Apple Mac OS X Snow Leopard for $29

At the recent developers converence Apple revealed that the next version of its OS X operating system will be released in September and it will cost $29. (No matter what the exchange rate, it'll probably be £29 here in the UK.) The reason for the September release is probably to beat Microsoft Windows 7 and it's hardly surprising, but why is it so cheap? It is normally more like $129.

Pricing it at $29 is very unusual for Apple, a company this is not known for selling cheap products, so what are the reasons behind it? Basically, it wants to move everyone from a 32-bit operating system to a 64-bit one on Intel hardware. By supporting only one hardware architechture - Intel - instead of two - Intel and PowerPC - in the long term it will save time, effort and money, which is important in the current economic climate.

Apple has rewritten and recompiled OS X and the built in applications like Safari and Mail for 64-bit Intel processors. This is because they can handle data more efficiently, which means better performance. Removing the support for older Macs with PowerPC architechture means that there is less code. The end result is that Snow Leopard is half the size and twice as fast as Leopard. This is briliant news for everyone using newer Intel Macs, but bad news for everyone else.

The reason why it is only $29 is two fold. First Apple wants to encourage as many users as possible to a 64-bit operating system, and second, it's taken so much time and effort to rewrite the OS that there's not much that is actually new. There won't be a huge number of new features, so charging full price probably isn't an option, despite the speed boost and space saving.

Next year you can expect to see rewritten and recompiled 64-bit editions of Apple software like iLife and iWork.

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Why Windows starts so slowly

How long does your PC take to boot up? Two minutes, three, longer? Why can't Microsoft make it start faster? Actually, it isn't Windows that is at fault because if you format the hard disk drive and install a fresh copy of Windows on it, it will boot up very quickly indeed. The problem isn't the operating system, it's the software that is installed afterwards that makes it so slow. (Microsoft may be partially to blame because Windows allows or even encourages programming practices that slow down the boot up.)

It's amazing how much gets installed into memory when you switch on and half of it won't be used. For example, I run iTunes once a week to update my iPod, yet an iTunes Helper, an Apple Mobile Device driver and an iPod Service is loaded every time Windows starts up. They run 24/7 even though iTunes is run once a week. Why can't these things be loaded when they are needed instead of slowing down the boot process and consuming memory and processing power?
iTunes is just one example and it isn't the worst by any means. Looking at what's loaded on my computer it is clear that Roxio is a particularly bad offender. The company makes some useful software, but does it have to be loaded all the time? Surely it doesn't need to be loaded unless it is being used?

If you have a Blackberry mobile phone and have installed the software to sync it with your PC you'll have a Media Manager supplied by Roxio. This runs RoxWatchTray9, RoxMediaDB9, Roxio Hard Drive Watcher 9, Roxio UPnP Renderer 9, and Roxio Upnp Server 9 every time you start Windows. It doesn't matter whether you want to plug in your Blackberry or not, it all gets run every time Windows starts. Why can't these things be run when you want to plug in your Blackberry? They don't need to be running 24/7.

I have Roxio Creator Ultimate on another PC for burning CDs and DVDs, a task I perform perhaps once a week or once every couple of weeks. To use this software though, the following files are loaded automatically with Windows every time it starts whether I need it or not: CPMonitor, RoxTrayWatch, Roxio Upnp Server 11, RoxLiveShare11, RoxWatch11, PxHelp20, Sahdla32, Saibla32, saibsvc, and SaibVda32.

That's 10 programs just from one software application I installed. Now this is OK if you have just one a application on your PC, but who has just one? We have many applications, so when you multiple this by the number of apps you have the number of files loaded on startup can be quite large. And you probably won't need most of it. Not today. Maybe next week or whenever you run the associated application next, but it still gets loaded. It consumes memory, time, and processing power. Why?

Software developers: Stop loading all this crap into Windows every time it starts! When a program is run it can load all the files it needs, but don't run stuff when it's not being used.

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