Apple Confirms No (Default) ZFS In Leopard

javipas writes "Despite recent rumors about the possible inclusion of ZFS as the filesystem of choice for MacOS X 10.5 'Leopard', an Apple executive has denied this possibility. Brian Croll, senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS has as much as said 'ZFS is not happening ... Croll declined to comment on statements made last week by Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, who said the use of ZFS would be announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Upon further questioning, Croll would only confirm that Apple had never said ZFS would be a part of Leopard. A representative with Sun did not have any immediate comment.' Users of the future operating system will have to keep working with HFS+, a filesystem that is almost ten years old now." Update: 06/12 19:57 GMT by KD : An Apple spokesman contacted InformationWeek with a correction, which they ran as a comment on their original story: What Apple meant to say was, "ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

Haven't you learned anything Sun?

Nobody scoops Steve Jobs...

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

I agree.

Jonathan *had* to know he might get burned for spilling the beans before Steve. Jobs has a track record of being harsh, almost vindictive in his dealings with companies which betray his trust.

Exhibit A [insanely-great.com]: Samsung runs their mouth about being selected to supply software to drive the next-gen iPod Nano. Apple turns around and drops them.

Exhibit B [geek.com]: ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.

Simply put, don't try to scoop The Steve.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

Probably from where there's "No child left behind".

spelling

The larger pattern of which this is one example seems to indicate that many people don't read, except Slashdot and other geek discussion forums, blogs, etc., In turn, this leads to a self-perpetuating defect. A meme, if you will, mutates, and replicates in this pool because the corrective mechanisms are weak. It then may rise to dominance in a limited domain of Slashdot, for example, if people don't spend enough time reading outside materials. (We already know the articles are often not read.) People see these things misspelled more often than not. If they don't read sources from literature or properly edited magazines or newspapers then they pick up the wrong spelling or usage, and add to the noise. The feedback loop builds as other people are then more likely to encounter the incorrect usages or spellings more frequently than they otherwise would.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

ATI runs their mouth about some specs for new macs before Macworld. Apple removes ATI boards from their computers and refuses to offer them as a build-to-order.

Which really underscores the stupidity of Steve's arrogance. I'm sure ATI wanted that contract, it was a nice contract, but Apple is NOTHING in the great scheme of the PC market. And there aren't that many major players in the high-end graphic chip game. Why play the prima donna, when he might have to deal with them in the future?

Re:Haven't you learned anything?

The five year history of Apple's share price indicates that Apple's strictly enforced policies regarding secrecy of their product plans is probably not hurting the company in any way. Considering the lackluster performance of other companies that blabber on and on and on about their half-baked plans that never mature, one might well conclude that this policy is helping Apple shareholders, even if it comes at the expense of occasional inconvenience.

That said, ZFS is probably not important enough for Apple to punish Sun over a set of flapping gums. If you want a better conspiracy theory, perhaps Apple was testing Sun to see if they could keep a secret. The answer is "No."

Really, though, everybody knows ZFS is interesting, and Apple is porting it to Mac OS X. It's quite likely that nobody at Apple knows when or if ZFS on Mac OS X will be mature enough to become a candidate for replacing the default filesystem. It probably won't happen before October, but that's not to say it will never happen.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

Which really underscores the stupidity of Steve's arrogance.

Yeah, because Apple stock is so low compared to when he took charge.

I'm sure ATI wanted that contract, it was a nice contract, but Apple is NOTHING in the great scheme of the PC market.

Let's see, Apple is about 5% of the graphics card market share. ATI has about 25% of the market right now, so they would represent a 20% increase in sales for ATI, hmmm, I think that might be worth a little bit of work to get the contract. Gee what do we have to do to manage such a contract... not violate our confidentiality agreement, that does sound pretty hard.

And there aren't that many major players in the high-end graphic chip game.

There are enough so that Apple has a few choices.

Why play the prima donna, when he might have to deal with them in the future?

If people violate your trust and undermine your market position, why would you keep doing business with them? If, at some point in the future Apple does do business with ATI again, do you think ATI will take keeping things confidential seriously or do you think they'll stupidly lose a giant contract while gaining nothing again? What about all of Apple's other suppliers for components? Do you think they will take confidentiality seriously? By punishing ATI, Apple showed they were serious and would not put up with that kind of stupidity. Now their statements to suppliers are credible instead of hot air.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

Yeah, because Apple stock is so low compared to when he took charge.

