Mac OS X Secretly Cripples Non-Apple Software

spikedLemur writes "Vladimir Vukicevic of the Firefox team stumbled upon some questionable practices from Apple while trying to improve the performance of Firefox. Apparently, Apple is using some undocumented APIs that give Safari a significant performance advantage over other browsers. Of course, "undocumented" means that non-Apple developers have to try and reverse-engineer these interfaces to get the same level of performance. You really have to wonder what Apple is thinking, considering the kind of retaliation Microsoft has gotten for similar practices.

Comments

first post!

[Anonymous Coward]

first post!
i cheated though, i'm using safari.

Re:first post!

[FF0000 Phoenix]

It's even more incriminating that all the undocumented APIs are under the "Firefox_Sux" namespace.

Re:first post!

[dgatwood]

Or the SPI (System Programming Interface, the private equivalent of an API) takes advantage of inside knowledge of how some data structures are designed but which could change in the future as functionality is added to the class in question. For example, Apple might decide to change CFString to always convert data to BADC-byte-order UTF-32 under the hood for better efficiency on Vax. Not likely, but I never thought I'd see Macs using Intel CPUs, either, so you never know. :-D They could make such a change and still support the public APIs, but if they had an API that allowed you to arbitrarily manipulate the bytes under the hood, they'd be stuck.

The thing about Safari is that it is effectively insulated from SPI changes because it comes out with OS releases. If Apple needs to change an internal data structure in CF, Foundation, etc. in a way that would break an SPI, all they have to do is rev Safari to not use that SPI. Thus, it is safe for Safari to use any API or SPI. If Apple publishes the SPI as API, FireFox uses it, and Apple changes the data structure, Firefox breaks, and with "luck", so do Photoshop and Word.... :-(

So you see, Apple has only three choices: A. don't publish that portion of the API, in which case some people complain because they're not able to get that extra 1% from being able to walk inside private data structures of the HFS+ Extents B-tree or whatever, B. publish that portion of the API, in which case they're stuck with that internal architecture and can't ever change it to improve performance, add features, etc., or C. publish the API and break it later, in which case developers scream again. It's a no-win.

The only thing one could possibly argue is that Safari shouldn't be using the SPI, either, to put them on equal footing. That said, since it's safe for them to do so, where's the harm? There's no monopoly involved, certainly. :-) And as you noted, many of those SPIs that Safari is trying out might become APIs at some point in the future. Having an app like Safari exercise them allows the engineers to figure out what works and what doesn't so that they don't get stuck supporting an API that isn't scalable, is hard to enhance, or isn't easily maintainable. In the long run, everybody benefits.

I'm certain that Apple doesn't do this to cripple Firefox or to make its own software look better. It's not a vast fruit-wing conspiracy.... Apple limits its public API exposure to ensure that the APIs are sustainable so third-party code doesn't break. If you don't care about that, use the SPI... just don't come crying when your app crashes on launch after a software update or whatever.... :-)

Re:first post!

[dhavleak]

Great post.

I've been in product cycles where we've gone through exactly the dilemma you pointed out: where making an API public means supporting it until kingdom come, when the scenario is too new for the API to be stable, or you have definite long-term plans that will cause breaking changes in the API and you don't want the burden of having to be backwards compatible with applications designed for the older API.

The only part I didn't agree with was this:

The only thing one could possibly argue is that Safari shouldn't be using the SPI, either, to put them on equal footing. That said, since it's safe for them to do so, where's the harm? There's no monopoly involved, certainly. :-) And as you noted, many of those SPIs that Safari is trying out might become APIs at some point in the future.

I think it should either be ok for all players to have internal APIs or not ok for all players. I mean, if we say that right now it's ok for Apple to do this because they are not a monopoly, what happens if they do become one? At that point do they get penalized for these internal APIs (using which they designed the products that helped them obtain the monopoly)? At what point will Apple cross a threshold at which they need to change this practice and how will they know when they have crossed it? And when this threshold is crossed, is it suddenly ok for MS to start this practice again (of having undocumented APIs).

Re:first post!

[darthflo]

What about the other option?

"The SPI namespace is subject to change with future OS releases, minor as well as major. Changes will be made public on this site at least two weeks prior to shipping an update with any SPI modifications. Enter your e-mail address to be auto-notified about all changes, grouped into two e-mails per week at most."

Developers have documented access to the additional performance those libraries might give them while knowing they might change. For safety's sake, the versioning could be included into the interface, allowing thoughtful devs to fall back to the (slower) API on a version number update. Also, the documentation could include some sort of discussion plattform allowing qualified devs to propose changes that might, after approved by the Steve and his Turtleneck, improve Apple's SPI (and, trickling down, the "stable" API).

Article is a Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh give me a break, if you use an undocumented API for something that does not mean you "cripple" other pieces of software. It's not like OS-X says "oooo Firefox, quick make it run twice as slow". Grow up.

