Panther quartz

pbpb
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I have just read Apple's MacOS X feature comparison page and I noticed something that has not been discussed, I think. According to this page, Panther's Quartz engine has two features not present in Jaguar: hardware accelerated imaging and OpenGL fragment and shader programming. Could someone explain what this means for the OS and the user experience?



Thanks,

PB

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    not unlike myselfnot unlike myself Posts: 2,037member
    First off good find! I like that page. Second off the simple answer is 'Graphical Candy' but the longer answer will have to come from a 'pro'. Takers anybody?
  • Reply 2 of 7
    pbg4 dudepbg4 dude Posts: 1,611member
    Quote:

    Graceful file server disconnect



    This is a nice way of saying "Won't lock up if a network share disappears".
  • Reply 3 of 7
    programmerprogrammer Posts: 3,458member
    Quote:

    Python Quartz scripting



    Interesting...





    Quote:

    OpenGL fragment and shader programming



    Not sure exactly what they mean because Jaguar has support for this too. This is listed under "Quartz: Display Graphics" not "Quartz 2D" so I wouldn't read to much into it being labelled Quartz, that's just where they put all of the non-2D features.



    Quote:

    Hardware accelerated imaging



    This is interesting as well, and probably connected to the Python thing above. Sounds like they've added some cool APIs for accelerating image processing. Writing Photoshop competitors probably just got easier.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    pbpb Posts: 4,255member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Programmer

    Python Quartz scripting



    Could it be related to "Scriptable Image Processing Service" under "Quartz 2D Graphics"?
  • Reply 5 of 7
    smirclesmircle Posts: 1,035member
    Programmable shaders are a thing that originated in 3D games. They are basically micro programs that get uploaded to the superfast render unit in modern graphics cards and called whenever a game applies a shadow, lighting effect or gradient. When called, they transform pixel values much more flexible than static texture and lighting units can.



    They are one hot topic in the race between NVidia and ATI and in the race between OpenGL and DirectX. Only the latest crop of ATI cards is able to really use them to a larger extend, but for non-realtime effects, OpenGL allows you to run them on the main CPU.



    Since it is part of Quartz, this could be used by any application, not just the OS. I am not a 3D expert, but ideas that come to mind:

    - textured window shadows

    - animated textured widgets

    - visualizers

    - Final Cut et al could eventually use it for fade-in/fade-out and gfx effects.



    The bad news: if Apple should use them in the OS to any larger extend, most current gfx-cards will be left out (or rather slow).
  • Reply 6 of 7
    moogsmoogs Posts: 4,296member
    I agree: nice find, PB!



    I also found the "Graceful Disconnect" item humorous. The marketing dorks obviously had a big hand in creating this document.



  • Reply 7 of 7
    irfotonirfoton Posts: 15member
    Quartz accelerated imaging: Could this a reference to the vimage library they released a few months back. This is a library of imaging routines that make heavy use of Altivec vector processor.



    irfoton
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