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With iOS and OS X on an annual release cycle, some Apple watchers have expressed a desire for a “Snow Leopard” moment this year.

But what does that phrase even mean? How does it apply today, six years after Mac OS X Snow Leopard was announced?

No New Features

Released in 2009, Mac OS X Snow Leopard will best be remembered by this slide at its announcement:

That “0 new features” slide doesn’t tell the whole story, however.

The fact that 10.6 was introduced by Bertrand Serlet says a lot. Here are the three major points he made on stage:

1. Snow Leopard was a better Leopard. The release was full of refinements and little touches.
2. 10.6 brought new under-the-hood technologies to the Mac that the platform relies on today.
3. Exchange support was added to the Mac with 10.6, after being added to iOS previously.

There is a sea of complexities under those three tentpoles. ¹ Serlet claimed that 90% of the projects within OS X were refined between 10.5 and 10.6. QuickTime X and Safari 4 shipped with the OS, and things like Grand Central Dispatch, OpenCL, and much more robust 64-bit support all shipped with Snow Leopard, as well, not to mention Exchange support, which was a big step forward for the Mac in enterprise environments.

All that said, however, Snow Leopard lacked the laundry list of new features that OS X customers had grown use to. In his review of 10.6, John Siracusa wrote:

This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a “time out?” I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Many of these same developers applauded the “150+ new features” in Tiger and the “300 new features” in Leopard at past WWDCs. Now they were applauding zero new features for Snow Leopard? What explains this?

He continues:

The overall message from Apple to developers was something like this: “We’re adding a ton of new things to Mac OS X that will help you write better applications and make your existing code run faster, and we’re going to make sure that all this new stuff is rock-solid and as bug-free as possible. We’re not going to overextend ourselves adding a raft of new customer-facing, marketing-friendly features. Instead, we’re going to concentrate 100% on the things that affect you, the developers.”

Snow Leopard was heralded as a “love letter to Mac developers.” The phrase surfaced again last year, and was thrown around a lot after WWDC 2014, and for a long list of good reasons. Swift, third-party keyboards, Extensions, Touch ID APIs, better notifications, and more showed up with iOS 8.

The difference between iOS 8 and Snow Leopard is that the former brought many user-facing features, while the latter only really had one: Exchange support.

Busy Apple is Busy

With WWDC coming up, the annual topic of what Apple will highlight is back on my mind. Here’s a list of potential talking points, in no particular order:

• New Apple TV hardware
• Apple TV SDK
• New Apple TV service
• iOS 9 preview
• Music streaming service
• Native apps for Apple Watch
• Updated Mac hardware
• Mac OS X 10.11 preview

While it’s possible that all of these things will make it into the Keynote, it’s a whole hell of a lot of stuff to talk about.

Everything on that list is exciting, and with Apple on the hook for annual releases, chances are iOS 9 and Mac OS X 10.11 are just around the corner.

The problem is — of course — that Apple may be stretched too thin. Pundits have said that for years, and that bulleted list a few paragraphs up is a little frightening in that regard.

Tapping the Brakes

I don’t think the market will let Apple slow down on iOS; however, the space is competitive, and Android is looking better and better each year.

It’s interesting to think about what a Snow Leopard moment for iOS could look like. Apple could tidy up the new features in iOS 8, ² and polish the rough bits, turning iOS 8 into a mature mobile operating system, not a mere rung in the iOS ladder to the sky.

Likewise, I’d be fine with OS X slowing down a bit. While the yearly release cycle keeps things fresh — and in step with iOS, with features like Continuity — it feels like just about the time each version of OS X gets good and stable, a new version comes down the pipe.

Chances are, of course, that my dream of a slower 2015–2016 cycle won’t come true. The pragmatic thought is that some of this stuff will get a mention at WWDC, but Apple will follow up later in the year in more detail.

(My money is that this will be their approach for native Watch apps. The company has said WatchKit will be replaced with native apps later this year, so a mere mention at WWDC may be enough to hold the community over.)

This summer — like the past several — promises to be busy for those of us in the Apple space. I’d like a breather, but I don’t think we’re going to get much of one.

Apple:

Apple today announced financial results for its fiscal 2015 second quarter ended March 28, 2015. The Company posted quarterly revenue of $58 billion and quarterly net profit of $13.6 billion, or $2.33 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $45.6 billion and net profit of $10.2 billion, or $1.66 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 40.8 percent compared to 39.3 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 69 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The growth was fueled by record second quarter sales of iPhone and Mac and all-time record performance of the App Store.

