Snow Leopard has barely gotten its paws wet, and now news comes that Apple is already working on its replacement. It’s not really surprising, since Apple is basically always either working on the next iteration of its products or releasing them, but still, it does whet the appetite for the next version of OS X.

The suggestion of the new operating system appeared in an entry posted early this morning in a change database for “launchd,” an open source framework that controls the booting of OS X and administers running processes. The new entry includes an error message with the string “11A47″ in it, which is a reference to what version of Mac OS X is being used.

Previous versions of OS X have all followed the same numbering scheme. The number at the start of the string references which version of OS X is being used, with the letter indicated the minor release number and finally another number at the end indicating the development progress of said minor release. So, for example, Snow Leopard at release was represented by the string 10A432, and Leopard was 9A571. 11A47, then, would seem to indicate that an early build of 10.7 was being used.

According to MacRumors, the “47″ part of that number would suggest that Apple has already been working on the new version of OS X for at least a couple of months now. It’s still very early days, though, and probably even a long way off from a release to the developer community. We saw a two-year span between 10.4 and 10.5, but only a one year gap between the release of 10.5 and 10.6, because 10.6 represented mainly performance upgrades and refinements. Chances are, 10.7 is at least another year and a half off.

No news yet on what to expect in 10.7, although there is reason to believe that the upcoming iteration of OS X will bring more major changes than the last update. Traditionally, Apple introduces far more GUI and basic functionality changes in major point releases, but Snow Leopard was a special exception to that rule, a fact reflected in the price. It’s possible that Apple will release OS 11 at some point, but as of right now, it seems likely that it will continue with the current numbering scheme.

Anything in particular you’d like to see in 10.7? Maybe something you were disappointed wasn’t there in OS X 10.6? Personally, I still think Finder could use some further fine-tuning, but otherwise I’m at a loss at the moment.

With the release of 10.6.2, Apple killed unsupported support for the Atom processor — the processor used in low-cost netbooks. Certain models of netbooks could run OS X quite easily, and people used them to make the Little Netbook Apple Refuses to Make. While it’s a stretch to say Apple has killed the hackintosh market, it’s certainly proving it isn’t going to sit around and ignore it.

The reaction has been interesting and varies from casual indifference, to the defense of Apple’s action, to thinking Apple cancelled Christmas. While I’ve been a vocal supporter of Apple’s right to continue to club Palm over the Pre syncing fiasco, I imagine it’ll sound hypocritical when I say I’m disappointed in Apple over this move.

Up until now, Apple’s stance with the hackintosh community has largely been don’t ask, don’t tell. The people who bought a netbook and, hopefully, bought a copy of OS X to install it, were aware of the risks of doing so. Getting it to run might involve waving a dead chicken at the screen, or it could be completely painless. However, the person undertaking this task knew of the risks. So, there was little harm done.

I’d like to take a look at some of the armchair theories I’ve seen, and offer my own armchair analysis of them.

Apple wasn’t happy with the (alleged) piracy

The piracy angle has two fronts: your interpretation of the EULA, and how many copies of OS X running on hackintoshes were purchased.

In terms of the EULA, while I know Apple strongly disagrees with this, my personal take is as long as I’ve bought a legal license of OS X (and if it’s an upgrade license like Snow Leopard, I have the requisite Leopard copy), if I want to install it on a piece of non-Apple gear as long as I don’t waste Apple’s or mine time with supporting it, I’m in the clear. Now, this is not legal advice in any way, and all the usual disclaimers. It may be a tenuous stretch, but in this case I don’t consider a person creating such a hackintosh a “pirate.”

The second front, though, has no defense. If you’re creating a hackintosh and download a torrent or borrow a buddy’s disc, and don’t own a corresponding license, you’re a pirate. Where things get gray is if you’re downloading a hacked OS X distro, but have a legal license, are you a pirate? I have no data on how many hackintoshes were running pirated OS X installs, and I don’t have any corresponding data on how many Snow Leopard installs are legal. That said, since Apple offers no copy protection, I’m going to say that piracy wasn’t a motivator.

Apple didn’t like seeing netbooks with Apple stickers on them

In the somewhat wonky world of Apple’s Land of Preventing User Confusion, I can actually see this one being a reason for doing this. Now, I go to a fairly technical university and the overall number of netbooks I’ve seen is small, and zero of them have been running OS X (unscientific poll taken while trying to find tables at the canteen and library). I’ve never actually seen a hackbook, much less one with an Apple sticker slapped on it. But there are enough pictures on Flickr of people doing this, so I can see Apple getting irate and going, “OK, enough already.” Who knows, maybe people were walking into Apple stores looking for “that cute little Apple laptop I saw the nice guy at the airport using.”

Apple doesn’t have products running the Atom chipset

I’ll buy this one. While having support for the chipset doesn’t hurt anything, it’s unnecessary code. Maybe Apple was thinking of using the chipset and decided against it. Maybe knowing support for that chipset was keeping Jobs up at night. If Apple does end up using the chipset, it’s easy enough to re-enable the code in the future. Which is about as close as I’ll get to mentioning the oft-rumored, never-promised Tablaslabawhatevah. Some have opined that by doing this code cleanup Apple didn’t know it was breaking Atom support. I don’t agree. While it’s possible there’s nothing evil about its intent, I think it was intentional.

The Psystar lawsuit forced its hands

Now we’re getting somewhere. Up until recently, creating a hackintosh was very much a do-it-yourself affair. You had to get the hardware and do the grunt work to get the OS on it. Granted, while it’s gotten a lot easier over the years and many sites have complete walkthroughs, it’s still an undertaking. Psystar, though, upped the ante. It recently released the Rebel EFI tool which, allegedly, will allow you to install OS X on darn near anything. It’s not a stretch to assume it’s going to sell a netbook running OS X. Given the lawsuit, I believe Apple did this to both be able to demonstrate to a court it has taken measures to prevent OS X from running on un-supported hardware, as well as eliminate a future product line from Psystar.

