Apple famously became the first PC make to drop the floppy disk with the original iMac in 1998, ditched its creaking ‘classic’ Mac OS with the advent to Mac OS X in 2001; and then switched from PowerPC to Intel CPUs in 2005.
Apple now looks like it’s going to ditch PowerPC altogether for Snow Leopard, enabling it to strip legacy code out of the OS and focus nearly all its future development efforts on Intel.
Cocoa vs Carbon
It also plans to wrap Mac OS X’s code in a Cocoa wrapper. Cocoa, based on Objective C, is a development environment for Mac OS X that Apple has been cajoling developers into adopting for the last four years.
There are lots of benefits for developers in doing so, but some laggards have been doggedly sticking to Carbon - a hangover from the ‘classic’ Mac OS days.
Apple is evidently hoping that by squeezing Carbon even further it can eventually excise all traces of its code from Mac OS X - only it’ll need to persuade major developers like Adobe to come on side.
Leaner, meaner Mac OS X
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Another of Apple’s aims with Snow Leopard is to make the whole operating system much leaner and meaner than the current version.
That doesn’t just mean in power and performance terms, but also in how much physical disk space the OS takes up.
By shedding unwanted APIs and optimising its code, Apple will enable full versions of Mac OS X to be used devices with limited disk space - potentially benefiting the iPhone, MacBook Air and more.
It will also ensure that Apple’s software engineering teams don’t have to struggle to support multiple operating systems for a growing numbers of platforms.
That's exact opposite of what Microsoft’s been doing with the various flavours of Windows, Windows Mobile, etc.
QuickTime X
Another recipient of a Snow Leopard spring clean will be QuickTime, the audio-video technology that underpins apps like iTunes.
The new version, dubbed QuickTime X, leverages techniques Apple’s engineers have developed for the iPhone.
This should hopefully a much wider range of codecs in future, and to it enhance those - like H.264 - that is uses already.
There is also some speculation that QuickTime X will enable Apple to dump a lot of legacy code, leaving it leaner and less vulnerable to malware attacks.
Microsoft Exchange support
Apple is already set to deliver Microsoft Exchange for the iPhone 3G when it goes on sale next month. Now it’s going to do the same for the Mac.
It might seem a strange move for Apple to licence technology from its chief rival, but Microsoft Exchange support is all about getting more Macs into the hands of business users.
The logic is straightforward - give business users what they want on the iPhone, and soon they’ll want other Apple hardware too.
For that to happen, Apple also needs to remove other obstacles to adoption, just as it did by transitioning Mac hardware from PowerPC to Intel CPUs.
The challenge of Windows 7
Ultimately all of the changes are emblematic of how Apple wants to compete against current and future versions of Windows.
Despite some problems, Mac OS X Leopard has positively gleamed when compared to the mess that is Vista, and it’s evidently hoping to repeat that trick again against Windows 7.
By focusing on the core code of Mac OS X rather than on showboating features, Apple can do the hard work it needs to now to develop a solid foundation for future OS versions.
Mac OS 11?
By the time Windows 7 comes out in 2010, Apple may well be touting a version 7 of its own with Mac OS X 10.7.
It could even spring Mac OS X 11.0 upon us - and they’re sure to bring a whole suite of features that will have Microsoft’s engineers slapping their foreheads yet again.
Whatever happens the future of the Mac OS X looks mighty rosy indeed.
PS: Just a quick thought on 'A Quantum Leap'. Apple always chooses the phrases it uses very carefully. You don't think it has anything to do with this, do you?
Let the speculation begin - your comments below please!