How often do Apple release new o/s

I know the latest Snow Leopard came out last year but when do Apple release the next and how often do they? Is there much difference between the Leopard and Snow Lep.

Historically, every 18 to 24 months

How long is a piece of string ? ;P seriously
though there is no given time line. I've been around for only 12mths now just before SL came out, and not sure of the dates of the others. Personally I think SL is Apples pride and joy, anand as stable as it is, it will be a while before they try and better it.

IMO I think SL is the cream of the crop and walks all over what Leopard was. It gives you more space on your HD and so much more crammed into it. It's faster as well and I think there has been fewer bugs, for a straight up OS. They have come out pretty quickly
as well for fixing the intial bugs that where on it .......

Bottom line is I love it and that's what matters to me

Cheers

Yea, 24 months or so. I unfortunately missed out on almost all of Leopard's existence. I installed Leopard on my PowerMac G5, and it died hard, leaving me without a computer of my own for a year. Of course, I was on Tiger for almost 3 years with it after a year of panther. I only got 4 months with Leopard OS on my own hardware. Then again, SL is a better system anyway.

Here you are: Mac OS X - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The things used to be released so differently. For the first six releases, there was no box you go out and buy. That didn't show up until System 7 in 1991! Apple didn't really start their current scheme until 8.0 in 1997, and then cemented it when 10.2 came out. That's when every .1 cost money. Just remember, it doesn't cost a dime to upgrade from 8.5 to 8.6. You can go from 9.0 all the way to 9.2.2 free of charge as well, provided that you're fortunate enough to own Macintoshes of a good enough vintage to run those releases.

As for 10.6 being "cream of the crop", 10.4 was the best X ever. Nothing against 10.6, but 10.4 was the ultimate culmination. The newer versions just don't feel like they have the same polish, in my opinion. Maybe the flat gray is just a bit too bland for my taste. Matches my opinion of how the computers look. I still haven't gone to 10.6, myself.

Best version of the Mac OS ever, though was either 8.6 or 9.2.2.

Nah best release for vital changes was version 7.0.1 which required a hard drive to install it was that huge. About twenty floppies worth!

My SE/30 back then didn't like any of the 7.0 releases. I remember dad having 7.0 on his IIx, and I stuck with 6.0.8. But as for the others, I still use 8.6 today!

swoosta said:

I know the latest Snow Leopard came out last year but when do Apple release the next and how often do they?

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The Wikipedia page cited above in vansmith's answer should provide you with the history, but since your question appears directed towards knowing when the NEXT version comes out, the answer is "nobody knows."

If we get to October 2011 and we still don't have what will presumably be called "10.7," the tech bobble-heads will start wagging their tongues wondering what the problem is -- but in point of fact, OS X has been on a HIGHLY accelerated release schedule for a decade now and I would not be surprised if there wasn't a bit of a gap till the next one, though I know for a fact they are already working on it.

My **guess** would be around two years exactly, so at this point now I'd guess Fall 2011, but of course we'll get LOTS of clues if not outright announcements in the year prior to the actual release.

10.7 is likely to be a big upgrade with major changes, since 10.6 wasn't, and thus you can expect that developers will get a public briefing on it well in advance, probably at the Worldwide Developers Conference held each summer. We might hear the first rumblings about 10.7 at that event this year (which looks like it will be held in late June), but I would not be surprised if we don't -- the focus this year is much more on the "iPhone/iPad" version of OS X, so we may hear nothing about "Mac OS X" till WWDC 2011.

Is there much difference between the Leopard and Snow Lep.

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Yes, but most of it is rather subtle. There weren't many "big" changes: someone who was used to Leopard would hardly notice most of them. But there's a lot of "under the hood" tuning, more fit-and-finish, along with a few significant changes. The big improvements in my mind was the speed and space savings. I noticed a definite speedup that now makes slowdowns (ie potential trouble) much more noticeable, and of course I got back about 6GB of space (and could have gotten back even more with the help of programs like MonoLingual).

chas_m said:

Yes, but most of it is rather subtle. There weren't many "big" changes: someone who was used to Leopard would hardly notice most of them. But there's a lot of "under the hood" tuning, more fit-and-finish, along with a few significant changes. The big improvements in my mind was the speed and space savings. I noticed a definite speedup that now makes slowdowns (ie potential trouble) much more noticeable, and of course I got back about 6GB of space (and could have gotten back even more with the help of programs like MonoLingual).

Click to expand...

I'm glad that Apple took this route. Leopard was solid for me but it's nice to know that Apple took a step back and said "how can we make this more stable and more importantly, how can we set the groundwork for the future?". OpenCL and GCD were great foundations upon which to build the next versions of OS X. I think Apple was right in recognizing both the need to exploit mutli-core processors and the accelerated development of GPUs.

As a *nix nerd and an "under the hood" kind of guy, SL is fantastic and well worth the upgrade from Leopard. Then again, many users may not notice the difference. So in terms of user noticeable differences, you may not see that much but at $30, it's well worth the upgrade.