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OS X Snow Leopard Details
JD-1027 writes in to kick off a discussion of OS X Snow Leopard. Apple's stated goal: "Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard's enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality." The technologies: Grand Central to get better use of multiple processors and multicore chips, OpenCL to tap the power of the GPU, 64 bit so we can finally have our 16 TB of RAM, QuickTime X for optimized modern codec performance, and built in Exchange support in iCal, Address Book, and Apple Mail that most likely will help get Macs into corporate environments. We've previously discussed ZFS in the server version of Snow Leopard."
How about NTFS, Apple? About damn time OS X supported read-write for NTFS - hard to bring it into corporate environment when you can't read from a Windows partition. NTFS-3G drivers are stable, they ought to have been integrated with Leopard to begin with.
I am personally through with using Apple's "codenames" for their OS releases. It will never be anything other than "ten point six" to me.
It's almost as if Apple is trying to prove that FOSS projects don't have a monopoly on horrible names.
Yeah... "Leopard"... "Snow Leopard"... that's not gonna cause any confusion, right?
Well, most users are comparing against Windows on a Dell, not Irix on an O2. "stability and performance" seem like luxuries in comparison.
Or so I've heard.
IRIX on an O2 as a pinnacle of stability?
Hahaha. IRIX back then was so buggy I'm amazed that the user experience was as good as it was.
jh
For a while there, I was thinking that perhaps Apple would merely *say* they wouldn't release many new features in Snow Leopard, but then turn around and at the last second release a feature-laden OS. But then I realized how hard it would be to do that. Too many third-party developers would have to be in the loop for this to work.
The idea would be to stop Redmond from using Apple as the R&D labs, as many suspect winds up being the case ("Start your photocopiers"), and deny MS even the opportunity to borrow for Windows 7.
The more I think about it though, the more obstacles I see to this. But it would be sweeeeet...
Okay, I guess I implied too much in my comment about paying $20. What I meant to say was that I can't imagine that Apple would roll out the release bandwagon as they did for both Leopard and Tiger (t-shirts, closing the Apple store for a couple of hours, etc.) for this particular release as they've stated that there are no features that would inspire my mom to want to upgrade immediately.
That said, Apple has done amazing things with every release of OSX and I look forward to Snow Leopard as much as every other release. I simply didn't read it as something that anyone should treat as a Really Big Deal, even to the point that Jobs barely mentioned it in the keynote, unlike Leopard that got its coming out party twice.
Therefore, if a 10.6 box just appeared in the Apple stores, but didn't get much mention, it would probably be missed by most. Sure it would be pre-installed on new machines, but where would be the hype to get everyone on it as quickly as possible? This is why I was thinking about the 10.0->10.1 upgrade; if this is the first Intel-only release, how would they sell a version that offers no new features, and is unavailable to everyone who doesn't haven an Intel machine? I, personally, wouldn't want to be in the marketing department trying to sell 10.6; if they just make it available as a download, they might ultimately save a lot of $$$ that would have been spent trying to market it, then explain it, correct the marketing, etc.
OS X Tiger isn't buggy, Leopard on the other hand is a steaming pile. I have constant problems with it, both at work and at home. Hell, iTunes, an app you think Apple would have put some effort into perfecting, manages to crash on a daily basis. I hit the little report button, but Steve is so obsessed with the iPhone it seems Leopard bugs are getting the cold shoulder.
Monstar L
The only thing this demonstrates is that the developer release doesn't support PPC. Whether the production release will is still anyone's guess. I don't think we'll know for sure until it hits the shelves...
Sure, the boosts in efficiency and stability will be welcome, but I for one am very excited about full Exchange support in iCal and Address Book. Heck, the Exchange support in Mail is a bit spotty as well, so touching that up would be great as well.
But what would really be great (and very much in line with the whole "embracing enterprise" thing) would be native support for Cisco IPsec VPN connections. As it stands, you have to use Cisco's own clunky client; if you could use the built-in client you could connect via a menubar icon. (Shimo does this pretty nicely, but it just became crippleware.)
It seems like an obvious addition, given the iPhone 2.0 OS is supposed to have it. Anyone know if it's on the docket for Snow Leopard?
Sam! If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.
There seem to be absolutely no real details on this in the press or from Apple. I have not seen the WWDC iTunes videos yet, though, and there might be something there.
The closest thing that I got to additional information about Grand Central is some article specifically stating that it's a scheduler. It might be that's the assumption of the author, as they may be unfamiliar with Apple's affinity for adding or changing APIs.
