Snow Leopard will load printer drivers on demand

Snow Leopard is labeled as a “minor update” for the Mac OS X, but the rumors about the features that will be present on it show that the next OS will have more than what Apple let out. As it’s known, Apple has the intentions of making the OS X a lot lighter and faster by reducing the size of installed components.

In this way, it appears that only the drivers for the printers that are actually connected to the computer or visible through local networks will be installed (or in case of a system update). Every other printer that is connected later on will be configured by downloading a driver through a Software update.

Another feature is related to QuickTime. It’s known that Snow Leopard will feature a cleaned up and reviewed version of QuickTime, called QuickTime X. THe interesting thing is that in the latest beta versions of the new Operational System, the QuickTime version supplied with the software already present the functionalities that up to now were only available with QuickTime Pro. Even the menu options that allow users to buy the Pro version or register the software aren’t present, and this seems to confirm the fact that Apple doesn’t want to make users pay for the extra features such as conversion and exporting.

It could also be, however, that the export and conversion features are enabled only in order to give beta testers and developers a way to test them properly without further complications, being disabled once the official version is launched.

We’ll have to wait and see!