Apple Crippled Its DTrace Port

Linnen writes in to note that one of developers of Sun's open source system tracing tool, DTrace, has discovered that Apple crippled its port of the tool so that software like iTunes could not be traced. From Adam Leventhal's blog: "I let it run for a while, made iTunes do some work, and the result when I stopped the script? Nothing. The expensive DTrace invocation clearly caused iTunes to do a lot more work, but DTrace was giving me no output. Which started me thinking... did they? Surely not. They wouldn't disable DTrace for certain applications. But that's exactly what Apple's done with their DTrace implementation. The notion of true systemic tracing was a bit too egalitarian for their classist sensibilities..."

Comments

Re:Huh?

[molarmass192]

Your post is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start ... actually ... yeah, I do. The shared source license is primarily the GNU family of licenses, the BSD ones are known for the fact that you don't have to share your source. I commend Apple for releasing the Darwin sources, even though they absolutely do not have to.

Re:"DTrace is hardly crippled"

[jinxidoru]

I'm so sick of alarmists telling me that stuff that's broken is broken for an evil reason and that I should be concerned that someone has disabled a feature that I don't need, nor care about.

Re:And as quick as it is reported

[cbreaker]

blah blah blah no crap no crap no crap. But you're wrong. You can't say "X, Aqua, Gnome, KDE" because they are different parts of the system.

X is comparable to Aqua in that they provide the low level graphical capabilities of the system. However, the original point was that somehow MacOS is more "Unix" than Linux Distributions, and I contend that by not using a standard X system, instead relying on Aqua which is a MacOS-Only gig, it's another example of how MacOS is in fact "less" UNIX than Linux Distributions.

It is a pointless argument, but it's brought up over and over because so many ignorant MacOS fanboys insist on telling the world that MacOS is so awesome, it's the best Unix, it's the best Windows, it's the best Toaster. And try to tell them otherwise.

Re:And as quick as it is reported

[cbreaker]

Anti-aliasing on X now is among the best you can get. However, any issues you have with turning it off are the fault of whatever distribution you're using, not X itself. If you can't find the option to turn off anti-aliasing, don't blame X.

Remember, X is not Gnome, KDE, or Ubuntu. It's the graphical framework behind all of that.

Anti-aliasing started to get big in the last few years because it makes text on LCD screens look smoother, but has the unintended side-effect of making text on CRT's fuzzy sometimes. It depends on the CRT. Sometimes anti-aliasing doesn't look good on some LCD's either. It's not blurring, it's blending.

Overall I like Anti-aliasing.

Re:And as quick as it is reported

[cbreaker]

Are you that dense as to *completely* miss the point? Did you even bother reading the context in which X was mentioned? No?

Then shut the fuck up.

Re:And as quick as it is reported

[cbreaker]

Yea, we definately have different standard. Your standard is "Anything Apple does is the best, and you all suck." I prefer to go on the merits of the system itself. Anti-aliasing on Windows and Linux look better than MacOS. They're not perfect, but they're far superior. Ubuntu 7.1's version of X and the settings they use make it look so so easy on the eyes, so crisp, on any LCD screen I use.

MacOS aliasing is a fucking joke. Too many times are letters simply blended together because the smoothing is too hard. It's almost offensive to the eyes. Sometimes you can't even tell if you're using a nice Helvetica or a knock-off like Arial because it's all just a smashed up blob. Many times, people sit in front of my mac and they say "Why is the text so blurry?" - And it ain't the monitor.

So, whatever-the-shit you want to call it, Quartz/Aqua/Spongebob, it's not X, and that's all I've been trying to say. Unfortunately for me, I've apparently inadvertently hurt some poor apple boys feelings. I don't know about you, but if someone pointed to my truck and said "That Nissan is not a Ford" I would say "You're right" not "That's FUNNY! Why would you even SAY that? Are you MAD??!! My NISSAN IS BETTERERERER"

You can claim you're a publisher for 15 years, good for you. But just because your eyes are simply used to the crap Apple feeds you, doesn't mean mine are.

Re:And as quick as it is reported

[cbreaker]

Well, it's a little bit more complicated than just "blur" to the fonts =) Generally speaking, AA Font rendering looks okay on most CRT's when sub-pixel rendering is not enabled. A pixel on the screen is actually three pixels right next to each other - red, green, and blue. So what SPR does is it uses just one of those at times to smooth out the typeface without having to blend an entire pixel. It makes AA on small fonts possible. On LCD screens, it works the best, but on CRT screens it often leads to unsightly blurryness and discoloration.

"t's too much of an annoyance for enabling what is, in Windows, a matter of simply selecting an option in a drop down box"

I absolutely agree with you. I've been amazed at how much better Linux on the desktop has gotten in recent times (particularly due to Ubuntu) but yea, stupid little things like this keep getting overlooked. It's like, they put in all this stuff for WiFi usability, lots of GUI panels for themes, but when it comes to changing the desktop resolution or turning things like AA on and off, they're mysteriously missing. It's one of my biggest beefs.

Linux is like the opposite of Windows in some ways. On Windows, you do everything from the GUI, and can only do some things from the CLI. On Linux, you can do everything from the CLI but only some things from the GUI. I really hope steps are taken to improve things to let people do more from the GUI. It's 2008.