Like I said, I’m a little disappointed in Apple. But I can understand why it would cut the code for an unused chip. I’ve given some thought to getting a netbook and hackintoshing it, but after I got my new MacBook Pro a month or so ago, that desire faded away. I’m much happier using Apple-built hardware. I have a Dell Ultraportable laptop for work, and the small trackpad on that drives me nuts…I don’t want to think of one smaller.

What about you? What do you think of Apple’s decision?

The second minor incremental update for OS X Snow Leopard was released today, and it contains the usual expected bug fixes. It is also is said to contain built-in support for Apple’s new Magic Mouse, and may or may not remove support for Intel Atom processors. If you happen to be using a hackintosh and can confirm or deny whether or not the latest update breaks your system, please comment below and let us know.

You can download the update via Software Update now, or get it directly from the Apple Support site. Here’s Apple’s rather lengthy description of the update, including major bug fixes:

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

• an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
• a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
• Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
• a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
• issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
• the reliability of menu extras
• an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
• an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
• Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
• a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
• an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
• Safari plug-in reliability
• general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
• an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3874.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

For October, OS X 10.6 and iPhone OS 3.0 continued to make incremental gains in market share, as did Safari. Unfortunately for the Apple web browser, Google’s Chrome is gaining faster.

Compiling data from more than 160 million visitors to its worldwide network of sites, web metrics firm Net Applications has released numbers for the month. For web browsers, Internet Explorer still represents more than 60 percent of the market. That would be great for Microsoft, if it weren’t for the fact IE is down about 10 percent from a year ago and Firefox is up about 5 percent. Safari now stands at 4.4 percent, up from 4.24 percent in September, and 2.87 percent last year, and that’s great, but not as great as Chrome.

Based on WebKit and released just over a year ago for Windows, Google’s Chrome is now at 3.57 percent, up from 3.17 percent in September. Chrome’s rate of growth, plus the imminent release of a Mac version, as well as one for Linux, leads inexorably towards Chrome passing Safari, most likely by year’s end. The problem with Safari is that the Windows version just never caught on. After more than two years, its market share is yet to reach a third of 1 percent. To put that in perspective, more people browse the web with Safari from an iPhone than Windows.

As for iPhone OS, it continues to trend slowly upward. At 0.37 percent in October, and combined with 0.07 percent for the iPod touch, iPhone OS now measures 0.44 percent of total OS market share. While that may seem insignificant, it’s a little less than half what Net Applications reports Linux as having. Unlike Linux, the iPhone OS is steadily increasing share, and with the introduction of the iPhone in China and the U.S. holiday season, iPhone OS may break half a percent by the end of the year. To put that number in perspective, it’s about a 10th the market share of Mac OS X.

Nonetheless, Mac OS X continues to make small, steady gains in market share. OS X was at 5.26 percent for October, up from 5.12 percent in September — so much for Windows 7 hurting the Mac. Even better, a year ago OS X was at 3.79 percent, and a year before that at 3.43 percent. By October 2010, it’s quite possible OS X will have doubled its market share in three years. At 7 percent, that wouldn’t quite be the “rounding error” Steve Ballmer recently suggested OS X was when compared with Windows.

Regarding market share by version, after jumping to 18 percent in the month after release, Snow Leopard increased to just 21 percent of OS X users for October, with plain-old Leopard accounting for 50 percent of the user base. While that’s something of a plateau, it will be interesting to see how adoption between Snow Leopard and Windows 7 compares. A week after the official launch, Windows 7 is at 3 percent, up from 2 percent a week ago based on those using early release versions. Sounds like a rounding error to me.

Microsoft’s advertising strategy with the latest installment of Windows is basically to none-too-subtly deride its predecessors, and it does appear to be helping Windows 7 gain traction among consumers. Unfortunately, it also might be contributing to the success of Mac OS X, or at least, it isn’t doing anything to slow down the steady progress of the competition from Apple.

That’s according to preliminary data released Sunday from a report by Net Applications which breaks down the Internet presence of Mac, Windows and Linux machines for the month of October. Microsoft’s hope that Windows 7 would slow the sure and steady pace of Apple’s growth appears to have been unfounded, at least at this early stage.

Windows still controls the lion’s share of the computer market, of course, with a huge 92.54 percent total share. But that’s down 0.25 percent from September. And yes,  Windows 7 did gain ground during the month, despite being officially available for purchase for only nine days at the end of October, but Net Applications explains that it held more than 2 percent going into the survey, owing to the use of pre-release versions like the beta and the release candidate.

Net Applications also points out, in a separate report, that much of Windows 7’s gain during October (it ended the month at 2.85 percent) came from XP’s market share, so it doesn’t represent the sort of “switch back” users Microsoft was looking for, only upgraders who skipped Vista in favor of the older, more stable OS.

Mac’s share jumped to 5.26 percent, up from 5.12 percent during the previous period. That’s a gain of 2.73 percent overall, which is a good number, but not nearly as high as the 5 percent gain Apple experienced in September. The slowdown might be due to a surge thanks to early adoption of Snow Leopard which is now coming to an end.

Note that Net Applications isn’t taking this data from sales numbers, but from visits to its client web sites, which add up to an impressive 160 million total. That’s a fairly large sample base. Apple 2.0 does point out that this particular methodology tends to favor devices like the iPhone, which account for more frequent web visits due to their ease of use.

The key to the future success of both companies will be converting the large Windows XP user base, which still accounts for 70 percent of all users. Both Apple and Microsoft will be looking to convert those users as they inevitably decide to upgrade. Holiday season numbers over the next few months should give a good indication of who will win out in the competition for those consumer dollars.

VMware Fusion 3 for Mac is now available. That’s right, new virtualization software for your Mac, conveniently timed for the release of Windows 7. Actually, it’s very likely the release of VMware’s latest iteration of its OS virtualization software, Fusion 3, got its release date precisely because of Microsoft’s street date for its latest operating system, because Fusion 3 is specially designed to support Windows 7.