Re:Article is a Troll

[Architect_sasyr]

And I thought that the Underhanded C Contest would never have come in handy......

Re:Article is a Troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the article is a troll at face value. Apple has every right to keep its API secret from 2nd and 3rd parties. It is true however that Microsoft has been widely criticized for not opening up its APIs that give Office, IE, etc. and advantage. What the article is doing is predicting that Apple will be given a pass by the development community, thereby allowing the author to scream "hyprocrisy!" Of course none of this has happened yet, except for your comment. So yeah, the article is a troll.

Re:Article is a Troll

[udippel]

Yes and no. You are correct, using some new shiny and undocumented features for my own good does not primarily and automagically cripple others' products. But as secondary effect, those other products, in comparison, though effectively running at the original specs, look pale in comparison.

Since this is exactly one of the reasons how Microsoft came to dominate the software market, and had all major third parties kowtow to them (and pay) to get the information, the Free Market was distorted. It would not be the best/fastest application that grabbed the market, but the one with knowledge about and rights to the secrets.
I'd have to seriously disappoint you on this one: This is exactly not what the term 'Free Market' means, especially if you are already the monopolist.

You yourself might already have grown up, now try to work on your thinking abilities.

Re:Article is a Troll

[truthsearch]

Possibly confirming your post is this comment on TFA:

The programmatic disabling of coalesced updates should not be public API. It's actually a very dangerous thing to do. We aren't really happy with that code in WebKit, but we had to do it to avoid performance regressions in apps that embedded WebKit. Technically it's wrong though, since we turn off the coalesced updates for any app that uses WebKit! This includes drawing they do that doesn't even use WebKit.

As for the window display throttling, that was a pref designed for Safari (that we don't even use any more). It's not private or magic. It's nothing more than a pref that we can examine from Safari-land, so linking to that is just silly. ;)

Many of the private methods that WebKit uses are private for a reason. Either they expose internal structures that can't be depended on, or they are part of something inside a framework that may not be fully formed. WebKit subclasses several private NSView methods for example, and it cost us many many man hours to deal with the regressions caused by the internal changes that were made to NSViews in Leopard.

As you yourself blogged, there was a totally acceptable public way of doing what you needed to do.

For any private methods we use that we think should be public, we (the WebKit team) file bugs on the appropriate system components. Many of these methods have become public over time (CG stuff in Leopard for example). Be careful when you dig into WebKit code, since we may continue to use the WK method even though it's not public API just because we need to work on Tiger.

Re:Article is a Troll

[MouseR]

There is a slight difference in this case though. Unlike compiled C or C++ libraries, Objective-C (/Cocoa) frameworks can be easily turned inside out. The strong method signature nature of the language actually makes it easy to figure out the parameters being passed. If in doubt, just ask at runtime!!

Introspection makes this easy, as in java (and c# I suppose--I'm just guessing for this one).

Also, given Apple did mention it into a post (see above reply) and that although there wasn't documentation per say, the functions were in a published API (in this particular case), one could say "the plans where on display".

Re:Article is a Troll

[pavera]

The difference here is that the "problem" that firefox was hitting is a completely documented FEATURE and has been around since 10.4.

Also, There is a 100% documented, public, and simple way to disable the feature. The Firefox dev found this configuration, added 2 lines of XML to firefox, and bam, done, speedy. So I really don't see the comparison to MS at all.

Also one of the comments on the blog is from a webkit developer at Apple who says "yeah, these APIs basically suck, and they are here for backwards compatibility with Tiger, and they aren't stable, and cause us hundreds of hours of work dealing with regressions, so don't use them, use the perfectly acceptable and documented configuration setting, if there is anything in these APIs that should be made public, it will be once it is stabilized and reliable" He then gives examples of other APIs that have gone through the same process.

In the end this is 100% open to the public, any software can use this configuration setting to get around this potential performance bottleneck. The reason FF3 was "suddenly" slower than FF2 is they changed from Carbon to Cocoa (2 totally different frameworks) and the new feature is only applied to Cocoa apps. So in short, FF changed hundreds (probably thousands) of lines of code to use a new framework, and found a performance bottleneck, and then found the documentation about it, and changed configuration to avoid the bottleneck... How this is news at all baffles me, that sounds like a normal day in my life.

Re:Article is a Troll

[hxnwix]

it's reporting on Apple being evil just like microsoft Get real. Apple not only documented the issue the article author is complaining about, but Apple also offers a work around. The author even links to it! I'd like to say that he's ignorant, but he clearly knows better. Perhaps he wants to sell advertisements. Who the fuck knows? In any case, I'm comfortable labeling this particular article a troll.