Don’t miss Federico Viticci’s excellent coverage, including this graph, which really stopped my in my tracks:

It’s weird to quote myself, but here goes:

I’ve listened to Apple podcasts for a long time, and with over 250 episodes published, Mac Power Users has been a constant listen of mine for years.

Mac Power Users isn’t just a podcast; it’s an institution. The guest list is impressive, with greats like Rod Roddenberry, Merlin Mann, Aisha Tyler and David Allen making appearances.

That’s why today’s announcement is so exciting: MPU is joining Relay FM.

Blink: Better Affiliate Links is a universal iOS app for anyone who wants to earn commissions from the iTunes affiliate program. Creating affiliate links on iOS is time-consuming and fiddly. Blink simplifies the process by saving your tokens and other preferences so they are always at your finger tips, literally.

Blink converts existing appsto.re, itun.es, tw.appstore.com, tw.itunes.com, apple.co, appstore.com and itunes.com links into affiliate links. And if you don’t already have a link, Blink can search across Mac and iOS apps, film, TV, music, audiobooks and iBooks all at once, making it easy to grab the link you want.

Blink is available from other apps via an extension, so you can create links without interrupting the flow of your work. Blink also has URL scheme support and can generate links in three Markdown styles.

Blink: Better Affiliate Links, which is available on the iTunes App Store, is the most recent iOS app from Squibner LLC, an independent iOS development company based in Hinsdale, Illinois.

Apple has updated its guidelines for marketing App Store apps. There are some real gems concerning Apple Watch:

• Always use the name Apple Watch in singular form. Do not use plural form. Do not make Apple Watch possessive. Never say Apple Watches or Apple Watch’s. Modifiers such as model, device, or collection can be plural or possessive.
• Do not use the article the before Apple Watch.
• When referring to Apple Watch collections, use the terms Apple Watch collection, Apple Watch Sport collection, and Apple Watch Edition collection. After the first mention of a collection in copy, subsequent references can say simply Sport collection or Edition collection.
• Custom photography and video of Apple Watch are not permitted.

Apple Watch is awkward to talk about, much less write about. Apple’s removal of articles before their product names isn’t anything new, but the whole collection business is a new world of hurt.

Scarlett Kilcooley-O’Halloran, writing for Vogue:

“We don’t think about what we do in those terms,” said Ive. “Our focus has been doing our very best to create a product that’s useful. When we started on the iPhone it was because we all couldn’t bear our phones. The watch was different. We all loved our watches, but saw that the wrist was a fabulous place for technology, so there were different motivations. I don’t know how we can compare the old watches we know, with the functionality and the capability of the Apple Watch.”

The story of the Watch’s conception — in contrast to the iPhones’s — has been shared before, to the stress of many Apple watchers ¹ and fans. Could something created this way be any good? Has Apple lost its touch?

I think the answer is a little further down this article:

“I think that we’re on a path that Apple was determined to be on since the Seventies, which was to try and make technology relevant and personal. If people struggle to use the technology then we have failed,” said Ive. “The consequences of that path? I don’t know. Sadly so much of our manufactured environment testifies to carelessness - something that was built to a price point or a schedule. The products that we have developed describe who made them. I hope that people will like the watch and find it a beautiful item.”

That language about technology being well-designed, relevant and personal is the language Steve Jobs taught Apple to speak.

New from Google: a pay-for-what-you-use, invite-only, Nexus 6-only cellular plan that stiches together service from Sprint, T-Mobile and a Wi-Fi networks.

I can’t think of anything more Google-like.

This week, on the world’s most jetlagged podcast:

Federico, Stephen and Myke discuss Apple Watch shipments, search on Android, Chrome on iOS and music on the go.

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Myke and I are working with the Glide team on an iPhone and Apple Watch app for Relay FM. Go check out the trailer.

This week on Upgrade:

Stephen Hackett joins Jason to talk about John Siracusa’s semi-retirement, online shopping, the future of the OS X brand name, Photos for Mac, and Myke’s trip to Atlanta.

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I was thrilled to be the guest on episode three of TechTonic:

The digital world is largely a byproduct of Apple computers. Along with Stephen Hackett, Joe and Joshua discuss the ways that life changed for everyone over the last 30 years with the Mac. They also review our affair with photos, and the ways at present that we manage our ever-growing photo library concerns.