Fusion 3 comes just over a year after VMware released Fusion 2, in September 2008. A year is a long time in the life cycle of a piece of software, and in the case of Fusion, the lapsed time between versions shows in the numerous improvements made to the program that allows you to run another OS on a virtualized machine inside of OS X.

As mentioned above, Fusion 3 goes out of its way to make sure your Windows 7 virtualization experience is as seamless as possible. That includes things like support for Windows Aero, Flip 3D and Windows Aero Peek visualization effects, and the ability to run OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c, which should help with some of your gaming needs, especially if you’re into older MMOs that don’t have a native Mac client.

VMware’s sales tactics for Fusion 3 also focus on recent switchers who are having trouble adjusting to their new and unfamiliar environment on a Mac. For example, the improved Migration Assistant helps you copy your entire PC onto a virtual machine on your new Mac hardware quickly and easily using an Ethernet connection. VMware goes as far as to say it works “just like” Apple’s own Migration Assistant for setting up or restoring a Mac-based computer.

There’s also a lot of improvements under the hood, including a new 64-bit native core engine for Macs that can handle it. That means that Snow Leopard users will be getting the most bang for their buck with the latest version. Memory usage on all Vista and Windows 7 machines is also greatly reduced, so in general, you should experience much snappier performance.

Finally, a lot of improvements have been made to VMware Fusion’s Mac Unity mode, which makes the virtualization experience much more integrated than it is in its default, windowed configuration. The list of new features is long, but some highlights include the ability to search for Windows apps like Mac ones, assigning the new always-on Applications menu to a hotkey of your choosing, accessing recently opened documents using Windows apps, full Exposé and Dock Exposé support for all Windows apps, and 3D gaming/1080p video playback while in Unity mode.

Fusion 3 retails for $79.99, but if you’re upgrading from Fusion 1 or 2, you qualify for a special price of $39.99, or $59.99 with a subscription that includes major version upgrades for the next 12 months. Judging by the last upgrade schedule which saw Fusion 3’s release falling one month outside that bubble, that subscription option isn’t looking all that appealing. If you’re picking it up, let us know how you find it.

Apparently not content with just selling cloned Mac hardware in the form of PCs built out of components that are OS X friendly, Psystar, that perennial legal foe of Apple, has now released a software program, too. The program, dubbed Rebel EFI, perhaps in an effort to stir the patriotic hearts of American and Star Wars fans alike, “allows for the easy installation of multiple operating systems on a single system.”

Despite the odd syntactical choice made by Psystar’s copy editor, the ramifications are clear: you should, in theory, be able to install Mac OS X on any old PC hardware. Not only that, but Rebel EFI also reportedly scans your system for compatible hardware and downloads all the appropriate drivers where they are available.

Of course, Psystar is in the business of making money (though sometimes I wonder how it thinks that’s possible when tangling with Apple in court), so Rebel EFI isn’t free. It’ll cost you $49.99 to get the full version, which ships as a direct download.

You don’t have to dive in blind, though. Anyone can download and use Rebel, but the trial version limits some hardware features and only works for two hours. To prevent piracy, you see, or the unlicensed use of Psystar’s software. Yes, the irony is delicious.

Psystar bundles the Rebel EFI with the Darwin Universal Boot Loader, or DUBL, which allows for users to install multiple operating systems on the same computer on different drives. It supports up to six, so you could have OS X, Windows, and any number of Linux builds all running on the same machine, for example.

Rebel also uses the same “Safe Update” method Psystar includes on its pre-modded hardware, which automatically screens updates from Apple and lets you know if they’re safe to install. The same tool also checks with Psystar’s servers to make sure all your hardware is using optimal drivers.

Finally, Psystar has even introduced a new “home certification program.” The program encourages users of the Rebel EFI software to send in hardware components that aren’t fully compatible with the tool, so that the clone-maker’s engineers can correct the problem for all users affected. To me, sending your own hardware components in to a company with a questionable track record which could, theoretically, close its doors any day doesn’t seem like the wisest course of action, but to each his own.

If anyone is planning on purchasing the Rebel EFI, or even just downloading and trying out the demo ISO, we’d welcome an account of your trials and tribulations in the comments.

ChannelWeb’s Steven Burke says that in the manifold comparisons of Windows 7 with Snow Leopard burning up the Web, what all the reviewers and pundits seem to be forgetting is that it’s not about the operating system, which he maintains is simply the engine that runs the PC. As Burke puts it, you don’t go into a car dealership and buy an engine. You buy a car, and in his opinion, starting October 22, there will be no better ride available for the money than Windows 7.

Burke leans heavily on the initial purchase price angle, noting that an Apple Mac Pro desktop he cites as an example is nearly four times the price of an HP Pavilion, asking rhetorically whether anyone really believes the Mac is four times better than the HP Pavilion? I think some of us would argue that the value is there under the right circumstances, but it would’ve been more relevant to compare a mainstream Mac model such as the iMac or MacBook to their still admittedly cheaper, but not so dramatically so, Windows competition.

Apple Ignoring “Economic Reality?”

Burke accuses Apple and company CEO Steve Jobs of not considering “economic reality,” and having no interest in producing mass-market PCs, which is fair comment I suppose. However I’m constrained to observe that as Forbes’ Brian Caulfield pointed out last weekend, over the past year, banks have collapsed, PC sales have plummeted, unemployment has soared, and Steve Jobs went on mysterious medical leave for a liver transplant, but meanwhile Apple has thrived through all this with sales and earnings down less than everyone else in the industry and actually up year-over-year — on Monday reporting the company’s best quarter ever and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion on revenues of $9.87 billion. Consequently the question is begged as to who is and is not considering economic reality.

Netbook Sales Soar But Profitability Fizzles

NPD Group’s DisplaySearch Q2 ‘09 PC shipment data released last week estimated that netbook sales soared a whopping 264 percent year-over-year in the quarter, accounting for 22.2 percent of overall PC sales, but woefully for PC manufacturers and for Microsoft — only 11.7 percent of revenues. Overall PC laptop sales (excluding netbooks) declined 14 percent and PC laptop average selling prices dropped to $688 in Q2 2009 from $704 in Q1 2009 and from $849 in Q2 2008.

