When does 10.4 come?

Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
When will 10.4 be released? are there any developer previews out yet?

I'm asking this because I want to buy Panther because of ichatAV2.1, and I wouldn't buy it if Tiger or whatever it will be called is released in the summer.

Also does anybody have an idea of what is coming (speed, ichatAV2.2, expose2...)? Is it worth waiting?



Would Panther improve the performance of my Rev.A 12" Powerbook anywhere near a RAM upgrade (256 => 1GB)?

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    mcqmcq Posts: 1,543member
    No developer previews are out yet. If trends hold, then an announcement/feature demo of 10.4 would be shown at WWDC in July, then beta testing for a couple months with a developers, with a late Fall release.



    I'd probably say a ram upgrade would make your PB snappier? better than 10.2 --> 10.3... feature refinements and things like Expose are in 10.3, but I'm not sure that I'd say a really huge performance increase was gained between the two (it's been a while since I've used 10.2, so I could be off on that).
  • Reply 2 of 12
    staphbabystaphbaby Posts: 353member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by future-ex-pc-user

    When will 10.4 be released? are there any developer previews out yet?



    There are no developer previews out yet; they probably won't be released to developers until the Worldwide Developers' Conference (WWDC) in late June.



    The pattern from the last couple of years is announcement and discussion at WWDC, followed by 4-5 months of development and beta-testing, and then release sometime before Christmas (September for 10.2, I think, and early November for 10.3).



    Quote:

    I'm asking this because I want to buy Panther because of ichatAV2.1, and I wouldn't buy it if Tiger or whatever it will be called is released in the summer.



    Probably not actually in the northern summer... probably autumn/early winter I would imagine.



    Quote:

    Also does anybody have an idea of what is coming (speed, ichatAV2.2, expose2...)? Is it worth waiting?



    The only new feature officially announced so far is the spoken user interface. This will basically act like Dragon Naturally Speaking et al. for Windows. It's worth waiting for this if you have any sight-impaired friends or relatives I suppose...



    If you believe crazy rumour sites like macosrumors (blegh), features may include enhanced Linux API compatability and perhaps a Wine-like windows compatability layer (yeah, right!) ala Darwine.



    Beyond that, there'll probably be more optimisation, updates to the various subsystems (Perl, Samba, filesystem support for non-HFS volumes etc.), maybe some more work on fully taking advantage of the G5's capabilities, perhaps some new filesystem work building on the HFS-X filesystem from 10.3... there will probably be more moves to system-wide metadata integration (as discussed in other threads), although I doubt there would be anything as ambitious as WinFS.



    Beyond that ? who knows? I don't. I fervently wish they'll get around to revising Appleworks, but I doubt it will happen, and this isn't an OS issue anyway, unless they do a Safari and improve the text subsystem to the point where it will fully support an academic standard word-processor/spreadsheet without extra effort ? now that would be cool. I also really really want a single centralised Finder preference to enable/disable the spatial Finder. Please god Apple ? please!





    Quote:

    Would Panther improve the performance of my Rev.A 12" Powerbook anywhere near a RAM upgrade (256 => 1GB)?

    Any suggestions?

    Thanks



    It'll improve performance; but the machine is probably so crippled on 256MB that RAM should be your first priority. Even an extra 256MB would make a big difference (although by all means go for the 1GB: it will make life much nicer).



    10.3 is generally a rather nicer user experience though; it feels substantially more rounded than 10.2. This is more important to me than speed, but YMMV.
  • Reply 3 of 12
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by staphbaby



    The only new feature officially announced so far is the spoken user interface. This will basically act like Dragon Naturally Speaking et al. for Windows. It's worth waiting for this if you have any sight-impaired friends or relatives I suppose...




    And it will do Apple wonders in government and enterprise sales, many of which (understandably) require compliance with the disabilities act.



    Quote:

    If you believe crazy rumour sites like macosrumors (blegh), features may include enhanced Linux API compatability and perhaps a Wine-like windows compatability layer (yeah, right!) ala Darwine.



    The WINE layer is MOSR fodder (yeah, it's a third party project, and that's where it'll stay), but the Linux API compatibility is not. Apple's been moving that way.



    Quote:

    Beyond that ? who knows? I don't. I fervently wish they'll get around to revising Appleworks, but I doubt it will happen, and this isn't an OS issue anyway, unless they do a Safari and improve the text subsystem to the point where it will fully support an academic standard word-processor/spreadsheet without extra effort ? now that would be cool.



    According to the head of Nisus, Apple's been working very hard on the text engine. Nisus would be their most demanding customer in this regard, so this gives me hope.
  • Reply 4 of 12
    Quote:

    Originally posted by staphbaby

    The only new feature officially announced so far is the spoken user interface. This will basically act like Dragon Naturally Speaking et al. for Windows. It's worth waiting for this if you have any sight-impaired friends or relatives I suppose...



