ZFS is definitely promised for Mac OS X SL server but Apple doesn't really mention anything for consumer SL. I'm guessing it will probably end up being included as an "unadvertised" (read unsupported) feature for those who want to play around with it but Apple's official stance would to get the server edition. I can see the logic there—ZFS is really still new and the average Mac OS X user probably doesn't need ZFS unless they have crazy storage requirements.
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Apple's Newest Snow Leopard (10A314) Shows Steady Improvements
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Consumers need to migrate to more shared storage solutions before they need or will understand why ZFS is ideal.
In defense of the consumer, and SL's general design philosophy of smaller and more efficient / being able to take FULL advantage of hardware, ZFS makes a lot of sense. The compression features, efficiency of snapshots and clones, and faster I/O are vastly superior to HFS+. Even if these are transparent or unnoticeable to the end user / consumer, I'm sure there would be some level of benefit.
Of observation to all these posts, it sounds like ZFS won't be completely integrated into the system by release time. I'm sure there is a reason for that, like the ability to boot, integration with FileVault (which would need a major rewrite) and Time Machine. I bet the server solution is a milestone, especially with the new finder integration. It would be cool as a developer option on the client release for sure. It just doesn't make sense to make ZFS the default filesystem without complete transparency - which is why its isolated only to the server? I know my Toshiba laptop works great on OpenSolaris, and is really fast. With the non transparency issues of the current SL implementation, it may be best for only SL Server to have it...
Just food for thought....
Assuming Apple's still enthralled with ZFS I think of ZFS for consumers as being a 10.7 feature. We're talking 2011 here and the availability of 2.5 and maybe even 3TB drives so the ability to thwart data corruption is very important.
That also gives Apple time to do the necessary integration. ZFS enabled Time Machine would be very nice if Apple could leverage ZFS snapshots and for backing up individual files.
Things are just starting to heat up. Low cost NAS that don't perform like crap. Windows Home Server showing that enthusiasts "do" want to start centralizing their media. Cloud storage and computing.
The next few years are going to be absolutely amazing.
Hey Guys... Chill Out Already!!!
I'd like to add some thoughts to this, and direct them toward those feeling a bit impatient with Apple's "apparent lack of progress"...
What I think you folks need to understand is that you are expending your energies on the wrong target. This is not about Apple being slow to release 10.6 with thus-and-such feature set; rather, if we're being truly honest, it should more rightly be with the results of Apple's "save it for later" strategy which has, no doubt, resulted in a pile of features, concepts, and specific items from which largely they intend to build a new OS.
I don't say that to be critical of Apple, but simply to point out that, in any organization, there's only so many hours in a day, so many people and office spaces you can have, and one's ability to produce is also affected to one degree or another with both competing projects as well as external pressures.
Steve said at his last MWSF that Snow Leopard was going to involve a significant overhaul and would mark a transition for Apple from focusing on so-called "userland" features to "underpinnings" features. Steve as much as said they've focused on bells and whistles at the expense of efficiency, modernization, and possible stability. And that, actually, is something which should (rightfully) place this whole thread's conversation into a totally different context.
You have to understand that this development cycle is about a lot more than an OS release. Grand Central, OpenCL and much of the rest, while they exist at the OS level, are not really OS-release-centric so much as they are platform-centric. A lot of the stuff involves concepts not previously present in Mac OS X (or, in some cases, on virtually any other OS). What this means is that there's a fair amount of progress to be made and ground to be broken before you even get to the point of figuring out how you're going to build 10.6, much less how you're going to include A, B or C into 10.6.
Every company has "rainy day" projects. Every company. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that, hypothetically, some of these RDPs date back even to NeXT's acquisition by Apple. We don't know, and because we don't know, we're in no position to judge truly and properly what Apple's progress really is (meaning where they are on the "dragging their heels" to "shooting like a missile" scale) and I really think it does both us as members of the community and Apple something of a disservice to pass judgement without first being able to take this into account.
