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Build 10F569 of Mac OS X 10.6.4 Seeded to Developers

MikhailT said:
There are better opengl drivers, there's a few devs that have access to those seeds saying the opengl performance is better in 10.6.4, not 15% better but still better than 10.6.3. Even Valve's rbarris mentioned that 10.6.4 will contain some improvements but not a lot.

Hopefully now that Steam is out and Valve is working along with Apple, 10.6.5 might actually go further (rbarris said 10.6.4's opengl drivers were done before Steam even shipped, despite the fact that we're still getting seeds).
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I'm one of those people. And trust me. The gaming performance is similar to 10.6.3. No major changes there.
 
Anuba said:
IMO their hardware quality has improved, compared to the early and mid 2000's (broken TiBook hinges, bulging PB batteries, cracking Cubes etc). The software is another story though. Leopard was a paradigm shift... after the introduction of Leopard it seems they never get it right. Always one or two critical bugs in there, and for every one they fix, a new one appears. Leopard was the first version of OS X I used extensively, and this whole "Mac - it just works" thing must be referring to a mythical pre-Leopard past...
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Better the hardware is as good as it should be... you always can install Linux or Win7.
I have to agree about the "just works". Tiger was insanely stable for me, afterwords it never was the same again. Right now SL has major issues for me, need to push the power button as often than I needed in the pre WinXP SP3 era.
 
Is this actually a Mac Rumor? I thought that this site now only handled iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch Rumors.

Its good to see that outwardly Apple is still making it look like they are working on keeping the Mac from going away. I guess that since they have made the Mac the iToy development computer that they need to keep the Mac alive.

I'm still running 10.5.8 on my 1st Gen Intel Mac Pro. I could see no advantage in changing. I have a 17" I7 Intel MacBook Pro that has to have at least OS 10.6.3 to run. Other than having a totally non-booting system after Cloning over the Apps that I was using on my OS 10.6.3 partition on my Intel Mac Pro, OS 10.6.3 has done well enough for itself. As long as it will let me run MouseWorks for my trackball, DragStrip to start my Apps, & Excel 2004 to run my income tax prep program that I make my living I will remain happy.

After OS 10.6.4 ships & there is no important to me bugs with it I'll do some more testing & switching of Apps to run with it. I still use a lot of Apps that require Rosetta to operate. When the Mac OS stops supporting Rosetta then I'll have to take a look at whether I can change. Things like whether Excel 2011 can replace Excel 2004. Excel 2008 has failed on so many counts that I usually do not even have it installed on any of my Macs.

Even as slow as progress is outwardly appearing to be going with OS 10.6.4 I'm sure that OS 10.6.5 will be the version that will be running when Excel 2010 finally ships. Let's hope that 10.6.4 just fixes & doesn't do any new breaks.
 
bobbytomorow said:
holy crap push it out for christ sake

im looking forward to the opengl improvements
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No way. Apple, take your time and get it right.

MikhailT said:
There are better opengl drivers, there's a few devs that have access to those seeds saying the opengl performance is better in 10.6.4, not 15% better but still better than 10.6.3. Even Valve's rbarris mentioned that 10.6.4 will contain some improvements but not a lot.

Hopefully now that Steam is out and Valve is working along with Apple, 10.6.5 might actually go further (rbarris said 10.6.4's opengl drivers were done before Steam even shipped, despite the fact that we're still getting seeds).
Click to expand...

Unfortunate to hear, but it makes sense. Oh well, here's to hoping for a LOT of communication between Valve and Apple. The gaming situation on OS X is actually becoming a reality now, so hopefully Apple will take gaming (as far as OS optimizations go) a little more seriously now, rather than "good enough."
 
Stridder44 said:
No way. Apple, take your time and get it right.



Unfortunate to hear, but it makes sense. Oh well, here's to hoping for a LOT of communication between Valve and Apple. The gaming situation on OS X is actually becoming a reality now, so hopefully Apple will take gaming (as far as OS optimizations go) a little more seriously now, rather than "good enough."
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Gaming on OS X will never be as good as Windows regardless of Valve or Apple's further efforts. It's Direct3D vs OpenGL and it'll always stay that way. Even if the OpenGL drivers are fully optimized on OS X, Direct3D is significantly faster.
 
iBug2 said:
Gaming on OS X will never be as good as Windows regardless of Valve or Apple's further efforts. It's Direct3D vs OpenGL and it'll always stay that way. Even if the OpenGL drivers are fully optimized on OS X, Direct3D is significantly faster.
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QFT. Direct X is superior to Open GL in almost every way, except for the fact that Direct X is Microsoft proprietary and Open GL is Open Source. Which is unfortunate.
 
