Submitted by Apple has just released a new web page with developer information concerning Mac OS 10.5, Leopard. Among other things, the list includes: OpenGL 2.1, resolution independence, the adoption of the Mandatory Access Control framework from TrustedBSD, Code signing, and much more. And yes, boys and girls, there are screenshots as well. Update: Apple also launched faster MacBook Pros today. Update II: Screenshots of Leopard from ThinkSecret.
“Now in Leopard, the Objective-C runtime has been updated to include a thoroughly modern and high performance garbage collection system, making memory management a thing of the past.”
Now, there is always the question of how well does it compare to Hotspot’s GCs.
I’m kinda wondering what shape the GC takes myself. It’s probably a conservative collector, given that its got to integrate with a hybrid ObjC/C environment. If its “throughly modern” as Apple claims it is, its probably a concurrent collector, like Sun’s concurrent low pause collector. That makes sense, given that Objective C is used for GUI apps, where latency is more important than throughput.
Since nearly all Apple machines are SMP now, a good concurrent GC would benefit from that too. Being able to garbage collect from another thread on another CPU makes GC nearly free, if the locking is done well.
It really doesn’t make it free. The barriers and such required for concurrent GC to occur do impose a hit on mutator throughput. What it allows is very short and consistent pause times for the mutator, which is the important thing for most applications. In comparison, the relatively fixed hit on mutator performance is much less important.
I think “garbage collection” is just an updated version of NSAutoreleasePool. Now the runtime environment will automatically deallocate objects, not NSAutoreleasePool.
Xray looks pretty sweet, a GarageBand like interface for watching how your app performs. Neato.
Apple, is there is anything you do – please fix the Finder.
Its a peice of shit that is so poorly implemented its not even funny. Storing personal settings in a hidden file in each directory is so 1980’s.
I was tempted to mod you down, except that your comments are factually accurate.
1. The Finder is still written in Carbon. Why?
2. The interface inspires authors to write commercial software replacements for it, and they make money doing so. This should be a hint at the very least that the NeXT interface is not the kewlest thing evar.
Where I disagree somewhat is the issue of personal settings. I think the philosophy here is that *nixes manage very well with .hidden filenames/directories and that in the long run keeping the filesystem non-arcane is a better bet.
1. The Finder is still written in Carbon. Why?
Why Not?
Carbon is *not* deprecated in anyway.
http://daringfireball.net/2006/10/some_assembly_required
I find the Finder a bad piece of software, but not because it is written in Carbon… that has got nothing to do with it.
Maybe someone could be specific about what camplaints they have about the Finder? I have basically one– under OS X, there’s too much c**p in the left part of the window; I prefer the extra real estate you got in the left with OS 9 and below. Other than that, no issues.
@TomB7
If you click on the toolbar show/hide button in the upper right of any Finder window, not only does it hide the toolbar but the left panel as well.
another big beef folks have, is when a share point gets disconnected unexpectedly.. the finder will then rainbow swirl, no way to kill it. you either retart or wait an ungodly ammount of time for it to say “hey, these disconnected”
“If you click on the toolbar show/hide button in the upper right of any Finder window, not only does it hide the toolbar but the left panel as well.”
Wow– thanks! I guess I should have know that, but I don’t recall seeing that in MacWorld or anywhere.
As for sharepoints– yea that’s a nuisance, but Windows is pretty flaky in this regard as well.
That’s no excuse. We still want it fixed!
My main beef to be honest is with the seemingly random way in which folder contents are presented. It’s almost as if Steve Jobs is rolling a dice or involved in some other weird game –
“Yes ladies and gentlemen, he thought he was getting column view as set in the preferences, but no, we’re going to jump out and surprise him with icon view!”
“Xray builds on top of the open source DTrace utility”
Way to go. Apple is maybe the first company that finally stopped reinventing the wheel with each and every update…
PDF, opengl, khtml, etc, etc
I think Leopard looks very promising on paper. Hopefully this will get more people to develop for the mac.
And i agree with miro. I like the way Apple has stop reinventing the wheel and uses existing good and proven technology to work on.
Edit: Oh and i forgot to mention i am actually much more looking for to Leopard with all those updated apps such as Safari, iCal etc as well as iwork 07 then Vista with Office 07.
Edited 2006-10-24 12:28
I didn’t see in this article and haven’t looked yet, but will 10.5 support the G4 processors? I’d be sad if I have to replace my trusty powerbook, but I like the idea of resolution independence and OpenGL 2.1 support. The other stuff looks nice too
Yes, it will support G4.
I don’t think you have much to worry about with your PowerBook as long as it has a “fairly” recent graphics card. Here is a list of G4 Macs inside and outside of the office that I have run the Developer builds on:
1) 12″ PowerBook G4/867 MHz 1 GB RAM – Runs quite well albeit no Core Image acceleration. But Spaces and Expose works very fluidly. Overall, I see a subjective speed increase on this system over Tiger.
2) 400 MHz G4 Sawtooth 896MB RAM with upgraded NV 5200 (from the closet of deprecated parts) – Amazingly this system is running Leopard with no problems whatsoever. Not the fastest system ever but it does work without hardly any hiccups.
3) 700 MHz G4 iMac with 1 GB RAM – This system works very well with Leopard, even though the 32 MB video card inside doesn’t support Core Image Spaces and Expose work fluidly. Time Machine is not as fluid as it could be (Core Animations requirements are the same as Core Image)
4) 15″ 1.5 GHz PowerBook 1.5 GB RAM – This system works VERY well with Leopard. Core Image and Core Animation is both fully supported on this (my) laptop. Also, as in most of the other systems that I have tried my copy of the Developers build (newest) on I have seen a subjective speed increase.
I don’t think you will need to worry about not being able to run Leopard on you system. Though some of the fancy effects will not be fully enabled if your system does not fully support Core Image.
JRM7
Cool, I have the 17″ 1.33, so even Core Image and Core Animation should work. Thanks!
finally!