"Things that have never been done before"

[bellboy]

here's my take on this....

For starters, 10.2 will definitely be a paid upgrade. 10.1.5 will be the last "free" upgrade of it's series, getting at least a half-decent OS to everyone who isn't willing to pay for 10.2. I think that's why 10.1.5 is planned for release so soon after 10.1.4.

As for all of the "hype" - I agree, it's just that.... hype. But I honestly believe that we are on the fringe of something that we've never seen before. With all of Apple's recent hires and acquisitions...I think that their actually serious about building the best OS ever.

For all of those who feel they were taken advantage of with the release of 10.0-10.1 - you were... and I feel for you. If you expectations were that you were actually getting "the most advanced OS ever", you were seriously wrong. I definitely think the box should have read "Soon to be the most advanced OS ever". Apple had to release OSX, even if it was had baked. Given a little time, I think we'll definitely see something that's never been done before... and I think that Apple is finally in a position to pull it off. OSX is nowhere near a perfect OS, nor a revolutionary one. But I think that it's got the potential to be. Just give Apple some time.... and send in your comments to them. If I ever think of something, I send it to them.... and so far, they seem to be listening ;

 

[deejemon]

*

 

[mischief]

Incoming!!!!!

bellboy I'm gonna hafta call you on being a schmutz.

OS X is the most positive change in Apple's OS in a HELL of a long time. I'm getting sick of the griping. Every time an OS revs people whine like Mom just came in and told them to clean their rooms.

These same fools whined for YEARS about stability. Now we have stability and they're whining about the cost of stability: speed. Without a fundamental change (like dumping the UI to the GPU) that's the cost. Get over it, grow up and STOP WHINING.

 

[boobers]

i'll second that

OSX IS the most Advanced OS on the planet! No whiners allowed!

Its only going to get better and better

its already better than any windows OS M$ can conjure

i never felt bad about getting X.1, in fact i felt honoured!

So what if its a bit slow in some departments..it still hauls ass in others

boobers

 

[bellboy]

Whining?

mischief, you need to relax.

I'm curious... how is it that I'm being a "schmutz"? Apple released an OS that was far from being finished, and they've been working like sons of bitches to get it fixed as quickly as they can. I can't wait for them to release a new upgrade of it, 'cause I think that it's the brightest thing that Apple has had going for it in years...

dump the gui to the GPU, rebuild the filesytem, release new hardware - whatever it is, I'm game for it.

 

[mischief]

Clarity helps.

Sorry. Too many whiners. It sets me off. (twitch, twitch)

BTW: No OS is ever "finnished".

 

[bellboy]

No worries

I agree that no OS is ever finished... it's just obvious that 10.0 was nowhere near ready for prime time. (enough on this though, I think it's been argued to death about 1000 times over the last year).

 

[sjs]

Dumb Question:

Every now and then you have to ask a question that shows just how little you actually know. But here goes...

On another thread there was discussion of moving to an IBM Power chip. But would doing that destroy all the effort that has gone into "optimizing" software for the G4 and Altivec?

Or, while they are down there in the bowels of OSX, could they put some code in that would retain all the advantages of altivec, but allow the speed enhancements to occur without specially written software, and maybe allow for a change to a completely different chip, like IBM's?

 

[sjs]

Kerris said. "Allowing this kind of capability to be used by all sorts of applications, we can only imagine what's going to happen over the next year as developers start to tap into the power of the things that they'll see in this update."


Not meaning to use my entire quota of ignorant questions, but:

The phrase above: "allowing this kind of capability to be used by all sorts of applications..."

Could this mean that one of the new features of OSX 10.2 would be that Windows apps could be re-written to run on OSX in a way that is so quick and easy that developers would easily afford the cost?

 

[Geert]

Originally posted by Catfish_Man
Yeah! OpenGL GUI so it gets dumped on the graphics card instead of wasting CPU time. Keep it looking just the same, but do it in OpenGL instead of Quartz.

Originally posted by dukeStreet
Think of the speed increase this would give us! If it can be done it would be a first. Very cool and forward thinking. I like it.

That would indeed be the best possible solution to make the OS run screaminly fast

 

[mcrain]

Originally posted by Geert
That would indeed be the best possible solution to make the OS run screaminly fast

I disagree. I think the best possible solution would be the release of a G5 that kicks pentiums, althlons, clawhammers, itaniums, crainiums, or whatever to the curb.

