Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" confirmed, shipping next year

Lost in the iPhone 3G shuffle yesterday was the confirmation of a new Mac OS update: "Snow Leopard," which is set to arrive in 2009—and, as expected, it's more of a core-services update than a cavalcade of new features.

Apple has posted this page about OS X 10.6, where it ticks off some of the key improvements coming in the update—and most of them are, indeed, under the hood.

For example, "Snow Leopard" will include "Grand Central," a "set of technologies" that will optimize overall performance in multicore Mac processors. I'll spare you the technical details—just know that "Grand Central" promises to wring better performance from your (newer) Mac system.

The update will also add support for a jaw-dropping 16TB of system RAM, or about "500 times more" than current Macs, according to Apple. Of course, don't expect to see any Macs with 16TB of RAM at the Apple Store anytime soon—that's more of a theoretical limit at this point. Still, raising the memory limit will lay the groundwork for upcoming Macs with massive quantities of RAM, perfect for hard-core multimedia users.

And speaking of which, look for an updated, optimized version of Quicktime (dubbed "QuickTime X"), including support for the latest media codecs.

Finally, Snow Leopard will add support for Microsoft Exchange 2007 in Apple's Mail, Address Book, and iCal apps.

A couple of key questions remain: Will Snow Leopard be compatible with older PowerPC systems, or just Intel-based Macs? And how much will 10.6 cost, given that we're just talking performance improvements?

Stay tuned.

Related:
Apple posts details about Snow Leopard [TUAW]