Re:Article is a Troll

[Antique Geekmeister]

Well, the lack the tools in open source is partly because Apple fills that niche reasonably well with some decent hardware and well integrated software. MacOS *is* now a UNIX variant, so they're getting those benefits as well. They also pay a lot of attention to making their tools well integrated, which is not a strongpoint of open source tools.

Also note: Linus wrote the kernel, not the OS. So don't get too confused about whose got whose head up whose ass when you make statements like that.

The thinking is really quite simple:

[Valacosa]

You don't really have to wonder what Apple is thinking, considering the kind of marketshare Microsoft has gotten for similar practices.

Fixed.

This would have been a First Post

[Anonymous Coward]

... but I used a non-Apple browser.

<sigh>

Round Number?

[cobaltnova]

We're capping at 30.77 frames per second here. That's way too round of a number.

The author must be a mathematician.

It IS their right...

[hackel]

They are thinking that they are developing a proprietary operating system and they can do WHATEVER THEY WANT. Do not complain about this. It is Apple's right to do this. That's what you get when you make a deal with the devil... Both Microsoft and Apple have the right to cripple other people's software or make their proprietary operating systems run in any way they choose. Just accept it. If you don't like it, I've heard a rumour that there are a few alternatives out there...

Re:It IS their right...

[Bitsy Boffin]

No all they need to say is

"It's an undocumented feature. We're not going to document it because we don't want to support it. Feel free to use it, but don't bother complaining when it breaks sometime in the future."

Re:the difference

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but this is how they became one.

Re:the difference

[spoco2]

And is that the answer to everything is it? They can do anything that they feel like purely because they are not the dominant player... so all of Microsoft's underhanded playing early on when they weren't the dominant player is all excusable too is it?

It's ridiculous to try and use this insane rationale in regards to any company that's not Microsoft. At what point do you then start going 'well, actually I've decided they have enough market share now, NOW they should be ethical'

Bar and truly humbug

Re:the difference

[Valacosa]

Monopoly or no, it's undeniable that using secret APIs to give your own software an edge is anti-competitive. Not having a monopoly on the desktop market might mean that it's not illegal, but the legality has no bearing on the ethics.

Um, is this an emulation thing?

[pedropolis]

From tfa: "The reason why Firefox 2 wasn't affected was that Fx2 was not a Cocoa app"

So writing this from a native perspective introduced new APIs found in tech notes you should have read in the first place before writing and running into performance issues?

Re:Um, is this an emulation thing?

[Goaway]

The function to turn this on programmatically is undocumented. You're not supposed to do that, you're supposed to set a flag in the app metadata to turn it on. WebKit does it programmatically because it can be embedded in any app.

From the fucking comments

[norkakn]

David Hyatt
Feb 28th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
The programmatic disabling of coalesced updates should not be public API. It's actually a very dangerous thing to do. We aren't really happy with that code in WebKit, but we had to do it to avoid performance regressions in apps that embedded WebKit. Technically it's wrong though, since we turn off the coalesced updates for any app that uses WebKit! This includes drawing they do that doesn't even use WebKit.

As for the window display throttling, that was a pref designed for Safari (that we don't even use any more). It's not private or magic. It's nothing more than a pref that we can examine from Safari-land, so linking to that is just silly. ;)

Many of the private methods that WebKit uses are private for a reason. Either they expose internal structures that can't be depended on, or they are part of something inside a framework that may not be fully formed. WebKit subclasses several private NSView methods for example, and it cost us many many man hours to deal with the regressions caused by the internal changes that were made to NSViews in Leopard.

As you yourself blogged, there was a totally acceptable public way of doing what you needed to do.

For any private methods we use that we think should be public, we (the WebKit team) file bugs on the appropriate system components. Many of these methods have become public over time (CG stuff in Leopard for example). Be careful when you dig into WebKit code, since we may continue to use the WK method even though it's not public API just because we need to work on Tiger.

Re:From the fucking comments

[kisielk]

Thanks for posting this, I was just about to post it myself. This whole story stinks of sensationalism. Do people really think that the webkit and OS X developers sit together in a room and say "Ah.. how can we screw all those 3rd party application makers?". These types of APIs are usually undisclosed because you shouldn't depend on them. Anyone who reads The Old New Thing knows that it's a big problem for Microsoft as well, where developers go digging for some "hidden" APIs only to have their applications break in a future revision of the OS because it wasn't meant to be used.

Re:From the fucking comments

[norkakn]

There is a public way to do the same thing. They just added a total hack to the API to automatically do something by default when WebKit is embedded, instead of requiring a configuration value to be set. They didn't want it to be publicly available since they want the call to die as soon as they figure out a better way to do it. This isn't MS style stuff. There is no hidden feature. You can run the exact same code in a public way, and the it won't break when your user upgrades WebKit.

So, no, you aren't getting it right.