Apple, on the other hand, eased prices somewhat on entry level MacBook Pro models in all three sizes while holding the $999 price point for its price leader white MacBook, and is still enjoying healthy sales and profits on its laptops. Even the most substantial MacBook Pro price cut — $400 on the base 15″ model — was partly compensated by substituting an SD Card slot for the preceding model’s ExpressCard slot, and leaving out the discrete NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor unit with its 256MB of dedicated VRAM in the new price-leader model, so I doubt that Apple has taken a major profitability hit. It’s more about marketing refocus.

Burke says Jobs wants to build “Rolls Royces,” not “Fords” and for him it was never about putting a PC on every desktop, while Microsoft has always had more of a Henry Ford style mass production bent. Again, partially true I suppose, although it doesn’t hold up particularly well in the iPod and iPhone context, and I don’t think Mr. Jobs has anything against growing market share provided he can do it without compromising quality standards or profitability, as his “there are some markets Apple doesn’t choose to serve” comment a year ago attests.

Simplistic Fixation On Initial Purchase Cost

I don’t gainsay that Windows Vista was a gift to Apple that just kept on giving, or that Windows 7 will prove much stiffer competition for OS X, but I think Burke is overstating his case in contending that Apple’s market share gains over the past several years are now destined to evaporate. To borrow his own analogy, it’s the whole car, not just the engine, and many of us perceive the Mac as being not only a smoother, better-handling ride, but also a better value in a whole raft of contexts that transcend simplistic fixation on initial purchase cost. CNET’s Dong Ngo reports that Snow Leopard consistently beats Windows 7 in many general performance areas including boot up time and battery charge life in laptops, for example.

Burke says PCs running Windows 7 are for “the masses” while Macs running OS X are for “the rich.” I’m not rich by the wildest stretch and neither are most of the other Mac-users I know. I do like to think that I appreciate value, a superior user experience, lower total cost of ownership, and elegance of form and execution, and that while Windows 7 will narrow the gap somewhat, it will fall well short of closing it.

With the release of Windows 7 next week, senior Apple VP Phil Schiller is boldly asserting that it “presents a very good opportunity for us.”

That opportunity will possibly come in a series of ads contrasting Windows with OS X, at least according to Peter Burrows of BusinessWeek. The expected campaign is expected to take Windows 7 on directly, and will likely “poke fun” at the upgrade process, from backing up data and reformatting drives to reinstalling software.

“Any user that reads all those steps is probably going to freak out. If you have to go through all that, why not just buy a Mac?” says Schiller.

The idea is that, rather than upgrade, people will be buying new computers, but the problem with Macs — especially in difficult economic times — is price. To that end, rumors continue to swirl regarding price reductions. Just last week, Google AdSense placements temporarily appeared in several European countries hinting at new iMacs, Mac minis and MacBooks. While only the Mac minis listed lower prices, it’s certain that new MacBooks and iMacs will have speed and storage increases, and the rumor of Blu-ray for the iMac persists.

In the interview, Schiller deflected inquires about new Macs and lower prices, remaining dismissive towards Windows and predicting a poor upgrade rate for Windows 7 compared to Snow Leopard. In the end, Windows is “still Windows.”

From Computerworld, the ponderings of Broadpoint AmTech analyst Brian Marshall may state the obvious, but nonetheless bear repeating: Windows 7 is no threat to the Mac.

Having looked at the data on Windows release dates, Marshall “found no negative correlation between them and Mac sales.” Further, Marshall suggests that “new OS launches from MSFT may have even acted as a ‘delayed accelerant’ to AAPL’s computing sales.” However, he is also careful to add that “AAPL’s success (or failure) in the computing market is largely idiosyncratic (or company-specific) in nature and not dependent on others in the industry.” Just like a six-figure analyst to have it both ways, but he does have a point, at least about Apple.

While it’s true that the numbers don’t lie, they don’t tell the whole story in this case, either. Not shown on the chart is how the release of Windows 95 was an unmitigated disaster for then-Apple Computer. The company saw Mac market share effectively halved from 1995 to 1996, from around double digits to 5 percent in a year, and it only got worse.

That bump in sales in 1997 was due to the original iMac, as was a good deal of the spike that ran until 2001. And 2001, of course, brought the tech bust, not a worldwide embrace of Windows Millennium Edition at the expense of Apple. While Mac sales were stagnant over the next several years, even as PC sales grew, the basis of the Mac Renaissance we now enjoy can be traced to a few key events.

• Beginning in 2002, the continuous, incremental improvement in Mac OS X combined with the perceived security disaster of Windows XP changed attitudes about Microsoft and Apple.
• The iPod Halo Effect, the idea that the popularity of the iPod encouraged the Mac “curious” to switch, probably started in late 2003 with the iTunes Store and iTunes for Windows.
• The switch to Intel in 2006, along with the “safety net” of Apple’s Boot Camp or third-party virtualization, removed the last perceived obstacle to owning a Mac.

So, the iMac, the iPod and the iTunes Store, OS X, Intel Macs, and now the iPhone; all these “idiosyncratic” products are what have fueled Apple’s comeback, though it’s also fair to say Microsoft’s lack of innovation played a small part in that comeback, too. Looking forward to 2010, it appears that trend will continue. Windows 7 does nothing more than replace lackluster Vista, Microsoft’s mobile strategy is a disaster, and how about a tablet PC with a stylus in the age of multitouch?

Really, the game is Apple’s to lose.

We’ve covered doubleTwist in the past, and for a time I even used it as my primary media management solution on my Mac, until iTunes 9 drew my wondering eye back to familiar territory. Now there’s even reason to go back to the iTunes competitor, as doubleTwist has just introduced Amazon MP3 store compatibility.

doubleTwist already offers the ability to sync with pretty much any device, instead of just your standard Apple i-devices. And with Amazon support, there’s little reason for many to venture back to iTunes, especially since Amazon’s prices are often better than those found in Apple’s own online store.

