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Mac OS X 10.2 Technote Released

Posted by chrisd on from the they-used-to-be-fine-automobiles dept.

Etcetera writes "Apple has released their Mac OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) Technote chock-full of useful information about the API and technical changes in Jaguar. Interested parties will find lots of neat stuff in here... including the idea of storing kernel panic info in NVRAM and writing it to a logfile on reboot."

11 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Check out the BSD section by Demona · · Score: 4, Informative

    Linux users should appreciate some of the nice changes in the BSD section. Some are just the sort of window dressing we've come to expect like making bash the default shell, but others such as PAM, and replacing inetd with xinetd, show that Apple is trying to focus just as much on offering a solid, competitive Unix as they are trying to give it a friendly face. (Note: By 'competitive', I mean competing with the current 'best of breed' Linux distributions)

    --
    Fuck Slashdot
  2. Re:some thoughts by Dephex+Twin · · Score: 4, Informative
    Are cursors that big really that necessary?

    Beneficiaries that immediately spring to mind are children and vision-impaired.
    --

    If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
  3. Python in X by Tar-Palantir · · Score: 3, Informative

    Note the BSD section includes the fact that Python 2.1.1 is installed with Mac OS X. This ought to make some folks happy (myself included).

  4. Re:some thoughts by lemkebeth · · Score: 2, Informative

    Wanna bet?

    Big cursors do help the low vision impaired, (like me).

    Try standing 200 or 300 feet from your monitor and get back to me.

  5. Re:some thoughts by Maserati · · Score: 4, Informative

    Large cursor support

    64x64 cursors will also be a boon to those trying to implement a game interface using as much of the basic APIs as you can (always a good idea if you can manange it).

    .ttf files now recognized as fonts

    This makes it a lot easier to use Windows fonts in OS X. It isn't a big deal, they're just checking off that last box on the list.

    --
    Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
  6. Re:some thoughts by be-fan · · Score: 3, Informative

    But cursors in current machines are hardware drawn (quite an good performance improvement actually) and current hardware doesn't do vector cursors.

    --
    A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
  7. Hoorah for CUPS! by tm2b · · Score: 4, Informative

    My favorite change: the printing system was been replaced with CUPS, allowing Mac OS X users with printers from companies who enjoy screwing Mac users (*cough* Epson *cough*) to use Gimp-Print drivers. Hoorah, open source support!

    How to install the Gimp-Print drivers is detailed here. It's trivial.

    --
    "It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
  8. Re:X11 is not really supported by bnenning · · Score: 3, Informative
    Taking advatange of Cocoa makes your code non-portable.


    Wrong. Objective C is supported anywhere gcc runs, and there are multiple free implementations of Foundation (the non-GUI portion of Cocoa). The UI portion of Cocoa is not portable (although GNUstep is getting closer), but then neither is Carbon.


    When Alias|wavefront ported Maya to Mac OS X, they had no need for a 9 version, they had no existing Mac code base to salvage, they were starting from scratch. Yet they ended up using Carbon


    Possibly because when they began their port, Cocoa projects couldn't have ObjC and C++ source code in the same file. They can now, so there's no reason you can't have a Cocoa front end to your C++ back end (see Chimera for an example).


    It's great for little one-shot tools and utilities, but the big boys use Carbon.


    Most of the big boys may use Carbon currently, but Cocoa lets the little guys create apps that rival them. See OmniWeb, OmniGraffle, TIFFany, Stone Design, ViaVoice, and many others. Perhaps what you're seeing is that companies writing Carbon apps need many more developers than those writing Cocoa apps.

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    How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
  9. And Ruby too... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The Ruby scripting language is now installed with Mac OS X. (r. 2809964).

  10. Re:X11 is not really supported by Draoi · · Score: 4, Informative
    Requiring people to download X11 source code, fink, and the entire development environment in order to be able to pop up an xterm is absolutely ridiculous.

    You don't have to. You simply download the XFree86 package for MacOS X and click on it to install. If you like your X to have all that Aqua gooeyness, download the excellent OrborOSX package & perform a single-click install.

    To upgrade to Jaguar, download the new XTerm package update (1MB - whoopee). One click and you're done again!

    No rpm -u, no make install, no gcc, no fink, no X11 source, no dev env. Now, how difficult is this??

    --
    Alison

    "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein

  11. the _best_ feature: ktrace works! by GrumpyOldMan · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thje Technote fails to mention the best thing about 10.2 -- the kernel is compiled to support ktrace(1). In 10.1, the kernel was not compiled to support ktrace.

    For you linux people out there -- ktrace is a little like truss or strace, but it relies on tracepoints in the kernel, rather than /proc. It shows you everything
    the kernel is doing on your process' behalf, even things which may not show up as a system call (like signal posting). And following forks actually works.