Re:From the fucking comments

[norkakn]

Yeah, that's pretty much exactly why I posted it. IMHO, Apple has been quite good with private APIs. In a major upgrade, they tend to all either become public (often after changing), or die. MS has had a less open history, and I think there are some very valid complaints there, but some are certainly overstated.

Re:From the fucking comments

[Graff]

So WebKit is tightly integrated with the underlying OS service like Internet Explorer is alleged to be with Windows. So, if you use WebKit, you benefit from the private, "better" linkage to the OS service, but if you don't, your performance (or perhaps other qualities) will suffer. Am I getting that right? No, you have it wrong.

Webkit is a framework that is open for anyone to take and put into their own application. Safari and some components of Mac OS use WebKit for their own rendering of html. There is no private, "better" linkage to WebKit, there is just a hack within the WebKit framework that is there so that other applications using WebKit will not have problems with it. The Apple developers knew the internals of the operating system well enough to do this semi-safely but even they aren't happy with themselves doing it because it can still cause problems.

There is also a public, safer, more documented way of doing the same thing for applications that don't use WebKit. This public method is not perfect either but it is much safer. The Apple developers are keeping parts of the operating system under wraps which could cause major problems if you don't know EXACTLY what the internals are doing. This is a very common thing for responsible developers to do, you don't want to expose API that could fail catastrophically if something isn't set up just exactly correctly.

In short, nothing to see here, the public API is the safest bet to use. If you choose to use undocumented methods for a bit more speed then you risk bringing down your application in a hard and messy way. The WebKit developers weighed that in their own minds and decided that the risks were worth it, since they had a hand in developing the undocumented methods and could account for the quirks in a semi-safe manner.

In the case of Internet Explorer, Microsoft had a separate set of completely safe API that were optimized versions of methods other developers got to use. If you were an internal Microsoft developer you could do more with the internal API than anyone could with the external API. This was done deliberately so that Microsoft products could get preferential treatment on the Windows operating system. Microsoft also made it so that you couldn't easily use Windows without having some part of Internet Explorer as part of the system. Under Mac OS X you can remove every mention of WebKit and all that will happen is a couple of programs won't work until you re-install them with their embedded versions of WebKit.

Re:From the fucking comments

[iluvcapra]

I think you're reading too much malignancy into this, and searing about it and dropping the I-E word doesn't help :).

So WebKit is tightly integrated with the underlying OS service like Internet Explorer is alleged to be with Windows.

It totally is, nothing up our sleeve there, though you don't need webkit to run Finder.app, though under Leopard I bet the QuickView system will break. I think the main complaint about IE was that you can't actually delete Internet Explorer.exe from your Windows system, and it was a finagle to keep Windows from favoring IE for content. Safari.app can be deleted from a Mac with no effort, because Apple actually separated the web rendering system into a library, like the MS people were supposed to.

So, if you use WebKit, you benefit from the private, "better" linkage to the OS service, but if you don't, your performance (or perhaps other qualities) will suffer. Am I getting that right?

You put "better" in quotes because you probably anticipated where the issue is. The OS throttles display updates to the framerate of the display when you run a Cocoa application; this was done to make the drawing to the framebuffer look cleaner and for efficiency reasons (you can read about it here, it's from TFA). If you are building a Cocoa app and want to opt-out of the beam sync, you have to set this option in your Info.plist, which is just a setting built into your deployment (it's really easy, and documented, but they suggest you not do it because it might leave you with a faster-rendering but ugly result). Setting the option in the Info.plist is global for your app, from launch to exit.

WebKit makes use of beam sync on/off, but uses a call into the system to turn it off only at certain times (this is my understanding of Hyatt's explanation). Hyatt, a former Firefox dev himself we might add, himself says this is a hack, and that if you actually expose this functionality to vendors you're totally going to be loading the gun and pointing it at peoples feet.

So what do you do if you're Apple? You can offer people a function that'll turn this efficiency feature on and off, and a few devs might like this, but a ton won't care, and if you do decide to support this, you've gotta make sure it works forever for everybody and perfectly.

Re:From the fucking comments

[Graff]

What I'm reading is this. WebKit team, an Apple team, makes use of info available only to Apple people, and not to 3rd party development houses.

Apple not being a convicted monopoly, this may be an acceptable practice, but technically, this is exactly the same thing (actually, one of many things) people accuse MS of, regardless of the underlying motive, and to argue that this is somehow different is dishonest. You seem to be repeating yourself and you got it wrong again.

The WebKit team has created a framework which is free and open for anyone to use. In order to make this framework as compatable as possible they used some undocumented methods in Quartz, the drawing layer of Mac OS X. Yes, they are also Apple developers and they have intimate knowledge of the internals of Mac OS X. This is why they feel reasonably safe in doing something as unsafe as using undocumented methods for means which they were never intended. They didn't do it because it provided some sort of advantage to WebKit over other applications, they did it because it kept WebKit from breaking some applications that embedded WebKit.

