Mac OS X 'Leopard'-related Discussion

[DrunkenMaster]

I honestly don't mind if Apple incorporated some black elements here and there, but this is just over the top. Same goes for the transparency levels.

Ditto. Or as long as you have a different theme to choose from. Even though the ones in Gnome, Windows and KDE tend to suck, there's always a few options to choose from. Tiger only has two.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Putting transparency throughout the UI, solely because you can is just silly IMO.

In my opinion, MS fell into that trap with Vista, the updated engine supports full translucency, so they go ahead and make every window translucent (Apple kinda did this too, luckily they took it out).

Edit: and not every app is theme compliant on OS X, just look at Firefox, it uses it's own tabs, looks ok if you're using black text on white, but try it with a theme with white text on black, tabs are going to stay white.

[Berto]

All I know is that once the final UI is out there on Leopard this fall it's going to look great. Apple is not going to drop a bomb on us and develop something so subpar at this point as they are gaining ground slowly and a simple effective UI is key to users out there.

Too over the top and you got Vista. Too under and it's kinda like Linux. Apple will find the sweet spot. They probably already have it and just don't want to release it.

[.Neo]

Putting transparency throughout the UI, solely because you can is just silly IMO.

In my opinion, MS fell into that trap with Vista, the updated engine supports full translucency, so they go ahead and make every window translucent (Apple kinda did this too, luckily they took it out).

From what I understand Windows Vista's core - unlike Mac OS X' - still doesn't support real translucency. Aero's supporting frameworks are basically a hack upon hack that had to be put in place in order to achieve the glass effect.

The way I see it Microsoft didn't use transparency because Windows Vista supports it, no, they pasted on an extra layer of frameworks to support the glass effect. This for the soul purpose to give Windows Vista a look that was distinctively different from previous Windows versions, without making any fundamental UI changes.

When Apple had to design Mac OS X' Aqua interface is was more or less the other way around: They wanted to show the public what Mac OS X' core was capable of. Of course Apple's idea was equally poorly thought out and after receiving tons of complaints they decided to get rid of most of the transparency in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

Edited May 13, 2007 by .Neo

[dagamer34]

I'm still wondering if transparency ever has it's usefulness, especially since it requires extra GPU power. While the coding on OS X might not be hard, it should and needs to be deactivated when a MacBook/MacBook Pro is running on battery to prevent a needless waste of power. Otherwise you start getting eye candy that sucks up juice.

Just my 2 cents.

[.Neo]

Do those HUD panels actually use more GPU processing power than a default Aqua or Brushed window? :/

[osirisX]

I would say no. Since Brushed and Aqua windows are more than likely made up of PNGs or TIFFs.

[the evn show]

I would say no. Since Brushed and Aqua windows are more than likely made up of PNGs or TIFFs.

Even if they weren't?which they are?they could just as easily rasterize a vector image at a resolution appropriate to the display and cache the result. It's not like the resolution of the display changes so frequently that there's a need to re-draw complicated graphics more than once a session in the common case. The performance penalty of converting a complex vector graphic to raster can be fairly high (watch Illustrator re-draw when you zoom out) but for the sorts of things a GUI does you rarely have to do it.

"Don't re-draw anything you don't have to" is the first performance optimization tip they teach you when doing custom UI elements with coca (well, maybe "Use the standard widgets unless you have a damn good reason not to" comes first). It's also part of the way Preview renders and scrolls so much faster than Adobe Acrobat.

[bdsams Veteran]

I'm still wondering if transparency ever has it's usefulness, especially since it requires extra GPU power. While the coding on OS X might not be hard, it should and needs to be deactivated when a MacBook/MacBook Pro is running on battery to prevent a needless waste of power. Otherwise you start getting eye candy that sucks up juice.

Just my 2 cents.

that comment doesnt make much sence, all the window transitions would be turned off by your thoughts, they are all eye candy that just waste battery powa

[rajputwarrior]

now apparently according to endgadget it's delayed :( I know it's not official, but engadget is pretty reliable :(

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/16/iphone-...n-until-januar/

[Southern Patriot]

now apparently according to endgadget it's delayed :( I know it's not official, but engadget is pretty reliable :(

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/16/iphone-...n-until-januar/

Nope, false info:

Update: While our source that provided us the information is solid, it turns out the internal memo we received was actually redacted. (Published after the break.) We also just heard back from Apple PR -- they let us know that the iPhone and Leopard are both still on track, and should meet their expected launch timeframes. We'll keep you up to the second with any further developments.

