Stability and security
Posted by marshall Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:48:00 GMT
TUAW is saying that WWDC next week will bring a build of Mac OS X 10.6, which "will not include any new significant features from 10.5; instead, Apple is focusing solely on 'stability and security.'"
Daring Fireball notes that the name for this release is rumored to be "Snow Leopard", and follows up with this comment:
"If you’ve ever wished that Apple would spend more time focusing on making existing parts of the OS work better rather than adding new features, this is going to be the release for you."
Count me in among those who have wished for something like this.
I had hoped that 10.5 would be that release. 10.4 introduced a lot of great technology, but it felt unfinished: Spotlight and Core Data were great first steps, but needed refinement, and things like resolution independence and hardware-accelerated "Quartz 2D Extreme" were developer-only previews. Windows file-sharing support (a.k.a. SMB) had been present in OS X since 10.1, but was never stable; even in 10.4, disconnecting from a network while an SMB share was mounted would usually result in a complete lock-up of the OS or even a kernel panic.
At WWDC 2006, it looked like Leopard would indeed be the refined, polished version of Mac OS X 10.4. Spotlight would gain performance enhancements, network support, advanced queries, and more. Core Data would be faster. Resolution independence was a key feature, discussed in various sessions. SMB would become a first-class protocol on OS X. (I believe the sessions are still considered "confidential", so I'm wary about going into too much detail, though this site has some notes saying that Apple promised SMB support for Time Machine backups.) The fact that Leopard had been initially scheduled for "late 2006" and was now moved to "Spring 2007" simply suggested that they wanted to make sure it was a high-quality product.
Things were looking good until Macworld 2007, when instead of revealing the "top secret" Leopard features, Steve Jobs spent the entire keynote on the Apple TV and iPhone, not even discussing Leopard at all. Then Leopard was delayed until October. Then WWDC 2007 came (with the infamous "sweet" iPhone developer solution of "Web 2.0 apps") and Apple started dropping features from Leopard. 64-bit Carbon suddenly disappeared. There was almost no talk of resolution independence anymore. Network support for Spotlight and Time Machine was a fraction of what had been promised. Hopes of ZFS as one of the "top secret" features were dashed. The first-class support for SMB was denied by engineers as even being discussed the previous year (despite their own slides to the contrary). It was clear that Leopard development wasn't going so well.
The seeds of Leopard that appeared over the next several months were notable for their paucity. Infrequent, buggy, and sometimes introducing major changes, they were certainly not the rapid bug-fix releases expected of a beta program winding down. It was something of a surprise when Leopard actually did ship in October. At least, it was a surprise for someone hoping for a polished, refined operating system release.
Mac OS X version 10.5.0 certainly was not the solid operating system release that I was looking for. It was rather like 10.4.0 all over again: lots of interesting technologies that weren't quite done yet. Resolution independence made progress, but still wasn't user-accessible. SMB disconnections no longer hung the system, but browsing Windows networks sometimes worked and sometimes didn't. Active Directory integration was improved, but only when binding actually worked to begin with. Stacks had originally sounded cool -- they were supposed to be a draggable unit created from a file selection -- but ended up being merely a pop-up icon view for docked folders that was actually less functional than the equivalent feature in Tiger (though this was much improved in 10.5.2).
So the news that 10.6 "Snow Leopard" may finally focus on stability and security is very welcome. The system really needs a good cleaning and tune-up to make it a solid foundation for innovation in years to come. The only part of the current rumors that I'm hoping isn't true is the lack of PowerPC support. It doesn't seem right to deprive PowerPC owners of Leopard as it should have been to begin with. While this doesn't affect me personally, I do have friends with perfectly good iMac G5s that deserve a stable, secure Mac OS X as the final release for their systems.
Once this spit-and-polish release is done, I can completely see Apple moving on with an Intel-only software platform, perhaps even under a different name. For over a year now, I've been expecting them to rebrand "Mac OS X" as "Apple OS" or something similar, since it's now used in more than just Macs. Post-10.6 would seem like a good time to do that, although it's looking like they might in fact be doing something along those lines already, with early shots of the WWDC banners advertising "OS X Leopard" and "OS X iPhone" -- notice the unified brand name and its lack of the word "Mac".
However it works out, I'm very much looking forward to this year's WWDC, what with the 3G iPhone, possible 10.6 introduction, and probably other things we haven't even considered. I have high hopes for an exciting conference, especially after the disappointment of last year's, and it's looking good so far. Just a few more days!
