- More Support for the Faster 64-bit Computers
- Installation Has Been Renovated and Simplified
- Improvements to Finder, Dock, and Expos
- It Plays Nice on Corporate Networks with Microsoft Exchange Support
- Even More Processing Enhancements
- New Editing Features in QuickTime X
- Getting Snow Leopard on Your Mac
Even More Processing Enhancements
Apple didn't only add more 64-bit support. It also added a new feature called Grand Central Dispatch (GCD) and included support for a technology named Open Computing Language (OpenCL). Both can dramatically increase the power of the Mac.
To increase processor performance, we used to just turn up the clock speed. Now we also add more cores to the processors and include multiple processors in a single PC. However, most developers don't program their applications to be multi-corefriendly; it's just too hard.
Grand Central Dispatch enables the OS to manage the use of the multiple cores instead of making the applications do the work. Thus developers can add multi-core support much easier. This means you should start seeing faster, higher performing, applications.
Graphics processing units (GPUs) are processors customized to process graphics. However, their power can be harnessed for other demanding applications as well. In the past few years, the speed of GPUs has increased significantly. Thanks to OpenCL, this doesn't mean just faster graphics processing. OpenCL makes the power of GPU available for other general-purpose computing.