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Mac OS X v10.6 is the first of the big cats to be named for a different breed of a previous version. After all, we didn’t rush out to buy Siberian Tiger this past October. As the naming convention implies, there’s not a lot of difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard, at least as far as the end user in concerned. Apple’s info page is sparse, but at least gives us some insight on what to expect.

The general focus is on the core underpinnings of the OS, with no new UI features planned. This includes a significant reduction of the size of the OS as a primary goal, meaning that some pruning has likely been done. What’s been pruned to make for the smaller footprint? Apple’s not saying, but there’s a good chance that PowerPC support may be on the cutting block. There’s also a fair chance that the Carbon API will be fading away as Apple moves more and more toward a purely Cocoa environment. Whatever changes are made, expect the OS to be quite a bit smaller. Apple’s been practicing on reducing its size for the iPhone and AppleTV, so by the time Snow gets added to our Leopard, they should have the streamlining process down to a science.  Here are some of the more specific items to look forward to:

• Full Microsoft Exchange support, including Mail, iCal and Address book, to match the new iPhone features.
• A new set of technologies called “Grand Central” will optimize the entire OS for multiple cores and allow all Mac developers to take full advantage of however many processing cores are available. This is very good news, since we’re likely to have Quad-Core MacBook Pros by the time Snow Leopard hits the shelves.
• A giant jump in 64-bit technology will supposedly allow for up to 16TB of RAM (500 times what today’s hardware will allow) to be fully utilized. Just…wow.
• Quicktime gets an update as well, with Quicktime X. Like the OS itself, Quicktime will be streamlined, and promises to be optimized for modern codecs and internet standards.  It would be very nice to see out of the box support for Divx/Xvid and other codecs, especially if that support is ported over to the AppleTV.
• Safari is also getting faster, apparently running Java-based web Apps 53% faster due to new JavaScript technology.
• And, last, a new technology called OpenCL will allow the GPU’s resources to be utilized by developers for general computing tasks.

All told, it sounds like we’ll have a faster, better OS foundation that takes up less space and focuses on improving our experience with current features, rather than cramming more and more features in at the expense of stability and efficiency (see Vista, Microsoft).