One

The press about Apple and its product range are burgeoning about the coming Leopard Snow, the latest version of the operating system used by Apple (version 10.6).

Apple released information on their website about the new version, due in september. The announcement says that the OS will use up to 50% less disk space and that the Macs will boot and shut down faster (wake up 2x faster, shutdown 1.7x faster). Some functionalities in the Finder (comparable to Windows’ Explorer) will be faster, file backup will be up to 50% faster.

WOW ! They streamlined their operating system and made it smaller and more performant. Together with this Apple claims an increased stability of the OS. It has been tuned to take advantage of the 64 bit capabilities of the Intel processors, hence the improved performance.

Will this finally set in a trend of optimisation of the basis of IT ? Reduce the memory consumption, reduce the number of CPU cycles, streamlined and stable operations. Looking back at the developments in the last years : we always needed more disk and memory space, for a “better” user interface, with more graphics and music, and not that much more functionalities.

I sincerely hope that Apple breaks a long trend here. Imagine the advantages : happier users, less disk space, less RAM, better virtualisation, smaller updates, less heat generation, less electricity consumption.