Wake on Demand lets Snow Leopard sleep with one eye open
A new networking option in OS X 10.6 lets you access files on a slumbering Mac — To conserve power and reduce your electrical bill, you should shut down your computer or put it to sleep when not in use.
Context & Ripple Effects
Snow Leopard’s feature set had been emerging in pieces since Apple outlined early Snow Leopard details in 2008, including a report that it would support native 3G wireless WAN hardware. Wake on Demand adds a power-management layer to that broader connectivity story: a Mac need not stay fully awake merely to remain reachable.
First-order effects
- Mac owners can put compatible machines to sleep while preserving network access to their files, reducing the need to choose between availability and lower power use.
Second-order effects
- Networked Mac households and small offices can treat sleeping machines as intermittently available file endpoints, making wake-capable networking more valuable than keeping systems continuously powered.
Third-order effects
- If operating systems continue to pair low-power states with network reachability, endpoint management shifts from an on-or-off choice toward selective, service-triggered availability.
The trend: Personal-computing platforms are making power conservation compatible with always-reachable network services.