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Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

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Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#91

Somewhat more technical information found 2 links deep on Apple site http://images.apple.com/osx/preview/docs/OSX_Mavericks_Core_...

With at least one questionable statement: OS X was the first operating system to ship as a single install that could boot into either a 32-bit or 64-bit kernel, either of which could run 32-bit and 64-bit applications at full native performance. OS X now exclusively uses a 64-bit kernel, but it continues to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. I believe Solaris was actually the first to do this: http://en.wikiped…

To be clear, Apple are claiming the ability to install both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels on a single disk, and select the correct one at boot time so that boot disks are transportable between 64-bit and 32-bit machines.

OS X has had this ability since 64-bit PPC days.

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#93
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of surprised and amused that the NBA expansion team chose the name of a surfing location in Northern California (1961): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavericks_(location) ;)

If the next releases are all California surf spots, I'm all for it.

I honestly thought Sea Lion was pretty cool.

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#94
post #11

I would have preferred OS X Sea Lion.

Me too actually, Mavericks sounds pretty lame compared to the great cat releases.

Are you serious? Mavericks is awesome. One of the greatest surf breaks ever. Every bit as lethal as any of those cats and more a testament to human achievement. Personally I am looking forward to releases like Cloudbreak, Teahupoo, Waimea, and Shipsterns.

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#95
post #80

Are Goose and Iceman the next releases? Sea Lion was 100x better And Keychain stored in iCloud, yeah, nice try there Apple. Finally - the new MacPro looks like a roll of toilet paper encased in glossy plastic. What is that thing.

And Keychain stored in iCloud, yeah, nice try there NSA. FTFY

Either California or surfing metaphors will be next. Sea lion? Probably a little on the cute side for an OS trying to get into enterprise markets.

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#96
post #63

I am so happy to hear that OS X Mavericks will fix fullscreen apps across multiple displays!

How was it ever possible that this was broken in the first place ? Incredible. Stupefying.

I think it was a philosophy more than anything. Fullscreen is not just "taking up the whole screen", it's the idea that you are working on only one application. So if you are fullscreen on one screen, the other screens should be blanked out so they aren't a distraction.

Many disagreed with this philosophy, but that was why it was "broken."

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#97
post #87
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How was it ever possible that this was broken in the first place ? Incredible. Stupefying.

Most users don't use multiple displays. For the vast majority of users, nothing was broken. Also, the multiple-menubar thing illustrates that it's not exactly a simple or uncomplicated fix following the introduction of fullscreen app support.

I would think that Apple devs would use multiple monitors and would have coded the base functionality so that it made sense working.. Even Windows has had pretty decent multi-monitor support for about 5 years now.

Anyway, I look forward to proper multi-monitor support without have to purchase an expensive 3rd party add on, or manually resizing my windows on different screens.

I'm also hoping that like windows, OS-M will remember what apps are where when I plug in different screens (like home vs office).

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#98

Not a lot of technical specificity around "memory compression". Edit: Ok, I stand corrected, somebody's done some research and found the code. Windows 8 does a similar-sounding trick. At some timer interrupts they de-dupe pages and make them copy-on-write when they are identical. I seem to recall also reading that some VM products (VMware?) do this - so if you have a few instances of the same OS, only unique pages en…

Google added this to the Linux kernel quite some time ago for Android.

Basically, it inserts a step before the "move to swap" step where it compresses the page. This a) allows Linux to write a compressed page to swap which allows both faster writes but also faster reads, b) allows you to use more memory before hitting swap.

Major distros are considering enabling this functionality in their kernels by default.

What you're describing sounds like samepage detection, which Linux also has thanks to Google and Android.

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#99
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With at least one questionable statement: OS X was the first operating system to ship as a single install that could boot into either a 32-bit or 64-bit kernel, either of which could run 32-bit and 64-bit applications at full native performance. OS X now exclusively uses a 64-bit kernel, but it continues to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. I believe Solaris was actually the first to do this: http://en.wikiped…

To be clear, Apple are claiming the ability to install both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels on a single disk, and select the correct one at boot time so that boot disks are transportable between 64-bit and 32-bit machines. OS X has had this ability since 64-bit PPC days.

I'll clarify then: I believe Solaris has had the first part (ability to boot into a 32-bit or 64-bit kernel) since 1998. That's well before Apple even provided a 64-bit kernel or ever shipped an OS X release.

Solaris has long had a single, unified architecture for 32-bit and 64-bit and until recently delivered both a 32-bit and 64-bit kernel on a single disk. That's why on Solaris you'll generally find the 32-bit libraries installed in 'usr/lib' and the 64-bit under 'usr/lib/64'.

The only exception is for processor architectures (SPARC/x86) where it made less sense.

But even then, Solaris 11 has multi-variant packages, so a single package provides support for both x86 and SPARC.

It's true that (as far as I'm aware) Solaris never supported the 64-bit application on 32-bit kernel hack that OS X did (which comes with significant performance tradeoffs).

So at most, Apple can claim that achievement, but they can't claim to be the first to provide a single install image supporting 32-bit and 64-bit.

Re: Apple Announces Mac OS X 'Mavericks'

#100

Somewhat more technical information found 2 links deep on Apple site http://images.apple.com/osx/preview/docs/OSX_Mavericks_Core_...

With at least one questionable statement: OS X was the first operating system to ship as a single install that could boot into either a 32-bit or 64-bit kernel, either of which could run 32-bit and 64-bit applications at full native performance. OS X now exclusively uses a 64-bit kernel, but it continues to run both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. I believe Solaris was actually the first to do this: http://en.wikiped…

The key phrase is "either of which could run 32-bit and 64-bit applications." OS X supported 64-bit apps on a 32-bit kernel. This enabled users to run 64 bit apps, and use >4 GB address space, without any device driver incompatibilities.

I think Solaris (and Windows and Linux) require a 64 bit kernel to run 64 bit apps. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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