The Mac OS X developers also have a documented, public way of doing this very same thing and the Firefox developers used it. It worked well and everyone is happy now. In fact when you compare the public way of solving the problem and the behind-the-scenes way of doing it you find that the behind-the-scenes way is much more difficult to work with and more likely to have problems down the road.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has a history of developing two different layers of its API, both of which are equally safe. The private API is only shared with internal Microsoft Developers and is much quicker/easier/more efficient than the public API. This is what has gotten Microsoft in hot water before.

It's a far cry to say that Microsoft's dual API is at all comparable to Apple's public API and the undocumented methods being used here. If Apple was truly doing the same thing as Microsoft then the undocumented methods would do the job more easily and efficiently than the public API. They don't, they are just a hack that only an internal developer could come up with to make sure OTHER people's applications keep working well. If you look at the developer's (David Hyatt's) comments he even says that they don't use this hack in Safari, Apple's own web browser. It's meant so that other people's browsers can work well.

I'd say the dishonest thing here is your feigned innocence over your comments. "I'm not trying to read too much into it." - yes you are! All of this was explained to you by several people in several different ways and yet you still came back to try to further muddy the waters. Just admit that either you have no clue about the whole situation or that you do understand the difference between Microsoft's and Apple's behaviors and you are just trying to stir up trouble.

Indeed, where's the advantage?

[Foerstner]

In Microsoft's case, the goal of keeping "secret" APIs was pretty clear: whoever controls the Windows browser market, controls the browser market, period.

I can just see Steve Jobs rubbing his hands and gloating to his minions..."Yes, and with Firefox handicapped, we will have five percent of the browser market all to ourselves! Ours...all ours! Muahahahaha!"

Display Throttling?

[Talez]

Duhhhhh...

Mac OS X 10.4 introduces a new behavior of coalescing updates that enables Quartz to more efficiently update the frame buffer during each display refresh. In addition to increasing system efficiency, Coalescing updates improved visual consistency and eliminates "tearing" during scrolling and animation. To coalesce updates, the Quartz window server composites all window buffers into a single offscreen frame buffer before flushing it to the screen. When your application issues a command to flush, the system doesn't actually flush that content until the next available display refresh. This allows all updates for multiple applications to happen at the same time. Window server operations (window resize or move, for example) are handled in the same manner--coalesced into a system-wide screen update.

I would assume Apple would be thinking this makes a lot of fucking sense.

They give app writers a way to turn it off if need be. What the hell are we crying about again?

Re:Display Throttling?

[johne_ganz]

You are bang on.

Display coalescing was introduced way back in 10.4. This was well documented, and as the Firefox developer points out, there's even tools provided to enable and disable this behavior to see if you're being limited by it.

While I don't know all the details, I would venture to say that far from Apple "Secretly Crippling Non-Apple Software" (which they conveniently provide release notes and debug tools with the stock Xcode tools for this secret behavior), this has exposed a serious performance problem in Firefox.

To put it another way, display coalescing will effectively penalize apps that are rendering more updates that are physically possible to display. As an extreme example, this roughly equivalent to rendering / writing 60 frames of video to the display in 1/60th of a second, which can only possibly display one of those 60 frames. The rest are just wasting CPU, GPU, and bandwidth resources which could be better spent doing other things. Display coalescing will cause an application to "stall" if it's forcing too many updates, the call to flush the buffer just won't return until the the current frame has fully rendered.

Mac OS X prior to 10.4 did not enforce this, and so as one of those compatibility trade-offs, display coalescing is turned off by default when certain conditions are detected. I believe anything linked prior to 10.4 will trigger it, and carbon apps. Carbon is essentially for those who are unwilling to (almost literally) join the 21st century.

Just how secret can it possibly be with publicly available release notes published years ago?

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn2005/tn2133.html

Re:Really?

[Ctrl-Z]

If you read the article...

You lost me there.

*sniffle*

[Serenissima]

Awwwwww... our little system is all grown up now! Who's a good system? Who's a good system?

Tag "alreadyfixed"

[The Iso]

The submission is an exaggeration, and this "secret API" nonsense is speculation on the part of the submitter. Firefox's performance has already been brought up to snuff.

Re:Really?

[dal20402]

The Safari performance improvements are coming in Safari 3.1, not yet available to the public. To see them today, you have to be running current WebKit nightlies. The difference between the new WebKit builds and vanilla Safari 3.0.4 is pretty dramatic.

Re:the difference

[cyfer2000]

From David Hyatt's reply, it seems that the webkit team as a whole somehow doesn't like this practice too. David Hyatt was one of the original developers of Firefox and now he is working for Apple.