Anuba said:
Oh COME ON already... I don't care if the graphics are upside down, as long as this fixes the SMB write support that's been broken for five effing months.
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THIS.

I am stuck at 10.6.2 on my laptop, and having to do "work arounds" for the company I support. Which is 95% Macs.
 
iBunny said:
QFT. Direct X is superior to Open GL in almost every way, except for the fact that Direct X is Microsoft proprietary and Open GL is Open Source. Which is unfortunate.
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Live in the past.

OpenGL 4. and it's many siblings are no longer inferior to DirectX. Not even close.

DirectX has nothing close to OpenCL and with OpenCL 1.1 now out the gap grows considerably more.
 
iBug2 said:
Gaming on OS X will never be as good as Windows regardless of Valve or Apple's further efforts. It's Direct3D vs OpenGL and it'll always stay that way. Even if the OpenGL drivers are fully optimized on OS X, Direct3D is significantly faster.
Click to expand...

I see 2000 is calling and proclaiming DirectX the winner.

Wake me up when you realize that only XBox is running DirectX on consoles and every other console is OpenGL and the next generation will include OpenCL.

Every smartphone is OpenGL ES.

On and on. OpenGL is taking over and Microsoft knows it.
 
heisetax said:
Is this actually a Mac Rumor? I thought that this site now only handled iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch Rumors.
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As an AAPL shareholder, I will state that it appears that Apple is still in the computer business based on their SEC filings.

As a matter of fact the following statistics have increased over many quarters: Mac unit sales, Mac revenue, Mac marketshare, Mac profit.

So quit griping.

If you want to play armchair CEO, find another company. AAPL blows doors on the rest of the S&P 500. If you want to bitch and moan about a company's senior management team, there are plenty you can choose from, but Apple won't be one of them at this time.

If Steve & Co. don't think it's time to announce OS X 10.7, a new Mac Pro, new Cinema Displays, whatever, I'm fine with it. I'm not going to be able to run a billion-dollar computer company any better than they can. In my book, I am getting my money's worth from Steve. He only draws $1 in salary a year.

How much does the General Motors CEO make every year?
 
iBug2 said:
Gaming on OS X will never be as good as Windows regardless of Valve or Apple's further efforts. It's Direct3D vs OpenGL and it'll always stay that way. Even if the OpenGL drivers are fully optimized on OS X, Direct3D is significantly faster.
Click to expand...

So PS3 games must be completely bad since they use a subset of OpenGL, iPhone/iPad games must be crappy since they use OpenGL ES.

While gaming on OSX might not be good as Windows and may never be, OpenGL drivers on OSX right now can only go up from here, not get worse. Even 10-20% can be gained via more optimizations in the drivers and better GPU choices that Apple and their GPU partners can work on. Apple is very conservative for drivers, barely update them and don't set aggressive settings at all.



Libertine Lush said:
What's rbarris' role at Valve? I've seen his posts here before, but only recall a Blizzard link in his profile.
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http://www.linkedin.com/in/rbarris

mdriftmeyer said:
With OpenCL 1.1 now released, will this be included?

Will OpenGL 3.3/4.0 be available?
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OpenCL 1.1 will not be in this build, I doubt that. It'll show up in a couple of builds away from now, Apple is often late with implementation of latest standards, despite the fact that we're just starting to get the full OpenGL 3.x support with some features missing. OpenGL 4.x is not likely to ever be in 10.6.x, we might see something in 10.7 but that can be years away as usual.

The question that remains is that, is Apple taking Valve serious about Steam and gaming on OSX? It is possible something will change but only time can tell.
 
MikhailT said:
So PS3 games must be completely bad since they use a subset of OpenGL, iPhone/iPad games must be crappy since they use OpenGL ES.

While gaming on OSX might not be good as Windows and may never be, OpenGL drivers on OSX right now can only go up from here, not get worse. Even 10-20% can be gained via more optimizations in the drivers and better GPU choices that Apple and their GPU partners can work on. Apple is very conservative for drivers, barely update them and don't set aggressive settings at all.





http://www.linkedin.com/in/rbarris



OpenCL 1.1 will not be in this build, I doubt that. It'll show up in a couple of builds away from now, Apple is often late with implementation of latest standards, despite the fact that we're just starting to get the full OpenGL 3.x support with some features missing. OpenGL 4.x is not likely to ever be in 10.6.x, we might see something in 10.7 but that can be years away as usual.

The question that remains is that, is Apple taking Valve serious about Steam and gaming on OSX? It is possible something will change but only time can tell.
Click to expand...

The thing is, games ported to OS X are largely Windows based games, written originally in Direct3D. Any game which is designed from the ground up as OpenGL on OS X, such as World of Warcraft, runs much better compared to pretty much anything else.

