Apple to adopt ZFS as default file system for Leopard - Page 4

Sorry guys, no ZFS. http://www.informationweek.com/story...Sfeed_IWK_News

There is now unfortunately:

http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=199903281

It looks like it's not coming after all. But there's a surprise, Apple not delivering a product everybody wants and instead giving us stuff we don't particularly care about one way or the other.

Where the hell is the support for Mac themes??? Dammit, I don't want a shiny dock or transparent menu, I want to be able to choose what I want.

Maybe it really *is* time for Jobs to step down...maybe not shut down Apple like in the PC/Mac guy joke at the WWDC Keynote intro but Jobs has clearly lost it.

He's dishonest (lying about having a lot of top secret features)
He's insulting (showing the world 8 features that we already knew about, 1 of them a Tiger feature, also telling developers 'fuck you' in the form of 'you can build iPhone apps, Web 2.0 apps')
His priorities are wrong. (letting iPhone dev take up all the Leopard resources)

Steve may have saved Apple but I think his time is up...if he's left up there much longer, we may see Apple become the new Microsoft.

I don't know. Regardless, I have the impression that Apple becomes more and more conservative, relatively speaking, when it comes to computer updates. While it can even modestly refresh the hardware (hard drives, graphics, RAM) on a regular basis, and while the updates today are 95% silent (so no need to have THE big hardware to show off), it will choose to wait, wait, and wait until you see something new. And in the meantime the whining machine gets off and flies over our heads in this board.

This looks very much like the Apple attitude from the past when computer components were updated less often than today.

Apple is DOOMED!!!!

not!

The impression from Leopard feature show case is so underwhelmed that keep people thinking that if the features were coming from Solaris, Linux, etc. Space. And earlier, people had impression that Time machine will intelligently reuse the disk drive space to reproduce lost files, now it seemed people need to connect to another external driver? Isn't that the same thing people can do with their own backup softwares now a day?

It smells like yet another Leopard delay, or a feature cutting version of Leopard by October. Hopefully Leopard doesn't turn out to be yet another Windows Vista. People are sticking on Windows XP because how slow Windows Vista perform yet with many more problem than ever.

If it turns out like Microsoft, people better sell their AAPL shares quick!

I hate having to tell people this all the time. Apple did NOT update their computers less often, in the past. That only happened after Moto failed to deliver updates to its chips in a timely manner, after the G4 450 came out.

Before that, Apple updated its machines every 3 months. We expected, and got, new machines, or major upgrades in January, A speed bump in March. Updated machines in July, a speed bump in September, and New machines in January, again.

It will come out in October, feature complete.

I agree. I think quick look/cover flow is one of THE best gui features i have ever seen and (as long as it doesnt lag like in itunes (although 64 bit should cover that (hopefully))) will definitely change the way i access my files. Microsoft would call that ALONE a new os

While I agree that the keynote was disappointing and that the secret features were just spin and hype, we just can't tell from here what the end is really going to look like. Leopard may turn out to offer a lot of improvements under the hood that result in real productivity increases ... or it may just be lipstick on a pig.

I expect we'll all start to hear reports of Leopard's goodness and badness in the next few days as more and more developers post their impressions on the new OS.

As for no ZFS, well, given that nothing new really came out of the keynote, I guess it's par for the course.

I also have a sinking feeling that the iPhone is far and away the apple of Apple's eye right now. Until that fruit drops, I don't think we're going to get anything earth shattering from the other branches of the tree.

The WWDC keynote was AMAZING. By far it was the best so far. You have to remember what previous upgrades where like - people would get all excited over just exposé. Now we have a new finder, new dock, unified look, stacks, big upgrade to mail, spaces, Safari 3.0 , time machine, quick look, spotlight on steroids, ichat, boot camp, that FUCKING AMAZING back to my mac feature, shared folders - I mean holy fuck. We still haven't seen the iLife updates either. I understand some people aren't very tech saavy and don't realize how much work this all takes, but I have never seen so many improvements added to an OS between releases (in under 2 years no less) If you think anyone else can do better - like linux or Microsoft - I would only be too happy to show you the door.