It wasn’t too long ago that doubleTwist’s “DVD” Jon Johansen was taking flack from BART for buying legit advertising space at a very conspicuous location, and then using it to promote the iTunes competitor. With the introduction of the Amazon store, we should see that competition heat up even further.

The new Music Store looks like a very stripped-down iTunes store, and though it isn’t as fancy as Apple’s, it is clean and functional, and it doesn’t cause the program to occasionally fail, as iTunes has been known to do. It pales in comparison to the iTunes store in terms of navigation options, though, with a search bar and two small Top Albums and Top Songs lists providing your only means of browsing the Amazon catalog.

The main advantage, of course, comes for people who don’t own an iPod or iPhone (some really do exist, honest). Plug in your BlackBerry, PSP, Android phone, and any number of other supported devices, and you can immediately copy over your purchased media. You miss out on Genius playlists and other iTunes niceties, but if you don’t have an iPod, that probably isn’t an issue anyway.

It may be a small step towards making doubleTwist a full-fledged competitor to iTunes, but having a major player like Amazon onboard is nothing to sneeze at. Ideally, the next step for DVD Jon and his open alternative for the i-device deficient would be to form a partnership with major video media distributors, especially given that doubleTwist automatically converts video when it syncs to most major devices, including the PSP and the Palm Pre.

In fact, Palm could do far worse than doubleTwist in an official partnership to provide its users a dedicated software solution for syncing media instead of continuing to play leapfrog with Apple over iTunes. I’m sure something could be arranged, so long as Palm agreed to keep the software open to other devices as well.

For now, the Amazon store is only available for the OS X version of doubleTwist, but a Windows version is coming soon. You must have an Amazon.com account with a registered payment method in order to use the service.

Just two weeks after being released, Snow Leopard is already setting records. According to NPD, sales are more than twice that of plain-old Leopard in its first two weeks, and nearly four times that of Tiger.

“Even though some considered Snow Leopard to be less feature-focused than the releases of Leopard or Tiger, the ease of upgrading to Snow Leopard and the affordable pricing made it a win-win for Apple computer owners — thus helping to push sales to record numbers” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD.

While it’s true Apple is not counting off 300 “new features,” as was done with Leopard, and it’s mostly true that Snow Leopard is an easy upgrade, at least after 10.6.1, the story here is really about price. At $29, Snow Leopard costs less than a quarter of the $129 price of Leopard or Tiger.

NPD further reports that the sales momentum has declined from the first week to the second by only around 25 percent, contrasting sharply with a decline of 60 percent for both Leopard and Tiger. NPD’s Stephen Baker suggests that Apple’s “aggressive pricing policies in this economic environment generate an outstanding consumer response,” but there is also money in volume. Macrumors previously reported on a research note from Piper Jaffray research analyst Gene Munster predicting as many as 5 million copies sold during the current quarter. That’s good news for the bottom line, but there may be another benefit for Apple in the low price of Snow Leopard.

While there are few new features in the user interface, Snow Leopard does make use of new technologies, like Grand Central. By encouraging users to upgrade through a lower price, the adoption of those technologies will occur sooner rather than later. An upgrade wave also makes it easier to discontinue supporting legacy technology associated with the PPC architecture, like Rosetta, now an optional install with Snow Leopard. Ultimately, this means the low price of Snow Leopard now will reap support savings for Apple in the future.

At $29, Snow Leopard appears to be a good deal for both consumers and the company. If there is a downside, it could come in trying to charge $129 for the next iteration of OS X. Good luck with that, Apple.

OS X Liger?

Now that Snow Leopard is on the prowl, thoughts turn to what Mac OS 10.7 might be called.

When it was announced that Mac OS 10.6 would be christened “Snow Leopard,” there was some speculation that Apple was running out of big cat names for its OS X versions. OS X 10.1 was Puma, 10.2 Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard, and 10.6 is Snow Leopard.

More likely is that Apple wanted to emphasize that 10.6 would not be a major new features upgrade (hence the relatively modest price of $29.95), but rather pretty much a code-slimming and streamlining revision of OS 10.5 Leopard, with Power PC support excised. That would make a name somewhat similar to OS 10.5 logical (although the Snow Leopard is actually a completely different species from Leopard).

There’s no danger of Apple running out of cat names anytime soon. According to one wild cat species resource site, there are 36 distinct species of non-domestic cats, although some are concededly so obscure that they wouldn’t be suitable for an operating system moniker (Jaguarundi, anyone?).

One cat name I like is Cougar, although an objection might be that it’s a synonym for Puma, which has already been used for OS 10.1, but then so is Panther in its North American context. The largest wild cat species on this continent is variously known as Cougar, Puma, Mountain Lion, Panther, Painter, and Catamount plus reportedly several dozen other less-widely used names that have been recorded across North and South America.

If Apple wanted a particularly exotic variant, they might consider Eastern Cougar, referencing cats some contend still range in small numbers east of the Mississippi River in the U.S., and Canada — an assertion that remains to be scientifically verified.

Perhaps the most likely not-yet-used for an OS X version would be Cheetah, with the positive association of being the fastest animal on the planet. Running flat out, the fastest horses might hit about 43 miles per hour, while a cheetah can touch 70 MPH in short bursts. Earlier this month a cheetah named Sarah, whose home is the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, broke the world cheetah speed record in the 100-meter dash , covering the distance in 6.16 seconds — .06 seconds off the previous record set in 2001 by a cheetah living in South Africa.

Other Mac OS name candidates would be Ocelot, a primarily South and Central American cat that also ranges into Mexico and as far north as Texas, and the medium-sized North American Lynx and Bobcat. There’s Wildcat too, a name used by Grumman for a World War II vintage naval fighter aircraft, and of course “the king of beasts” — Lion, which for some reason hasn’t been used on an OS X version yet.

