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New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

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Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#71

Post by wriq »

gcr wrote: post #69

So this version has: - an ubuntu netbook remix clone (OMG A SCREEN FULL OF ICONS!) but with even more blur, - built-in F11 key - Compiz ring switching plugin - a trackpad, but rebranded! - automatic saving, but rebranded! - time machine, but rebranded! - "suspend" instead of "shut down", but rebranded! - thunderbird's default email layout - gmail's threads, but rebranded! - ripoff of giver (a Novell engineer's 2007 h…

"Why do people pay for this?"

Cause the implementation of a feature is more important than the feature itself. Apple rarely comes up with new tech on its own. They rebrand existing tech and work on the experience to create a product and a platform. Seriously, who in the general public knows what LUKS is?

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#72

Post by foobarbazetc »

gcr wrote: post #69

So this version has: - an ubuntu netbook remix clone (OMG A SCREEN FULL OF ICONS!) but with even more blur, - built-in F11 key - Compiz ring switching plugin - a trackpad, but rebranded! - automatic saving, but rebranded! - time machine, but rebranded! - "suspend" instead of "shut down", but rebranded! - thunderbird's default email layout - gmail's threads, but rebranded! - ripoff of giver (a Novell engineer's 2007 h…

Because it just works.

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#73

Post by X-Istence »

calloc wrote: post #63

I found this interesting, apparently Dino A. Dai Zovi ( http://twitter.com/dinodaizovi ) and Stefan Esser ( http://twitter.com/i0n1c ), two security researchers (hackers) have apparently received invitations to try out Mac OS X Lion with some strings attached that they can't talk about the as of yet unreleased OS: https://twitter.com/dinodaizovi/status/40903620438269952 https://twitter.com/i0n1c/status/40905883584180…

Ha, that's me asking those questions!

Yeah, I was honestly really surprised as well that Apple is doing an outreach, it definitely makes me extremely happy to see that Apple may finally be getting it concerning security!

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#74

Post by code_duck »

gcr wrote: post #70
eggbrain wrote: post #10

Resume is something I've wanted from an operating system for a long time. Nothing is more frustrating than leaving your computer for an hour, only to come back and realize updates demanded that they restart your computer and you need to relaunch all your applications, videos, etc.

Linux users only have to reboot on kernel updates (say, twice a year, only if you want a new kernel, which often isn't worth the trouble). It isn't that you've wanted "restart" from an operating system, it's that you've wanted an operating system where the paradigm is such that no restarts are required.

Distros like Ubuntu will give you updates that require an reboot more frequently. If you have it on auto-update, which an average desktop user very well may, the situation is about the same as a Mac. Ubuntu puts out new kernels very couple of months.

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#75

Post by code_duck »

gcr wrote: post #69

So this version has: - an ubuntu netbook remix clone (OMG A SCREEN FULL OF ICONS!) but with even more blur, - built-in F11 key - Compiz ring switching plugin - a trackpad, but rebranded! - automatic saving, but rebranded! - time machine, but rebranded! - "suspend" instead of "shut down", but rebranded! - thunderbird's default email layout - gmail's threads, but rebranded! - ripoff of giver (a Novell engineer's 2007 h…

Mac OS itself is great. I don't mind paying for a version as part of a new machine. The update, though, isn't necessarily exciting enough to me to pay for.

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#76

Post by kentosi »

gcr wrote: post #69

So this version has: - an ubuntu netbook remix clone (OMG A SCREEN FULL OF ICONS!) but with even more blur, - built-in F11 key - Compiz ring switching plugin - a trackpad, but rebranded! - automatic saving, but rebranded! - time machine, but rebranded! - "suspend" instead of "shut down", but rebranded! - thunderbird's default email layout - gmail's threads, but rebranded! - ripoff of giver (a Novell engineer's 2007 h…

> Why do people pay for this?

So that you don't have to bother installing each of these items separately. No downloading, config files, drivers, etc.

It's all just there.

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#77

Post by chc »

ryannielsen wrote: post #68
chc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people actually do use a large percentage of their hard drives.

Why shouldn't the OS treat the HDD/SDD just as it does RAM: use up as much as possible in the background, while always ensuring the user's immediate needs come first? In other words, empty disk is wasted disk. Lion could quite easily use 'empty' disk space for document versioning or local backups, and immediately reap those versions/backups when the user actually does need that disk space.

For HDDs (rather than SSD), there are very good technical reasons not to abuse the disk. Disk access is easily the slowest thing a computer. While everything else leapt ahead over the past several decades, seek times for hard disks have improved a fair amount, but nothing like the almost unbelievable improvements the other parts of your computer have gone through.

Your computer already kind of does what you describe: That's what virtual memory paging is. And when your system starts paging a lot, it's noticeably slower. And when your computer starts paging with a nearly full disk, it is an out-and-out dog.

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#78

Post by chc »

catch23 wrote: post #44
chc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless I'm misremembering, unless you ask for detailed information about the updates, it doesn't tell you ahead of time if it's going to ask to restart your computer. It just says basically, "There are updates available. Do you want them?"

you're probably misremembering -- there's a little arrow next to the update items which require a reboot, and even after installing everything, you can still choose to reboot later. I still have a system running Tiger so I don't think it's changed since then.

I just checked. The standard Software Update screen in 10.6 doesn't have a list of items. It just has three buttons: "Show Details", "Not Now" and "Install" — the list you're talking about is revealed by "Show Details." You do still have the option to wait as long as you want to restart, though.

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#79

Post by ryannielsen »

chc wrote: post #77
ryannielsen wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn't the OS treat the HDD/SDD just as it does RAM: use up as much as possible in the background, while always ensuring the user's immediate needs come first? In other words, empty disk is wasted disk. Lion could quite easily use 'empty' disk space for document versioning or local backups, and immediately reap those versions/backups when the user actually does need that disk space.

For HDDs (rather than SSD), there are very good technical reasons not to abuse the disk. Disk access is easily the slowest thing a computer. While everything else leapt ahead over the past several decades, seek times for hard disks have improved a fair amount, but nothing like the almost unbelievable improvements the other parts of your computer have gone through. Your computer already kind of does what you describe:…

Actually, I disagree. What I describe is more like RAM buffered IO, where the space can be reclaimed at no cost, rather than swap, where the data must be saved for coherency.

It's entirely viable for a filesystem to archive all of the data you've ever created. Treat the archived files as an LRU cache and, when new data needs to be saved, just write over the least recently used data. Instead of a volume bitmap of used blocks, you have a tree that can be traversed to get the blocks that can be overwritten. This is not data that must be saved, like the swap; it's data that should be saved until something else needs it, at which point it's overwritten, like most OS's RAM IO buffers.

Re: New Mac OS X Lion features announced: Version Control, Instant Resume

#80

Post by robotresearcher »

cryptoz wrote: post #41
chc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people actually do use a large percentage of their hard drives.

Those people are exceedingly rare. And I'm sure applications won't autosave huge files; if they do there would be large performance hits. Most files that need autosaving are basic documents, maybe pictures. 99.9% of the time autosaving is a good idea. If your autosave makes you run out of disk space, you're probably "doing it wrong".

> Those people are exceedingly rare

They are not so rare at this point in history - many people use a laptop as their main/only machine, and the move to SSD shrunk my disk by 3X. Space is going to be tight for a couple of years - I traded it for great performance.

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