Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Seeds Safari 4 to Developers

I'm running Safari4 right now on Leo. It seems nice...pretty stable for a beta. The interesting thing is that it uses the option "Run in 32bit Mode" on my machine. This means that the binary is 64bit, right? I wonder what the effects of running it in 64bit mode are? I don't think I have any other 64bit apps on Leo.
 
Maury said:
Here's what I _guess_ is happening...

Apple has been working with a new compiler technology called LLVM. According to most of the comments I've seen about it, LLVM is "radically better" than gcc when it comes to generating code. However, it still uses the existing gcc "front end" compiler to read the code and parse it, before handing it off to the LLVM system to turn it into source code.

What this means is that LLVM can be used to compile Cocoa, and when you do, it gets much smaller and faster. Like "presto". Of course, you need to make sure the compiler tool-chain actually does what it says, and that takes a lot of hard work and a whole lot of testing. Every time you find a bug in the chain you have to fix it and then re-compile everything and test it all over again. Since it's the compiler it touches every single piece of code on the system, there's no simple way to isolate the changes.

But if you do go through with all the effort, you end up with a platform that works better. Everything works better. But it takes a lot of time to make sure you get it right, especially with a project like LLVM that hasn't seen the same sort of wide-scale use (and thus testing) that GCC has. Maybe it will take an entire year to get it right...

Combine that with general tweaks and cleanup, zfs and a new QuickTime and you've got one hell of an OS. I don't know about you, but for me the number one feature of an OS is stability, followed closely by performance. Everything else I can do with 3rd party applications (assuming they exist and work well, so no, I don't run Linux). If Snow Leopard is significantly better in these regards and I can boot off of zfs, I'll be lined up to buy it, and I would recommend the same to anyone.

Maury
Click to expand...

LLVM is a cross-platform Open Source Project initiated and gathered at UIUC, apple, like many other groups such as adobe, contributed some resources, that doesn't make apple the owner of LLVM.

LLVM is very closely related to GCC. Because apple is unwilling to obey GPLv3, which is the license under which GCC is developed currently, apple has to deviate more from GCC and spend more resources to sorta reinvent the wheel...
 
clevin said:
LLVM is a cross-platform Open Source Project initiated and gathered at UIUC, apple, like many other groups such as adobe, contributed some resources, that doesn't make apple the owner of LLVM.
Click to expand...

Owner? I never said, or even remotely implied, anything of the sort.

clevin said:
LLVM is very closely related to GCC.
Click to expand...

WAS very closely related to GCC. And would have been more-so if not for the politics of the FSF and GCC development efforts. Everyone, even those within the GCC world that were highly supportive of LLVM, just burned out and gave up. And the result is that GCC continues to plod along at the same sloth-like pace it did when everyone was complaining about it in 2005. It's been three years since all of these extension proposals came up, and there is very little to show for it.

So now we have clang. When clang+llvm is ready for prime time, GCC will largely go the way of the dodo (on the Mac, that is). And that's a good thing, because GCC can hardly be considered a paragon of development systems; practically every commercial compiler runs rings around it for at least some widely seen use-cases, and in general the only real upside to GCC is that it kinda compiles code for a lot of ISAs, even if it does a crap job of it (which it does).

Apple's entire product line is based on GCC, what were they going to do? Wait and see if the politics of the open source world suddenly went away? Pause while they measured if the development cycle of GCC sped back up? Use a commercial toolchain and be at the mercy of a potentially fickle 3rd party? Anyone remember "Bedrock"?

apple has to deviate more from GCC and spend more resources to sorta reinvent the wheel...
Click to expand...

The wheel in question was in desperate need of re-inventing anyway. That much is obvious. If the rest of the OS community did the work I'm sure it would all be butterflies and rainbows. Hey, they could even call it "GCC+".

And let's not forget that clang and llvm are "more free" than GCC - you have the freedom to lock it into commercial products. Both projects appear to have an active developer base and seem to be progressing much more rapidly than GCC. Let's see what happens when they finally go gold with C++.

Maury
 
MotleyPete said:
You can save web based apps as Mac apps. Similar to what Fluid does.

For example, I saved the BBC iPlayer as an application, so I can click it in my dock and it opens straight to the player, separate from my browser.

I find that useful, not only for convenience but because sometimes I'm watching/listening to something while I'm surfing the web and then I quit my browser (or it crashes) and I find that I have cut-off what I was watching/listening too. Having some items as separate apps can avoid this sort of problem. I'm sure there are other handy uses (for mail, maps, online docs etc) and perhaps there might even be customizable options in the future (adding preferences and whatnot).

