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How is not having ZFS by default dropping features? AFAIK Apple simply never mentionned anything publicly about ZFS. All I heard about ZFS on Leopard was from external sources.

Also really... running a G3 on Tiger is already a pain. I don't want to know what it's like with Leopard.

If you want to use your old machine for a server then there's always a good linux distribution suited for it.

> Also really... running a G3 on Tiger is already a pain.

Not true.

1.) There are 900MHz G3 iBooks out there.
2.) Tiger on a G3 is as fast as Panther on a G3 which is MUCH faster than 10.2 on a G3, which was the preinstalled OS on those iBooks. So if you claim that running Tiger on these machines is a pain, you'll have to argue that using these machines was an even bigger pain when they were brand-new.

If I could mod you straight up to 5, I would. Heck, if I could mod you way beyond 5, I would.

You nailed it.

OTOH, Thom (or Jeremy, I dunno, but it's still Thom's job to dig deeper into the story!) *so* cherry-picked the email in that thread that he found news-worthy.

Check these out (both by the very same Eric Schlegel):
http://lists.apple.com/archives/carbon-dev/2007/Jun/msg00316.html
http://lists.apple.com/archives/carbon-dev/2007/Jun/msg00322.html

There's hardly a lack of care for the current developer situation. Specially when there are sessions *dedicated* to the subject on WWDC itself!

Mass hysteria seems to abound, though.

Anyway, I still pretty much doubt that Leopard can't be shoehorned into quite a number of G3's at all.

My Performa 6360, running 9.2.2, can attest this. Manual ResEdit intervention was necessary, but it works like a charm.

Same as my iMac Rev D, running the very latest release of Tiger. XPostFacto to the rescue.

But we'll know the *real deal* in due time.

(Sidenote: who in a right mindset would run Vista, or even XP, on a processor that tops at 900MHz (and those are few and far between), especially processors lacking any kind of SIMD extensions? Not to mention how most G3 motherboards can't support more than 640MB of RAM. Really, wake up and smell the coffee. And those rare, fastest-ever-produced G3s were discontinued in 2003. 4 years already!

Now, how about unreasonable expectations that Apple itself will continue supporting machines after they EOLd? Try Ubuntu PPC for a change! Or Xubuntu if you machine is lacking RAM and a larger hard disk.)

Anyway, my souped-up iMac 333 won't cry missing out on Leopard until I'm pretty sure XPostFacto won't do its magic; and it's not like it feels any zippy on Tiger already.

And it will take a couple years for Leopard-exclusive apps to become the norm. Until then, Apple will continue releasing security updates for Tiger, as it currently does for Panther.

So really, what's the big deal? You can't run the glitz already. A hardware failure might be on the verge of happening (specially the HDs, those tend to fail quite frequently!).

What about saving some money or getting yourself an el-cheapo G4 on eBay?

OK, Leopard is six months late. But ZFS in Mac OS X wasn't dropped, because it has never been officially announced. And the policy regarding ZFS seems much like resolution-independence in Tiger: It's part of the OS, but it's not turned on. But developers/hackers who want to test/play with the feature can unlock it.
And I bet that there'll be ZFS implementations and hacks for Leopard as soon as the OS is released.

Just wondering cause I am unsure.....but how long does it take to take source code that is already written by someone else (ZFS by Sun) and sticking it into a *NIX OS (OS X by Apple) compared to a written from scratch filesystem (WinFS by MS)...if I am not mistaken, most of the ZFS should be plumbing code to make it work with OS X?

This is not trying to start a flame war or anything I am just tryng to understand. I have a feeling Apple spent more time with the Iphone since that will probably bring them more revenue and hence the delays with OS X. Also they figure people are gonna wait anyway for Penryn based workstations and Santa Rosa based laptops to come out full strength which is around the time when Leopard will be released. Just a thought.

The signs are starting, delays (6 month delay so far)

Actually, iPhone is a good reason for the leopard delay. Vista delays had no other reason than crappy management.

dropping features (ZFS, this)

Apple never said that they'd include ZFS. Plus, ZFS is not a critical feature - it's just a better filesystem, but still a filesystem. Why people cares so much about it is a mistery for me.

And 64-bit Carbon is not a "feature". Carbon is a library for legacy apps. Not many apps use it, and the ones that use it don't need 64 bit. Nobody cares about 64-bit carbon, nobody is going to notice it. Actually, I think that the "feature here" is not making it 64-bit capable - Carbon has to die, is just old compatibility crap.


