Earlier this week, Apple seeded pre-release versions of the v10.2.4 update to Mac OS X, both client and server. Both seeds of 10.2.4, known internally as “Jaguar Pink,” were numbered build 6I13. Apple also has been writing drivers for a number of popular sound and video cards. With the release of 10.2.3, support was added for SoundBlaster Extigy, and as of last month, work was nearly complete on Audigy and Audigy 2 drivers. As for video cards, Apple is planning to support several workstation-quality graphics cards in 10.3, that weren’t previously supported, including full support for NVidia Quadro 980, 900, and 750XGL. Support will also be added for ATI’s top-end Fire GL series.
MacOSX 10.2.4 Seeded to Testers; New Info on Future Improvements
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Will this include fixes for the fix_prebinding bug which appears to be responsible for the “beach ball of death”?
Could anyone share some information on sound regarding Mac OS X? (Sorry, OT, I know). I’m curious if they are using their own sound module, or ALSA or arts. I’m assuming they are using their own, unless I hear otherwise. The reason I ask, is because there is a lack of support in many Unixes for the sound cards mentioned above. Is it possible Apple will release their drivers? Or do they contained licensed code? I honestly don’t know anything about the situation and would appreciate any information/corrections.
> I’m curious if they are using their own sound module, or ALSA or arts.
Its own media stuff, not compatible with the rest of the “common” Unix multimedia architectures.
> Is it possible Apple will release their drivers?
Not likely.
>Or do they contained licensed code?
Bingo.
Check out this link:
http://developer.apple.com/audio/index.html
You are interested in CoreAudio, and I/O Kit. But as Eugenia mentions, these are not OS and this is do to licensing issues. However, it’s worth a look. CoreAudio and I/O Kit are very impressive examples of quality Apple code.
Is there anywhere where Apple posts a hardware compatibility list? I have seen support for devices added in a particular update but no complete list.
I’ve looked through the Apple support area and all I get is unrelated items.
Strange that they are writing drivers for nVidia cards in-house as I assumed that nVidia (famous for not sharing code) would be keeping this as an inside project.
nVidia is known to have a good relationship with Apple (Apple machines were the first to ship GeForce4s). Everything can be done for the right price you known. Plus, we don’t know if some Apple engineers actually have to work from within nVidia’s offices (as they suggested once to another OS company).
Check this out:
http://www.apple.com/switch/questions/peripherals/cameras.html
There’s nav along the top to check out the following devices:
cameras, camcorders, input devices, monitors/projectors, printers, storage
This could still be incomplete. Many devices will have out-of-box or partial support, but may not have been rigorously tested.
What’s the point of a complete compat list? Either you have devices now which you can check individually, or you are considering something that should also say whether or not it is? Why do you care about what you don’t have or never will get?
Strange that they are writing drivers for nVidia cards in-house as I assumed that nVidia (famous for not sharing code) would be keeping this as an inside project.
Hmm…I don’t know their history really, but I would think it would go like this:
Apple: Hey, nVidia Guys, we’d like to write drivers for your video cards? Whaddya think?
nVidia: Sure, sign this NDA, license the source to our base driver to get you started, and for an extra few $$$ we’ll help set up a porting team to help you in porting it. Oh, and, of course, you can’t release the source code.
Apple: Ok, no problem, where do we send the check?
vs.
OSS Community: Hi, we’d like to write a drive to support your video cards.
nVidia: Sure, sign this NDA, license the source to our base driver to get you started, and for an extra few $$$ we’ll give you a phone number to call for tech support to help you in porting it.
OSSC: Can we do it without the NDA?
nVidia: No.
OSSC: Can we get the base driver source free?
nVidia: No.
OSSC: Can I get tech support free?
nVidia: No.
OSSC: Can we release the source when we’re done?
nVidia: No.
Looks like a pretty straight forward technology transfer to me.
