Details on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Build 10A261

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 24 Feb 2009

Apple did not provide an in-depth look, or any kind of look for that matter, into the next iteration of their operating system, mainly Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard at the Macworld 2009 expo. Regardless, details and info have leaked out online: back in January some early Alpha build of the Snow Leopard leaked to torrent sites, and now screenshots of Build 10A261 have been published online.

“Snow Leopard was announced very briefly at WWDC 2008 by Steve Jobs, the public received very little informaton while developers were given a more detailed brief and given the first build for testing. As mentioned Snow Leopard was from the start billed as an under the hood upgrade, significantly improving performance and reducing the OSes footprint. So far the developer builds have added very few new visible user features,” says World of Apple, the site who published the screenshots of Mac OS X 10.6 Build 10A261.

By taking a look at the screenshots (and video) one can notice the fact that the Snow Leopard does not feature very visible changes. The simple truth of the matter is that the improvements made in this next iteration of the Apple developed operating system are solely architectural; which is in accordance to Apple’s statement that with the Mac OS X 10.6 the focus will not be on adding new features to the OS, but improving its stability and overall performance.

From what we can see in the screenshots, these are the changes Apple has made:
- Stacks view for navigating through folders.
- Trash features a “Put Back” option which will come in handy when you accidentally delete files, or when you want to restore deleted files.
- Keyboard Shortcuts control pane lets you define shortcuts.
- PCC support is on, Rosetta is now optional.
- Enhanced performance, a smaller footprint, and other minor UI changes.

Mac OS X 10.6 is supposed to come out in the first quarter of 2009, or at least that is what we were lead to believe by Jordan Hubbard, director of engineering of Unix Technologies with Apple, and the presentation he made at the Large Installation System Administration (LISA) Conference last year. It is yet unclear whether Apple will be able to meet that deadline – rumor on the web has it they won’t.


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