I'm not at all sure what to make of these rumours about
Snow Leopard. Something about it doesn't sound right to me. It's not the little funeral for PowerPC, or even the curious ramblings about it being 64 bit Intel only*.
Rather: why advertise a release whose raison d'être is to fix mistakes? It sounds all too Microsoft to me, as in a service pack. Indeed, could it be that some folk are believing that
Leopard is the New Vista? Give me a break.
(*I upgraded my Mac mini to a Merom Core2 some time ago. It always seemed odd that the first Intel Macs were 32 bit, especially when the iMac moved from 64 bit G5 to the new 32 bit Core Duo chip. Thankfully, the speed improvements weren't at all overstated and the new machines have all been greatly superior. But I made sure to grab the appropriate 64 bit upgrade for my old mini just as Intel were putting them out of production. It seemed to me to be something with implications rather further out than 10.6 already. I still doubt there's sensible argument to strike at all the Macs from most of 2006 with such an arcane distinction as far as customers are concerned.)
Carbon's demise seems greatly exaggerated too, though the kernel of a valid rumour seems to be there … albeit misinterpreted.
My prediction: 10.6 is talked about, graphically demoed perhaps, and the iPhone and Mac presented as one and the same thing moving together. Cocoa will overcome! But I don't think most of the buzz at the moment is accurate, not to mention the Mac clone thing!
January seems a bit of a rush too. Oh, and what's all this nonsense about 10.6 and 10.5 being parallel? I'd need Steve to hypnotise me as to the benefits of that one all right…
Yes, obviously. Several models? Perhaps. Certainly, the platform thing will be key to all of this. Mac and iPhone, iPhone and Mac. That's my expectation.
About as likely as new displays! Actually, maybe not that bad. But Intel's summer delay in Nehalem is a pain and likely to push things out a bit. Still, at least they'll be spectacular machines from the benchmarks I've seen. Might have to get one myself if PowerPC is going out of fashion as fast as it seems.
Right, well, I'd better watch the keynote!
