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."

Ooookaaaay...

[gentlemen_loser]

"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"...

Err...no he didn't.

[mccalli]

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:Wow, 10 years old?!

[bark]

but seriously, what does age have anything to do with the suitability of the os? Linux has used ext2fs for a long time, and only in the last 4 or 5 years migrated to ext3fs.

Certain filesystems have been around forever, gaining incremental improvements with the years.

Re:Mac OS X Leopard

[Slashcrap]

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.

Re:reminds me of something

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm yes. I can see the parallels. In one case, Microsoft started development on WinFS and then dropped it. In the other case, Apple NEVER intended to use ZFS, and still don't. No wait, what are the parallels again?

Re:Ooookaaaay...

[Scudsucker]

The priceless thing about this announcement is having all the Macheads that went "Leopard will be so hip, full of advanced filesystem goodness - all you other lusers will have to play catch-up" now rationalize why ZFS was not a good choice for Leopard anyway.

Which Macheads, exactly.

Re:Retribution

[Trillan]

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?

Sun is shipping it

[Nicolas MONNET]

Sun is shipping it for use in "enterprise" setups.

Their core business is very expensive hardware and software for demanding users: banks and the likes.

If you've gotta give the benefit of the doubt to someone in this area, it's gotta be Sun.

Re:Retribution

[Bassman59]

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:Yeah. So?

[linefeed0]

You'd think so. You'd be wrong. Ever seen an "invalid sibling link"? I did, oh, in 1996, with the original HFS. Also this past year on a Tiger server. I suspect there was something wrong with the RAID controller, but a filesystem that relies on b-trees really should be able to at least try to repair them. HFS+ has good company, though. XFS from SGI (on Linux) has tons of stupid bugs, omissions, and corner cases; NTFS certainly has its share of "fun"; and I haven't used reiserfs enough to really know how stable it is. I do like JFS, though, even though it's not the fastest in the world.

Re:Retribution

[danpsmith]

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.

Re:Notes from a WWDC curmudgeon

[VWJedi]

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?

Considering ATI's drivers...

[MsGeek]

...for Linux bite the bag, and at least NVidia's and Intel's are worth using, this is a blessing in disguise for all those who intend to use Linux with their MacIntels. No big loss.

Re:ZFS looks great but.

[laffer1]

I won't argue benefits, but I'd like to point out the FreeBSD 7-current implementation uses a lot of RAM. Apple doesn't ship enough RAM in their products as it is. I don't see this working well out of the box on desktops. Now, we might see it in OS X server and it may be in the client, but not pushed. Regardless, a serious RAM upgrade is needed. I think Sun even recommends at least 1GB of RAM to use ZFS on Solaris.

The other issue people aren't thinking about is making older Mac apps work on the new file system. Not all Mac apps work on UFS which is an option in OS X. Apple might have to wait on this until more people run on intel Macs.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[jeffasselin]

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

Re:A new iChat??

[eddy]

Honestly, unleashing that kind of easy remote-control power on the unwashed masses seems like security hell waiting to happen.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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?

[adisakp]

I predicted this a week ago:

PREVIOUS POST [slashdot.org]

Re:Ooookaaaay...

[jeffasselin]

At first, when we heard the more serious info about ZFS last week, I found it interesting, but when I read the comments here on /. and went to look for info on ZFS, I realized it's a powerful filesystem but which might not be ready for prime-time. I suspect Apple is looking or looked at using it, but realized it wasn't ready for integration -- especially not as the default FS in a consumer OS. I'd certainly like to see it as an optional supported format to play and experiment with, but such a switch would probably cause more trouble than it'd be worth right now.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[Genevish]

Not exactly true. Apple is one of the largest PC manufacturers (and was when they dropped ATI as well). Their OS share may be low, but they are a big hardware maker. (Fourth largest in the September quarter last year: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6127255.html?ta g=nl [zdnet.com]).

For an OS comparison, a Dell is the same as an Acer is the same a HP. But as for hardware, these are all different.

Are you sure about your data?

[YesIAmAScript]

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?

[moderatorrater]

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?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

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.

One of Jobs major methods of promoting the company is through secrecy and well timed manipulation of the press. Anyone can claim that the move he made hurt the company, but there is no easy way to show it on paper, since it was a long-term strategic move. Thus, you have to judge based upon the overall results.

There's no doubt that Steve Jobs has been a great asset, but that doesn't mean he's above criticism (or SEC regulations).

Of course he can be criticized and should be, but I've seen no convincing argument he should be criticized for this particular move. He stood behind his agreement and his partner did not, so he dumped them. I applaud such action. Too often people are willing to sell their reputation for expedience.

What does the SEC have to do with this?

case sensitivity

[e**(i pi)-1]

I actually hoped that Leopard would have case sensitivity by default. Case insensitivity, files like "makefile" and "Makefile" are considered the same is a pain, when using OS X together with other OS. I lost many files due to case insensitivity (i.e. back up a directory on OSX, then move things back). While it is possible to enable case sensitivity, there are still too many things which break [macfixit.com] when doing the switch on the boot drive and this is no surprise because many applications depend on insensitive FS. What about allowing the user to have certain folders to be case sensitive?

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[PygmySurfer]

Jonathan *had* to know he might get burned for spilling the beans before Steve.

I'm not sure how Jonathan got burned. Sure, it'd look good for Sun to have ZFS integrated into Mac OS X, but at the end of the day it doesn't really do much for them. If anyone got screwed, it's the end-users. That's if Steve really did decide to pull it based on Jonathan's comments.

I'm not convinced ZFS support is far enough along to be included in Leopard.

Apparently, the work they've done is still in the WWDC beta build [opensolaris.org].

The way they point to the full read/write kext at developer.apple.com makes me think maybe Apple will ship it flagged as experimental or something (similar to FreeBSD).

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

[Sancho]

I don't expect that ZFS would be a major announcement from Apple. It's too techie. The keynotes tend to focus on whiz-bang interface features. ZFS might have been the driving file system behind Time Machine, but when the announcement came, it would be all about Time Machine, not ZFS.

Re:Haven't you learned anything?

[Gary W. Longsine]

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:Retribution

[FauxPasIII]

> this wouldn't be the first time Apple has gone out of it's way to punish its customers for preemptive announcements about Apples products made by vendors.

Fixed.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[duffbeer703]

<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:reminds me of something

[drsmithy]

On the one hand, MS was telling everyone for years about their new filesystem named WinFS.

No, they weren't. WinFS is not - and never has been - a filesystem.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[Magic5Ball]

In real IT and business shops, a reliable roadmap is a requirement of any product of which you plan to buy and support thousands of units. Architecture switches and products going end of life in 18 months matters a lot if you're working with a 3-year roll-out plan, especially if there are complex platform dependencies.

Corporate policy pertains to things surrounding predictable inputs and desired outputs. If the continued availability of a product line is unpredictable, my policies are suddenly less valuable and the business risk of going with that product has increased. For that reason, suppliers like Dell have multiple product tracks, with the consumer version having no promises of configuration or support security, and the corporate version being available in the presently available standard configuration for 18 to 36 months into the future.

That is how secrecy could hurt sales.

Apple are lame

[aliquis]

Considering there will only be read-only support of ZFS now I doubt it was as much as Steve Jobs beeing upset on Schwartz as it was Apple not beeing done with porting and getting ZFS to run which was the problem.