Nice troll. NVIDIA is famously secretive about their code and interfaces. Not only will they not give you the specs without NDA (like ATI and Matrox do) they won’t even give them to you *with* NDA (at least to their 3D core). Why do you think only a few operating systems have drivers for NVIDIA’s 3D core? Remember how Be couldn’t even get specs under NDA? That said, NVIDIA has very good reasons to be secretive. Their hardware is the fastest available 90% of the time. Furthermore, their drivers are incredibly stable and *correct* (something very hard to do for an OpenGL driver). Carmack even said in his plan file that when his code doesn’t work on an ATI card, he assumes it is a bug in the driver. Meanwhile, when his code doesn’t work on a NVIDIA card, he assumes it is a bug in his code. An OpenGL driver is a rather high-level piece of code (in fact, an ICD encompasses everything from glVertex down to register-banging), and only part of it is dedicated to driving specific hardware. A large portion is totally generic, and has to do more with implementing and optimizing the spec than driving any particular card. Releasing that code would be too much of help to ATI, whose drivers really hold their hardware back.
Besides, your characterization is totally false. NVIDIA has been very supportive of the Open Source community (within the limitations of their situation) and gave a great deal of technical support to the FreeBSD guys who tried to port their driver. In the end, the up and did the port themselves, with rather little to gain from it other than goodwil among nerds everywhere
Support for the Quadro and so forth seems like a perfect idea for Apple’s market.
However, doesn’t this lend support to the rumors that Apple might be developing a workstation-level computer? Sun’s workstations often carry such caliber video cards (or Sun branded ones).
Just a thought.
Thanks for the link posted above, that is the type of thing for which I was looking.
As to the why I ask, some manufacturers just list Mac OS compatibility and don’t specify a version, some give you Mac OS 9.x and Up, some mention a particular versions of OS 9 and OS X. I wouldn’t buy from the manufacturers who won’t specify any particular version. And what does the OS 9.x and Up mean? All OS 9? Compatibility within Classic? Native 9.x and 10.x support?
Most specifically, I want to know which CD burners work with the native Disk Burner and which require third party software. What is the big secret?
i had hoped that the extigy would eventually supported by OS X but this is the first I’ve heard of it and I can’t find conformation of this anywhere else. Is this really true?
Glad to help. I was just curious because even these lists will not fully detail what will work properly–although ALL of these devices listed will have excellent support.
Anything that lists OS 9 or greater will include OS X.
There is no big secret.
“As for video cards, Apple is planning to support several workstation-quality graphics cards in 10.3, that weren’t previously supported, including full support for NVidia Quadro 980, 900, and 750XGL. Support will also be added for ATI’s top-end Fire GL series.”
10.3 is scheduled for spring but may come later. Have a little patience. ThinkSecret is a rumor site–although a highly reliable one. If they see something fit to post that no one else is aware of, it’s a good sign that it’s true.
But Nick himself admits that he can’t even guess at whether or not this could slip because of the work involved.
I also wonder if all the talk of an non-PPC based Mac has made the long term profitability of PPC Mac drivers less of a guaranteed thing, hence the deal to let Apple eat its own dev costs and thus limit financial risk. After all nVidia is in the business of selling HW, something they can still do regardless who writes the drivers… just a thought
Unfortunately, Apple frequently gets stuck developing the drivers for third party hardware. It doesn’t have to do with the viability of the PPC at all.
However, I would agree with a previous poster–based on the timing of 10.3 and the GP-UL (I still suspect and argue that Apple can produce product earlier than or simultaneous with IBM’s release schedule), I would say these high-end drivers point to an Apple 970-based workstation mid year.
I didn’t realize you were specifically asking about the extigy-support and that Nick claims it’s present in 10.2.3. If you are running OS X this is easy enough to check in System Profiler, but I’m at work on a PC. If someone else doesn’t check in the meantime, I’ll post your answer tonight from home.
Some time back I read and posted news about SciTech Software producing a Linux version of Scitech SNAP Graphics (they claim suppport for 180 2D accelerated chipsets) – I wonder if Scitech or others will be looking into supporting a wider range of Graphics cards on the Mac in the future?
SciTech is just bundling large numbers of drivers for platforms where this isn’t organized (Linux–still not available yet–and OS/2).
Apple has it’s own standards for producing this support and frequently has to fight with developers to produce their drivers in compliance with I/O Kit and other interfaces.
If the drivers exist and are compatible, they should be added to the appropriate Apple frameworks. A third-party bundle implemented the wrong way, isn’t going to help Apple.
