Wwdc 2006
Nu har WWDC 2006 börjat, en mässa för utvecklare inom Mac och Mac OS X. Idag kommer troligtvis Mac OS X Leopard annonseras (Mac OS X 10.5). Mässan pågår i några dagar. Dom nya PowerMacarna kommer också komma nästan helt säkert med namn MacPro, troligtvis med IntelCore2Duo och kanske nya servrar. Vad tror ni kommer? I kväll svensk tid mellan 19.00 och 22.00 kommer det troligtvis en podcast från eventet. Spännande.
http://macosrumors.com/20060710A1.php
Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" early developer-release build reports are in, with some very interesting performance numbers.
Leopard is a remarkable advance in several fundamental ways over previous versions of Mac OS X.
Some features will undoubtedly still be a surprise when unveiled at WWDC, because the core OS and some of the basic bundled applications are all we've seen so far....other projects still need to be merged with the Developer Release in the coming weeks and we'll be able to report on those applications/features, but for now we are mostly looking at the core Leopard operating system itself.
For one thing, the Leopard user interface has continued the considerable Aqua, Quartz and Finder revolutions that began in Jaguar and Tiger. Virtually all incidences of the "brushed metal" theme have been replaced with a sleeker, better-contrasting theme that bears some similarities to the appearance of the current Mail.app....but with a new spin at several layers of the theme design and rendering engine changes that create a remarkably high-resolution, visually rich look which immediately tells the user, at first glance:
"This OS is a big step forward."
Other interface changes reportedly include the Dashboard being separated from other Dock icons and given its own section of the Menu Bar which will absorb many other functions -- Spotlight, most of what is currently in System Preferences.app in terms of operating system control panels, and many other of the tools which control the operating system. The Dashboard will continue to be an environment for running third party Widgets, but by consolidating so much of its operating system into the Dashboard, it is made very portable so that the System Widgets can easily be adopted for use on iPhone, iPod, and a multitude of other Apple devices that will eventually run an adapted form of Mac OS X itself....
Continue on to the next few pages for more feature reports, and early performance numbers. There are many pleasant surprises....and a lot of Insanely-Greatness.....coming out of the developers in Cupertino, and we're proud to be able to give an early look into what's coming
ac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" early developer-release build reports are in, with some very interesting performance numbers. (Cont'd)
Along with the consolidation of as many functions as possible into Widget-like form in the "Dashboard", and the blending of Widgets into the "main application space" of Leopard, the user interface will get some other changes.
More basic settings and system information will be available directly in the Apple Menu, and in the About This Mac window, without having to open System Preferences/Dashboard or System Profiler.app for example.
More "hardware and system feedback" is being added to Leopard, to expand on the existing options available from Activity Monitor.app. Many power users set Activity Monitor's Dock icon to display CPU History or other key system performance information, having to add third party software to display multiple performance criteria at the same time. Leopard will tackle this head-on by allowing all of the various options....CPU History, Used/Free/Active/Inactive RAM, Load Averages, even the option to pop-up a Quartz Extreme overlay (like the Application Switcher, Volume Overlay, Brightness Overlay, Dashboard itself, et cetera) with information about crashing processes as soon as they are detected, offering options to react to the crash.
There are a lot of other interface changes, which we'll be confirming and getting permission to bring out of source-embargo in the next few weeks leading up to WWDC...but next up we'd like to dig into some of the low-level system optimizations and new features which will greatly increase the performance of Leopard on all recent Macs....but most particularly, on multi-core Intel systems and Core 2 processors.
You have not seen anywhere near Apple's best work with Intel and highly optimized compilers with mature code design from the ground up to take advantage of the uniquely efficient Core microarchitecture, until you've seen Leopard on a Mac Pro with four cores of Conroe or eight cores of Woodcrest....even Apple's early experimental four and eight core systems which were impressive in their day, couldn't dream of the kind of multitasking efficiency -- even for small numbers of, or single, tasks due to the remarkable Thread Farming technology we have reported on previously -- that the combination of Leopard and Core 2 will create.
