OS X 10.4 Tiger build 8A378 Seeded

[matticus008]

But if you have more then 31 days uptime on a windows system you have missed some important updates. But then again it depends on what and how you use the system if it matters or not. Almost the same goes for 10.3 but the updates are not as necessary in a security point of view for the normal user.

Windows updates, as frequent as they are, rarely require a full system reboot, especially for enterprise-grade software. Major service packs, yes, but I can't think of any critical update in recent history that required a reboot of my Windows 2003 server (needed because of Access). I would remember, because when you restart Windows 2003, you have to enter a reason for the reboot. You can't just restart the system on a whim. So the log would tell me what I was doing.

 

[httpd]

Windows updates, as frequent as they are, rarely require a full system reboot, especially for enterprise-grade software. Major service packs, yes, but I can't think of any critical update in recent history that required a reboot of my Windows 2003 server (needed because of Access). I would remember, because when you restart Windows 2003, you have to enter a reason for the reboot. You can't just restart the system on a whim. So the log would tell me what I was doing.

I do not know about W2003 server since we do not have one. But for W2K server/Pro and XP, not having to reboot after a update is very rare. I do not think it is a mayor issue since most updates are not security fixes concerning servers.

 

[JFreak]

Tiger is clearly in beta. It entered beta phase at WWDC, when it was first introduced

yes and no. tiger is clearly in beta stage NOW, but it was still at alpha stage last year. the difference between alpha and beta is "feature freeze", which they did in january keynote.

 

[JFreak]

Tiger is in Beta. Longhorn is still in Alpha though, and the current builds suck so bad I don't think we'll see a beta anytime soon

i believe we see longhorn shipping before powerbook G5

 

[wrldwzrd89]

yes and no. tiger is clearly in beta stage NOW, but it was still at alpha stage last year. the difference between alpha and beta is "feature freeze", which they did in january keynote.

I don't think any of us know exactly, to be honest. We're all just making our best guess as to what Apple considers alpha and beta.

 

[JFreak]

We're all just making our best guess as to what Apple considers alpha and beta.

all sofware companies [granted, apple is primarily a hardware company, but makes good software too, so is also a quality software company] consider "alpha" software being such software that is getting new features, "beta" software being such software that has its features implemented but still under development, and a "release candidate" software being such version of beta software that is only being changed if there is a real "showstopper" bug found; and then, the release candidate is being declared a released software if no showstoppers are found within defined timeframe. such release candidate is what apple calls "gold".

 

[Littleodie914]

I've got a question that I've been wondering about for a while now... When Apple releases the new Tiger seeds, do the developers get them from Apple's ADC website, or do they show up in Software Update? Strange question, I know, but my friend and I were wondering how Apple would approach releasing such large yet frequent updates.

 

[dicklacara]

You are absolutely correct.... It is a seed release.

but developer members are also bound by NDA... read the agreement

Now, that is interesting....

Seed releases go to a different audience, A select group of end users, I think.

As opposed to Developer releases that go to programmers.

I have no knowledge, but:
Mar 22 - Announce
Mar 28 - Available

Just feels right.

 

[dicklacara]

Maybe Apple is trying to say is that Tiger is so close to release that there is no point to fix it in Panther as there are multiple people just waiting to upgrade due to they research.

Its all about Marketing.

Apple continues to release updates & fixes to Panther and probably will do so for some time after Tiger is released.

I suspect that there are several separate teams of developers, each working an OS X release:

-- Panther Team
-- Tiger Team
-- Lion Team

The choice to fix a bug in a current release, when a new release is pending is often evaluated on:

-- how many users does the bug affect
-- how critical is the bug (is there a workauound)
-- how will the fix affect the rest of the users
-- how difficult is the bug to fix
-- is the bug already fixed (or made moot) in the pending release
-- How soon will the pending release be available.

There are certain classes of bugs that affect many conponents of the software... they are difficult, to co-ordinate, implement, test, release and install.

These bugs may require significant changes in the architecture. It is quite normal to defer these bugs to a new release-- in fact, they can be one of the reasons for a new release.

It is a tradeoff.