This is a rather on-point announcement to me, as I'm writing software for OS X and have been doing "back to basics" readings which include Butenhof's POSIX thread book. I'd hate to settle on a particular approach to multithreading in my software and then find out Grand Central undercuts that decision.
But what would really be great (and very much in line with the whole "embracing enterprise" thing) would be native support for Cisco IPsec VPN connections. As it stands, you have to use Cisco's own clunky client; if you could use the built-in client you could connect via a menubar icon. (Shimo does this pretty nicely, but it just became crippleware.)
That, and it would also be nice if they'd refine and include the TUN/TAP driver. I understand that it's in the kernel code, but has never been part of a build. (At least not an officially released one.)It's actually really nice to have a Mac around when pulling files from a possibly infected NTFS drive. You're not going to pick up anything that will infect your machine, and you can pick and choose through the files you want at your leisure after reimaging your Windows box.
I don't like NTFS either, but I do regularly run computers with all three OSs (Mac mostly for work (developer), Windows for home (WoW), and a Linux server). I think the slowest format is either HFS+ or ext3, I've certainly seen ext3 be quite slow. So long as you use the "quick" option for NTFS formats it is quite fast. Of course, with all the grahpic goodies everything on Macs seems slow, but it's also hard to time how long it takes.
And no, I'm not a switcheur nor a noob. I've used/owned Macs since System 7, I've been using Linux for 8 years now, and I started with DOS 5 on an 80286, and ran every Windows and Mac version from then to current.
XFS is a fast format, ext3 takes a few minutes depending on the size of the partition, and NTFS is a few seconds in quick mode. Quick format has been there for quite a while (even DOS) and without it I always assumed format was zeroing the partition, which is slow of course.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
To be fair, Leopard wasn't just about adding a few "shinies." In fact, they really only added coverflow, the dock thing, and the transparent menu bar. A lot more innovate features were included like webclips, stacks, updated finder, new front row, better ical and address book, nifty new ichat features, fixed airport menu, parental controls, preview, quick look, better security, spaces, better terminal, TIME MACHINE, full Unix certification, and a whole host of developer tools and under the hood stability improvements.
Apple didn't just add bling - they made the operating system more stable and fixed a lot of bugs. So, be fair - we didn't pay $120 for a new dock.
Full list of new features in Leopard: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/300.html
or else!
I just started to use a Mac a little, after leaving it mostly alone for about 5 years. It's not really as simple and intuitive as it once was. All kinds of special Mac knowledge about where to look for buried UI widges, modes that mean you can't always do what worked in some other mode, lots of "Desktop similes" rather than "Desktop metaphor" (eg. you can't deal with the Desktop widget as if it were the real thing, but only in some special virtual Mac way), and generally the exact same kinds of necessary expertise that gives Windows and Linux users "tunnel vision", a narrow skillset only within the apps and features they use.
Maybe it's Apple competing with Windows that's somehow gravitationally moved the Mac experience closer to the Windows one, even as Windows has sucked ever closer to Apple's innovations. But it used to be easy for a beginner (or just an "uninformed expert" like me) to "just do it" with a Mac, with a much shallower, barely noticeable learning curve.
What we need is a GUI revolution. The iPhone offers one, with its multitouch innovations. As does Nintendo's Wii, with its unconventional new controllers. The Mac, like everyone else, is still stuck in a transitional metaphor to an office/desktop physical environment that's now been totally replaced by its simulation on the Mac. That metaphor doesn't really help people use "documents" and "tools" from past experience with the real things, liberating us from them. It's now a trap that constrains us to only the small set of characteristics that both the real and the virtual versions share in common.
I hope Apple will spend the next year "streamlining" MacOS into something more simple and immediately usable, the way Apple has delivered in the past. Because usually Windows, Linux and everyone else follows and improves likewise. But if it doesn't, then I hope that inspires people to do something really new that's really simple, yet delivering the vast power of all our new devices. Because those people will inevitably be the ones to drag everyone else along into the new, simpler paradigm. And probably get rich along the way.
--
make install -not war
I understand your point, but let's talk about file systems for a second. HFS+ is awful (poorer performance than ..everything, meta data is a mess). OS X has UFS support but it doesn't actually work (can't format the boot drive with UFS, applications randomly fail to run on UFS volumes).
