Apple's Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard spoke at LISA '08 last week. LISA (or Large Installation System Administration Conference) is a technical conference targeted at engineers and system administrators. This year's conference invited Apple's Jordan Hubbard to speak about the evolution of Mac OS X from large servers to embedded platforms. While technical readers may find the content of Hubbard's presentation slides (PDF) quite interesting, the most surprising revelation is a more specific target date for Apple's Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): 1st Quarter 2009.
When Apple first previewed Snow Leopard at the Worldwide Developers Conference 2008, they simply stated that Snow Leopard would ship "in about a year" from the announcement. A Q1 release would deliver it earlier than most had expected and makes it conceivable that we could see a demo or announcement at Macworld San Francisco 2009.
Apple has said that they would be focusing on both quality and performance in Snow Leopard. In particular, Apple has made it clear that there will be efforts to improve support for multi-core processors and GPU processing. These improvements will help developers more efficiently use these capabilities that already ship in Macs.
Sunday February 1, 2026 10:08 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Last year, Apple launched CarPlay Ultra, the long-awaited next-generation version of its CarPlay software system for vehicles. Nearly nine months later, CarPlay Ultra is still limited to Aston Martin's latest luxury vehicles, but that should change fairly soon.
In May 2025, Apple said many other vehicle brands planned to offer CarPlay Ultra, including Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis.
In his Powe...
Sunday February 1, 2026 12:31 pm PST by Joe Rossignol
The calendar has turned to February, and a new report indicates that Apple's next product launch is "imminent," in the form of new MacBook Pro models.
"All signs point to an imminent launch of next-generation MacBook Pros that retain the current form factor but deliver faster chips," Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said on Sunday. "I'm told the new models — code-named J714 and J716 — are slated...
Sunday February 1, 2026 5:42 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple is planning to launch new MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips alongside macOS 26.3, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
"Apple's faster MacBook Pros are planned for the macOS 26.3 release cycle," wrote Gurman, in his Power On newsletter today.
"I'm told the new models — code-named J714 and J716 — are slated for the macOS 26.3 software cycle, which runs from...
Tuesday February 3, 2026 7:47 am PST by Joe Rossignol
We are still waiting for the iOS 26.3 Release Candidate to come out, so the first iOS 26.4 beta is likely still at least a week or two away. Following beta testing, iOS 26.4 will likely be released to the general public in March or April.
Below, we have recapped known or rumored iOS 26.3 and iOS 26.4 features so far.
iOS 26.3
iPhone to Android Transfer Tool
iOS 26.3 makes it easier...
Saturday January 31, 2026 10:51 am PST by Joe Rossignol
Apple recently updated its online store with a new ordering process for Macs, including the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, Mac Studio, and Mac Pro.
There used to be a handful of standard configurations available for each Mac, but now you must configure a Mac entirely from scratch on a feature-by-feature basis. In other words, ordering a new Mac now works much like ordering an...
