Here comes the next big cat

Well, after a few episodes of overpromising and underdelivering, Apple is once again on track with meeting or beating their projected ship dates. Not that they announce many products ahead of time, but for Snow Leopard, the expected ship time was sometime in September, which usually means last day of. By beating that expected ship date, Apple is back on form.

Of course, we'll have to wait until then to see if the program is really all it's cracked up to be. The OS has gained a surprising amount of traction, considering the fact that Apple has promised no new user features, with all the performance gains under the hood. Well, that's not quite true, but the fact is there is no new iChat or Mail Program or anything big and flashy. Instead, the upgrade will improve usability, with better assistive technologies for people with disabilities, built in support for Microsoft Exchange Server, and faster wake-up and shut down speeds.

Whew! Now that's flashy stuff. But perhaps users are getting sick of feature bloat, and are really looking forward to a streamlined experience. I know I am. And the $29 price point doesn't hurt, either....

Of course, this update lays down core technologies, like Grand Central Dispatch and Open CL, which will allow developers to take advantage of the processing power of the Mac. And of course, when the sequel to Snow Leopard comes out, expect a number of flashy new features that they've now had a double development cycle to work on, too.