Just like (most) everyone else here, I'm a human being, I have needs, wants and desires, and yes, amongst those is for Apple to finally release 10.6. However, I understand (on a philosophical level if not on an intimate technical one) what's going on, what's at stake, and as much as I hate to wait, I'd rather have a better, more stable OS which in turn is based on more stable and mature overarching concepts, even if it meant waiting until Q3 or Q4 of 2009, or Q1 of 2010.
Obviously Apple can't afford to delay their release too much; they have a very legitimate business agenda which requires there be a product to sell. The longer this takes, the more it costs and the longer they have to wait to start making back their investment money. I'll bet everyone inside Apple is just as anxious to get this OS out as we all are anxious to buy a copy. But give Apple a break, some of you folks, ok?
I'd like to add some thoughts to this, and direct them toward those feeling a bit impatient with Apple's "apparent lack of progress"...
What I think you folks need to understand is that you are expending your energies on the wrong target. This is not about Apple being slow to release 10.6 with thus-and-such feature set; rather, if we're being truly honest, it should more rightly be with the results of Apple's "save it for later" strategy which has, no doubt, resulted in a pile of features, concepts, and specific items from which largely they intend to build a new OS.
I don't say that to be critical of Apple, but simply to point out that, in any organization, there's only so many hours in a day, so many people and office spaces you can have, and one's ability to produce is also affected to one degree or another with both competing projects as well as external pressures.
Steve said at his last MWSF that Snow Leopard was going to involve a significant overhaul and would mark a transition for Apple from focusing on so-called "userland" features to "underpinnings" features. Steve as much as said they've focused on bells and whistles at the expense of efficiency, modernization, and possible stability. And that, actually, is something which should (rightfully) place this whole thread's conversation into a totally different context.
You have to understand that this development cycle is about a lot more than an OS release. Grand Central, OpenCL and much of the rest, while they exist at the OS level, are not really OS-release-centric so much as they are platform-centric. A lot of the stuff involves concepts not previously present in Mac OS X (or, in some cases, on virtually any other OS). What this means is that there's a fair amount of progress to be made and ground to be broken before you even get to the point of figuring out how you're going to build 10.6, much less how you're going to include A, B or C into 10.6.
Every company has "rainy day" projects. Every company. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that, hypothetically, some of these RDPs date back even to NeXT's acquisition by Apple. We don't know, and because we don't know, we're in no position to judge truly and properly what Apple's progress really is (meaning where they are on the "dragging their heels" to "shooting like a missile" scale) and I really think it does both us as members of the community and Apple something of a disservice to pass judgement without first being able to take this into account.
Just like (most) everyone else here, I'm a human being, I have needs, wants and desires, and yes, amongst those is for Apple to finally release 10.6. However, I understand (on a philosophical level if not on an intimate technical one) what's going on, what's at stake, and as much as I hate to wait, I'd rather have a better, more stable OS which in turn is based on more stable and mature overarching concepts, even if it meant waiting until Q3 or Q4 of 2009, or Q1 of 2010.
Obviously Apple can't afford to delay their release too much; they have a very legitimate business agenda which requires there be a product to sell. The longer this takes, the more it costs and the longer they have to wait to start making back their investment money. I'll bet everyone inside Apple is just as anxious to get this OS out as we all are anxious to buy a copy. But give Apple a break, some of you folks, ok?
The great Win/Mac wars may indeed be slowly dying down after decades. All the major OS's are mature enough to do reasonably reliable and stable work that hadn't even been conceived of back in the days of the Apple II and DOS, and while continuous improvement will occur - and maybe someday a whole paradigm shift will bring the focus back - the real action's moving elsewhere.
1. To the web. As one data point, I read a column yesterday by a tech press writer who's moved from iPhoto to Picasa and there are increasingly compelling web alternatives to so many programs, beyond the iLife stuff and Google docs and web mail, social networks, calendaring, storage - and massive amounts of entertainment and knowledge - that will eventually meet 90% of people's needs 90% of the time with relatively middling hardware, again, except for niches. It's inevitable - constantly bigger, faster pipes and better plumbing and pumps will mean that for most using PC's the OS will mainly be the program that hosts their web browser(s). Even fast, graphically rich games are in sight.