Still plenty of cat names to chose from. What’s your preference for OS 10.7?

Photo courtesy of allwest44.

The one thing many people did not expect with a new version of iTunes was that Apple would use the opportunity to cause dissent among its fanbase by introducing another new user interface. Some classify the new styling as “needed” and “elegant and refined” while others have resorted to a variety of hacks to return to the UI of yesteryear.

We’ve gone through every corner of iTunes we could find and dug up all of the major changes in the interface. Here’s what we found.

Welcome to iTunes 9

The first thing many noticed is that iTunes 9 now launches with a Welcome to iTunes screen, offering quick links to videos showcasing some of iTunes features. Similar to apps like iPhoto and iWeb, users can disable this by ticking a checkbox.

iTunes Preferences

iTunes Preferences also featured a few notable changes, specifically adding support for grouping iTunes U content.

iTunes 9 General Preferences

iTunes 8 General Preferences

Parental Control also received a new icon (matching the icon in Snow Leopard) as well as some slight rewording.

iTunes 9 Parental Controls

iTunes 8 Parental Controls

Removed from iTunes 9 are references in the Store section to “adding to shopping cart” versus buying with Amazon’s licensed 1-Click technology. Added is an option to use the full window when browsing the iTunes Store.

iTunes 9 Store Preferences

iTunes 8 Store Preferences

Browsing Content

Browsing content within iTunes has also received a refresh. While browsing music in List Mode, the artists have been grouped along the left, making it easier to narrow down your selection rather quickly.

iTunes 9 Music List Mode

When browsing in Grid View, the first thing you will notice is that the dark black background is gone and now albums are scattered amongst an off white background. Badged content, such as Podcasts, TV Shows, iTunes U and Movies feature blue badges instead of the original red. Gone from this view are the tabs to sort content within an area (such as Music) by Albums, Artists, Genres and Composers. This can be re-enabled via the View menu.

ITunes 9 Podcasts

Cover Flow view is pretty much the same, with the refining of the “full screen” icon.

iTunes 9 CoverFlow

The iTunes 9 Equalizer also received a refresh, styling the control knobs with blue accents.

iTunes 9 Equalizer

iTunes 8 Equalizer

Icons & Buttons

Buttons and displays in iTunes 9 have been overhauled to give them a more glossy, shiny three dimensional look. The toolbar has also been realigned, removing the ‘View’ label and moving the ‘Search’ label instead the Search field. The information area has also been updated, providing more useful information during syncing and downloading of content from the iTunes Store (such as time remaining).

iTunes 9 also brings about many refreshed icons, including many of the icons in the sidebar. Specifically, playlist icons have gotten the most attention, while TVs, Movies, Audiobooks, and Applications have seen slight refreshes as well.

Syncing

Syncing is by far the area that received the most attention in this revision. Specifically, users now have the ability to sync content more selectively. When choosing a TV show, for instance, they can sync specific seasons or specific episodes. When syncing a podcast, they can choose to sync specific episodes. When syncing photos, users can take advantage of the iPhoto ‘09 Faces and Places aspect to sync photos of particular people or a particular place. Many of these areas also provide a search field, making it easier to quickly narrow down and select the specific content you’re looking for.

Syncing TV Shows

Syncing Ringtones

Syncing iTunes U

Syncing Music

Syncing Photos

The biggest feature in the redesigned sync options is the ability to organize your iPhone and iPod touch apps directly within iTunes. Check the ones you wish to add, highlight to select them and drag them to whichever home screen you desire. Selecting multiple apps is a cinch and moving them between home screens is equally easy.

Syncing Apps

Everything Else

Upon a user’s first visit to a section, such as creating a new Playlist, or visiting the Podcast area, they are greeted with a new UI that discusses how that particular concept works.

iTunes 9 New Playlist

While this overview is fairly exhaustive, there are likely many other features that users will continue to discover. If there’s one we’ve missed, please use the comments to let us know!

]]> http://theappleblog.com/2009/09/16/itunes-ui-deconstructing-8-to-9/feed/ 45 limeology iTunes Icon Welcome to iTunes 9 iTunes 9 General Preferences iTunes 8 General Preferences iTunes 9 Parental Controls iTunes 8 Parental Controls iTunes 9 Store Preferences iTunes 8 Store Preferences iTunes 9 Music List Mode ITunes 9 Podcasts iTunes 9 CoverFlow iTunes 9 Equalizer iTunes 8 Equalizer iTunes 9 vs iTunes 8 Sidebar Icons TV Shows Syncing Ringtones Sync iTunes U Syncing Music Syncing Photos Syncing Apps iTunes 9 New Playlist http://theappleblog.com/2009/09/01/snow-leopard-features-suggest-its-a-touchscreen-os/ http://theappleblog.com/2009/09/01/snow-leopard-features-suggest-its-a-touchscreen-os/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:00:13 +0000 Darrell Etherington http://theappleblog.com/?p=31812 ]]>

If you’ve got one of Axiotron’s awesome Modbooks, and you’re running Snow Leopard, you may have already stumbled across a few features that make your Mac so much easier to use. It’s unlikely Apple had Axiotron in mind when it included these features, though, so what’s the real story here?

Cult of Mac believes the features confirm Apple’s intent to release an OS X-based tablet device sometime in the near future (or near enough that Snow Leopard will still be relevant, at least). And when you consider the signs, its hard to believe that isn’t what the company is planning.

First, there’s Exposé in the Dock. The Dock itself is already built for fingertip usage, and to have it included in Exposé is just icing on the cake. Stacks Grid view, with its nice, large, oh-so-pressable icons, which now also includes scrolling and subfolder navigation, is a definite touchscreen plus. Also, being able to adjust icon size using a slider right at the bottom of every Finder window is a great accessibility option, but even more so if you consider the possibility of wanting to make those icons even more fingertip friendly.