Apple email

From: [redacted]

Date: May 16, 2007 10:47:39 AM CDT

To: [redacted]

Subject: NEWS: Disregard Bullet*News Sent May 16 at Approximately 9 a.m. Central--AP/CA/EU/JP/LA/US

You may have received what appeared to be a Bullet*News from Apple. This communication is fake and did not come from Apple.

Apple is on track to ship iPhone in late June and Mac OS X Leopard in October.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

What i've gathered from reading about DCE (or DWM, whatever they call it now), it pretty much does it the same way as OS X's window manager, and cause it uses DirectX (like OS X uses OpenGL), it can do all the alpha/shaders it needs to (so it's not that much of a hack)

I'm still wondering if transparency ever has it's usefulness, especially since it requires extra GPU power. While the coding on OS X might not be hard, it should and needs to be deactivated when a MacBook/MacBook Pro is running on battery to prevent a needless waste of power. Otherwise you start getting eye candy that sucks up juice.

Just my 2 cents.

If you disable Quartz Extreme, your CPU has to do all the work, and will likely draw more power in doing such (your GPU can composite images much faster than your CPU can, and compositing with 8bit alpha is just as fast as compositing with 1 bit alpha).

[DrunkenMaster]

http://developer.apple.com/wwdc/

Don't know how old or new this is. But Apple is annoucing that Leopard will be shown feature complete at WWDC in June. So we'll probably find out amoun the new systems and all the secret features. Schweet!

[.Neo]

Apple promised a feature complete version at WWDC the day they announced Mac OS X Leopard will be delayed till Oktober.

[PyX]

And to say that this feature complete version is... no more than 12 days from now.

[MacOSXMan]

Tuesday, June 12th

Apple: Leopard utilizes HFS+, not ZFS

An Apple official has openly discounted the possibility that Sun Microsystems' Zettabyte File System will serve as the underlying structure for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The news contradicts a statement made by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz last week, who said Apple would announce its inclusion of ZFS in the forthcoming system software at its World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC). Apple will incorporate its well-known HFS+ file system instead, according to the company, which falls in line with industry skeptics who said using ZFS as the default file system for Leopard made no sense, according to InformationWeek.

http://www.macnn.com/articles/07/06/12/leo...es.hfs.not.zfs/

[the quixotic]

Leopard is being touted as a true 64-bit OS right - so what about all the iMac's / Mac Mini's / Macbook / Macbook Pro's with Core Duo's (not Core 2 Duo) in them, which are only 32-bit capable? Or is it like Tiger with 32-bit kernel with the ability to run 64-bit apps?

[saxondale.]

32/64bit is built into Leopard, only one copy needed, unlike Vista.

[the quixotic]

32/64bit is built into Leopard, only one copy needed, unlike Vista.

It's just that during the keynote Jobs said something to the effect that "You know everyone running Leopard has a 64-bit OS so you can write 64-bit apps without compatibility worries." Although probably this won't affect many people cause by the time say Adobe releases a 64-bit Photoshop people will have moved on from Core Duo's anyway. Sweet Macbook btw :)

[Elliott]

It's just that during the keynote Jobs said something to the effect that "You know everyone running Leopard has a 64-bit OS so you can write 64-bit apps without compatibility worries." Although probably this won't affect many people cause by the time say Adobe releases a 64-bit Photoshop people will have moved on from Core Duo's anyway. Sweet Macbook btw :)

Binaries will contain instruction sets for both 32-bit and 64-bit programs, kinda like how Universal Binaries work (both PPC and Intel instruction sets).

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

really fat binaries, code for PPC, and 32 and 64bit Intel (and maybe 64Bit PPC for G5's)

So if you code it correctly, it will run on PPC and Intel in 32Bit and 64Bit mode.

[temple_treefrog]

really fat binaries, code for PPC, and 32 and 64bit Intel (and maybe 64Bit PPC for G5's)

So if you code it correctly, it will run on PPC and Intel in 32Bit and 64Bit mode.

Won't this increase the size of the binary?

[Rudy]

Won't this increase the size of the binary?

yes it will

[Southern Patriot]

yes it will

Not as much as you might think though. Most of an application is made up of resources that are shared by all platforms. The actual executable is usually a very small part of the application. Take iPhoto for example: the entire application is 552.5MB, but the actual executable file (where all of the code is stored) is only 10MB! At worst, adding 64-bit code to it might add another 10 or 20 MB of code, but maybe not even that much, depending on the compiler.

[sambrentnall]

does anybody nno what the latest beta build is? the one shownn in the WWDC