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Apple Confirms No (Default) ZFS In Leopard
javipas writes "Despite recent rumors about the possible inclusion of ZFS as the filesystem of choice for MacOS X 10.5 'Leopard', an Apple executive has denied this possibility. Brian Croll, senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS has as much as said 'ZFS is not happening ... Croll declined to comment on statements made last week by Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, who said the use of ZFS would be announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Upon further questioning, Croll would only confirm that Apple had never said ZFS would be a part of Leopard. A representative with Sun did not have any immediate comment.' Users of the future operating system will have to keep working with HFS+, a filesystem that is almost ten years old now." Update: 06/12 19:57 GMT by KD : An Apple spokesman contacted InformationWeek with a correction, which they ran as a comment on their original story: What Apple meant to say was, "ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."
I agree.
Jonathan *had* to know he might get burned for spilling the beans before Steve. Jobs has a track record of being harsh, almost vindictive in his dealings with companies which betray his trust.
Exhibit A: Samsung runs their mouth about being selected to supply software to drive the next-gen iPod Nano. Apple turns around and drops them.
Exhibit B: ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.
Simply put, don't try to scoop The Steve.
I'm not saying this is retailatory... But this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish partners for making preemptive announcements about Apples products. One may recall not too many years ago ATI making a show about Apple using their video cards just before another WWDC (maybe it was Macworld, I forget). Apple proceeded to spend the night pulling ATI's cards from their ready to ship Macs. In keynote the following morning Steve Jobs announced (surely with ATI execs in the front row) that nVidia was their premier partner for Mac video. It has been said that it was 6 monts before ATI execs could get even an executive secretary on the phone.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
When I worked for Apple, at 6am ATI let slip that they were making cards for The PowerMac and "something else". That "something else" was the cube. My boss got a call about 5 minutes later from Steve telling us to remove all references to ATI on all web pages, in 17 languages, by 9am.
It is really better for servers than a Workstation. It uses a lot of CPU power and adds features that no Workstation is likely to need for a while. It would be ideal for a NAS so maybe we will see it as an option on storage product from Apple.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.
Which really underscores the stupidity of Steve's arrogance. I'm sure ATI wanted that contract, it was a nice contract, but Apple is NOTHING in the great scheme of the PC market. And there aren't that many major players in the high-end graphic chip game. Why play the prima donna, when he might have to deal with them in the future?
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
From the Leopard Sneak Peak, still in Google's cache here
However, there is no mention of iChat Desktop sharing on Apple's new iChat for Leopard page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/icha
This sucks. I was really hoping to replace my kludgy VNC setups and NAT tables with a clean, elegant, and free remote desktop solution. Thanks a lot Apple!
I was one of the two reporters in that interview and we both were surprised by Croll's comment. We were just contacted by Apple to say that what we heard (or what we both thought we heard) was not the fully story. The real story is:
An Apple spokesperson seeking to clarify Croll's statement indicated that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."
Further detail:
It's only available as a read only option from the command line.
We're still trying to find out what this means, but a correction is coming.
Sun Micro probably does not have the same motivation as the other two companies you mentioned above to keep things secret. Afterall, with ZFS being open source, Apple doesn't have to pay royalties or licensing fees to them. They may have some sort of consulting contract with Apple, as they have the most knowledgable people on ZFS working for them. That and bragging rights may be good for Sun, but it's not likely a major contract will be lost.
--Aaron Greenberg
That, in my mind, would be a compelling reason not to ever buy an Apple. If the company is so ready to remove features that would be useful to users and advance the state of the art just to get back at someone for leaking word of that feature, they clearly don't have the customer's best interests at heart.
What's more likely is that there were technical troubles getting it to work with the rest of the OS that couldn't be fixed or worked around before the release date. As others have noted, the support for ZFS is there (read-only at the moment), but even Sun has had some issues with it in the current version of Solaris. I don't doubt that Schwartz jumped the gun on the announcement, but I think he's got egg on his face for different reasons than you do.
This poo is cold.
The larger pattern of which this is one example seems to indicate that many people don't read, except Slashdot and other geek discussion forums, blogs, etc., In turn, this leads to a self-perpetuating defect. A meme, if you will, mutates, and replicates in this pool because the corrective mechanisms are weak. It then may rise to dominance in a limited domain of Slashdot, for example, if people don't spend enough time reading outside materials. (We already know the articles are often not read.) People see these things misspelled more often than not. If they don't read sources from literature or properly edited magazines or newspapers then they pick up the wrong spelling or usage, and add to the noise. The feedback loop builds as other people are then more likely to encounter the incorrect usages or spellings more frequently than they otherwise would.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Why is the fact that it is "old" considered to be a problem ? Anyone who thinks new=good, old=bad is way out of step.
Far better to talk about what features it lacks. Or if you're trying to defend it, talk about its stability record. Have filesystems really advanced, since journalling became the standard way to do things, in any specific way that benefits regular users ?