 

[Bradcoe]

No no no, KEEP Quartz

Apple loves quartz for tons of reasons. They won't dump it as the GUI for OpenGL so it works with the Vid cards. Instead, they'll talk to Nvidia and ATI (gee, has anyone else heard rumors/press reports about this already?) and get them to engineer their GPU's and chipsets to recognize and speed up quartz! DUH! Apple loves dual processors, why not make the GPU a 2nd processor for the GUI of the Finder and all its surroundings when it isn't being used for games or rendering. It just sits there doing nothing.

 

[Geert]

Originally posted by mcrain


I disagree. I think the best possible solution would be the release of a G5 that kicks pentiums, althlons, clawhammers, itaniums, crainiums, or whatever to the curb.

Sorry mcrain, we're discussing WWDC, and that is the sneak peek on Jaguar, no hardware.
I agree with you that such a machine should be released, but that will be at MWNY, not at WWDC, we could see however a preview of some wireless devices, eg keyboard, mouse.

 

[sjs]

Is there any chance that changes to the OS could make it extremely easy and cheap to re-write windows apps to run on OSX?

(I am repeating my previous question which looks like it is getting lost in the shuffle.)

 

[Geert]

Is there any chance that changes to the OS could make it extremely easy and cheap to re-write windows apps to run on OSX?

dunno actually. only time will tell, another 4 days.

 

[mischief]

Yes, I've postulated this before......

I think Classic was an excercise in disecting an OS's kernel and re-routing it thriugh Darwin. Note that XP is semi-unix based. This means that with an AMD on board OS X could "gut" XP like Classic so it has no kernel and run it without VPC.

 

[mcrain]

Originally posted by Geert
Sorry mcrain, we're discussing WWDC, and that is the sneak peek on Jaguar, no hardware.

Sure, but if Jaguar is designed around a 64 bit chip, we may not see any hardware, but that's a pretty good tip that there is new hardware on the way.

 

[Gelfin]

The OpenGL pipeline is optimized for 3D. It has functions for pushing pixels around, but hardly anyone uses them for pure 2D applications because OpenGL just isn't the best solution for that. To speed up Quartz, you're much better served by having and utilizing some sort of hardware accelerated 2D bitmap composition. OpenGL can handle this, to an extent, with multitexturing abilities, but whether this functionality can be accelerated still depends on your video hardware and the drivers for it. OpenGL is far from a magic bullet for OS X's UI.

As far as a full 3D GUI, to start with, even with GL, people who complain about the resource utilization of OS X now do -not- want 3D. I don't want my TiBook's fan running on high all the time. Otherwise, NOBODY has made a truly usable 3D GUI. There are some very good design reasons why full 3D environments don't make great GUIs.

On the upside, you could advertise it by getting the little girl from Jurassic Park in to look at the barely-usable 3D Finder and say, "This is a UNIX system! I know this!"

 

[nathany]

I'm guessing...

From reading the article, it sounds like new features exposed in the APIs - and not necessarily as low level as the kernel.

For examples, any Mac app can use the spell checking and speech frameworks built into the OS. We could see more of this.

The Image Capture framework is relatively new, so it could become ridiculously easy to add an NSImage control that supports scanners, etc. within the app ("without having to" launch a separate app). And the Bluetooth API stuff is obviously new and in no way integrated into the Windows SDK or other OSs.

Running the Quartz API on top of OpenGL does sound good, as long as OS X still works on all the systems it does now. But that article doesn't seem to point towards performance, though obviously that will come with time.

I'm just speculating of course - we'll find out in a few days.

- n8

 

[pwfletcher]

It could be that ...

Maybe they will make 10.2 actually work with a scanner. That would be HUGE for I hear that graphics professionals like the Mac OS! Maybe someone should tell Jobs

 

[nathany]

Image Capture Framework

I hear yah . I'm just glad my digital camera has worked since OS X.0. Haven't got a scanner yet for just this reason. And my Epson printer works, but won't do borderless prints except in Classic.

Hopefully the Image Capture framework and new printing back-end are a sign that all this is being addressed - so the pros can finally upgrade.

- n8

 

[Catfish_Man]

I wasn't talking about...