So as long as the majority of OS X games are ported from their Windows Direct3D cousins, their performance will suffer. That's what I meant.

Yes OpenGL rules the mobile market at the moment, but ask any game developer, they'll say DirectX is still far ahead in simplicity, performance and documentation.
 
mdriftmeyer said:
I see 2000 is calling and proclaiming DirectX the winner.

Wake me up when you realize that only XBox is running DirectX on consoles and every other console is OpenGL and the next generation will include OpenCL.

Every smartphone is OpenGL ES.

On and on. OpenGL is taking over and Microsoft knows it.
Click to expand...

Even then OpenGL on Windows is at a much better place than on OS X.

And I don't really think OpenGL will take over desktop PC gaming soon. That's gonna be Direct3D dominated for a while.
 
brymaster said:
We don't know that. This could go on for a long time.
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I believe it will go on for a long time. Apple made the most stable OSX ever. They did that for many reason. One of them being to be able to have a skeleton crew patching OSX, hence the long waits on minor point release.

iOS has a fast paced development cycle and that's where Apple must focus its resources on to secure their future.

I also believe Apple will back fill their OSX development team for a new and maybe final release of OSX. One that'll usher in features taken from iOS but will extend the 3D desktop further. It'll also support many new hardware innovations (USB 3.0, Firewire 1600/3200, bluray etc).

We'll see what unfolds.
 
iBug2 said:
Even then OpenGL on Windows is at a much better place than on OS X.

And I don't really think OpenGL will take over desktop PC gaming soon. That's gonna be Direct3D dominated for a while.
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I don't agree with your opinion completely. Valve said performance is great on the Mac and that's even before they've really tweaked the Mac versions of their offerings. The Windows versions have had many tweaks and refinements over the years so it is hardly fair to compare. Valve has certainly worked with Microsoft to optimize their wares for Direct3D etc.

With that said I'd still say DirectX Direct3D has an edge on OpenGL but OpenGL will catch-up if it hasn't already.
 
iBug2 said:
The thing is, games ported to OS X are largely Windows based games, written originally in Direct3D. Any game which is designed from the ground up as OpenGL on OS X, such as World of Warcraft, runs much better compared to pretty much anything else.

So as long as the majority of OS X games are ported from their Windows Direct3D cousins, their performance will suffer. That's what I meant.

Yes OpenGL rules the mobile market at the moment, but ask any game developer, they'll say DirectX is still far ahead in simplicity, performance and documentation.
Click to expand...

That's the nature of porting, it's almost never going to be as good as the original. But you never once said that, you said that OpenGL is inferior to D3D and gaming on OSX is never to catch up to Windows. Never say Never, it is completely possible. Graphics itself isn't the only factor here, I'm perfectly happy with HL2 games on my Mac, i don't really care about having 90FPS, if it's at least 30FPS, that's fine with me. I'm running just an old 8600gt in my '08 MBP.

I can ask John Carmack, a well know game engine developer and he'll disagree and say OpenGL is better. It still need a lot of improvements of course but that's beside the point because at this moment its not the OpenGL itself that is the problem.

The problem is that Apple is just horrible with OpenGL drivers and just not optimizing them fast enough. You can play OpenGL games on Windows much better than on OSX as well. Apple really needs to do what MS does, set up a certification program for OpenGL drivers so that we can get certified drivers directly from nVidia and ATi monthly or bimonthly and not depend on Apple for delivering them.

Now gaming on OSX can change radically if Steam works out for publishers and Valve, because Valve has an excellent Source engine running on OSX and if they can show that publishers/developers can make money on OSX, more developers/publishers will get into OS X.
 
BTW said:
I believe it will go on for a long time. Apple made the most stable OSX ever. They did that for many reason. One of them being to be able to have a skeleton crew patching OSX, hence the long waits on minor point release.

iOS has a fast paced development cycle and that's where Apple must focus its resources on to secure their future.

I also believe Apple will back fill their OSX development team for a new and maybe final release of OSX. One that'll usher in features taken from iOS but will extend the 3D desktop further. It'll also support many new hardware innovations (USB 3.0, Firewire 1600/3200, bluray etc).

We'll see what unfolds.
Click to expand...

Apple has several development teams running at full speed at same time, do not assume otherwise because Apple has history of doing this (most recent is the Intel OS X among others).

The iOS is dependent on the OSX team, remember iOS is based on the same core of OSX ported to ARM arch and tuned to the hardware. The key is that Apple reuses majority of OSX's code to make iOS. Any major low level changes to OS X is likely to be ported to iOS as well. Thanks to SL having GCD all ready, Apple was able to port that to iOS 4 as well. Now it's all ready for the next generation of iOS hardware using multicore CPUs and open-cl capable GPUs.
 
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