I didn’t realize you were specifically asking about the extigy-support and that Nick claims it’s present in 10.2.3. If you are running OS X this is easy enough to check in System Profiler, but I’m at work on a PC. If someone else doesn’t check in the meantime, I’ll post your answer tonight from home.
The only thing I see that’s remotely close in 10.2.3 is “Apple USB Audio”
The inclusion of drivers for workstation grade graphics cards should not be considered evidence of the 970 appearing in Macintoshes – the current Power Macs can use these cards just as well. If Apple was to use these cards in a workstation, why support for at least six of them when Apple has historically only afford two or three build-to-order options per line? Also, one should not hope for the 970 to appear mid-year; IBM itself said that these chips would reach mass-production in October, barring any production delays. Thus, workstation drivers in 10.3 does not promise that an Apple workstation is going to be released at the same time.
For your consideration: who is to say that the 970 will replace the g4/G5 in Power Macs. There has been quite a few rumors of a “Xstation” workstation – which sounds like the perfect nest for the 970. Check out the prices IBM currently charge for their PowerPC workstations and then tell me if there isn’t room for both the Xstation and the PowerMac in Apple’s line-up.
Even the KB article has more info than that.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107263
…but the KB articles are very cursory in nature.
If you are on an OS X system, fire up Apple System Profiler. I forget exactly where to look–I think there’s a tab called “Devices and Drivers”. Look there and see if there are any references to SoundBlaster, Audigy, or Extigy. Or hunt through the frameworks directly. That’s the best way to figure this one out.
Look there and see if there are any references to SoundBlaster, Audigy, or Extigy. Or hunt through the frameworks directly. That’s the best way to figure this one out.
I was looking under the list of available KEXTs in the System Profiler.
As I said, the only thing remotely close is “Apple USB Audio” There are no SoundBlaster drivers whatsoever.
Anecdoter is that there hasn’t been enough demand in the PowerMacs for ATi, Nvidia, or Apple to produce these drivers so far. I would imagine this would also relate to the Bus issue Nick alludes to too… If the bus can’t fully utilize these cards, what’s the point of spending the extra cash?
So we are talking about a bus improvement as well to utilize these PCI add-ons. Also, don’t these cards run from $300-400 to $1000+ at the high end(just a couple of the high-end ones, right? I’m not entirely familiar with this market?) If these cards are going to cost that much, I don’t see them getting included in PowerMacs.
I think you’ve got a poor perception of Apple’s product make up at this point. After all, there are 4 distinct iMacs now (old G3, eMac, 15, and 17 inch). I don’t see why what I suggested would mean 6 PMs.
As you say, there is room for an xStation. (I didn’t surmise that the 970 would replace PowerMacs.) This wouldn’t create 6 PMs. This would be 3 xServes, 3 xStations, 3 PowerMacs, 3 new iMacs, etc… (By the way, each of the 3 base models are build-to-order-able; that is–there are 3 “boxed” models. Each one can than be custom ordered with various HW components.)
As for the timeline, I don’t want you to think I’m an overly-optimistic Apple nut. I see it being tight too. But Apple delivered G4s before Motorola said they’d be ready too. (Of course, that ultimately led to issues.) And who is to say that mass market orders for IBM isn’t much larger yields than what Apple needs, or that they are already on board for set quantities that are guaranteed them, before IBM sells them at market? (Personally, I’ve seen enough evidence to suggest that this chip was developed at Apple’s instigation after all, and will be receiving special treatment in regards to orders.)
Anyway, my own thoughts are out of sync. I expect 10.3 in March. (And I’m hoping that what Hubbard said before 10.2 came out is true–that 10.3 will catch up with FreeBSD 5.5 ports.) And think we may see the 970 in an Apple product before October… say, September. Just guesses though. At the very least, and this was in part what I was originally suggesting, is that Apple will be creating a high end video/audio workstation distint from the PowerMac line.
To the point of third party graphics drivers – it would appear that SciTech has managed to build support for 180 chipsets under what they call the SciTech SNAP architecture – how many chipsets does apple currently support?
