WWDC 2007

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-06-12 12:32am

No Safari for linux? awww

oh well, at least we have konqueror...not quite the same though. I downloaded it and through it into a VM though, runs great. The font smoothing doesn't look like ass, it looks like the apple smoothing (nice). Like it so far, except for the memory usage but I think that's due to it not using GDI or....any windows libaries (I noticed it's using Microsoft Visual C++ though???)

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2007-06-12 12:34am

Interestingly, EA is using Cider. I don't know whether this is good or bad. I'd much prefer EA to actually port their stuff over to OS X. But I'd rather them use Cider than not at all.

For those that aren't aware (and I'm going to massively simplify things), Cider is made by Transgaming, the guys who did Cedega/WineX, a gaming-specific version of WINE. The basic concept is that you make a specialized build of WINE for your specific application, and bundle it in the executable.

Then you only have one codebase to maintain (the Windows one), and the Mac version of the game is the same as the Windows version except with your Cider build added to the executable.

These EA games are using Cider. They'll only run on Intel Macs, and it's basically WINE without any bugs and just for the one application.

I wonder how the performance will compare to the Windows version? I've heard of Linux users on WINE reporting better performance...and sometimes horrid performance.

http://www.transgaming.com/products/cider/

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-06-12 12:42am

I've heard of Linux users on WINE reporting better performance...and sometimes horrid performance.

If you watch the terminal (I'm sure the ea games won't show it though

) most of the horrible slowdowns come from wine dropping into software pixel shaders for some unimplimented stuff. If EA are going to fix up a version of Cider and use that as an internal build to run games on Mac, it shouldn't have that problem.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2007-06-12 01:02am

I remember a few years back actually reading benchmarks where WINE sometimes beat Windows performance.

Any chance that the Cider games might have performance equal to or within single-digit-percentage-points of the Windows versions?

RThurmont · Post by **RThurmont** » 2007-06-12 01:11am

Its highly unlikely that Safari will be ported to Linux. If you look at Apple, they seldom or never mention Linux in their marketing materials, or port any products to it...indeed, I don't believe Steve Jobs has ever mentioned it once. Apple takes on the apparent attitude that Linux does not exist.

This is arguably because Linux is a huge competitive threat to them. For consumers considering leaving Microsoft due to the general horridness of Vista and the fact that XP, while a good OS, is totally antiquated, the two choices are basically Apple and Linux. Linux lets them use existing hardware and is free, thus the competitive threat it poses is obvious. Given the general lackluster response Vista has seemed, one could argue that the real competition increasingly will be between Apple and Linux.

However, porting Safari to Linux is probably just as well for all parties concerned-Safari is garbage, and the underlying KHTML rendering engine is already availible in the form of Konqueror. Linux also has Opera and Firefox, among other first-class browsers, and given that, I just don't see what Safari could possibly do for Linux users.

This last bit may sound strange, but one could actually argue that the porting of Internet Explorer to Linux would be more desirable. There remain some websites that do not work with any other browser, and Explorer's rendering engine is different from other engines to the point where I would argue that having that engine run on the Linux platform would be hugely useful.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-06-12 01:18am

Any chance that the Cider games might have performance equal to or within single-digit-percentage-points of the Windows versions?

Unless EA somehow rapes the code-base, very likely. WineX/Cedega on linux runs games at near native speed (I notice faster on some games, others is only a few FPS difference), all it has to do is remap the API calls afterall, nothing is emulated.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-06-12 10:41am

Durandal wrote:
RThurmont wrote:
Download the new Safari beta and try it
No thanks, I think I'll pass. If I wanted to open up a lot of security vulnerabilities and massively degrade system performance on one of my Windows boxes, I'd just download Kazaa or some other random bit of malware instead-the same result, accomplished with greater efficiency.

To be fair, Safari is beta, but still, my opinion of it remains the same.
So David Maynor, the disgraced researcher who couldn't demonstrate a vulnerability he made untold amounts of noise about, is now getting more press by claiming he's found six new vulnerabilities in Safari through "idle fuzzing". And conveniently, he doesn't report these vulnerabilities to Apple.

Maynor is a hack publicity whore with zero credibility.

Oh good, we'll be seeing George Ou doing his cheerleader/pro shill act soon enough then.

Okay, page 2. Who wants to talk about how many of these features originated in Redmond?

