Prognostications and portents

Geek time. (duh.)

Next week is Apple's World-wide Developer Conference, and the rumors, they are flying. One of the more intriguing ones is outlined at http://daringfireball.net/ : that devs will get a preview of MacOS X 10.6, codenamed Snow Leopard. RHI that this will be a speed and stability update *only* - no new features... but that it will be sporting a brand new minor version bump, which is usually reserved for feature-adding releases. Blogosphere whining has ensued. "Pay for no new features? Unpossible!"

Another rumor is that Apple is finally going to drive a stake through the heart of the Carbon APIs - the legacy-induced Mac OS9 compatible API that was created for old codebases to come forward. (It was introduced as a legacy API, devs were told from the first day that it was only temporary, etc, etc, etc... I think 10 years is enough time to migrate code, don't you? Well, unless you're Adobe... man those guys are pissed.) This one is reasonable. Head over to and try and find mention of Carbon in the WWDC Sessions. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Alright, enough time - there aren't any. The hint, it has become a club. Carbon is dead, long live Cocoa. (That's the other API, the one that the NeXT technologies morphed into.)

Common wisdom is arising that the above list is justified by an urge to step back and clean up the OS X tree - both Mac and iPhone variants, and make sure they're in line and cohesive moving forward.

Finally, RHI that Snow Leopard will ditch support for both PowerPC and 32-bit Intel hardware. The first I have no problem believing, the second one is a stretch IMO.

Some rather spot-on folks are convinced that their sources are correct in the above rumors... but they don't make much sense.

Unless...

I have a theory. There is one way that Apple could:
a) Introduce no new user level features
b) Introduce no new developer APIs
c) Work almost exclusively on speed
d) Support their desire to integrate MacOS X and iPhoneOS X (and other versions?)
e) Have Snow Leopard be worthy of a 10.6 version bump
f) *MAYBE* even have it be worth of a paid upgrade (probably not full, but something)

( Ditch gcc for llvm. )

Prognostications and portents

Geek time. (duh.)

Next week is Apple's World-wide Developer Conference, and the rumors, they are flying. One of the more intriguing ones is outlined at http://daringfireball.net/ : that devs will get a preview of MacOS X 10.6, codenamed Snow Leopard. RHI that this will be a speed and stability update *only* - no new features... but that it will be sporting a brand new minor version bump, which is usually reserved for feature-adding releases. Blogosphere whining has ensued. "Pay for no new features? Unpossible!"

Another rumor is that Apple is finally going to drive a stake through the heart of the Carbon APIs - the legacy-induced Mac OS9 compatible API that was created for old codebases to come forward. (It was introduced as a legacy API, devs were told from the first day that it was only temporary, etc, etc, etc... I think 10 years is enough time to migrate code, don't you? Well, unless you're Adobe... man those guys are pissed.) This one is reasonable. Head over to and try and find mention of Carbon in the WWDC Sessions. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Alright, enough time - there aren't any. The hint, it has become a club. Carbon is dead, long live Cocoa. (That's the other API, the one that the NeXT technologies morphed into.)

Common wisdom is arising that the above list is justified by an urge to step back and clean up the OS X tree - both Mac and iPhone variants, and make sure they're in line and cohesive moving forward.

Finally, RHI that Snow Leopard will ditch support for both PowerPC and 32-bit Intel hardware. The first I have no problem believing, the second one is a stretch IMO.

Some rather spot-on folks are convinced that their sources are correct in the above rumors... but they don't make much sense.

Unless...

I have a theory. There is one way that Apple could:
a) Introduce no new user level features
b) Introduce no new developer APIs
c) Work almost exclusively on speed
d) Support their desire to integrate MacOS X and iPhoneOS X (and other versions?)
e) Have Snow Leopard be worthy of a 10.6 version bump
f) *MAYBE* even have it be worth of a paid upgrade (probably not full, but something)

( Ditch gcc for llvm. )