There's nothing to stop Google, for example, from making good money by selling an OS that's basically Chrome with hooks to hardware, bypassing MS, Apple AND Linux. Which a recent article I read hinted strongly at.
Sun had it right, in the language of the time, if 15 or so years early: "The network is the computer." Except "the network" turned out to be the net and its OS is the web (currently at about Web 2.1?), an OS so big it's not only not owned by any one party, public or private, but only partially by a group of consortiums.
This doesn't mean Apple still doesn't dream of 10-15% personal computer market share - every point's measured in the billions and the PC as a concept still has massive mind share, so there's still lots of 'puters to be sold.
But that's the other area of action "nuckin'futz" zoned in on:
2. The terminal of choice in the future to access that system will increasingly look little like a Dell or iMac or MacBook - and much more like iPhones, netbooks and classes yet to debut. Completely mobile, lightweight, ubiquitously connected wireless devices will rule and "full-powered" computers - eventually even full notebooks - will be an ever-less frequent sight in homes.
And I totally agree that iPods/Phones have done much more to sell Apple computers (while making a ton themselves) than Apple computers have done to sell pods and phones.
I also agree that neither MS or Apple will be the heavyweights of web presence, even though the huge success of iTunes and the App Store are nothing to sneeze at, and not Apple's last foray into major new net ventures.
I do follow MS's Live efforts and while they're throwing in everything including the kitchen sink, not a bit of it impresses me outside of the enterprise bits that will probably keep their cash flow going. There are better alternatives to all the consumer parts. I've kept a Hotmail account for umpteen years because it works well enough to handle all the non-personal stuff and accounts I've set up without cluttering up my separate personal account, and despite several and continuing re-writes, the best I can say, in comparison to gMail, is that it sucks less than it used to, but remains leagues behind Google, and, for that matter, since I went web before I went Mac, I've yet to discover a use for Apple Mail or iCal, while the pieces of MobileMe that have some interest (to me) can be cobbled together from other sources, with most of the pieces free.
But I do believe it's deep in Apple's genes that their success is based on staying relevant by sussing out emerging trends and seizing on them with energy and fresh, appealing approaches, so, unless they lose their way under new leadership when it comes, they will find a way to be a major player in areas still on the drawing boards.
3. The other key pieces of the action are convergence, input and output. An iPhone in your hand is a phone, iPod, computer, media center, book reader, gaming device and more without a mouse or physical keyboard in sight. Even as miniaturization, battery life, better software, user interface improvements and experiments and net everywhere make it continuously more useful at all these tasks.
And in another form of convergence, cell networks, POTS and cable companies are all gradually being reduced to being primarily different forms of nodes on the net, rather than being distinguished by their original exclusive forms of content transmission.
This is why traditional Mac sites are no longer about Macs vs. PC's, to the dismay of many of we long-time propeller heads who by default claimed the leading edge, but are dominated by the iPhone, the maybe NewtonBook, etc., etc. The TWIT podcast is now more about Twitter than technology in general.
These devices are also going to be where new ways interacting with our devices and the ways they can interact with us will be pioneered. Voice control (and response) will finally become natural and integral (and remain optional since there are settings where it would be cumbersome) but won't be the only interfaces.
Consider a hardware example: you bring your fifth gen iWhatever into the house and set it down on an induction pad. Whatever you were doing is now displayed on a monitor or HDTV of your choice, including sound, ready to accept input from whatever devices - keyboards will continue to exist, e.g., TV remotes, mice, whatever, connect to every other digital device in the home, gather and store whatever stored info is relevant (whatever's not already on the web); and it will also interface with cars, your job network and more - replace credit cards too (another convergence), e.g.
