On Friday, Apple launched their new Mac operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, and whenever that happens, Mac iPhone Jailbreakers everyone wonder if, on purpose or by accident (oh, hi DFU bug!) Apple will somehow break the Jailbreak. Well, good news this time around — Snow Leopard looks to be Jailbreak safe according to the Dev-Team:

Snow Leopard, the OS released for Mac on Friday, poses no new wrinkles for the redsn0w jailbreak or ultrsn0w unlock. [...] We’re glad to see Apple joining in on the “snow” theme. If only Apple had called their new OS “Sn0w Leopard”!

Indeed!

UPDATE: Official press release from Apple: Apple to Ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28

The Apple Store is back up, and as expected it’s brought the next generation of Mac OS X, 10.6 Snow Leopard, with it! Pre-ordering is now available for delivery by this Friday, August 28 in the US (international stores may only ship by 8/28).

At $29 for single user and $49 for a 5-user family pack, for Mac users, this is likely a no-brainer. We’re not sure what, if any, goodies will be in there specific to the iPhone of iPod touch, but with OpenCL (use GPU as CPU), Grand Central Dispatch (packetize processor tasks like network traffic), built-in Exchange ActiveSync support, QuickTime X, and a whole heap of refinements under the hood (hello, Cocoa Finder!), it’ll be worth it anyway. Find out more at Apple.com.

For everyone else, worry not, Windows 7 is still on track for October 22, Ubuntu Karmic Koala is set for October 29, and if you rock a different distro… well, you’ll likely have an update at some point too!

We already knew that Apple’s next computer operating system, OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard (estimated for delivery mid-2009) was leveraging some of the amazing work done by the iPhone team, including the highly optimized QuickTime X. Now Apple Insider brings word that things like CoreLocation and more Multi-Touch might be making their way back to the big desktop brother as well:

CoreLocation will utilize a Mac’s existing networking hardware to triangulate the system’s location in a manner similar to the way the original iPhone was able to use the technology to emulate a true global positioning signal. [...] Snow Leopard will also gain access to a new set of Cocoa-based programing interfaces for leveraging the multi-touch features of the latest MacBooks and MacBook Pros within their applications.

The synergy between Apple’s desktop and mobile OS X development really seems to not only be benefitting both platforms, and optimizing R&D’s bottom-line, but bouncing off each other in iterative splendor. Hopefully iPhone OS 3.0 can take a little back as well — I’m looking at you universal spotlight search!

Apple.com has put up a teaser page for their next-generation OS X, 10.6, code-named Snow Leopard. And the features, to put it mildly, are mind blowing:

Exchange support built in, so that iPhone and OS X share common business email, calendar, and contact sync.

64-bit monster, supporting a theoretical 16TB (terabytes!!) of RAM.

Multi-core optimized, using “Grand Central” to chip away at one of the biggest problems in programming: how to really take advantage of multi-core processors.

Media from iPhone! building on the iPhone OS X, Quicktime X takes advantage of streamlined, next gen tech for modern codec support, and ultra-fast javascript for the web.

Open CL, to co-opt the GPU into doing some heavy crunching on the compute side.

How does this relate to the iPhone? Aside from using what they learned making iPhone OS X, from optimization to shrinking the OS footprint, rumor has it Snow Leopard will go a long way towards unifying the OS X branches, leveraging development efforts, and in the end, giving the best of both worlds to desktop, laptop, and handheld users.

Great, I just got through WWDC 2008 and now I’m already jonesing for 2009. Way to go Apple!

Last year Apple infamously delayed the release of their long anticipated OS X 10.5 Leopard in order to devote more resources to their soon-to-launch iPhone. When Leopard finally roared, it brought with it a host of new features, including CoreAnimation, Time Machine, Coverflow and Quicklook, and some 296 more according to Apple.

So would the next OS X release be similarly feature-packed… and delayed?

Turns out maybe just the opposite. Rumor is Apple may release OS X 10.6, claimed to be code-named “Snow Leopard” as early as Macworld in January 2008, and maybe even debut a beta this WWDC (?!).

Sounds crazy? Here’s what’s crazier: just as “Snow Leopard” comes off as a minor addition to “Leopard”, so too is OS X 10.6 supposedly a functionally similar product to 10.5! Focus this time may just be on stability, making what’s good better, and increasing the unification between the various “flavors” of the OS Apple now deploys across the Mac, iPhone, and Apple TV platforms.

Personally, this sounds great to me. OS X is mature enough at this point that more eye-candy or changes for changes sake can easily take a back seat for the final polish analogous to the 10.1 release of the early days. Nailing down the platform will let Apple take both the Mac and their mobile initiatives, headlined by the iPhone, fully and functionally into the future.

Gimme.

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