Re:Dtrace

[byjove]

I can't speak to the rest, but you think it's "almost impossible ... to replace apple programs to default to other ones"? I just changed PDF's to open in Adobe Acrobat instead of Preview by going into Get Info and under "Open With" I selected "Change All". Are you calling this "almost impossible", or am I missing something?

Article points finger in wrong directoin

[goombah99]

The Slashdot summary is accusing Apple of reserving the tasty bits for safari, but the article shows that it's webkit not safari that knows the shorcuts. Anyone is free to use webkit. it's apples optimized interface for applications. If Firefox chooses not to use it well I can understand why but they need to accept that their interface may not be as optimized.

Indeed what apple is doing does not seem that out of whack. They have an interface that is optimized for stability not speed. That's the proper way to do it. and they figure out how one can tweak it for speed. Do you make that the defaults or do you put those in a container like webkit where one can manage the tradeoffs better? duh...

Re:Article points finger in wrong directoin

[RodgerDodger]

More to the point - there is a public API that can give the same effect (which is used in Firefox 3). Yes, it turns out that WebKit has a similar, but different method - but it's not an advantage that's just for WebKit.

The FTA even makes it clear - FF3 got the speed advantage they wanted, using the public API. The FTA even has an addition making it clear that the Slashdot article is taking the wrong slant. 'nuff sad.

Garbage!

[Jane Q. Public]

Microsoft did NOT do "what any sane company would do"! Most sane companies do not deliberately engage in monopolist practices in order to cheat and delude their customers. Microsoft did. There is no argument about that... they have been CONVICTED many times now of doing just that, in both U.S. and European courts!

"Most sane companies" do not do that. MOST companies at least make some effort to engage in Good Business, which involves both parties walking away feeling they got a good deal. That is a far cry from Microsoft's practices, which have largely been "Great! They're in the store! Now, quick, lock the door behind them before they can get away!"

Those are two very, very different approaches. It gained Microsoft a lot of marketshare... at first. But as anybody can see today, those tactics do not keep customers. It pisses them off. And once they find a way out, they tend to stay out.

David Hyatt response

[powermacx]

If instead of conspiracy theories you are interested in an answer from one of the co-creators of Firefox and who is currently working at Apple's WebKit team, here it is: http://blog.vlad1.com/2008/02/28/finding-the-os-x-turbo-button/#comment-573

Re:David Hyatt response

[pavera]

I didn't read it that way at all. He said "we're using APIs that are secret because they aren't solid yet, and in reality, we hate the secret APIs because they cause regressions and waste hundreds of man hours, as soon as the APIs are stable, we'll make them public".

As for the specific problem encountered in firefox, there is a perfectly acceptable and PUBLIC way of achieving the same thing, so why use the API? Especially since as he mentions in his post, it is the WRONG way to do it.

Re:the difference

[MightyYar]

How is the use of an API in an open-source project "secret"?

Re:From TFA...

[Anonymous Coward]

ACRONYMS! THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!
Seriously though, your post was really hard to read. When you referred to OS X as "X", I was thinking "X Windows". Please, for the sake of everyone here and Slashdot reputation, declining or not, refrain from using such atrocious techniques. Really, who uses "%" instead of typing "percentage"? It's not that hard.

Re:From TFA...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes! There definitely needs to be a -5 learn to fucking type mod.

Except it IS documented.

[tlambert]

Except it IS documented. He was looking in the header file that documented the API, rather than the one that defined the manifest constant. If he had looked in the one with the manifest constant, he would have seen this comment:

// CoreGraphics deferred updates are disabled if WebKitEnableCoalescedUpdatesPreferenceKey is set
// to NO, or has no value. For compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4.6, deferred updates are OFF by
// default.
#define WebKitEnableDeferredUpdatesPreferenceKey @"WebKitEnableDeferredUpdates"

If all else fails, use google.

-- Terry

Re:Except it IS documented.

[42forty-two42]

There are two seperate APIs here. The one you're looking at is the public one, and the one that mozilla is using - you add a preference entry to your program's plist. WebKit however, made a call to an undocumented function to disable it at runtime; they did this because otherwise programs /embedding/ webkit, where they do not have access to the plist, would suffer performance regressions otherwise. And they plan to remove it once the root cause of the performance issues is fixed (the call disables deferred updates for the entire program that uses webkit, not just webkit itself)

Re:Proprietary software is monopoly software.

[murdocj]

By this reasoning anyone who sells anything is a monopolist. I can't buy Starbucks coffee from Dunkin Donuts. That doesn't make Starbucks a monopoly.

Re:Proprietary software is monopoly software.

[onefriedrice]

All proprietary software developers are monopolists. When you run non-free software you put the monopolists in control. I think you misunderstand what a monopoly is. Under a free market, the success of all products is based on merit, and that has nothing to do with whether it is propriety or Free. You may personally believe in and buy (or use) only software which is Free, but that does not make vendors of propriety software monopolies. That doesn't even make sense at all.