(severe stability problems currently, even in released Safari beta)

Which is why they're not shipping leopard until october.

Edited 2007-06-14 16:38

"And 64-bit Carbon is not a "feature". Carbon is a library for legacy apps."

It would be like Microsoft shipping Vista x64 with only a 32 bit Win32 API and requiring anyone who wants to write native 64 bit apps to use .Net x64. If that were the case, it'd be a huge deal, but of course since this is Apple no one gets up in arms.

Apple's user base lets them get away with bloody murder without holding anyone accountable for actions like this.

Edited 2007-06-14 16:43

If you are going to write a game on Mac, you write it in Carbon, so I disagree, there SHOULD be 64-bit Carbon. Carbon apps perform much better than Cocoa apps (and don't give me that crap about computers are getting faster, its no excuse) and I rarely use Cocoa.

And Carbon is NOT just old compatibility crap, there are a lot of parts in Carbon that are OS X only!!

Photoshop
QuarkXPress
Acrobat
MS Office

These applications are not insignificant, and all of them rely on Carbon. There are others very important Mac apps too that pre-date Mac OS X that all rely on Carbon, such as Illustrator.

It's arguable as to whether or not a 64-bit Carbon would really be all that useful for Acrobat or MS Office.... Given the demo that Steve gave at the keynote though it's clear that Photoshop and QuarkXPress could both benefit.

Well, the development teams are probably spread quite thin. The iPhone takes a good chunk of development hours to finish. MS had Vista to finish.



ZFS was never announced by Apple, it was blurted out by a Sun director at a non-Apple conference and it had been spotted in a Leopard beta. G3 support could be dropped, simply because there is too much support going on and Apple can't stretch resources that thin.



It seems to me that Steve might have called the Safari dev team and said "I want Safari 3.0 beta released at WWDC, no discussion. I don't have a 'One more thing' for the keynote!" where the Safari project leader says in a nervous tone "uh.. yes, sir!" and goes crapping his pants, having to tell the dev team the good news that sleep is going to be banned for the next few weeks, because either satisfy Steve or be Steved.

It's not the same mess as Vista, which probably never will be perfect, but underwent seemingly endless nightmare of rewrites and still isn't good enough. They had 5 years to do an OS.

I think the Safari release was just particularly poorly coordinated.

Excuses, excuses, yes, but I don't think you can say that things are running out of control in a Vista like way. They were in the 90's with hundreds of projects going no where, but I don't think that's the case today.

Well, the development teams are probably spread quite thin. The iPhone takes a good chunk of development hours to finish. MS had Vista to finish.
MS also had the Xbox 360, Zune, etc to finish as well. Apple should have a team dedicated to OS X, and hire additional people to work on other products as the need arises.

ZFS was never announced by Apple, it was blurted out by a Sun director at a non-Apple conference and it had been spotted in a Leopard beta.
Yeah, but some features in Leopard, such as Time Machine, really needed it and could benefit from it... zfs allows Time Machine to be well integrated rather then hacked into the system.

It seems to me that Steve might have called the Safari dev team and said "I want Safari 3.0 beta released at WWDC, no discussion. I don't have a 'One more thing' for the keynote!" where the Safari project leader says in a nervous tone "uh.. yes, sir!" and goes crapping his pants, having to tell the dev team the good news that sleep is going to be banned for the next few weeks, because either satisfy Steve or be Steved.
Is that a good way to run a company? I think thats why Google is rated a much better place to work, and why I personally tend to find Google's products to be top notch, moreso then Apple with the pretty interface on top of an existing product.

Even though I am a big mac fan and am excited about leopard, I will have to agree with you. At least leopard still has innovation. Hopefully the next release will go better.

Well you didn't get the -5 ... :-)

But I can't see how you can count ZFS as a dropped feature, when Apple did not say they would be including it in the first place.

Why does everyone put Apple on such a high pedestal?

If you have your expectations so high, when they disappoint you are let down even more than normal... In Vistas case no one had these high expectations and actually expected it to be crap.

When it comes to Apple everyone expects the OS to be so great and the computers so great, it never gives Apple any room for error...

OSX is great, it is by far the best OS I've ever used (and that is a bold statement), coming from a Linux background I find it stable and *nix like to the point where I don't actually miss not using linux.

Now I expect Leopard is going to be great and it's going to be stable, it's only slipped a few months (not years) so relax and wait for it.

Don't allow rumors of what to expect to dictate your thoughts, rather let Apple tell what they are doing. This is probably why they keep so many things secret.