And so forth and so on. From now on it will take more than an evolutionary OS update - however cool all the new SL tech is at doing things better - to cause a seismic shift in the digital world again. And Snow Leopard v Win 7 may be the last big OS battle to get even nearly this much ink.
Alas, those were the days, my OS friends.
And yeah, I'm a windbag.
I wonder how the lo-fi and low-tech folk feel about all of this, and whether or not it's too late to join their ranks... 
Leopard at discount
I just got an email as others have I am sure from Apple giving me a $30 of Leopard upgrade. This makes me wonder is SL is sooner than later and they are trying to clear out old stock? The email also had an offer for a Time Capsule making me wonder about the 2TB upgrade photo.
I just got an email as others have I am sure from Apple giving me a $30 of Leopard upgrade. This makes me wonder is SL is sooner than later and they are trying to clear out old stock? The email also had an offer for a Time Capsule making me wonder about the 2TB upgrade photo.
It could also mean that they want to minimize market fragmentation by encouraging straggling Tiger users to upgrade. I'm sure Leopard has been doing well, especially compared to the XP/Vista split, but it couldn't hurt to entice as many as possible away from Tiger.
The big deal about snow leopard is it's fast. Really, really fast. Finder is threaded properly. stuff is offloaded to the GPU. 32bit prefs don't work or ktext if you boot in 64bit mode.
It's so fast on a modern computer that apple had to artificially slow down the coverflow view in the finder because it went to fast with the GPU ;-)
It's all about the beauty underneath.
It's so fast on a modern computer that apple had to artificially slow down the coverflow view in the finder because it went to fast with the GPU ;-)
It's all about the beauty underneath.
So what is the point in having a 32bit mode if the drivers don't work in the 64bit mode?
Man! Things move fast in the Apple world. Too fast maybe. I'm just getting used to Leopard.
And I've only had a Mac for two years. If I buy Snow Leopard, it will be the third major OS I've had in two years! I'm not all that enthused about Snow Leopard to be honest. I'm still trying to learn "Mac" from "The Missing Manual Tiger Edition".
Rich
Snow Leopard won't be too much of a change for you. It's mainly the behind the scene stuff but there will probably be a few new UI changes here and there. I can't wait for it because I want the software to actually catch up with the hardware. For once.
Nuk
1) There are 32bit Intel CPUs out there.
2) Most of the applications out there are still in 32bit mode.
3) Learn how a kernel works, the need for 32bit mode etc. - once you do that then it will be face palm time.
Who is going to drive this big transition though? Not users. Users don't care about platforms, they care about whether a program does what they want or not. They will therefore not flock to the web, but to whatever program meets their needs, regardless of platform.
What about companies - will they drive it? They don't care about platforms either, they care about profits. But maximizing profit depends on where a program is in it's life cycle.
If they have an idea for a new program, they want to get it out there quickly at low cost and see if people want to buy it, and dump it if not. This is where the web shines, you can use HTML/CSS/JS to do a quick prototype and distribution is easy - just publicize a URL.
But if a program does prove successful, and becomes long life - maximizing profits depends on having a clean code base that cheap to maintain and improve. This is where the web platform does not shine (not yet anyway). Javascript is a deliberately loose language, and once a program gets past a certain size you want a more disciplined language to result in cleaner code, such as those typically available on a desktop platform.
The smart company will add web technologies to their toolbox, but not move exclusively to it. They will use the web for rapid prototyping followed by desktop versions of anything that catches on (e.g. Google Maps -> Google Earth). Horses for courses.
Which has very little to do with drivers. You should be able to run 32bit programs just fine in Snow Leopard x64.
Almost everyone here made fun of MS's divide in the drivers between x64 and x32 and lo and behold Apple can't bridge the divide either. To top it off they probably won't have a smooth transition. Especially if x32 kernel drivers won't work in x64. They are in the same position MS was in with XP x64 and Vista x64.
Web 2.1, hehe. Please don't give that horrible buzzword any more credence than it already has.
