Waiting for it to snow leopards
21 August 2009

"You may think that they've run out of great names or thought that Google Stainless Steel wasn't going to shift many boxes off shelves"

It's summer in England and it's not snowing just yet, although hopefully a light dusting of four legged wild animals in the shape of round DVD shaped Leopards is just on the horizon.

Major updates to operating systems (OS) aren't that common, but at the moment there are no less than three grabbing the headlines. Let's look at all three, starting with the new kid on the block: Google Chrome OS.

Google Chrome OS
Google recently announced that they are entering the operating system market with the Linux based Google Chrome OS. Linux has long been the under achiever in the OS market despite being very capable (and most notably very free too) but despite some major players flirting with the idea of selling computers bundled with various Linux based distributions, Windows has continued to dominate aided by ridiculous levels of discounting by Redmond.

Enter stage left Microsoft's biggest rival in the shape of Google who out of the blue announced that they were going to release their own OS. Confusingly they're giving it the same name as their also-recently-launched web browser Google Chrome. You may think that they've run out of great names or thought that Google Stainless Steel wasn't going to shift many boxes off shelves, but the close tie between the OS and browser may be because the OS is going to be, so Google suggest, lightweight, quick to load and a just a front-end to a web browser through which you'll do everything via the interweb. They're also going to give it away for nothing.

It's not such a crazy thought. On-line apps extend now to graphics (Adobe have an on-line version of Photoshop) as well as spreadsheets and documents amongst others. I worry that we may be getting ahead of ourselves, however. Security of data held on some distant server is a concern as is the reliability and speed of broadband connections. It'll be something to watch with interest and may be the big backing that Linux needs to finally crack the OS market. No timescales have been given, but there will be many interested parties (not least Microsoft) watching what happens.

Microsoft Windows 7
After the disaster that was Windows Vista, Microsoft are due to release its replacement on October 22. It's imaginatively called Windows 7 (perhaps they've run out of ideas too. Can I suggest Windows Stainless Steel then as Google didn't want that one?) Rumour has it that Windows 7 is everything that Vista was supposed to be but clearly wasn't. Whether it'll be reliable, stable and all the things Windows never has been (in my honest and somewhat biased opinion) remains to be seen. Personally I really couldn't care less, but I wish all you long suffering Windows users luck with it. Even those who are paying for it. Which won't be many, I fear.

Still, as Microsoft's last decent OS (Windows XP) was released an astonishing 8 years ago it is going to be interesting to see what happens with Windows 7 and, crucially, whether the corporate world will take any notice of it.

Apple Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
Apple bring out significant updates to their core operating system pretty regularly. Mac OS X is at the core of what they do as it runs not only their Mac hardware but also the iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple TV and the rumoured forthcoming Apple Tablet. It's a great piece of software built on solid Unix foundations and these foundations that make it so much more reliable and efficient than anything else. With Snow Leopard, coming a lengthy 2 years after the last OS update, Apple have kept the visual and feature updates to a minimum and instead (and rather bravely) decided to go through the code, line by line, enhancing, tweaking and fixing to create something really rather special.

Snow Leopard is still Leopard, but with something like 90% of the underlying code optimised. It includes a completely re-written Finder (that's Windows Explorer and the desktop to you Windows stalwarts) and also cleverly makes use of extra processor cores, 64-bit capabilities and (if you have a really good graphics card) even co-processing using unused capacity on that blisteringly fast peripheral. It's Intel only so you need a Mac sold in the last 3 years or so to install it.

Apple couldn't have seen the credit crunch coming, but despite the OS having more work done on it than any of the previous releases, because there are few "new features" to shout about a low selling price was always going to be on the cards. With times being hard the $29 upgrade price is considerably cheaper than Windows 7 and well worth anyone with a compatible machine paying out.

Snow Leopard launches in September, and depsite some fevered speculation (not without some basis as it turns out) that an announcement would be made today that the OS would come out early on August 28th, no news has been forthcoming (yet) of when it will launch. After Leopard came out a little late (although not "late" by Redmonds standards) I'm sure Apple will make it an early September release rather than a late one but it WILL be September that's a dead cert now.

Which one to pick?
Operating systems are difficult to get excited about (unless you're a nerd like me) but they sit at the core of everyone's computer desktop and so which one you choose is important to how well you can perform your day to day computing activities. Personally, I'd never go back to Windows and wonder what anyone sees in it. It totally baffles me. I will be an early adopter of Snow Leopard and I will do an erase and install (but more on why next time) but because I run my business from my Mac Pro I may not necessarily install it on day one. The reality distortion field doesn't quite extend far enough for me to do that.

What should you run? Up to you, of course, but choose wisely, grasshopper!