 

[dicklacara]

When will Apple stop the whole notion that Indexing is necessary? Ever since Sherlock was the file search engine they have been using indexing to index the content of files. There is a lone function in Unix which requires no indexing, and if properly utilized can really speed up Spotlight. It is integrated into the search engine built-in to the webpage editor by barebones.com called BBEdit, and is a real boon to searching for files throughout a file system. Searching an indexed file may take hours if you take the time to index files, where as this function takes a few seconds. What is this holy grail of search utilities?

GREP.

What about metadata, such as camera settings on image files?

What about content enbedded in a proprietary file format?

 

[ProfSBrown]

When will Apple stop the whole notion that Indexing is necessary? Ever since Sherlock was the file search engine they have been using indexing to index the content of files. There is a lone function in Unix which requires no indexing, and if properly utilized can really speed up Spotlight. It is integrated into the search engine built-in to the webpage editor by barebones.com called BBEdit, and is a real boon to searching for files throughout a file system. Searching an indexed file may take hours if you take the time to index files, where as this function takes a few seconds. What is this holy grail of search utilities?

GREP.

Are you serious?

 

[SiliconAddict]

But if you have more then 31 days uptime on a windows system you have missed some important updates. But then again it depends on what and how you use the system if it matters or not. Almost the same goes for 10.3 but the updates are not as necessary in a security point of view for the normal user.

Here is the secret about Windows updates. First and foremost most updates pertain to vulnerabilities that actively need to be taken advantage of in the GUI. So we are talking a fault in direct X or in one of Windows built in apps or IE. From a server standpoint this means exactly nothing. Most people who are running a server aren't doing a whole heck of a lot from the GUI so it’s a moot point.
From a desktop standpoint the last dozen or so vulnerabilities in Windows pertain to IE. I don't use IE. I know there are some underlying parts of Windows that use IE whether I like it or not but its not hat big of a deal for a reason I will get into in a minute.

The other update half pertains to externally facing vulnerabilities. Those that can be exploited by worms and such. A good firewall makes such patches less critical. They still need to be patched but its not a NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW thing. Finally there is this: Tiny Firewall This is the same software the air force uses on their clients. The extent to which you can lock down a system, beyond a simple firewall, is insane. I have every file on my computer signed and every process monitored by TF. A registry entry can’t change without my say so and I’ve defined which hives are allowed to be altered and which need the equivalent of root access. Patches are still an important part of security but not nearly as important with an appropriately configured box. *shrugs*

 

[SiliconAddict]

Windows updates, as frequent as they are, rarely require a full system reboot, especially for enterprise-grade software. Major service packs, yes, but I can't think of any critical update in recent history that required a reboot of my Windows 2003 server (needed because of Access). I would remember, because when you restart Windows 2003, you have to enter a reason for the reboot. You can't just restart the system on a whim. So the log would tell me what I was doing.

Windows 2003 has an advanced enough architecture to allow updates that don’t require reboots. Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Pre SP2.) are another matter entirely. SP2 has done a fine job at implementing some of the tech found in 2003 to cut down on reboots but simply: you can’t get away from the reboot without a massive overhaul to the OS. Its going to be interesting to see if Longshot can do this.

 

[AidenShaw]

Windows 2003 has an advanced enough architecture to allow updates that don’t require reboots. Windows 2000 and Windows XP (Pre SP2.) are another matter entirely.

It depends on the developer as well. Windows has unloadable drivers, so that it is possible to add or replace device drivers without a reboot.

Most consumer products aren't engineered to allow this - it just isn't worth the added work to add the features to allow unloading to the driver.

Server-class hardware, though, is another matter.

On many of my Windows servers, I can do some or all of the following without shutting down or rebooting:

• add additional memory (add DIMMs) to the system
• remove and replace failed memory DIMMs
• remove PCI-X cards and replace them
• replace Fibre Channel or SCSI cards and/or drivers
• replace NICs and drivers
• add internal disk drives
• replace failed disk drives
• replace failed fans
• replace failed power supplies

My longest running Windows servers were last rebooted on 31 July 2004....


ps: You post was well-written until you used the cutesy name for Longhorn....

 

[impierced]

yes and no. tiger is clearly in beta stage NOW, but it was still at alpha stage last year. the difference between alpha and beta is "feature freeze", which they did in january keynote.

I was under the impression that the A in 8A378 stood for alpha. When Apple releases an 8Bxxx build then it'll be in beta.

