exchange ActiveSync becomes more than just interesting. Why? Because they didn’t buy Outlook. They’re making their own MobileMail app which will seamlessly handle Exchange, but, oh by the way, will also handle MobileMe (the new .Mac refresh already billed as Exchange for the rest of us), as well as the usual Gmail, Yahoo!, etc.

So, for the end user, ActiveSync disappears behind the MobileMail iPhone interface. And if they have a home account, be it MobileMe, Gmail, Yahoo!, or whatever, the differences become less and less apparent (especially as push-like technologies propagate the different services), and in the end, ActiveSync disappears and people just think of their MobileMail app.

Meanwhile, the technologies behind MobileMail, with the advent of Snow Leopard Server, get more interesting, especially with Apple offering open, standards-based protocols like IMAP IDLE, and developing and releasing to the Open Source community similar code like CalDAV for push calendar and now, CardDAV for push contacts.

All of a sudden, a business could run an Exchange-like server without any Microsoft like licensing fees (which anyone who has dealt with them can tell you are money trap unto themselves).

Most interesting of all, if a business had deployed iPhones and they decided to switch from Exchange to Snow Leopard (or any *nix server using the FOSS implementations on their own), their end users may not even notice.

Roughly Drafted has more on Snow Leopard and its possible implications for Exchange/SharePoint users.

Apple.com has put up a teaser page for their next-generation OS X, 10.6, code-named Snow Leopard. And the features, to put it mildly, are mind blowing:

Exchange support built in, so that iPhone and OS X share common business email, calendar, and contact sync.

64-bit monster, supporting a theoretical 16TB (terabytes!!) of RAM.

Multi-core optimized, using “Grand Central” to chip away at one of the biggest problems in programming: how to really take advantage of multi-core processors.

Media from iPhone! building on the iPhone OS X, Quicktime X takes advantage of streamlined, next gen tech for modern codec support, and ultra-fast javascript for the web.

Open CL, to co-opt the GPU into doing some heavy crunching on the compute side.

How does this relate to the iPhone? Aside from using what they learned making iPhone OS X, from optimization to shrinking the OS footprint, rumor has it Snow Leopard will go a long way towards unifying the OS X branches, leveraging development efforts, and in the end, giving the best of both worlds to desktop, laptop, and handheld users.

Great, I just got through WWDC 2008 and now I’m already jonesing for 2009. Way to go Apple!

Last year Apple infamously delayed the release of their long anticipated OS X 10.5 Leopard in order to devote more resources to their soon-to-launch iPhone. When Leopard finally roared, it brought with it a host of new features, including CoreAnimation, Time Machine, Coverflow and Quicklook, and some 296 more according to Apple.

So would the next OS X release be similarly feature-packed… and delayed?

Turns out maybe just the opposite. Rumor is Apple may release OS X 10.6, claimed to be code-named “Snow Leopard” as early as Macworld in January 2008, and maybe even debut a beta this WWDC (?!).

Sounds crazy? Here’s what’s crazier: just as “Snow Leopard” comes off as a minor addition to “Leopard”, so too is OS X 10.6 supposedly a functionally similar product to 10.5! Focus this time may just be on stability, making what’s good better, and increasing the unification between the various “flavors” of the OS Apple now deploys across the Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV platforms.

Personally, this sounds great to me. OS X is mature enough at this point that more eye-candy or changes for changes sake can easily take a back seat for the final polish analogous to the 10.1 release of the early days. Nailing down the platform will let Apple take both the Mac and their mobile initiatives, headlined by the iPhone, fully and functionally into the future.

Gimme.

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