People have been waffling on about digital convergence and mobile computing for well over a decade, but the bottom line is this: who wants to write their CV on an iPhone?
The desktop computer isn't going anywhere.
Actually you make my point in your last line. The only place desktop computers are going is down in market share (and now unit sales) - with a bifrucation between those who can't afford even cheaper laptops and those with a legitimate need for more power than they can get (or afford) in a notebook. So desktop computers will be around for decades, they'll just be less and less common.
There are also other subclasses of desktop users - those who don't like notebook keyboards, pointing devices and screens - and a large subclass of corporations who are still based around bringing workers to computers rather than computers to workers - but the day of the desktop as the main computer in most people's life has already passed.
Notebooks/laptops were the heir apparent and their market share has zoomed acccordingly based on their increasing functionality, decreasing price, etc. But it turns out that while you may not want to write your CV on an iPhone, most people certainly can on a 10-12" netbook on the cheap, with fewer hernias/mile on trips to the coffeeshop or across the campus to do your facebooking, YouTubing, eMailing, IM'ing and light note-taking.
And notebook share of the total market (including netbooks, but not iPhones and their ilk) is now shrinking as well to this new pretender.
So I'll grant you that ergonomics are not going anywhere - anyone with any serious writing or imaging to do is going to want comfortable, responsive input devices and be able to see their work at a sufficient size - and these things will soon connect seamlessly to iPhone sized devices - but I'll repeat that most things that most people now (or or two years ago, more precisely) think of needing/using computers for will primarily be done on devices that won't much resemble today's towers or notebooks, and within five years, even netbooks.
snow leopard
i hope they let out a free beta on their website ...as of april 25 all they have is developer and invester betas
i hope they let out a free beta on their website ...as of april 25 all they have is developer and invester betas
I think the idea of the cloud OS is overrated. We are decades away from really considering this a potential reality. We are still fighting cable companies to not have a data cap on usage. Most places in this world don't even have high-speed access or access of any kind. The US has large patches where you can't get high speed access. Applications are getting more complex and are demanding better hardware. Programs like photoshop require far more bandwidth than even the fastest provide today. Storage is still too expensive to host in large amounts and consistently access. We are still having problems with privacy rules.
I think there can be a happy medium between the desktop and the cloud but not everything is meant to be in the cloud. The power user will still require something native but the casual user may get by with web apps. The mac vs pc wars will continue for the forseeable future because of this.
As for the movements of the respective OS's, it has to to with two things:
1. Products are getting smaller and smaller. If an apple tablet would come out running snow leopard, it would have to be very lightweight
2. In order to build for future versions of the OS, the foundation has to be solid. The trouble for windows is that it has so much legacy code while snow leopard is going the extra mile to get rid of it with lack of PowerPC support. Ptograms are going to depend more and more on the GPU and multiple core CPUs that the OS needs to be streamlined.
I really can't wait for snow leopard because of the speed improvements and the updates to QuickTime. I really hope they mange to cut some of the fat out of iTunes also. This has been needed for the past 5 years.
I've been looking forward to 10.6 for ages, not for a new UI (which I'm yet to be convinced will happen) but because I use Exchange at work .
They do seem to have been stretching this release out a bit, and I know that this sounds a bit ridiculous, but could they be trying to avoid another Schiller Macworld?
Maybe they are waiting for Jobs to come back so that he can go on stage and work his magic. For the media/press, it will appear quite lame (no glitzy new features), but the presence of Jobs will provide enough buzz - especially if it is his first public appearance after moving back into the driving seat...
.They do seem to have been stretching this release out a bit, and I know that this sounds a bit ridiculous, but could they be trying to avoid another Schiller Macworld?
Maybe they are waiting for Jobs to come back so that he can go on stage and work his magic. For the media/press, it will appear quite lame (no glitzy new features), but the presence of Jobs will provide enough buzz - especially if it is his first public appearance after moving back into the driving seat...