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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."

3 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Math libraries included, too... by wfolta · · Score: 5, Interesting
    • A complete BLAS implementation ships with Mac OS X 10.2. The Basic Linear Algebra Subroutines (BLAS) are high quality leaf routines for performing basic vector and matrix operations.
    • The LAPACK library ships with Mac OS X 10.2. LAPACK provides routines for solving systems of simultaneous linear equations, least-squares solutions of linear systems of equations, eigenvalue problems, and singular value problems.
    • The libm library is now standard compliant. The new math library in jaguar is now IEEE-754 and C99 compliant in double precision. In addition, the new libm is faster than MathLib found in Mac OS 9 and faster than libm in Mac OS 10.1.x.
  2. X11 is not really supported by g4dget · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Sadly, there is no X11 support in Mac OSX--X11 on OSX requires a separate download. It works acceptably well, but it is not well integrated with the OS. Also, when you upgrade to Jaguar, your X11 installation breaks and you need to reinstall it.

    Apple really needs to support X11 officially alongside with Cocoa and Carbon. Vendors of OSX software (e.g., Matlab) clearly want to use it. Users need it for tens of thousands of educational and scientific packages that are not going to get rewritten. Supporting X11 would be very little cost or overhead, and it would make the machines a lot more interesting and attractive for scientific and engineering uers.

    1. Re:X11 is not really supported by andrewski · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apple WILL NEVER include or support X11. Why not?

      1. X11 apps use a plethora of ugly widget sets, all of which look and feel completely different from one another and from Aqua. There's no way Apple would endorse or implement such a flagrant pile of different UI's on their carefully-crafted OS. Can you name a single X11 app that comes even close to conforming to the Apple UI guidelines?

      2. The availability of X11 native on OS X would discourage developers from making their applications at all Mac-like in appearance or functionality, leading to less mindshare for Apple's way of doing the GUI.

      Apple is still fighting with application developers to get them to Carbonize their apps. Carbon blows, big time. It's a stopgap solution crafted solely to allow ports from OS 9. (If you are developing a brand-new program for Carbon, allow me to BITCH-SLAP you out of the 80's with the clue stick a few times. ) Apple, and anyone with a brain, knows this. Apple's ultimate plan is to ditch Carbon like a hooker bad case of genital warts. Carbon ties Apple to the Motorola PPC platform which is looking more and more like an evolutionary trichordate (good potential, slow development causes it to be overwhelmed by the competition).

      Apple surely won't go out of it's way to deny X11 on OS X, but you can bet they won't include it with OS X v10.3 or or OS X v11 or whatever.

      As a side-note, does anyone have a theory on how Apple will name their products in the future once the 10.x numbers run out for them (or they get sick of 10.x)? Mac OS XIV anyone?