Finally, Cult of Mac points out the feather in the cap of the touchscreen argument — a built-in, scalable on-screen virtual keyboard. As someone who uses a Wacom Cintiq 12WX regularly with my Mac, and sometimes without the aid of keyboard or mouse, I’ve long used OS X’s Keyboard Viewer (available as an option in the Input Menu) to hunt and peck type with my stylus. That feature gets a much-needed upgrade in Snow Leopard, since it becomes fully resizable. In fact, Keyboard Viewer is now capable of displaying keys larger than the MacBook Pro’s hardware keyboard.

In Snow Leopard, Keyboard and Character Viewer have both been moved from the International preferences pane to the Keyboard menu, which makes a lot more sense in general, but especially if you consider the Keyboard Viewer an input tool and not just a keypress indicator for screencasts, as the old, less functional version seemed to be.

The lack of officially supported hardware will make it hard to dig much deeper into Snow Leopard’s touchscreen secrets. For all we know, it could support multitouch gestures similar to those usable with the trackpad right now, out of the box. People with Modbooks might be able to uncover some other touch-friendly refinements, and I know I’ll be poking around with my Wacom stylus to see what else I can find, but only Apple knows the true extent of Snow Leopard’s touchscreen prowess.

Not that any TheAppleBlog readers would ever try to acquire software in a less-than-legal manner, but just in case you know someone who would, tell them to watch out for web sites claiming to bear Snow Leopard gifts.

Like the Adobe Photoshop CS4 and iWork ‘09 before it, Snow Leopard now has a super-special malware edition floating around the web. It’s a classic software honeypot scheme: You find a site advertising a free Snow Leopard upgrade, download a disk image file (.DMG), and it unleashes its trojan payload.

Trend Micro is advising folks to avoid any and all sites advertising free Snow Leopard upgrades, since what you actually get is a new variant of the DNS charger trojan known as OSX_JAHLAV.K. The Apple-specific malware, once it makes itself at home on your computer, will redirect your Internet browser to phishing sites and malware-infected web sites. OSX_JAHLAV.K has a particularly nasty trick up its sleeve — it sends you to a site that advertises fake antivirus software that will notify you that you have an infection until you pay to register and have it removed.

Trend Micro’s advice is to pick up its Smart Surfing for Mac malicious URL-blocking software, which will cost you $50 a year in subscription fees. My advice is to think long and hard about how much you’re willing to pay down the road just to avoid spending $29 upfront for the 10.6 upgrade.

No doubt this will give antivirus companies cause to raise the red flags once more, and spout on about how the end is nigh for the days of OS X being the secure choice, but as before, smart browsing and downloading policies are still your best bet for a happy, safe Mac.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Darcy McCarty.

Naturally, as a contributor to this blog, I purchased a Snow Leopard family pack the first possible day. Some people may have pre-ordered on Amazon, but they missed out on the in-store experience. My mother lives close to an Apple store, so I decided to stop by and upgrade my Macbook Pro while catching up with her.

Soon after arriving she asked, “Do I need that?”

Silence.

I honestly had no idea what to say. Sure it’s a cheap and quick upgrade, but does she really need Snow Leopard on the 20 inch iMac she bought last year? Her entire computer life at home revolves around Safari, Mail, and Microsoft Word. She networks, reads, and writes. I, however, consider myself an über power user: Netbeans, Adobe CS3, and tinkerer extraordinaire. I can’t refuse an OS upgrade.

Let’s take a look at Apple’s Snow Leopard page.

The only item I see here that is actually appealing to my mother is “faster.” One can never say no to speed in the computer world. The rest sounds like under the hood features. Fortunately, the UI changes in Snow Leopard are miniscule enough to not terrify the average Mac user. I guess it’s safe to upgrade her. After all, the Apple coolness factor always entertains.

What about all of you? Planning on upgrading your parents’ computers?

I’m now running OS X 10.5.6 on two of my three eligible Macs (the fourth is a 12-inch PowerBook G4), and so far, I couldn’t be happier. I haven’t run into any nasty compatibility issues or really disastrous bugs (although Finder once auto-quit and restarted when I was fiddling with the menu bar), and general system performance seems noticeably improved.

All that said, if you’re looking for big flashy changes, look elsewhere. Snow Leopard is exactly what Apple said it was all along: a nice collection of system refinements and improvements, with a few experience-enhancing features thrown in for good measure.

Installation

OS X users will find the installation process very much simplified. For advanced users, probably too much so, in fact. Running the installer from the Snow Leopard disc off of your desktop gives you only one install option: a simple upgrade. In the interest of time, and because I was curious to see how well it would work, that’s the option I used on my MacBook Pro, though I generally prefer doing a clean install with any major point OS change.

To run a clean install, users can boot from the Snow Leopard disc by holding down “C” during startup. From there, you can use Disk Utility to format your target drive and perform a fresh install.

Installation time was surprisingly fast, taking less than an hour start to finish. Apple has streamlined the installation process by removing a lot of drivers that used to be packaged with the OS, since Snow Leopard is programmed to go to the web to find those later if and when they’re required.

System Performance

The best comparison I can make in order to describe the general system performance enhancements Snow Leopard brings to the table is my experience of moving from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 3GS. Everything felt faster, tighter and more responsive. My Macs running 10.6 feel the same.

Initial boot-up times are improved on both my MacBook Pro and my Mac mini, albeit by only nominal amounts, but once you’re actually up and running, the response times in Finder, Exposé, Stacks and all bundled system applications is markedly improved. Launch times for non-Apple apps doesn’t seem to be much better, nor does in-app performance, but it may take time for developers to incorporate code to take advantage of Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL technology.

Quicktime X

Aside from a cool icon update, Quicktime X also gets a completely overhauled UI, which puts much more focus on the content. Videos are framed in a minimalist, borderless window that has only a dark control bar at the top, and a playback overlay.