Don't confuse terms. A monopoly occurs when a company or group uses their market position (rather than the product's merit) to cause people to buy their product. Technically, it is quite possible that a Free software vendor could be guilty of monopolistic behavior. Believing that all propriety software vendors are monopolists is a clear logical fallacy as I have demonstrated, so please stop spreading misinformation. The merits of Free software do not increase because you post an irrational rant against propriety software.

Re:From TFA...

[Kyro]

I must say, I've been using Mac OS X since 2002 and have been a part of various mac forums etc.
That is *the* first time I have seen anyone refer to OS X as 'X'.

Very confusing.

Let's be fair now...

[heretic108]

In the Linux world, there are 'undocumented APIs' everywhere. Unless of course, one considers a .h file to be documentation.

Slashdot spreads more FUD

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

It seems quite clear from the comments that this article is a load of crap, yet it still hangs around on the front page, giving skim readers (the majority) false info. Integrity matters, and having user submitted content doesn't change that -- it's still sloppy journalism to let it be published.

Re:From TFA...

[thephotoman]

Along with several other minuses, such as "Just Plain Wrong", "Talking Out of His/Her Ass" (yes, there are women on Slashdot, and yes, there are naked pictures, too), and "Obvious Fanboy/Hater". On the other side, there really ought to be a [+5, IAWTC].

Re:Looks pretty secret to me.

[p0tat03]

Except in this case Apple provided a Technical Note that detailed the exact steps you'd need to follow to implement this feature. The only thing that was undocumented was an *alternate* but *functionally identical* way to do it (i.e. doing it from code as opposed to from program config).

No.

[warrax_666]

It's either "X Window System" or just plain "X".

Re:the difference

[mikael_j]

The media player in windows is complete shit but atleast you can use alternatives. In OSX.. Quicktime is the only game in town. iTunes comes with OSX... It doesnt come with windows.

There are no restrictions in OS X preventing you from using another media player such as Cog, VLC, mpg123 or really anything else that will compile and run on OS X. You also state that iTunes comes with OS X but not with Windows yet Windows comes with WMP but it doesn't come with OS X, oh wait! that's completely irrelevant!

The Dock in OSX is built in... In windows, you can dl docks made by various developers. Windows still could benefit from a dock feature being apart of a standard install.

So somehow having a default UI feature that doesn't even come with another OS means you're a monopoly? Most 3rd party dock software I've seen for Windows has had some interesting bugs (haven't really used Windows in 1-2 years though).

OSX's disk imaging backup time machine thing... It beats the crap out of the Vista one, which is crippled due to the fact that MS would be sued in court for putting the competition out of business.

Well, that's because MS is a convicted monopolist and Apple isn't, personally I use rsync+ssh to mirror data across drives and machines so I don't really know too much about their offerings but I've definitely heard of a couple of annoying limitations of Time Machine.

Vista has a terrible graphics viewer, where as OSX previews just about all file types right in the os.

If anything that implies that Vista is the OS that is selling because it's based on abuse of a monopoly situation.

Apple makes the hardware, sells you the computer, and the OS. It is a monopoly, more so than Microsoft. Microsoft doesnt insist you buy their pc hardware direct from their own stores and then charge you for their os.

Only if you're using some weird twilight zone definition of a monopoly, on the desktop computer market MS has a pretty steady grip of the market, Apple OTOH produce a complete system where they control both the hardware and the operating system, but saying that's a monopoly is like saying GM has a monopoly on the Chevy market.

Apple controls the distro of their hardware, software, and even f'n accesories. Apple Store anyone? iPod liscensed accessories....

Once again, we're in the realm of Apple hardware/software, as for iPod licensed accessories that's just the typical "guarantee" that an accessory will work with the Apple product at hand and is something lots of manufacturers do.

Apple has had their end of things locked up for a while. They have a monopoly more than MS has. MS may have more installs, but Apple is an entire entity that is in complete control of its hardware, software and sales. They dictate prices to you. There is no competition with Apple hardware, or software. You have one place to buy it, and It's from Apple.

Selling a complete system with hardware and OS tightly integrated is not a monopoly any more than selling a truck that comes with seats is a monopoly just because some other guy is selling just seats. Using this analogy may also help illustrate the idea that you're not allowed to run OS X on non-Apple hardware, it would be like telling people who buy extra seats for their trucks that those seats have only been verified to work with your trucks (while also using specials fittings for the seats to make it harder to just stick the seats in any old junk car).

/Mikael (IHBT IHL HAND)

Re:From TFA...

[unfunk]

(yes, there are women on Slashdot, and yes, there are naked pictures, too),. I demand proof!