Wait? Assisted, or attended? Because all keynote attendees (and I think all WWDC attendees) get a copy of the Beta.

But for the rest of us, there may be a few things "de-NDA'd", which means we might get a shiny video of another meeting, and devs can discuss that meeting. Last year, two things were released: State of the Mac 100 & 500. They both mostly just gave new images of stuff we'd already seen, but we learned a few things.

And odds are good that in about a week or so, some developer willing to risk the NDA will upload Leopard Beta to a torrent, or at least pass it along to a release group. And there will always be screenshots someone sends in to MR or AI.

In short, I'd say odds are better than even that we'll know by the end of July.

Sure they are improvements but that's it, just the same as what we've had but marginally improved. In other words *yawn*.

There were so many good things that developers are interested in that didn't get covered like no more need to learn Applescript to control apps but you can use proper languages like Python and Ruby. What about the performance improvements X-Ray gives to apps and OS X itself. What about reducing application load times and improve caching? What about themes? What about Resolution Independence? What about quickdraw 2D? What about improving Spotlight's performance?

There were a ton of things that he could have covered but he concentrated on the dumbed down gimmicky features that either nobody cares about or that we've seen/expected for ages. The majority of the Keynote was a waste of time. I honestly think that Leopard has some great things coming but I don't think Jobs' presentation covered them adequately.

Interesting article here how moving to ZFS could be the first step in making OSX for all Intel P.C.s:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/storage/?p=146

I had forgotten about that patent. It could be crucial.

Yea, I agree. And add to the list of insults Steve Jobs' solution to a backup server: throw a [single] USB drive on the Airport Base Station and Time Machine will backup to it. Now WHY THE %%@# would anyone ever want to archive and backup onto a SINGLE drive? That's just like tempting the gods with your precious data.

I'm not quite following your logic. Since people current don't back up at all, creating a simple to use and automatic backup solutions is a good thing no matter how you slice it. Sure, it's only one backup drive, but that is two drives with your data is on. Plus, you could always get a multi-disk NAS with hardware RAID over USB or Ethernet port. Time Machine won't be able to tell the difference.

Uhm this was a keynote....to a developers conference. He did not want to go over the minor details in an hour and a half and not share the major details.

The minor details are being covered in sessions through out the week.

A glimmer of hope.

It wasn't an hour and a half.

It started pretty late, and ended pretty early. I don't think it was over an hour, or not by much. Maybe someone has the time.

Most of what I use my 250GB backup drive for is to "archive" stuff that won't fit on my 80GB MacBook. That's right - I'm archiving to my backup drive.. which means the data is in only one place.. Yea, a SINGLE drive just waiting to fail. I don't like it, but that's all I have right now. I've been waiting for Apple to come out with a "home network server" appliance with RAID, etc.. which will probably never happen... until maybe Steve Jobs is replaced.

So much of my backups/archives are on only one drive. And this should never be. This is an accident waiting to happen. But the only real option Apple gives me is to spend extra $$$ and buy a MacPro.

I could backup to a NAS via SMB or to a Windows machine but then I have to deal with filesystem incompatibilities, lost metadata, strange characters, etc. I was hoping ZFS might help to eliminate a lot of this crap... but what do we get at the keynote? An iPhone demo instead of a ZFS demo. Safari on Windows instead of ZFS, etc.

Relax, guys!
http://www.informationweek.com/news/...leID=199903281

See also the update on AI.

We are back in the game

Edit: browse down to Michael Singer's comment!

Edit 2 - Well, here is the sweet part:

The keynote was 1:23:40.

You know, I am actually starting to think that OS X or OS 11 will be a wide open commodity.

I am remembering two years ago Steve Jobs gave an interview in which he said Apple is "a really good hardware company, but wer'e an even better software company."

then, this year at "D", he praised Gates for realizing that "it is all about the software."

While Apple moving to Intel is good for so many reasons, it can also be seen as the first step to making and Apple OS available for all PCs.

I hope not, but it is possible. And things do seem to be pointing in that direction.