Panther:

7A179 (WWDC Developer Preview)
7B21 (First beta build)
7B28
7B44
7B52
7B59
7B68
7B85 (declared Gold Master)

 

[impierced]

My longest running Windows servers were last rebooted on 31 July 2004....

Are you saying that with a straight face? Has it gotten so bad when 6 months of uptime is considered impressive for a server?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I was under the impression that the A in 8A378 stood for alpha. When Apple releases an 8Bxxx build then it'll be in beta.

Panther:

7A179 (WWDC Developer Preview)
7B21 (First beta build)
7B28
7B44
7B52
7B59
7B68
7B85 (declared Gold Master)

It's amazing how many are misinformed about the build number system.

8=Tiger (Darwin 8.0, to be specific). 7=Panther, 6=Jaguar, 5=10.1, 4=10.0, etc.
A=the current branch of the 8 tree. Future branches get higher letters: B, C, D, E, etc.
378=the current minor revision/build number of the 8A branch. Newer builds have higher numbers. If a new branch is started, its minor revisions/build numbers will start over at 1 again.

 

[impierced]

It's amazing how many are misinformed about the build number system.

8=Tiger (Darwin 8.0, to be specific). 7=Panther, 6=Jaguar, 5=10.1, 4=10.0, etc.
A=the current branch of the 8 tree. Future branches get higher letters: B, C, D, E, etc.
378=the current minor revision/build number of the 8A branch. Newer builds have higher numbers. If a new branch is started, its minor revisions/build numbers will start over at 1 again.

Thanks for the info - makes sense. Now if you could clarify the stardate number system?

 

[AidenShaw]

Are you saying that with a straight face? Has it gotten so bad when 6 months of uptime is considered impressive for a server?

No, but six months uptime for the California electrical system is impressive!

BTW, these are just random lab servers - not 24x7 production systems.

 

[wdlove]

Apple continues to release updates & fixes to Panther and probably will do so for some time after Tiger is released.

I suspect that there are several separate teams of developers, each working an OS X release:

-- Panther Team
-- Tiger Team
-- Lion Team

Did I miss an announcement? Or is the code made Lion, just your opinion? IMHO it sounds like a good name for 10.5.

 

[Catfish_Man]

For some reason, I have a bad feeling about Tiger. Moving to the 64 bit processing seems to be an opening for a lot of trouble. Normally, I'm not a pessimistic person at all, ESPECIALLY when it comes to Apple products. Just looking at the list of strange problems still left with Tiger makes me wonder what kind of strange problems are going to arise when it's released to the public. If I invest in Tiger, I'll wait until it's 10.4.5 at least. Otherwise, I'll skip in and wait for the next big cat. I like Panther a lot (though it doesn't have those cute little widgets).

64 bit processing has little/nothing to do with it. Quartz 2D Extreme is a big culprit (for a while it would randomly turn text into weird barcode like images, and would behave really really badly when combined with UI scaling), and many other major changes are in there as well. However, the 10.2 and 10.3 prerelease builds were at least as bad. Some of them I'd install, play around with for about 5 minutes, and go "yeah... time to go back to a release build for now". They were just unusably bad. 10.4.0 will have some issues, just as 10.3.0 and 10.2.0 did, but I don't think it'll be significantly more buggy than them. Be wary of any 3rd party stuff that comes out to turn on UI scaling though... the combination of it and Q2DE is a Nontrivial change. Very nontrivial. You'll be able to identify Quartz/CoreGraphics engineers at WWDC this year by the white hair. I recommend buying them a beer, they've earned it.

<edit>wrldwizard89: thanks for saving me from having to copy and paste my build # post yet again </edit>

 

[madog]

all sofware companies [granted, apple is primarily a hardware company, but makes good software too, so is also a quality software company] consider "alpha" software being such software that is getting new features, "beta" software being such software that has its features implemented but still under development, and a "release candidate" software being such version of beta software that is only being changed if there is a real "showstopper" bug found; and then, the release candidate is being declared a released software if no showstoppers are found within defined timeframe. such release candidate is what apple calls "gold".

I have to utterly and completely disagree with you and state, matter-of-factly, that you are wrong!