Like iMovie ‘09 and iPhoto ‘09 before it, Quicktime X is now more social thanks to a new “Share” menu that allows you to upload your movie directly to your MobileMe gallery or YouTube, or to export to an iTunes-friendly format. Selecting the iTunes option brings up a dialog with three conversion options, allowing you to format the movie for use on an iPhone/iPod, an Apple TV or just for general computer use. Export and trim functions are also available from the playback control overlay.

Exposé and Stacks

Two features that have become inseparable from my daily Mac experience are Exposé and Stacks. Exposé gets a major usability boost thanks to the inclusion of Dock access. Under both “All Windows” and “Application Windows” views, you’ll be able to click on open apps in the dock as well as open windows — helpful if you’ve hidden a program, or for changing the active application without leaving Exposé.

Stacks are now much more functional, since you can scroll in Grid view and navigate through subfolders instead of having to click through to Finder. Fan view still does things the old-fashioned way, though I’m not sure why anyone would voluntarily use Fan mode with Stacks anyway.

Finder and Preview

A few little things really up Finder’s game in Snow Leopard. There’s an icon size slider in the bottom right-hand corner of every finder window, which is great news for universal access, and for people like me who often have to take application icon screenshots. There’s also advanced icon viewing in Finder which allows you to preview movies and scroll through PDFs without even activating live preview.

Preview itself gets some great usability enhancements, such as better, more accessible screenshot and import options and soft preview using any available system color profiles. You can also preview a wider range of documents, even if you don’t have the software that created it on your system. That includes Word and Excel files.

Exchange Support

For you business-types out there, one of the big features of Snow Leopard is built-in Exchange support. This wasn’t one I could test out personally, but Exchange support in 10.6 extends to Mail, Address Book, and iCal, so you no longer have to depend on Entourage to get by.

iCal even does fancy things like detecting scheduling conflicts and suggesting alternate times depending on availability. The best part? You’re doing it all without using Windows or Outlook.

Lots of Little Things

Snow Leopard brings so many little changes that it’s impossible to list them all here, or to uncover them all after spending such a short amount of time with the OS. Among my favorite early discoveries is the new naming scheme for screenshots. Gone are the “Photo 1,” “Photo 2,” etc. that tell you absolutely nothing. Instead, images are now labeled “Screen Shot,” complete with the date and time they were taken underneath.

Another nice touch is always having System Preferences accessible from the dock, even when the SysPref app itself isn’t actually open. In Leopard, you could set your System Preferences to open and auto-hide at startup, and then with a right click on the icon in your dock, access all the preference sub-menus quickly and easily. Snow Leopard takes away the first step, so that right-clicking on the Preferences icon always brings up that sub-menu.

Finally, Core Location tech will automatically update your time zone based on nearby Wi-Fi hotspots it detects, so if you travel a lot, you won’t have to worry about constantly switching your computer clock.

Right now, Snow Leopard is like a treasure box with lots of little prizes to uncover. If you’re spending your Friday poking around and you’ve found anything I’ve missed above, please share with the rest of the class.

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Today, Apple officially launches the latest milestone update to its Mac OS X operating system. “Snow Leopard” is the fifth major update to the operating system since it was launched in 2001. Apple has spent the last year tweaking and refining just about every line of code in the entire operating system and the result is a far leaner, meaner animal.

We’ve been covering the rumors, news and leaks on Snow Leopard for what feels like forever. For a whistle-stop tour of how 10.6 has developed over the year and what new features and functionality it brings, follow these links to learn about:

• How much weight Snow Leopard has lost -– system apps are much smaller than ever before now all that old PPC code is a thing of the past.
• How the Finder and Dock have been tweaked to make navigating your files faster and easier than ever before.
• Under-the-hood additions, tweaks and tune-ups that make Snow Leopard the most powerful and sophisticated Mac OS X yet.
• Changes to Apple’s venerable QuickTime media software.
• The introduction of native support for Microsoft Exchange.
• The revolutionary new multicore management technology Grand Central Dispatch.

Finally, just in case you’re not sure where to get started when you upgrade, check out Jon Buy’s Upgrade Strategy: Getting Ready for Snow Leopard and Chris Ryan’s Snow Leopard: The Installation Process.

Of course, in the interest of fair and balanced reporting, you could always read Dave Greenbaum’s Why I’ll Wait on Snow Leopard, and Why Maybe You Should Too.

But of course, you won’t be doing a Greenbaum. You’ll be rushing out to buy your copy. And why not? It’s cheap. If you are upgrading from Leopard (and maybe even if not), a single-installation license will cost only $29. For a 5-license Family Pack, it’s just $49.

Bottom line: It runs faster than Leopard. It gives you back a lot of hard drive space. It’s packed full of next-generation technology and it’s a lot cheaper than the competition. Snow Leopard is available now.

While many of us had suspected it to be the case, Walt Mossberg of All Things Digital in his review of Snow Leopard has confirmed it: The 10.6 upgrade will work with 10.4 Tiger. Which means that if you’re not keen on iLife or iWork ‘09, you can skip the full version included in the box set and save yourself a cool $140.

Of course, while Tiger users are probably pleased as punch, it’s unclear how Apple’s going to feel about this. On the one hand, Mossberg has let the cat out of the bag, so to speak, and advised users of a course of action that could deprive the company of a lot of potential revenue. Not to mention that those who do use this upgrade method will be in clear violation of Apple’s licensing agreement.

On the other hand, Walt’s exact words are:

[H]ere’s a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.

That “Apple concedes” bit makes it sound like Cupertino had a hand in this particular revelation, which could mean the company expects to make more off of Tiger users buying the upgrade at a discounted price than it would from straight-up sales of the box set. Which makes sense, since why would you pay $169 for an update when your machine is humming along fine without it? A $30 price point, by contrast, will convince an awful lot of fence-sitters.

It remains unclear whether the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade disc (or $49 family pack) will work for standalone (ie. clean slate) installations, though it seems likely that it will, at least according to Lifehacker’s review of the software. Snow Leopard goes on sale tomorrow, Aug. 28th; the NYT and USA Today have interesting reviews as well.