I'd imagine that some people will find it really useful and others will have no use for it at all (like the dashboard in that respect).
Click to expand...


Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't dragging a link to your desktop, dock, etc. accomplish the same thing?
 
Chundles said:
But how is it an "Application"?

It's just a cut down version of Safari that doesn't say Safari in the menu bar.

How is actually helpful?

To the person who uses iPlayer as a web app? How is it not just a Safari window that says "iPlayer" in the menu bar? What makes it an actual application?
Click to expand...

Have you heard of Mozilla's Prism, its the same exact concept that is shown in this build of safari.
 
Google maps is much quicker, especially in satellite mode. Almost instantaneous.
I like the web app ability, but feel it should have a 'Go Home' option, as if you navigate away from the page you've saved, there is no easy way to get back apart from closing and opening the web app.
 
Forgot to say, only thing that stops me from using Safari on a day to day basis currently is the lack of a drop down history of web site addresses typed in the address bar. Every other browser seems to have this and I use it as my main way of navigating to the sites I visit most. I'll try submitting feedback to Apple, again.
 
ggjstudios said:
Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't dragging a link to your desktop, dock, etc. accomplish the same thing?
Click to expand...

No. That would be just a link to Safari. Standalone web apps are like having other smaller browsers dedicated to individual tasks and separate from Safari (like a widget, or a Dashboard Clipping).

For example, you can have a web app available in all Spaces at once (maybe a web based music player or News feed) and at the same time make Safari available in only one Space. Or, have a web app for Google Spreadsheets, one that won't go down when Safari does if it decides to flip out. Stuff like that.

With Fluid you can go further and customize them a bit more, turn them into menulets, or use Coverflow in them. I like them as music/radio players (Last.fm, Muxtape, the BBC etc.), but whatever floats your boat.
 
MotleyPete said:
With Fluid you can go further and customize them a bit more, turn them into menulets, or use Coverflow in them. I like them as music/radio players (Last.fm, Muxtape, the BBC etc.), but whatever floats your boat.
Click to expand...

Hi MotleyPete. If you are interested in the BBC radio output, might like the BBC listen again widget - Listen Again widget
It gives you access to the Live feeds as well as all the Listen Again archives.
 
Iamtherealwoody said:
I lost single window mode when I installed Safari 4 Developer Preview.
I had it working using this terminal command:
which doesn't work now. Anyone know how to enable this again?
Click to expand...
I was SO disappointed by this... having everything in one window was so nice. I almost reverted back to my previous version, but decided just to command click the links till there's a fix... :rolleyes:
 
lostfan916 said:
I was SO disappointed by this... having everything in one window was so nice. I almost reverted back to my previous version, but decided just to command click the links till there's a fix... :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I've noticed this as well, especially with javascript links (which I HATE!) On some photo albums, when you click the thumbnail to see a larger image, Safari 3.1 would open the image in a new tab. Now it opens a new window, even if you Command-click. I hope someone finds a fix for this! What a pain if you want to review dozens of pics! I used to be able to just hold the Command key down and click dozens of thumbnails, then use Command-W to run through the images, closing each window after viewing. Not with Safari 4! Help!
 
Stridder44 said:
Awesome news that Safari 4 is already under development. I'm assuming it's competing with Firefox 3, which has shown amazing changes.
Click to expand...

It's also competing with Opera, which just released Opera 9.5.

Good news is, they're all competing to get standards-compliant.

Except Internet Explorer, which always has to do it's "own thing" (though they are getting better, and I'm really glad for Microsoft's conditional comments).
 
Yvan256 said:
Except Internet Explorer, which always has to do it's "own thing" (though they are getting better, and I'm really glad for Microsoft's conditional comments).
Click to expand...

IE8 will be defaulting "standard mode", just not sure how standard it will be.;)
 
Can anyone thats using it tell me if there is a "New Tab" button option within "Customize the toolbar"?
 
Chairman Plow said:
Snappy my @**. It's still as sluggish as ever. Firefox for me, until further notice.
Click to expand...

To me the speeds of both Safari 3 and Safari 4(beta) feel exactly the same. Maybe Safari 4 is a bit snappier, but not significantly noticeable. The only concern is that Safari 4 takes up 200MB+ after being on for about 20 minutes.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back