Well, not really [ ], but I just wanted to point out the obvious: OS X10.0

If 10.0 was gold [by your reasoning, feature sufficient to what the dev's had in mind in terms of availability and stability], then I'm a monkey's uncle. It's safe to say that 10.0 was a complete mess [well, at least for me ] of a system and by all reasoning should have been just another beta release. The showstopper was when 10.1 came out and everyone realized that this is what Apple meant by a great new/revamped OS. "Ohhhhhhhhhhh that's what the X is for! Oh OK, I get it..."

Of course..... then came 10.2..... then 10.3 [awesome, btw] and now 10.4 [can you even imagine?!?!, even if you have a dev seed....] we kind have been in a constant alpha stage.....
[isn't all technology just a preview of what's next?]

So really, it's a slippery slope and I shouldn't have even opened my big mouth in the first place

 

[wdlove]

History of Mac OS X release dates:

10.0 on March 24, 2001

10.1 on September 24, 2001

10.2 on August 24, 2002

10.3 on October 24, 2003

10.4 on June 24, 2005?

This a prediction from someone else, sounds good to me. Steve announces at WWDC with the release date. Friday sounds like a good for a relase party.

 

[ryanyogan]

That would be because everyone at the microsoft campus are just twiddling their thumbs mostly, waiting for tiger to release so they can then put the lcds in the photocopier and begin ripping it off for themselves.

I hate to call you out on a Mac forum, I like both PC and MAC. I start my internship w/ Microsoft soon, and I can personally tell you this is not the case. You are going to be somewhat surprised of the new features that are headlined. I know windows XP isn't the greatest, but longhorn really is going to have alot of breakthrough modules in it. If you are a programmer you are already excited about XAML GUI development with C#, it is a breakthrough in development, although is somewhat similar to Flex from macromedia ? Yes / no? Regardless, I watched a demonstration of pictures taken on a wi-fi camera, synched to a longhorn computer, then instantly showed up on a windows smart phone across the U.S. That was pretty neat, not to mention the fact that Aero is starting to look really good, it is very clean and reminds me of glass. And no longhorn is going to look NOTHING like windows XP, don't be surprised when you don't see a start button

Also no thumb twidling, have you noticed there R&D budget, 6 billion dollars for this year! They are making developing easier than ever, now offer free development tools that make me wonder of the future of open source!!

With all that said, I prefer Mac OS X hands down right now, and I love mac so don't flame me, I just had to say you will all be very surprised with what they are cooking up.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I hate to call you out on a Mac forum, I like both PC and MAC. I start my internship w/ Microsoft soon, and I can personally tell you this is not the case. You are going to be somewhat surprised of the new features that are headlined. I know windows XP isn't the greatest, but longhorn really is going to have alot of breakthrough modules in it. If you are a programmer you are already excited about XAML GUI development with C#, it is a breakthrough in development, although is somewhat similar to Flex from macromedia ? Yes / no? Regardless, I watched a demonstration of pictures taken on a wi-fi camera, synched to a longhorn computer, then instantly showed up on a windows smart phone across the U.S. That was pretty neat, not to mention the fact that Aero is starting to look really good, it is very clean and reminds me of glass. And no longhorn is going to look NOTHING like windows XP, don't be surprised when you don't see a start button

Also no thumb twidling, have you noticed there R&D budget, 6 billion dollars for this year! They are making developing easier than ever, now offer free development tools that make me wonder of the future of open source!!

With all that said, I prefer Mac OS X hands down right now, and I love mac so don't flame me, I just had to say you will all be very surprised with what they are cooking up.

Interesting. I have never seen any member use all three common spellings of "Mac" (1 is right - "Mac"; 2 are wrong - "MAC", "mac").

Anyway...

That was a good post, ryanyogan. At least Microsoft is putting in a serious effort to improve Windows now. IMO, this started with Windows XP, and Microsoft is going to finish it with Longhorn. I hope Microsoft has the sense to abolish drive letters once and for all with the release of Longhorn. Sure, you can use tweaking tools to hide the drive letters in Windows XP right now, but that doesn't make them go away completely. They're still in certain Explorer windows as well as in the command prompt.

I can't praise Mac OS X enough for general use - that doesn't mean I'm not interested in what Microsoft's working on in addition to what Apple's working on - far from it.