Is a possible new interface in Snow Leopard only about looks?

[Runenees]

I recently tried out Windows 7 and I have to say, I really like the application management features that they have come up with. Then I heard about "Marble" and it made me think: Is a new interface, such as Marble or whatever it's going to be called, all about the looks or could it have something to do with application management as well?

As far as I remember, Marble was described as a new look and feel of OS X. I'm not trying to argue over whether Windows 7 has better navigation tools than OS X, I'm just saying that I was impressed (seeing as I hate XP, that says a lot) and I'm thinking that Apple probably has to do something to fresh up Exposé or even better, come up with something new.

But what do you think? Could Marble contain more than looks?

 

[ihabime]

Marble...now I get it! It ties in perfectly with all the multi-touch stuff too.

Imagine this, instead of double clicking to launch an application, you'll flick it's icon off the Dock toward a circle in the middle of your desktop.

Plus it could replace expose, you just flick your icons around and whichever ends up closest to the center of the circle gets the top window.

Spaces, you have multiple circles that you flick icons between

Just kiddin, they just froze SLs APIs, so I don't think there will be any major changes that haven't been seen already. Marble is probably just cosmetic stuff, like they dropped brushed metal between tiger and leopard.

 

[Cabbit]

Marble...now I get it! It ties in perfectly with all the multi-touch stuff too.

Imagine this, instead of double clicking to launch an application, you'll flick it's icon off the Dock toward a circle in the middle of your desktop.

Plus it could replace expose, you just flick your icons around and whichever ends up closest to the center of the circle gets the top window.

Spaces, you have multiple circles that you flick icons between

Just kiddin, they just froze SLs APIs, so I don't think there will be any major changes that haven't been seen already. Marble is probably just cosmetic stuff, like they dropped brushed metal between tiger and leopard.

We have not yet used half of the APIs in OS 10.5 that are available yet. I can see a lot more Core Animation and maybe one day turning Quartz Extreme on.

 

[Saladinos]

Nobody knows

 

[t0mat0]

Nobody knows

Well, one could go along the lines that 10.6 uses both CPU and GPU for the UI, and if they enabled the GPU to do more work, they could improve the speed and power of what the user sees. With the opportunity to harness the GPU - they could actually start making some better uses of OpenGL - instead of just showing off demos of building buildings with cover art - actually provide the user with a screensaver that does this. Seeing as Spaces was introduced in 10.5, they could at some point tweak it a bit.

Is an Atom, or a Bugatti or a Caterham 7's car shape only about looks?

Marble is being sold as a change to the style of the interface -
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...veiling_guarded_snow_leopard_ui_overhaul.html

So the talk is currently of a unified style for windows, scrollbars, buttons etc.

 

[iMacmatician]

Marble...now I get it! It ties in perfectly with all the multi-touch stuff too.

Imagine this, instead of double clicking to launch an application, you'll flick it's icon off the Dock toward a circle in the middle of your desktop.

Plus it could replace expose, you just flick your icons around and whichever ends up closest to the center of the circle gets the top window.

Spaces, you have multiple circles that you flick icons between

Just kiddin, they just froze SLs APIs, so I don't think there will be any major changes that haven't been seen already. Marble is probably just cosmetic stuff, like they dropped brushed metal between tiger and leopard.

Pretty good ideas there. I'm also thinking of more Core Animation effects in Snow Leopard.

 

[t0mat0]

Pretty good ideas there. I'm also thinking of more Core Animation effects in Snow Leopard.

FreeBSD moving away from gcc and towards LLVM//clang - and with Apple's hand in Clang

The fun part?
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=llvm_gallium3d&num=1

LLVM is "already being used for tasks like compiling and optimizing GPU shaders"
What did Chris Lattner think about LLVM? http://lists.cs.uiuc.edu/pipermail/llvmdev/2006-August/006492.html
Well - LLVM 2.5 was announced right around WWDC 2008.:

Like any good compiler, the only impact that LLVM has on the OpenGL stack is better performance (there are no user-visible knobs).

Lattner directly manages the Clang team, contributes daily to both the Clang and LLVM projects, and continues in role as compiler architect and lead on the Open Source LLVM/Clang projects. He hasn't updated his profiles since July 2008.

The idea of embedding LLVM into a graphics framework to provide shader compilation and optimization capabilities is not an original idea for Linux developers, but in fact it is already being done by Apple. With Mac OS X, the Low-Level Virtual Machine is being used in a similar way to speed as a shader optimization/generation engine on both the CPU and GPU. Right now though, the open-source 3D drivers on Linux are running at a snail's pace, as many of you will agree, so any efforts to improve the performance will certainly be welcomed.

What is left to accomplish is finishing the LLVM back-ends, iron out code generation bugs, add new LLVM optimization passes, and changes in LLVM itself (more intermediate level instructions and straightforward support for VLIW). As for a time-frame when this work should be in good standing, Stephane believes it could be working well in about one year.

Apple pushed through OpenCL in record time. With the GPU taking some of the work for the UI, and some to the GPU - Apple with OpenCL could push even more to the GPU to free up the CPU, which will be running GCD.

Cover art cities this time round?

As for Core Animation specifically - whilst it's all about "non-intersecting 2D planes in space." there are links to Open GL and Open CL. OpenCL is designed to work closely with OpenGL code. Core Animation running on top of OpenGL, so there should be improvements here -

Under the covers, each Core Animation layer is handled by OpenGL and ends up in VRAM on the video card. (For layers that are beyond the maximum texture size of the video card, Core Animation provides a "tiled layer" API, with callbacks to retrieve each portion of the larger image as needed.) Core Animation layers are extremely lightweight; modern Macs can animate many thousands of layers simultaneously. The unification of content types in Core Animation layers provides an opportunity to consolidate many previously separate GPU acceleration mechanisms for video, 2D drawing, and animation into a single context.

They went hog wild with Core Animation previously. Whilst Microsoft might bring new wallpaper to reheated Vista, Apple might bring a little more to the party. The fun bit is that this feeds into the iPhone's visuals as well.

 

[Riverbird]

Well, one could go along the lines that 10.6 uses both CPU and GPU for the UI, and if they enabled the GPU to do more work, they could improve the speed and power of what the user sees. With the opportunity to harness the GPU - they could actually start making some better uses of OpenGL - instead of just showing off demos of building buildings with cover art - actually provide the user with a screensaver that does this. Seeing as Spaces was introduced in 10.5, they could at some point tweak it a bit.

Is an Atom, or a Bugatti or a Caterham 7's car shape only about looks?

Marble is being sold as a change to the style of the interface -
http://www.appleinsider.com/article...veiling_guarded_snow_leopard_ui_overhaul.html

So the talk is currently of a unified style for windows, scrollbars, buttons etc.

If this is the new look for the interface, it sure is pretty! ^^