Nice fallacious argument. Jobs has done well with the company, but that doesn't mean his arrogance hasn't hurt the company or that the arrogance is stupid. There's no doubt that Steve Jobs has been a great asset, but that doesn't mean he's above criticism (or SEC regulations).

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

<quote>Yeah, because Apple stock is so low compared to when he took charge.</quote>

Hubris often leads to poor decisions. An arrogant prick who is always right is a hero -- until he's wrong.

Jobs has done alot of great stuff -- he's a visionary who has beaten cancer and grown an amazing company at the same time. That doesn't mean that he's infallible. The obsession with secrecy costs Apple alot of business -- there are today enterprises that would purchase thousands of Macs, but the needless obsession with secrecy and refusal to listen to some customer desires hurts the company in the long run.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

I think Jobs kinda knows what he's doing. We're the ones posting on Slashdot.

Are you sure about your data?

My understanding is that Samsung did score the contract for the chip in the 2nd Gen Nano. Wikipedia says so, for whatever that's worth.

Additionally, I think people are getting crazy reactionary, assuming that the gaffe by SUN was responsible for ZFS not making Leopard.

There's no way to know if it was even in there before anyway.

And besides, Leopard was delayed by 6 months back in March. When you delay a product, you don't go adding new features to it, it'll just make the schedule longer. You might in fact defer features you were thinking of adding, like ZFS. It reduces the work to be done and helps shorten the schedule, keeping you closer to the original date.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

When I worked for Apple, at 6am ATI let slip that they were making cards for The PowerMac and "something else". That "something else" was the cube. My boss got a call about 5 minutes later from Steve telling us to remove all references to ATI on all web pages, in 17 languages, by 9am.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

I predicted this a week ago:

PREVIOUS POST [slashdot.org]

Wow, 10 years old?!

Too bad NTFS is almost 15, and I heard FAT stopped counting (because of a technical limitation).

Re:Wow, 10 years old?!

...and HFS+ is just an incremental update from HFS - adding stuff like journaling and support for larger drives, long unicode file names, and some unixisms like inodes and /dev and hard links and case sensitivity.

So you can really say that HFS+ is almost 22 years old now. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Wow, 10 years old?!

Why is the fact that it is "old" considered to be a problem ? Anyone who thinks new=good, old=bad is way out of step.

Far better to talk about what features it lacks. Or if you're trying to defend it, talk about its stability record. Have filesystems really advanced, since journalling became the standard way to do things, in any specific way that benefits regular users ?

Mac OS X Leopard

Apple has beaten the world's most popular desktop operating system and the world's most popular Unixalike to the punch with multi-platform support. At Monday's WWDC07 Apple, Inc. CEO Steve Jobs revealed that, when Leopard ships, it will install and run on every one of its supported architectures from one DVD without bothering the user. And the more featured your system is, the more features Leopard will automatically enable.

For example, a user can use the same DVD to install Mac OS X on a dual 533 MHz Power Mac G4, a 32-bit Core Solo Mac mini, a 64-bit Power Mac G5 Quad, and a 64-bit Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro. It even goes so far as to allow 64-bit apps without a 32-bit binary to run in 32-bit mode transparently, which is unprecedented thus far.

Windows, on the other hand, requires a different 32- or 64-bit version for each of its six flavors. So once you decide you want, say, Windows Professional Enterprise, you need to make sure it comes with 64-bit support. Otherwise, you'll be stuck booting your chip in 32-bit mode. Apps must be written and released for 32- or 64-bit and can't run otherwise. This limits users of older systems with Pentium III processors, for example, from running a 64-bit version of a popular game.

Linux eats dust in the race for 64-bit desktopedness too. With Ubuntu 7.05, the latest stable release, things have gotten simpler but still don't stack up to Leopard. So while you can download one version of Ubuntu for both 32- and 64-bit x86, if you want to run 32-bit programs on a 64-bit system you have to download a compatibility layer, check library dependencies, and compile it yourself. 64-bit programs won't work on a 32-bit arch, simply returning an error code and quitting.