Apple has been approached to license their OS before. They said no. If they were going to do they would have done it when they were hurting. Now that they are successfully kicking ass in all their markets I can't imagine why they would finally decide to do it now.

Yeah, even subtracting the almost two minutes at the beginning for the humorous aside, it was longer than I remembered. But, it still wasn't very long. One of the shorter ones.

Yeah, I remember. When I say "past" I mean the dark Motorola days. Sorry to make you repeat this for me.

This is where I don't agree.

My long term proposition is that as Apple moves into more areas, and the computer portion of their business shrinks as a percentage, even if it is growing well, it will become easier for them to license out the OS to a few, select, companies, under their terms.

Look at some numbers. If the iPhone does as well as some in the industry have stated it might, it could be selling at 50 million a year by 2010. At $350 average price, that would be $17.5 billion, almost two thirds would go to Apple one way or another.

If the iPhone line is successful, up and down a price line, and thus, Apple becomes a successful phone manufacturer, they could be selling 100 million phones a year in a few more years. It's not impossible, considering that a billion phones are sold a year now, and that number is rising. At $250 a phone (average), that would be $25 billion a year.

With a royalty for accessories, like they get now from iPod accessory makers, software, and whatnot, Apple could be raking in a great deal every year just from that.

If Apple is successful with their iPods over that time, even for less expensive models, sells ever more software, ATv, and music, Tv shows, movies, etc, they could be taking in $35 to $45 billion a year, WITHOUT counting computer hardware sales.

Apple may also get into other lines as well. Jobs said that they wouldn't be doing it now. Why? Because they have to digest what they are starting to do.

But, he left it open for the future. I don't doubt that they will.

The point to all of this, is that Apple could find themselves with a 25%, or so, share of their sales, coming from computer hardware.

If this is so, it gives Apple options they never had before, esp. when they were struggling, and got almost all of their sales from computer hardware.

If Apple had a license agreement with one or more companies to build "Macs", as their OS would be in good demand, they could control how those machines were built, and possibly, even sold.

With a possible chance to sell into a far larger market, they might very well take that road.

As OS profits are vastly greater as a percentage, than those from hardware, it could pay very well to see their market expand by several times from OS sales to OEMs', plus the upgrade business they would get as well.

Remember that Apple makes far more profit from selling one copy of OS X retail, than it makes even from the top model Mini. Those would be the upgrade sales. If Apple sells the OS to OEMs for $40, with the increased numbers of copies being sold, much of that would be profit as well.

Apple could make far more profit selling 50 million OEM copies of the OS a year, as well as several million retail copies, then it would get from selling 15 million, or more (depending on the mix), computers.

Apple's computer sales wouldn't dry up, though they would slow down.

I think we might see it someday.

Oops, foreign language(s) short-circuit in my brain. Attended of course.

Shut up. Go buy Solaris and then bitch at Sun for being behind on it's own future filesystem.

That's the first time I hear that. Who thought that Time Machine would use the same drive?

You can use the same drive if you partition it - and in Leopard you can partition your main drive without erasing the existing data.

Sun needs a savior and Apple may be it. If Sun looses their government contract, they are super screwed.

I don't know about a savior, but Sun doesn't have much margin for error.

Their CPU biz is in trouble if Rock and Niagra II don't hit it out of the park, and Solaris isn't gaining the marketshare they'd like.

What I don't see is how Apple adopting ZFS helps Sun. Realistically, if Apple goes to ZFS, it will only be all that useful on Mac Pros and XServes, and the XServe competes directly with Sun's server offerings (Sun's offerings cream it, btw).

I agree with the usefulness of it on a regular MAC, as far as how it would help, I really don't see how it would much this particular tool but if Leopard has tons of Sun based stuff in it they should at least be able to get some sort of royalties, right?
Also, as far as sun servers go, they rock, but their user side systems are really sucking. I am using a Sun 45 right now and it kinda blows.

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=SUNW

Let's not call them "screwed", shall we?

Nope. It's free open source released under Sun's CDDL...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_...bution_License