Slashdot Pressure

[superbrose]

I think one of the main reasons acronyms are frequently used on slashdot boils down to the pressure of posting a slashdot comment as early as possible.

After all, the longer it takes to post a comment, the more comments it will be competing with and the chances of it being read (modded up) dwindle.

In fact, even if this was a great comment by now the chances of it reaching +5 Insightful are pretty slim.

Maybe great late comments do deserve more generous attention though.

Bullshit, ask the original firefox blogger:

[slashbart]

On the Firefox blog Vladimir writes:

Edit: Slashdot seems to have picked up on this, and in typical style, has completely misunderstood the post. To be clear, I do not think that Apple is in any way trying to purposely "cripple" non-Apple software. I also do not think that undocumented APIs give Safari any kind of "significant performance advantage" (as Firefox 3 should show!). However, as I said, the undocumented functionality could be useful for Firefox and other apps to implement things in an simpler (and potentially more efficient) manner. I don't think this is malicious, it's just an unfortunate cutting of corners that is way too easy for a company that's not fully open to do.

His finding is that there is a beamsync synchronization, which can possible cause rapidly updating displays to slow down. There are some yet undocumented calls in the Webkit library that allows software to deal with beamsync.

Agreed

[p.rican]

FTFA:

Slashdot seems to have picked up on this, and in typical style, has completely misunderstood the post. To be clear, I do not think that Apple is in any way trying to purposely "cripple" non-Apple software. I also do not think that undocumented APIs give Safari any kind of "significant performance advantage" (as Firefox 3 should show!). However, as I said, the undocumented functionality could be useful for Firefox and other apps to implement things in an simpler (and potentially more efficient) manner. I don't think this is malicious, it's just an unfortunate cutting of corners that is way too easy for a company that's not fully open to do.

Re:Techincally ..

[Machine9]

technically, you're subject title should be "technically," not "techincally." =P And technically, it's "your subject title", not "you're subject title" =)

Slashdot ... has completely misunderstood...

[Futurepower(R)]

Quote from the article:

"Edit: Slashdot seems to have picked up on this, and in typical style, has completely misunderstood the post. To be clear, I do not think that Apple is in any way trying to purposely "cripple" non-Apple software. I also do not think that undocumented APIs give Safari any kind of "significant performance advantage" (as Firefox 3 should show!). However, as I said, the undocumented functionality could be useful for Firefox and other apps to implement things in an simpler (and potentially more efficient) manner. I don't think this is malicious, it's just an unfortunate cutting of corners that is way too easy for a company that's not fully open to do."

Slashdot has a reputation: "Slashdot ... in typical style, has completely misunderstood the post."

It amazes me that, after all these years, Slashdot editors still apparently do not do any research before they post the stories. That has reduced the value of Slashdot as an advertising medium enormously.

Re:Slashdot ... has completely misunderstood...

[ivan256]

On the contrary, had the headline not been so sensational, they would have attracted far fewer viewers to the new ad-laden comments section of this particular article. I think the editors have struck a balance between pissing people off enough to get them to click the story, and not pissing them off enough to leave (you're still here, after all).

Re:Slashdot ... has completely misunderstood...

[Lumpy]

Why? it works fantastically for Fox-News on cable. they go for the sensational inaccurate reporting for viewiership and accuracy dead last. It's highly effective to the point that they are doing great.

Slashdot is better because of all the bitching and discussion afterwards on how it's inaccurate.

Re:From TFA...

[Tore S B]

IATWTC? I Ate the World Trade Center?

Re:From TFA...

[cbackas]

They actually are documented. If you go to the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab in the Keyboard and Mouse preference pane in System Preferences, there's a pretty long list of the default key sequences. You can even globally edit them, and add new ones. (It's even possible to say, globally override something like the "Copy" shotcut in all apps, or add shortcuts for common menu items that don't normally have them)

You can also turn on "Full Keyboard Access" there which enables tabbing between all controls like most non-Mac users expect.

Re:From TFA...

[Archangel Michael]

I also use it 50 percent of the time.

Remember the World of Warcraft rant?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Whenever someone brings up Slashdot's journalistic integrity, I'm reminded of CmdrTaco's World of Warcraft rant from a few years ago, Blizzard Made Me Change My Name. An entire 12-paragraph article because Blizzard made him change his name for using a title in it (Cmdr), which is against the naming rules. That CmdrTaco thought it was news, or that he felt so slighted that he thought he'd "strike back" at Blizzard by posting an article about it on Slashdot because he's CmdrTaco of Slashdot, gosh-darned it, just really showed me how immature and lame this site is.

The headline "Mac OS X Secretly Cripples Non-Apple Software" will go out on all the feeds. A lot of people won't even read the article. They'll look at it and say "See, typical tyrannical Apple." They may skim the summary and head straight for the comments. And they will be unknowingly misinformed.