Mobius · Post by **Mobius** » 2007-06-12 11:13am

Xisiqomelir wrote: Okay, page 2. Who wants to talk about how many of these features originated in Redmond?

Who cares?

Seriously?
(apart from terminally insecure rabbid fanboy)

Every OS take a little from the competition and most of the times tweak them to accommodate their vision/need, etc...
At the end we are the winners, that's the most important thing.

Time machine is Windows Shadow Copy with the human interface; Windows Desktop Search is a blatant rip-off of Spotlight so what?

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-06-12 11:37am

Mobius wrote:
Xisiqomelir wrote: Okay, page 2. Who wants to talk about how many of these features originated in Redmond?
Who cares?
Seriously?

Correct attribution and lineages are important. Time Machine looks more like rsync to me than anything else.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-06-12 12:23pm

Xisiqomelir wrote:
Mobius wrote:
Xisiqomelir wrote: Okay, page 2. Who wants to talk about how many of these features originated in Redmond?
Who cares?
Seriously?
Correct attribution and lineages are important. Time Machine looks more like rsync to me than anything else.

Well how is it stealing then? FreeBSD has had rsync for a long time now, so it makes sense for apple to use it.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-06-12 12:29pm

Resinence wrote:
Xisiqomelir wrote:
Mobius wrote: Who cares?
Seriously?
Correct attribution and lineages are important. Time Machine looks more like rsync to me than anything else.
Well how is it stealing then? FreeBSD has had rsync for a long time now, so it makes sense for apple to use it.

You might want to read the thread from the beginning again.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2007-06-12 01:24pm

Xisiqomelir wrote:
Okay, page 2. Who wants to talk about how many of these features originated in Redmond?

The security vulnerabilities?

Honestly, not that many. Okay, Quick Look is pretty similar to Windows XP's Preview. Sure. Although it definitely seems more functional, we'll give the original idea to XP.

Oooh, the new Finder now displays live thumbnails! Windows had that first, right?

The rest of Finder is designed off of iTunes, not Windows.

Safari's new "view PDF's within the browser!" is mostly Apple playing catchup with everyone else.

But the rest of it looks pretty unique.

Xisiqomelir · Post by **Xisiqomelir** » 2007-06-12 11:07pm

Tardbucketitis at ZDnet, what a shocking and wholly unexpected development!

I think I'll let Praxis and Durandal handle this one, I'm lolling too hard.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-06-12 11:10pm

skyman8081 wrote:By my standards, This Safari beta is a piece of shit.

Backspace doesn't go back, unlike every other browser.

Wait, people actually use backspace to go back? I use Alt-Left. (And I can use Alt-Right to go forward in the history!)

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2007-06-13 03:19am

Uraniun235 wrote:
skyman8081 wrote:By my standards, This Safari beta is a piece of shit.

Backspace doesn't go back, unlike every other browser.

Wait, people actually use backspace to go back? I use Alt-Left. (And I can use Alt-Right to go forward in the history!)

Yes, people do that. Whenever I am not using Opera and I don't have my right-click-left-click combo, I actually use backspace do go back through the history...

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-06-13 03:46am

That just seems like such a stretch across the keyboard.

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2007-06-13 04:04am

I use backspace, or the mouse buttons for it. I've never even thought about using Alt-left.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2007-06-13 04:13am

Xisiqomelir wrote:Tardbucketitis at ZDnet, what a shocking and wholly unexpected development!

I think I'll let Praxis and Durandal handle this one, I'm lolling too hard.

Don't mind if I do.

Actually, I agree for the top part; prior to the list at least. Very disappointing WWDC. Most of the features had already been shown at MacWorld, only 3 of the 10 were new. And the iPhone bit was mostly..."Hey everyone! We know you want to write iPhone apps; well TOO BAD! We'll let you write browser apps if it makes you feel any better." He acknowledges what everyone wants and then denies it.

Now that list...that list is silly.

1. New Leopard Desktop: Not a whole lot different from Vista’s Aero and Sidebar.

...

...

Huh? They added transparency and reflections. Vista doesn't have window reflections, and transparency is something that Linux has had forever as well as thousands of Windows XP themes.

2. New Finder: Many of the same capabilities as the integrated “Instant Search” in Vista (the subsystem that Google is trying to get the Department of Justice to rule as being anti-competitive). The new Leopard Coverflow viewing capability looked almost identical to Vista’s Flip 3D to me.