The SNAP architecture is duplicated by Apple’s I/O Kit. Is Apple going to let SciTech plug their own device manager into their OS? Doubt it? And besides 180 (it’s actually 179 and for OS/2–and does IBM VGA count?) cards? Who cares? A third of them are old (or completely dead for that matter). A bunch of them are for the embedded, industrial market.
Meanwhile I’m using Apple hardware that only supports ATi and Nvidia. Why do I care about about an antique Voodoo driver?
What Apple is doing is taking existing drivers (from the OS community) and working with card developers and ATi and Nvidia most closely to maximize driver performace to their platform. And using their driver frameworks so that applications can fully take advantage of them. I do not see any beenfit from what SciTech could offer.
On the other hand, I think Apple’s work will be quicker because of existing drivers available in the OS community to drive more exotic add-ons.
But I do want the drivers to work properly with I/O Kit and other Apple technologies. Not an extra software package that is going to be a third redundant and a third useless.
Bascule, just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.
But “USB Audio”? That’s for the Pro Speakers and other usb-powered audio outpout (or input I suppose) devices
What about:
VirtualAudioDriver.kext
IOPCIFamily.kext
IOAudioFamily.kext
There’s also FW Audio too, but I would presume this is similar to USB Audio.
Anyway, I would suspect the 3 kext’s above to contain a host of audio drivers. Not that this get’s us closer to answering the question, but I don’t think we’ve ruled out support either.
Well, the Extigy is a USB audio device…
Considering the heavy device enumeration that occurs in other areas (i.e. video, IDE controllers) it would not appear that OS X supports any SoundBlaster at the present time.
but still… there’s really not many third party extensions at all: Adaptec, ATi, Nvidia, Ultra Tek, some ATA/IDE controllers, yes…
but it’s not like you are seeing separate drivers for digicams, camcorders, mice, etc… but we know that the drivers are there.
And it sounded to me like Apple was doing the work anyway…
What do you know about exploring .kext files? I was just in the plist editor on a copied kext, but the app was behaving strangely–Finder kept moving to the foreground.
I wanted to upgrade my mothers iMac for her from OS 8.6 to OSX.
She has a iMac DV 400 mhz with 256MB 10 gig hd. These DV models have a ATI Rage 128 w/ 8mb ram.
Would OSX run acceptably on this? Does anyone have this experience with this?
I guess I would have to turn off a lot of the eye candy for it to work with acceptable speed.
>Would OSX run acceptably on this?
Nope. It will run. But not acceptably. Not by my standards.
…they are ASTRONOMICAL!
I would suggest you test the speed of a low end iBook–they currently crush the iMac you have, but you could expect the performance to be only slightly slower.
I have the same system (but with 512MB RAM) and am satisfied with the speed. Apps built for X respond well, Classic runs at OS 9 speeds when within the Classic app you are using. Some tasks require some hesitation from the user to simply allow the GUI to keep up with your responses, etc… But the speed is fine.
This may not apply for you, but I find doing heavy multitasking (8+ apps, and many docs) responds quicker, network transfers are quicker, media related functions are smoother…
I would suggest that there are many other factors that could be more “unsettling” to your mother: the need for new software… the file structure if you use a multi-user environment, other interface changes because of the OS changes, etc… could be more difficult for her to deal with.
Ian, I just did practically the same thing for my parents, with an even slower G3, but made some changes. I got a nice used Indigo 350 MHz iMac. This was the first of the slot loading iMacs and the processor cannot be upgraded. I wasn’t worried about that – I was just going to install OS 9 and everything would be fine.
But, I got the fever ;-). I was dying to see what I could do to speed it up some and then started getting crazy OS X ideas. First, I replaced the 10 GB drive with a faster 7200 rpm 20 GB drive. When RAM was at rock bottom prices, I stocked up, so was able to max out the RAM at 1 GB. That was the big thing. It. like yours, has 8 MB VRAM.
So, I can’t stand it and install OS X just to see what happens. X wants to install at 1024 by 768 on it, although 9 installs at 800 by 600. So, the install goes fine and, after rebottong, i change the resolution to 800 by 600 and change the color to 16 bit (thousands of colors). And I was shocked.