Originally posted by Gelfin
The OpenGL pipeline is optimized for 3D. It has functions for pushing pixels around, but hardly anyone uses them for pure 2D applications because OpenGL just isn't the best solution for that. To speed up Quartz, you're much better served by having and utilizing some sort of hardware accelerated 2D bitmap composition. OpenGL can handle this, to an extent, with multitexturing abilities, but whether this functionality can be accelerated still depends on your video hardware and the drivers for it. OpenGL is far from a magic bullet for OS X's UI.

As far as a full 3D GUI, to start with, even with GL, people who complain about the resource utilization of OS X now do -not- want 3D. I don't want my TiBook's fan running on high all the time. Otherwise, NOBODY has made a truly usable 3D GUI. There are some very good design reasons why full 3D environments don't make great GUIs.

On the upside, you could advertise it by getting the little girl from Jurassic Park in to look at the barely-usable 3D Finder and say, "This is a UNIX system! I know this!"

...replacing Quartz. Just making the GUI in OpenGL. It would basically be a bunch of flat objects with textures, although you could do a few fun things like actually rounding the buttons, and handling windows being behind other ones really well (they'd actually be behind them, instead of just being told not to draw certain parts of themselves. The graphics card's occlusion culling would get rid of the parts that were behind other windows). Basically, my thoughts went like this: Aqua is simpler than Quake III. Quake III runs just fine on most new Macs. Aqua uses annoying amounts of cpu time. Graphics cards are designed to accelerate 3d more than they are designed to accelerate 2d (with the exception of Matrox cards). The graphics card isn't in use while the finder is (practically all OpenGL run full screen). Given all that, an OpenGL Aqua would run fine, not slow down other programs, and free up cpu time, while allowing fancy graphical effects to be added in in later versions (OS XI+). I doubt they're going to do this (anytime soon, anyway), but it's a fun idea to play around with.

 

[nathany]

Quartz on OpenGL

You would still want Quartz API calls to work, so that existing apps continue working. That's why I say Quartz on top of OpenGL. In a way though, it'd be both.

Older video cards with little VRAM, and cards that have limits in texture sizes would cause a problem for OpenGL-based 2D. So it makes sense to keep the low-level Quartz 2D stuff around. The Quartz APIs to draw lines and things could then be made to work on top of both.

Still, this doesn't help any with old hardware that users want to run OS X on. Then again, that may not be part of the plan .

I'm not sure where they get their info, but this was posted on macosrumors.com:

---
A major project intended to accelerate Mac OS X is underway, designed to employ significant portions of the 3D acceleration hardware onboard ATi and nVIDIA graphics cards to speed drawing of on-screen user interface elements and even some lower-level functions. Essentially, this will involve greater use of OpenGL as a drawing layer for common OS X elements, along with custom code developed in cooperation with nVIDIA that should make better use of the raw computing power of graphics accelerators, which are largely inactive when the user is not playing games or running other 3D-intensive applications.
---

I wouldn't really expect anything like this for 10.2, but perhaps the next major revision.

- n8

 

[sjs]

A couple of weeks ago a MS Mac unit guy said that Apple would be doing some things to speed up browsing in the next 12-18 months, the issue being page rendering. Would the discussion in the previous post help with that?

 

[nathany]

page rendering

If the bottle neck is the actual drawing of the page, or progressively refreshing the page as data comes in - then yes, assumably it would go faster.

If it's just Microsoft's parsing of HTML, then no.

Mozila/Chimera seem pretty snappy, which is probably more to do with using the low-level BSD networking APIs.

Personally, I don't use IE anymore except for my bank site which is particular about the browser being used. Part of my reason is because IE always hangs with a rainbow cursor when it tries to auto-complete a URL I'm typing (I have like 2000 bookmarks, but so what.

Other than that, I don't really have anything against IE Mac, which is in many ways better than IE Windows (it is less standards compliant and has had some of the same annoying bugs in version 6 that it had in v4)

My main browser is OmniWeb (latest public beta), which has no such problems with auto-complete. I'm very interested in Chimera, however - which is fast, looks good and has a good standards compliant rendering engine (Mozilla's Gecko) and good JavaScript support. It's not feature complete (i.e. no auto-completion on the URL line among many other things) but it's improving rapidly all the time.

http://www.omnigroup.com
http://chimera.mozdev.org

- n8