Has this guy never used Tiger? It already has the Instant Search. Is he stupid enough to think THAT was the new feature?

And is he stupid enough to not know the difference between Coverflow and Flip 3D? Does he not know the difference between files and windows? (And Coverflow's been in iTunes for awhile now).

3. QuickLook: Live file previews — just like the thumbnail preview capability available in Vista.

Granted. Though better done; unless Vista can flip through PDF documents from the thumbnail preview, or blow the thumbnail preview to full screen and watch HD videos.

4. 64-bitness: Leopard is the first 64-bit only version of a desktop client. Vista comes in 32-bit and 64-bit varieties. And most expect Windows Seven will still be available in 32-bit flavors. Until 32-bit machines go away, it seems like a good idea to offer 32-bit operating systems.

Leopard isn't 64-bit only, is it? You can install it on a 32-bit machine just fine, IIRC.

I mean, it would rather SUCK for me, as I bought a MacBook with a Core Duo, which is 32-bit. Considering for how many years Apple supported OS 9, I find it highly unlikely they would suddenly release an operating system that would not only not install on any G3 or G4 machine, but also not install on the CURRENT Mac Mini model that they are selling today (Core Duo- 32 bit) or an eight-month-old machine like mine.

5. Core animation: Not sure what the Vista comparison is here. The demo reminded me of Microsoft Max photo-sharing application. The WWDC developers attending the Jobs keynote didn’t seem wowed with this functionality.

Well, he just admitted he couldn't find the comparison. He's just trying to bash it.

6. Boot Camp. You can run Vista on your Mac. Apple showed Vista running Solitaire in its WWDC demo. But I bet those downloading the 2.5 million copies of Boot Camp available since last year are running a lot of other Windows business apps and games.

Again, just mindless bashing. Why bring it up? It's not a feature rip-off.

7. Spaces: A feature allowing users to group applications into separate spaces. I haven’t seen anything like in in Vista, but the audience didn’t seem overly impressed by it.

Again, he brings it up just to bash it.
And actually, he missed a point. Spaces has been in Linux for pretty much forever.

8. Dashboard with widgets. Isn’t this like the Vista Sidebar with gadgets?

Okay, I'm really starting to wonder if this guy has never used Tiger. Because Apple had Widgets, and everyone accused Vista of copying them with Gadgets, and now he's accusing Apple of copying with...more widgets?

9. iChat gets a bunch of fun add-ons (photo-booth effects, backrops, etc.) to make it a more fully-featured videoconferencing product. The “iChat Theater” capability Jobs showed off reminded me of Vista’s Meeting Space and/or the new Microsoft “Shared View” (code-named “Tahiti”) document-sharing/conferencing subsystems.

Shared View just lets you show someone part of what's on your screen. It's NOT the same thing has hosting a keynote presentation within iChat, looking at how iChat handles it. It's NOT the same as filtering out and replacing your background or overlaying images or effects over a video chat.

He's grasping at straws.

10. Time Machine automatic backup. Vista has built-in automatic backup (Volume Shadow Copy). It doesn’t look anywhere near as cool as Time Machine. But it seems to provide a lot of the same functionality.

A lot of similarities, though from a user interface level Time Machine blows it away.
A relevant quote:

Thurrott tries to portray Time Machine as a rip off of Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service. This is a grossly misleading bit of hubris, or perhaps huge ignorance. For starters, the volume shadow copy service is only designed to create a read only clone of an entire volume so that it can be backed up by another service without interruption, as its name suggests.

Does Thurrott not really understand the basic principles of how Windows works, or is he just purposefully lying? In any case, prepare to see a constant regurgitation of the Time Machine is a Shadow Copy Clone Myth ooze out from every crevice of the web.

Leopard's Time Machine was demoed as a way for desktop users to ensure their stuff gets backed up, and to be able to restore items themselves from backups in an intuitive way.

Thurrott glosses over the point that Time Machine allows users to search through iterations of contacts, photos, and other collections in ways that no backup system currently does. Shadow copy is not integrated into Outlook items, Windows' photo collections, or any other user applications.

Shadow Copy isn’t even functional in XP; it’s a Windows Server 2003 feature to allow backup programs to snapshot a server’s file system without worrying about background services changing or locking files. It has nothing at all to do with the usability of backup and restore for end users.

