Is an OS X Snow Leopard Hiding in the Drifts?

With Apple's (Nasdaq: AAPL) legendary efforts at secrecy, much of the news surrounding the Cupertino, Calif.-based company starts with rumors ferreted out from unnamed sources and posted on blog sites -- and that's especially true when the date for a major Apple event draws closer.

The latest next-generation Mac OS X rumor is no different -- The Unnofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) and Ars Technica have both reported that Apple's next version, ostensibly OS X 10.6, will be a fully 64-bit Intel-only Mac OS X.

While TUAW only guessed at possible cat code names, Ars Technica identified the next version as "Snow Leopard."

Both sites report that Apple is aiming to ship the so-called Snow Leopard OS X in time for the Macworld 2009 conference in January -- though some have guessed that 10.6 might get a mention at next week's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference.

Not surprisingly, Apple did not respond to requests for comment regarding the matter.

No New Major Features?

Unlike previous upgrades to Apple's OS X operating system, Snow Leopard reportedly won't be packed with new features. Instead, the release may be heavily focused on performance and stability. Some reports have also indicated that Apple may be dropping out Carbon-based application support in favor of Cocoa-based applications -- though Ars Technica did report that Apple may simply cut out any remaining Carbon user interface features.

There is also the possibility that Apple's work will focus on cleaning up its operating system so it can be better deployed on a range of new devices using processors that suck up less energy -- like the existing super-thin MacBook Air, iPhone and any as-yet-unannounced goodie Apple might deliver, like a multi-touch tablet Mac or super-mini-Mac laptop.

Beyond making OS X more stable, is it even possible to gain performance improvements by focusing on the operating system?

There are a few things Apple can do to tease out performance and energy improvements, said Roger Kay, principal analyst for Endpoint Technologies.

"There are areas within a chip, like an L2 cache, that could be flushed and shut off, that piece of circuitry, so you can save power that way -- with a lot of micro-power management going on in the silicon and even non-silicon parts like drives and screens, you can get some power savings," Kay told MacNewsWorld, noting he expects Apple will pursue that sort of strategy .

Modularity Method

Of course, any performance improvements could also work in concert with Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) improvements as well, in which case Apple would be tweaking Mac OS X to hook into Intel's handiwork.

"It's hard for me to see how the OS, independently, can increase performance, because in some sense the OS is a piggyback rider in the system that requires performance -- but it could take less," Kay said.

"In a lot of Unix flavors, there is this idea of modularity, where processes don't get booted until they are needed, are used, and then they clean up after themselves when they are put away, so memory is freed and system resources are used more efficiently," he explained. "Increasing simplicity seems to be a good direction."