For one thing, we can say right up front that Leopard is noticeably snappier across the board than Tiger....even on the oldest system that supports it, a PowerMac G3 Blue and White or Powerbook G3 "Pismo" (both with built-in FireWire which will still be Leopard's basic requirement, essentially the same as Tiger). And on typical systems owned by Mac users today, in between the G3 and the Core Duo, the advantage is very substantial. On single-processor/single-core systems, you can expect to see a gain of about 25% overall when working with the user interface, and 12-20% performance boosts on many common system functions which nearly all applications access, like Core Graphics, Quartz Extreme, Aqua, AudioAL, et cetera. Significant changes to the Carbon libraries will help those applications take advantage of most of these advances but Cocoa apps are much more likely to get the full boost.
Many more details on Page Three!
Much of the advance comes with new graphics drivers, a hugely revamped 2D and 3D Core Graphics/Quartz Extreme codebase, and the long awaited re-introduction of Quartz 2D Extreme, a feature cut from Tiger due to the complexity required to ensure that all the different ways applications write to the screen are fully compatible with the GPU acceleration it creates.
Also, Leopard itself has been revamped with intimate assistance by Intel developers and engineers. This is an unprecedented effort which utterly dwarfs everything that has been done with Tiger on Intel....and quite remarkably, also carries over somewhat to Leopard on PowerPC systems. Some of the improvements are fundamental, but of course the best results are definitely to be seen on Core Duo and Core 2 systems.
On the average multicore Intel Mac, you can expect Leopard to simply feel -- as Steve Jobs has often said -- an "All New Mac". We're talking about 100%+ performance boosts in many benchmarks that are dependent on compiler optimization, GPU acceleration, efficient use of multiple CPUs and high-bandwidth motherboards, etc.....and 40, 50, 70, 80% boosts in many others.
The numbers we've seen, while specifically embargoed in this instance because some developers may have access to different builds and therefore get different numbers which could potentially identify them at this point....also give significant increases for broadband internet performance (on par with hand-optimized configurations under Tiger, if not better), very significant LAN networking and Finder FTP performance, more protocols supported directly in the Finder for network/internet access through Finder windows, and a big boost in application startup times as well -- even on the slowest of Macs a huge boost but on Intel Macs, "instantaneous" will be redefined.
When it comes to the system-level "BitTorrent"-style bandwidth sharing system, we know it is indeed a very real project at Apple and will eventually be part of a package that comes with Mac OS X Server in the Leopard or post-Leopard era. It will allow large organizations to pool bandwidth at multiple locations for single purposes, like high-demand global media downloads or popular files, distributing Software Updates across their enterprise or to external customers/employees/partners and so forth. It will also allow, at least in potential, the donation of bandwidth to Apple in return for "credits" that can be used on iTunes, the Apple Store, or to buy anything else Apple offers. This will be very attractive to large companies with unused bandwidth who can help offset their own expenses, and Apple's by effectively selling their bandwidth to Apple at a bargain-basement rate. For those companies, however, bargain-basement for unused bandwidth is infinitely better than nothing, and Quality of Service is a fundamental part of this project that is being developed under code-name "Supercluster".
Another big performance report comes from a source who works at Intel....developers there have been giving Apple access to the absolutely latest compilers and internal documentation which has allowed Apple to do optimization work for Conroe, Merom and Woodcrest that Microsoft won't even have scratched the surface of when Windows Vista ships to the public some time in mid to late 2007....most likely, after Leopard although it's currently scheduled to ship first to Redmond's biggest customers.
This will mean, that at a fundamental level, the cards are stacked in Apple's favor. Apple is moving faster, to ignore the traditional Intel processors like the Pentium, Xeon, Centrino et al. and focus like a laser beam on Intel's ultra-efficient future lineup, than Microsoft and that is definitely going to show when the two operating systems are run side by side.
There is a reason that Apple has decided not to develop its own virtualization solution, instead focusing on BootCamp and third-party software like Parallels Workstation. While new features and a series of philosophical evolutionary advancements are a big part of Leopard....the big story is that Leopard is very fast, very efficient, and has many new/improved bundled applications/widgets. Apple has had time to really dig deep and run through their internal wishlists right down to the kitchen sink.
We have a lot more reporting to do on Leopard in the days ahead, so stay tuned!
Mycket intressant!
