To upgrade or not to upgrade?

With every release of a new operating system, we all wonder if upgrading would be worth it. In the case of upgrading from XP to Vista, this was no go. It is a good thing that Windows 7 is here already, so if you are upgrading from XP, you can skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7. On the Linux front, it is always a must to upgrade primarily because it does not cost you a thing to get the new version. For Mac users, Snow Leopard is now available. But is it a must have?

Snow Leopard, as revealed a couple of months ago, does not come with the usual 200+ new features that came when Mac OS X transitioned from Tiger to Leopard. Most of the changes concentrate on the internals -- things that are not outright visible to ordinary users but greatly benefit software developers. So what are these features? Here is a short list of some of the new features:

64-bit vs. 32-bit. Now that the OS is full 64-bit, it means that applications can support up to 16 exabytes of memory vs. 4GB (at a time) for 32-bit. This does not mean squat to the ordinary user but is very important for software developers hungry for more memory, e.g. for image and video processing. The direct effect is that applications run faster. The benefit, however, depends on whether your software is 32-bit or 64-bit. Luckily, all built-in Mac OS X applications are all in 64-bit so expect a significant speed boost here.

Grand Central Dispatch. Computers used to come with just one processor with one core. Applications were designed to make sure that it's optimized for this architecture. Today, we have multiple-core architecture, i.e., 2 or more processors in a single die, but applications are still designed for single core processors. To leverage this shift in processor design (more cores packed in the same area compared to single but faster core), applications should be designed for multi-core computing. Apple's Mac OS X supports this via Grand Central Dispatch - not only is the entire OS multi-core aware, but it also provides access to this service to all its developers. Whilst this may not have immediate impact on release date, give the developers a couple of months and you will see your applications fly!

OpenCL. Along with fast multi-core systems, the graphic processing unit (GPU) is becoming so powerful that you can now offload CPU-bound operations to the GPU. Mac OS X now allows developers crunching a lot of data for images and video to use the GPU using OpenCL. Imagine how fast games are rendered - can't wait for this speed to trickle down to users soon.

QuickTime X. Now this one can be directly tested by the consumer. This new engine provides a lot of new features that were previously available only to the paid Quicktime Pro version. One feature that excites me is the Adaptive HTTP streaming support. No need for RTSP and the Quicktime Streaming Server to provide media streaming on the web. Not to forget, it uses HTTP so no other ports need to be opened besides port 80!

MS Exchange. Whilst definitely of no use to me, Microsoft Exchange Server is now natively supported by Mac OS X. Can't say anything more than this about Exchange, though. :)

CISCO VPN Support. Snow Leopard now supports CISCO's VPN service - no more extra software to install (besides, it is so fugly!). I cannot wait to test this with UP's VPN service.

Other small improvements such as faster Time Machine back-ups, higher resolution and more reliable iChat sessions, new Stacks and Expose features and faster Safari (64-bit!), may be enough to make you upgrade.

For PhP1550 for an upgrade (Leopard to Snow Leopard), I think there is no reason NOT to upgrade to this new OS from Apple. The only reason I can think of is if you have applications that are not compatible (yet) -- check Apple.com for a list of applications that are incompatible.

I pre-ordered my Family Pack from the Apple Online Store and waiting for it to get here any time now. Once I get it, I'll report back on how these other features fare.