So: it would be really nice if Apple could get *any* file system working other than HFS+ working. There is practically no chance of this until they abandon HFS+ completely. If (parts of) OS X weren't screwed up so bad that they depend on HFS+, then NTFS, ZFS, UFS, any FS(!) support would be easy.
OS X makes me hate Unix. In the sense that it makes me long for the systems i learned on: Solaris, FreeBSD, Linux, A/IX and yes: A/UX. "Thinking Different" is bad in this context. We have man pages and RFCs and POSIX so people are all thinking the same. I'm sick of Apple making up new solutions to problems the *nix community solved years ago.
I don't think its fair comparing NTFS to the Zune.
NTFS is an integral feature in win xp, which is an upgrade for most informed vista users.
As such ntfs is the future of the pc market.
The Zune, however, is to music players what the edsel was to automobiles.
When the comp usa's went belly up in my city and had their closeout sales, even the shelving units went before the piles of zunes left sitting in the middle of the empty salesfloors (I wish I had photos, it's not an exaggeration).
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Actually I think the ATI Mobility series is virtually an integrated card, with no memory of its own.
However, I wasn't trying to bash Apple (if you'll read above, I've been using Macs for a long time). I merely was responding to a comment that there is a WoW client for Mac, and yet I use a Windows laptop for it.
The GMA 950 is optimized for video playback, not 3d acceleration. To the Macbook's credit, it is quieter and cooler than the Windows machine.
I bought the Macbook for its size, and at the time I played no games at all. A 13.3" mac with a real video card would have me sold, but they haven't released one yet.
Ironically, the best system for playing WoW would probably be the rebuilt server, with a 2.4GHz conroe, a real Nvidia card with 256MB RAM and of course several 7200RPM drives. The Windows WoW client also runs on Linux I hear.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
And can you point to any standard??
Last time I was checking, only few applications were using Direct X 10. For any kind of productivity more or less everybody uses bunch of wrappers or some commercial library.
The whole point here that there is no standard. And M$ forces everybody to kiss PR ass of Direct X, though literally nobody directly uses it, except for hardware manufacturers (nVidia and ATI). Some proprietary half-arsed spec in .DOCX peppered with implementation details from actual version of Direct X (even is such document exists) hardly qualifies as standard to me.
On other side, Kronos group is something. They are slow on up-take, but generally deliver usable standards industry needs. They are vendor neutral what is also important.
Do not expect anything in particular from OpenCL. I'm pretty sure that it would try to appeal to wider audience - consequently it would be pretty dumb down. But still it would let any developer to access GPU chip. Knowing how Apple does things, with couple of extra objects in one's program and few extra checks on whether you can use GPU, many tasks would get a decent performance boost. It wouldn't be high-end nor exclusive - it would be something for wider audience.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
In future, while buying anything mobile, think about that: If Intel monster actually managed to make a integrated graphics chip that will perform just like a real Nvidia/ATI GPU, both companies would go Chapter 11 in matter of days.
For some reason, Apple feels forced to use Intel in everything even in Graphics which Intel has no clue about. I wonder if there is some kind of agreement involved considering they are basically ignoring 64bit/multi core/SMP G5 userbase in 10.6. Hopefully it is false rumour.
Apple should have nothing to do with "integrated graphics", "integrated" anything. They aren't some no name Taiwan company, they aren't in cheap laptop market.
I noticed that 10.5 seemingly has more stability problems than previous versions of OSX since 10.1. Is it unfair?
I don't know if it is unfair but it sure is incorrect. Did you use the Finder from 10.0 through 10.3? It got slightly more stable with 10.4 but it was only 10.5 that a network outage didn't take down most of the Finder.
OSX wasn't even usable until 10.2 and not really preferable until 10.3. (IMO)
Now I will say that 10.5.2 was the first point update that I thought caused tons of problems. I ended up having to reinstall Leopard from scratch and then apply the updates. I haven't had to do that since the old XP SP1 days.
I'm skeptical that Grand Central will help as many applications as some suggest. But it's anything but vaporware. It's on the 10.6 developer edition given out at WWDC and there were sessions on it.
Not being behind the NDA I have no clue exactly how Grand Central functions or what kinds of processes it'll improve. But those who have seen it seem reasonably impressed. Even if mum about the details.
Tell them to use Apple-H to hide the app instead of minimizing. I almost never minimize something on my Mac and constantly complain that I can't just Hide something when using Windows. >>Why does the parent-window of an application still dominate the core navigation context even when minimised?