That only counts for Intel and AMD, however. Other architectures supported by Linux, which number in the dozens and include 68k, ARM, Power, and SPARC among others, are one-at-a-time installs only and don't have any compatibility between 32- and 64-bit versions. So a user wanting to install on a 32-bit SPARC system from Sun will have to go out and purchase another completely different disc for installation on a 64-bit UltraSPARC system even tho both processors use the same instruction set.

At most, when counting Mac OS X and Mac OS X Server as two different "versions" of the operating system, you still have only to choose one and are then done with it. Each installs on all four architectures seamlessly and silently.

Windows comes to a total of twelves versions: 32- and 64-bit for each six editions. The number jumps to twenty-four when you consider that you must also choose whether to buy the retail or upgrade versions. This is simply too much work for most people whether they're doing personal use or IT.

Linux does little better, as above with the old download/compile scheme for legacy support. The kicker is that most other distributions of Linux don't even do that well. A user with Fedora Core 7 will still need to hunt down a different ISO for each and every nuance of processor, a real shame since Linux developers sit and scratch their heads over why Linux is still not ready for the desktop.

Come October, Mac OS X will serve everyone with one price, one version, one install: one vision of simple 64-bit desktop goodness.

Re:Mac OS X Leopard

It even goes so far as to allow 64-bit apps without a 32-bit binary to run in 32-bit mode transparently, which is unprecedented thus far.

Almost as unprecedented as a Mac zealot making hilariously inaccurate technical claims because they simply don't understand what they're talking about, but don't see that a justification for keeping their mouths shut.

Come October, Mac OS X will serve everyone with one price, one version, one install: one vision of simple 64-bit desktop goodness.

I made a deal with a hitman. If I ever fall in love with a company to that extent he's going to come round and shoot me in the face. I find it a more palatable option than allowing myself to become a PR spewing corporate cocksucker.

Ooookaaaay...

"Users of the future operating system will have to keep working with HFS+, a filesystem that is almost ten years old now."

Yes, because a file system is something that should definitely be re-designed every two years or so. You know, just to stay "current"...

Re:Ooookaaaay...

You have a point. I guess I'm just used to assuming that the thing at the end which makes no sense comes from Zonk. :)

Senior Director of Product Marketing

Why do reporters insist on interviewing marketing goons to uncover tech specs? This guy probably thought the reporter was asking if Leopard was going to include Zurich Financial Services.

Retribution

I'm not saying this is retailatory... But this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish partners for making preemptive announcements about Apples products. One may recall not too many years ago ATI making a show about Apple using their video cards just before another WWDC (maybe it was Macworld, I forget). Apple proceeded to spend the night pulling ATI's cards from their ready to ship Macs. In keynote the following morning Steve Jobs announced (surely with ATI execs in the front row) that nVidia was their premier partner for Mac video. It has been said that it was 6 monts before ATI execs could get even an executive secretary on the phone.

Re:Retribution

For the sake of argument, how would it have sounded different if Apple just had never planned on shipping ZFS as the defualt file system?

Re:Retribution

I'm not saying this is retailatory... But this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish partners for making preemptive announcements about Apples products. One may recall not too many years ago ATI making a show about Apple using their video cards just before another WWDC (maybe it was Macworld, I forget). Apple proceeded to spend the night pulling ATI's cards from their ready to ship Macs.

This really doesn't make any sense. Why would Apple have had tens of thousands of nVidia cards, something that otherwise they wouldn't be using, just sitting around?

Re:Retribution

I'm not saying this is retailatory... But this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish partners for making preemptive announcements about Apples products. One may recall not too many years ago ATI making a show about Apple using their video cards just before another WWDC (maybe it was Macworld, I forget). Apple proceeded to spend the night pulling ATI's cards from their ready to ship Macs. In keynote the following morning Steve Jobs announced (surely with ATI execs in the front row) that nVidia was their premier partner for Mac video. It has been said that it was 6 monts before ATI execs could get even an executive secretary on the phone.

