New Snow Leopard Facts

If you want to know a little about the world around you, getting to know as many animals and plants would be a good start. For example, the snow leopard. Of course, it's the next-gen Mac OS X from Apple, but it's also a big cat that can have up to 120 lb and a length of over 50 inch, and about the same length for the tail. Currently being one of the endangered species, the snow leopard can be found in central and south Asia, in about 12 countries. OK, that's all about the big cat today, because there's a lot to say about the Snow Leopard expected to drop on our Macs this June.

First, the great news - according to Philip Elmer-DeWitt's report for Fortune, "The 'end of June' is how long Steve Jobs said his medical leave would run when he announced in January that he was temporarily stepping down as Apple’s CEO, but David Zeiler, writing on another subject for the Baltimore Sun website, offers a scenario in which Jobs could return to the helm a few weeks earlier — on June 8 to be precise."

The story continues with something that most Apple fans probably dream about already - Steve's return - "Steve Jobs, only a few weeks away from the end of his medical time-out, is not likely to leave the honor of introducing the 6th major update of Mac OS X — and any other big announcements Apple might have in store — to Tim Cook or Phil Schiller. So if he’s made any kind of recovery at all, I expect to see Jobs that Monday, looking rested and relatively healthy, on Moscone West’s main auditorium stage at 9 a.m. sharp Pacific Daylight Time."

While the chance of having Steve Jobs back because the next-gen Mac OS X can't arrive without him around is one of the awesome Snow Leopard facts, leaving aside all the technical mumbo-jumbo we already heard of, this is not all. What about QuickTime X Player, huh?

As you probable know already, the QuickTime X Player is already in Beta stage, coming with pre-release versions of Snow Leopard. According to various reports, QuickTime X Player dropped all traditional interface controls in favor of video overlay controls, just like those appearing when you hover your mouse over video in the full screen mode of the current QuickTime Player software.

Just to remind you, the new QuickTime X Player will do a lot more than the current version, and Apple's description says it "optimizes support for modern audio and video formats resulting in extremely efficient media playback." So far, so good, I only hope they'll also release a version for Windows pretty fast. That would surely add some extra switchers to the crowd...