For the follow-up to Leopard to focus on under-the-hood improvements without changing the UI and user experience dramatically has precedent in Mac OS X Tiger for Intel. Apple did Tiger with many new user features, then Tiger for Intel was made to look completely identical to the user, but it brought with it dramatic under-the-hood differences. Leopard and Snow Leopard are the same thing again.
With Tiger they said "come get Tiger" and with Tiger for Intel they said "come get Intel". With Leopard they're selling Leopard and with Snow Leopard they'll sell a larger number of processors and more memory than Leopard can support. One release they sell the software then one release they sell the hardware. They don't have to worry if Snow Leopard in-a-box doesn't sell all that well, because Snow Leopard in-a-Mac will sell really well, it'll be designed to drive new Mac sales. They already mentioned ungodly amounts of RAM in their first PR about Snow Leopard.
"Why are users' *losing* software and files so often that they need a *Finder*?"
Why do they need so much software? Why don't they have it all in [Computer name]/Applications or their home folder?
Users can't find a particular window? Expose and Spaces. The dock is too cluttered? You can shove stuff into a folder or get rid of icons you don't use. Drag the Applications folder there, instant Start Menu.
I mean, good grief, Apple gives them a home directory complete with "Documents" and "Downloads", in addition to the desktop which they can clutter just as much as Windows/*nix users can. Why is it Apple's fault that your users can't organize their stuff?
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
My take is that they don't really "need" the hype anymore. For a couple years after Steve Jobs took over, their existence was riding solely on their Macs (desktop and laptop) and their OS - as they'd always done prior.
Now, they've got a fairly substantial "additional" product line - ipodTV, airport, etc. which all need support. And...
Now they've got other considerations for OS X: they're running all their products (aside from the ipod touch) on the OS X core technologies. That requires reduction in size, additional efficiency, and so on and so forth. Fixing, and making OS X better overall (sans additional features) pays dividends, because it spans all of their products. Doing tihs will make future feature additions to the platform more tenable, as well as make the platform a tenable long-term project.
There's really very little "small" stuff they can do to OS X, I think. I've only used it a little, and I'm no fan boy, but there are substantial benefits in almost every area for normal desktop use. In order to make OS X viable (and superior) in the other arenas, they've got to fix what ails - in this case, some of the underlying infrastructure.
As a system and database administrator on their over-priced platform, these changes excite me a lot more than 10.5 did, because they open up more fully the possibility of actually having a system which has a full suite of integrated sysadmin tools that can be leveraged for efficient db driving.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
People will often say they're not paying for security, stability, performance and the like, but they do, and usually will do so willingly.
.17). Not stable or fast, but damn did it/does it have a lot of features! It had most of those features before anything else available for linux, but plunkers like KDE and GNOME stuck with their development and provided features slowly, while trying to work on the other things (ie, balance) and providing a usable product in the process.
Case(s) in point:
Windows 98 -> 2000. People jumped on that ship pretty quickly, even though 2000 offered diminished graphical performance. The only people who stayed with 98 were people with low-end hardware, people who'd been bit by upgrading MS software too soon in the past, and by those who were hardcore gamers and didn't mind the stability for an extra 5fps.
Enlightenment window manager (.16 or
I'm curious: what new features do people actually want in OS X which are obtainable? I'm aware of the stupid things like "transparent Windows emulation" or "run Windows without any performance hit". Those are kind of stupid. In my mind, 95%+ of the features which can and be delivered in an OS and are significant to the vast majority's user experience are present already. The only things significantly lacking are not the wiz-bang user features, but the nitty-gritty which is important to the more technically inclined - the kind of things that linux users bicker about ("2.4 had better performance than 2.6 for aquatic parallel computing!", "the new i8x0 Xorg drivers are borked!" or what have you). That's important, because a lot of nitty-gritty stuff is missing...
However... If there was one feature I'd ask for in the "presentation" parts of OS X, it'd be the ability to do window vs. task/app based window management. Not something hardwired, just a damn option. Unfortunately, features like this will never come about, because they break the Apple UI Use Guidelines, or some such nonsense...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Thank you, you said what I've been feeling for the last couple of weeks fairly succinctly. As someone who's been using Linux and Windows maybe 75/25 for the past decade, having touched every useable window manager available for Linux (including many I've built myself), I don't think I've ever been so significantly frustrated with user interface characteristics as I have been in the last couple weeks of "first significant time" Mac use.