If this is simply retaliatory and not a readiness issue, then Apple is seriously undermining its own products in favor of PR. The truth of the matter is that it doesn't much matter if Samsung coded solutions for Apple or someone else did it, and it didn't particularly matter if ATI made the video cards or Nvidia, these companies can be switched out rather interchangeably. However, ZFS is a giant step forward in file systems and has loads more features than anything else, ripping it out just because they "spilled the beans" would be babyish and hostile. Any logical mind would reason that this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison of retaliation as there's no similar vendor. It's most likely a readiness issue.

Err...no he didn't.

The TFA says:

"Croll declined to comment on statements made last week by Sun Chief Executive Jonathan Schwartz, who said the use of ZFS would be announced at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. Upon further questioning, Croll would only confirm that Apple had never said ZFS would be a part of Leopard."

That reads like "would neither confirm nor deny to our reporter" to me, not "has denied".

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Err...no he didn't.

From the article:

During an interview with InformationWeek, Brian Croll, senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS, said, "ZFS is not happening," when asked whether Sun's Zettabyte File System would be in Leopard. Instead, Leopard would use Apple's current hierarchical file system, called HFS+. The Apple file system was first introduced in 1998 in Mac OS 8.0.

What he declined to comment on was the comment made by the Sun executive, but he did comment on ZFS itself.

What the cat said

"Upon further questioning, Croll would only confirm that Apple had never said ZFS would be a part of Leopard."

Obviously they haven't said anything about ZFS being included, but that doesn't imply they aren't including it. Sun might just have said something they weren't supposed to, or ZFS might just have been considered for inclusion. Who knows...

ZFS looks great but.

It is really better for servers than a Workstation. It uses a lot of CPU power and adds features that no Workstation is likely to need for a while. It would be ideal for a NAS so maybe we will see it as an option on storage product from Apple.

What's wrong with HFS+?

Fat32 isn't exactly young, it's used in many places. NTFS has been around for years. Ext2 likewise. They all work acceptably in the arenas they are designed for.

Notes from a WWDC curmudgeon

ZFS is in the WWDC Leopard build. It's currently configured for read-only, although full functionality is in there. Write ability is disabled for stability/integrity issues. /System/Library/Extensions:

drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 102 Jun 4 20:48 zfs.readonly.kext

Re:Notes from a WWDC curmudgeon

Considering all the talk about how Apple retalliates against people who cross them, don't you think you out to abide by the Non-Disclosure Agreement you entered into when you received that Leopard build?

HFS is older though

HFS+ may date only from System 8.1, but HFS is considerably older - nearly 22 years now. It's very mature and stable code, even the POSIX stuff they bolted on later for HFS+.

Well, we can wait a bit longer for ZFS. If you can't wait, grab a Solaris 10, [sun.com] Solaris Express, [sun.com] or OpenSolaris [opensolaris.org] distribution and start playing today! I'm not comfortable committing precious data to anything else.

One day most of our day-to-day filesystems will incorporate the ideas in ZFS [opensolaris.org] - one or two have been seen before, but never in such a devastating ensemble. The 'Z' may as well stand for 'Zen': Grokking why ZFS is revolutionary seems to be a Zen-like enlightenment :) Many people still wonder "huh? what's the fuss?", [sun.com] as happens with any generational change...

Linux

If sun is moving OpenSolaris to the GPL3 from their current license ZFS will be a high profile case where incompatibilities between GPL v2 and v3 are causing big trouble to Linux, the kernel.

Unless Linus and everyone else decide to move to v3

It's not ready!

Fascinating as it is to guess the workings of his Steveness I still think it's because ZFS is not ready for primetime yet. It's too large a change just to drop in but I do expect to see it in a couple of years. Journalled HFS is not that bad anyway.

It probably WAS in Leopard until June 6th...

Steve Jobs just hates people spoiling his surprises.

My first thought when Jonathan Schwartz announced that ZFS would be the file system in Leopard [arstechnica.com] was that now there was a really danger that Jobs might cancel it, just out of spite... and the prove the leaker wrong.

Ten years old? So what?

I fail to see the reason why the article poster is complaining that HFS+ is nearly 10 years old. Age really doesn't matter. If something is a good product, why not use it for 50 years. I'm not saying HFS+ is necessarilly such a product, but heck, even ext2 is 15 years old. People still use that, and