Like you, these are my parents, so that means Mail, IE, Chimera (and now Safari). 800 by 600 doesn’t give you alot of screen real estate on X, but enough for my parents. To my astonishment, AppleWorks opens instantly. Mail and the browsers open quickly. There are no beach balls to speak of. Responsiveness is much better than I anticipated. So, my parents are in business and I’m floored.
OS X is a mystery. I know the big thing is the extra RAM and the resolution reduction, but we’re still talking about a puny 350 MHz G3. I didn’t push things – like installing Photoshop Elements 2 – I put PixelNance in there for them 🙂 My God though, AppleWorks opens almost as fast as it does on our Dual 1 GHz Power Mac!!! Even with my modifications, I’m still astonished. So, if you put more RAM in and just install the basics, it should be better than you might expect, with a 400 MHz processor. But, nothing heavier than AppleWorks 🙂
. . . are not as demanding as people would have you think. I’ve been running OS X since 10.1 on a 350 MHz iMac with just 128 MB of RAM. It’s been fine, and every new release of OS X has run faster.
I windows is a bit snappier, but it flickers alot, and alot of menus and stuff load slowly. Its prolly the very large hd, which I defragged recently, but still on windows xp/2k systems I use, its about even with os X, except for window sizing and scrolling. It doesnt look quite as nice as OS X’s slowness, but its nice to know the window is there, even if its not rendered right for a moment.
Thing that got me was how much faster my athlon should be over my ibook.
> I’ve been running OS X since 10.1 on a 350 MHz iMac with just 128 MB of RAM
Naah.. You need the new PowerMac to run OSX fast enough:
http://www.spymac.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=3181&papass=&sort…
Why Apple hasn’t thought of version of MacOS X so it could be bundled with SGIs and similar vendor’s machines. They could co-develop the computers and Apple sell to the home market and lo-power business market, while the others sell work stations that supplement the BIG machines. MacOS X is BSD + great GUI. It would work wonders for the workstations now ladden with stuff like CDE (*yuck*) or IRIX’s window manager (isn’t SGI about cool gfx?).
The only thing missing from a phat mac with a top of the range GFX card is some more horsepower in the form of CPUs. But one version of Itanium 2 and one for PPC shouldn’t be that hard to fix. Especially since the other hardware would probably be much the same (PCI/AGP/USB/ETC).
Or they might have thought of this, and it was stopped for one or the other reason. But I still think it would do good for all involved. It is not like Apple has 95% of the market and can’t expand…
I heard a while back that Jaguar still used the radeon 8500 drivers for the 9000 card, was this ever fixed? In theory does that not mean that some features and power of the 9k card are not useable? Also the 9000 is one of ATI’s ‘top-end’ cards, is it FireGL? Is this some new function that will be available when I update to 10.2.4 or are FireGL cards different all together?
Im running OSX on a G3/250 powerbook w/ 96mb ram 4mb ATi 2d video card. it runs faster than OS9 did at any time. now *saves pennies for 256mb ram chip*
regardless of what people say, MacOS X, from my experience is not slow. It is in the same camp as Windows 2000/XP. Not enough memory, poorly reponsive. Moral of the story; screw faster processors, just make sure you have 256MB RAM and you should be fine.
cad card, workstation class, powermacs had been using consumer class vid cards.
Actually, the current Apple Pro Speakers are not USB – the sound out port is of a different type. The original Pro Speakers (that came with the Cube, for example) were USB.
I purchased an Extigy yesterday and plugged it into my DP800 with OS X 10.2.3. The Extigy is recognised and appears in Sound panel in Sys Prefs. I haven’t tested for any period of time but CD audio, MP3s etc. do sound better than the built in sound of the Quicksilver – clearer sounding.
There are some drawbacks though – 1. The volume keys on the keyboard and the volume menu extra do not work with the extigy, only the mute button works. 2. The volume control on the extigy does not work – resulting in you having to use the volume control of your speakers. 3. The upmixing of stereo signal to all of your speakers (CMSS button on the Extigy) does not work.
In the sound panel the extigy shows up twice in the output tab (probably 1 channel for front speakers and 1 channel for rear??) Selecting the first entry works and sound comes from the front speakers as expected, selecting the second entry caused a kernel panic for me, havent tried it again yet. The extigy also shows up in the inputs tab but I have not tested recording through it yet, will try tonight when I get home.