Finder is a complete mess. It appears to be a ported application from an OS from 1978, or something equally antiquated and quaint: being certain of what you're doing (copying? moving?), and in which directory you're doing it (damn it, why did it put it at the filesystem root, AGAIN) are just the start of what makes finder frustrating. Why does the 'maximize'/+ button not do as it does in most other applications? Why is there no "cut" option? Why do I not have an "address" bar, particularly now that we've got full and proper UNIX file paths? Why do Finder windows not stack/organize themselves in such a fashion as to make having more than (say) 3 open at any one time frustrating and confusing?
Honest to god, I've resorted to just using iTerm with multiple tabs for all file management (short of multiple selections). It's quicker, easier, and less confusing, as I never have to wonder "where am I?" I don't want to be forced to feel that way, and I don't intend to feel that way at all until I'm well past my 50s.
The task management - application switching instead of app switching, and no way to change it - is equally irritating. This includes the parent-child window lock-out situation. It results in all kinds of irritating context problems, where you're trying to perform work, but are unable to do so without repeatedly closing and opening a specific context window, as you're unable to switch and/or remember the content of said window between switches in completion (I end up printing shit out and referencing it that way, sadly, more often than I'd like). That isn't reasonable, at all, and it's like no other operating system or windowing system I've used.
Finally, combining those two problems seems to result in an inefficient use of screen real estate. There's a good reason mac workstations have large displays: they need them to be effective at multitasking. I don't imagine that was much of a case when the Mac was just a graphic workstation or something like that (when macOS multitasking sucked/didn't really exist, and there weren't many apps/users), but now, it's kind of ridiculous. I don't want to have to buy a larger screen just to get basic work done because fancy widgets are taking up too much space; I want a bigger screen because I need more space. Compared to pretty much other UI, OS X definitely seems to need more space by default. (Sorry, I can't quantify it better than that.)
It wouldn't be such an issue if focus context switched properly when going from "Space" to "Space", but doesn't, so that potential way of managing things is kinda of another irritant that's got to be worked around...
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I'm revealing my age here, when I say that my first unix based OS was NeXTstep.
One of the things I liked about Next was that an application kept to itself: Wherever you installed it, everything was in a directory "ApplicationName.app" This made uninstalling easy. It also meant that installing an application on a network file system made it available to all NextStations on the local network. (In some cases a 'dwrite global applicationname value' was needed for licensing for individual machines.)
Apple has not insisted on this. While many applications will work this way, now files are also stuffed into various Library directories. Uninstalling applications manually is no longer trivial.
Furthermore, some applications insist on writing to their own program directory.
I wish that apple and other OS's would implement a new security model regarding file spaces.
1. There are three file spaces: OS, Application, and user. Each can be divided.
2. The OS space consists of the distro along with applications from the distro vendor. For Windows the OS would include WordPad, but not Office (sold separately) For Mac it would include Mail, but not Aperture. For linux it would include
2a. The OS space has at least the following three subsections:
3. User space.
By default user space has a directory for each user, with access restricted to and controlled by that user. This is pretty much the way things are now.
3a. User space/group space. Methods for collaborating and sharing documents.
4. Application space.
app space is done on 1 top level directory per vendor. Acrobat reader goes in
The key here is that the adobe installer does not have write privileges outside of the
Just as user smith can't write to user jone's files, nor should Adobe be able to write to microsoft files.
This implies that some program equivalent to Next's 'buildservices' needs to periodically run to pick out what programs provided services for other programs.
5. In a general setup, no user should be able to execute a file in a directory they have write access to. Some mechanism for installations, and for developers needs to be made, but as a general rule this would go a long way to intercept malware. For users (as opposed to developers) having executable code in their directories is not a benefit.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Actually, I'm fairly comfortable saying that. Deep underlying changes, complete rewrites... those are great ways to break the living heck out of a system that is mostly working very well. Whereas adding tools for the end-users (even kids) that don't yank the entire rug out from under every program in the system and replace it with a brand new rug which may be slippery, a fire hazard, contain uncounted numbers of weevils, and - by accident of course - is missing the rubber backing so you slip on it every time you step on it...
But really, I'm not worried about it. You know why? Because what I actually think we're going to get a year from now is an announcement that there's new iPhone software available. Perhaps accompanied by the news that there's a new iPhone, too. If we do get an OS X that has been substantially rewritten internally, I will (a) be astonished, and (b) let you test it for a couple of years before I make even the slightest move to upgrade. Because momma didn't raise no fool.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.