Since Time Machine offers backups as an integrated operating system service, it makes sense that Apple would demonstrate it to developers at WWDC. It will require developers’ support to bring its features into their applications. Among other things, developers can tell Time Machine not to back up their scratch files and other content that would be pointless to archive.

One of the article's comments:

1. Are you blind?
2. Mac OS has had indexed searching (that works) since version 10.4, which was
released more than two years ago. GNOME has had it even longer.
3. True, but insignificant.
4. You're missing the point: Leopard supports both 32-bit and 64-bit processors
in a single version of the operating system. It would be difficult to understand the
significance of this unless you are a programmer.
5. Why have you listed this when there is no equivalent in Windows Vista?
6. Same as above.
7. Same as above.
8. Jobs was announcing enhancements to Dashboard, which has existed since
version 10.4, not announcing Dashboard itself.
9. I can't comment on this point because I know little about Meeting Space and
Shared View.
10. See http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/Home/2 ... 46CF-A66F-
1CCCA542AC6B.html.

Your points are weak and mostly invalid. In addition, you're not a developer and
you've never properly used Mac OS X, which prevents you from realising that Mac
OS X has been light years ahead of Windows since it was released in 2001.

Hotfoot · Post by **Hotfoot** » 2007-06-13 11:23am

I've used Alt-Left/Right for years and years. I've rebound the mouse buttons to PgUp/PgDn.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2007-06-13 11:42am

Destructionator XIII wrote:Is this Time Machine a backup system or a versioning system? From what I can tell it looks like the latter, which, while damn good to have, is no replacement for regular backups, since it seems to exist on the same physical drive; if that drive fails, you are still fucked without real, external backups.

Both - Time Machine can also write to an external drive.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2007-06-13 05:17pm

Ace Pace wrote:I use backspace, or the mouse buttons for it. I've never even thought about using Alt-left.

I misspoke; I actually most often use Shift-Mousewheel.

Durandal · Post by **Durandal** » 2007-06-13 08:35pm

Xisiqomelir wrote:Correct attribution and lineages are important. Time Machine looks more like rsync to me than anything else.

It isn't.

Resinence · Post by **Resinence** » 2007-06-14 01:02am

Leopard isn't 64-bit only, is it? You can install it on a 32-bit machine just fine, IIRC.

I mean, it would rather SUCK for me, as I bought a MacBook with a Core Duo, which is 32-bit. Considering for how many years Apple supported OS 9, I find it highly unlikely they would suddenly release an operating system that would not only not install on any G3 or G4 machine, but also not install on the CURRENT Mac Mini model that they are selling today (Core Duo- 32 bit) or an eight-month-old machine like mine.

He might mean x64, which will run on core2duo's (and it's technically closer to 48bit than 64bit), is leopard x64 only? That would make it only run on imtel macs though?

Seggybop · Post by **Seggybop** » 2007-06-14 01:19am

I mean, it would rather SUCK for me, as I bought a MacBook with a Core Duo, which is 32-bit.

I'm pretty sure that all Intel x86 processors since the late P4s have had the AMD64 extensions so I'd be really surprised if any modern Apple machine was unable to run 64 bit OS.

Praxis · Post by **Praxis** » 2007-06-14 01:20am

Resinence wrote:
Leopard isn't 64-bit only, is it? You can install it on a 32-bit machine just fine, IIRC.

I mean, it would rather SUCK for me, as I bought a MacBook with a Core Duo, which is 32-bit. Considering for how many years Apple supported OS 9, I find it highly unlikely they would suddenly release an operating system that would not only not install on any G3 or G4 machine, but also not install on the CURRENT Mac Mini model that they are selling today (Core Duo- 32 bit) or an eight-month-old machine like mine.
He might mean x64, which will run on core2duo's (and it's technically closer to 48bit than 64bit), is leopard x64 only? That would make it only run on imtel macs though?

And not even that; my Intel Mac isn't x64.

Leopard is available in one version. The same Leopard install DVD has 32- and 64-bit versions of PowerPC and Intel versions of Leopard. Quad Universal binaries; whenever a Mac application is compiled as universal, 32- and 64-bit versions are automatically compiled and stuck in the same binary.

There's one version of Leopard for any machine, 32- or 64-bit. There is one version of any app, not separate 32- and 64-bit versions like for windows. The guy who wrote that article didn't understand that and thought there was just an x64 version of Leopard.