    This is only half-right.



    The spoken interface will help with sight-impaired users because it will read elements off of the screen. However, it is not analogous to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. NS is speech recognition/dictation software. Mac OS X's spoken interface is the very opposite -- the computer speaking to you.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    banchobancho Posts: 1,517member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    The WINE layer is MOSR fodder (yeah, it's a third party project, and that's where it'll stay), but the Linux API compatibility is not. Apple's been moving that way.



    Doesn't WINE require an x86 processor?
  • Reply 6 of 12
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Bancho

    Doesn't WINE require an x86 processor?



    Correct.



    WINE will *never* run by itself on Mac OS X as long as we're still using PowerPC processors.



    However, the Darwine project is trying to merge an x86 emulator with WINE to get it to work.
  • Reply 7 of 12
    banchobancho Posts: 1,517member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Brad

    Correct.



    WINE will *never* run by itself on Mac OS X as long as we're still using PowerPC processors.



    However, the Darwine project is trying to merge an x86 emulator with WINE to get it to work.




    Gotcha, thanks!

  • Reply 8 of 12
    bigbluebigblue Posts: 341member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Amorph

    The WINE layer is MOSR fodder (yeah, it's a third party project, and that's where it'll stay), but the Linux API compatibility is not. Apple's been moving that way.





    What does that mean ? Can we expect to run Linux apps in the future on OSX (without X11 or whatever it's called) ?
  • Reply 9 of 12
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    You wouldn't use WINE for Linux apps. Most of the good ones are already ported to PPC and ready to download in Aquafied form. And for ones like GIMP that aren't Aquafied there is X11. WINE is for Windows apps. But buying a Walmart PC and pirating I mean...using a copy of Windows is just cheaper and faster than anything else.
  • Reply 10 of 12
    chuckerchucker Posts: 5,089member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Brad

    WINE will *never* run by itself on Mac OS X as long as we're still using PowerPC processors.



    With the exception of ppc-compiled Win32 binaries, of course. Think open source Win32 software. It'd be easier to compile it for ppc and have it run through Wine (which would then also work on Linux/ppc) than exchanging its used APIs.
  • Reply 11 of 12
    staphbabystaphbaby Posts: 353member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by BigBlue

    What does that mean ? Can we expect to run Linux apps in the future on OSX (without X11 or whatever it's called) ?



    No, but it will be easier to port them. Mind you, if the Linux apps use some of the toolkits like Qt or WxWindows then running them without X11 is already possible.



    As for wine, I have no idea why I even mentioned this, given that this is clearly one of the pieces of "information" given to Mosr by the rabid space monkeys.



    Clearly, wine alone will not allow windows apps compiled for x86 to run on OS X, not least of all because parts of the application will not be using the Win32 API and instead will be executing machine native code. As already mentioned, the two options for windows code compatability are therefore:



    (1) just provide WINE, and recompile any apps you want to run on OS X or go hunting for the rare surviving NT PPC binaries out there; or



    (2) provide WINE and an x86 emulator to run all the bits of the binary which are machine-native: the Darwine project plan to use Qemu to do this (this is about 5 times slower than native x86 when run on x86 ? so it's not hugely fast, although its certainly better than running a whole instance of Windows in Virtual PC, especially because you don't have to waste money and emotional energy on using Windows).



    Wine is currently working (more-or-less) on Darwin thanks to Darwine, but all apps require a recompile, because the emulation stuff is not finished (or even really started) yet.



    And no, I don't think Apple will do this. It's much more likely they'll release Cocoa for Windows, and that's saying something.



    As for the text subsystem: roll on Apple!
  • Reply 12 of 12
    staphbabystaphbaby Posts: 353member
    Mosr have this further "information" (although it sounds kind-of credible ? we'll see):



    "DiskWarrior-like directory rebuilding. Long the champion of Mac disk repair, DiskWarrior uses a unique method to construct an optimized replacement directory structure and simply replace the damaged directory with the optimized version, rather than attempting to repair individual instances of directory damage. Apple intends to offer a similar feature in Tiger's Disk Utility.



    Improved Permissions Repair. Permissions will now be automatically checked, and repaired if need be, before and after every Software Update or Installer run. Detection of potentially serious permissions problems may be carried out in the background, in real-time without the need for user interaction.



    System Integrity Checker. One of the most important new features touted by sources is a Disk Utility 10.5 feature that would store a map of the proper system state provided by Apple with each system release, and check the location, size, and attributes of system files against it. This would help even unskilled users ensure that their /System, /Library etc. directories are in a pristine state."



    I for one do not look forward to my permissions on /var/mail being reset every time I install software...
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