Working With Tiger Technologies

Juanvaldes writes "Apple has put online more developer-oriented information about Tiger. There are also detailed articles about Spotlight, Dashboard, 64-bit apps and Automator."

New Apple User

[rokzy]

I just got my first Mac, an iBook G4, and have been amazed by it so far. the level of integration is astounding. everything Just Works(tm) and also Plays Nice(tm). for example, everything can be voice-controlled, and the voice control actually works and doesn't need training, and when I install a new app ("Firefox") it automagically understand that app.

Having seen the Macworld Keynote, Tiger looks very good. I'm mostly interested in Dashboard. Seems like a good step forward (I love Expose). Spotlight also seems great, though the number of times I actually use a local search is tiny.

Apple keeps getting better and genuinely innovating, whereas MS seems to just buy, rebrand, then move on when it's Good Enough(tm). I'm sorry if that sounds flamebait, but it's The Truth(tm).

What about Java 1.5?

[skybrian]

It's interesting that there's no mention of Java 1.5, even though it's in the developer preview. Maybe the Java upgrade will slip to 10.4.1?

a converted developer

[Anonymous Coward]

i have two nice dells and dual 18" flat panel monitors. i used to think i had a really kick ass system. windows XP, btw.

i got a g4 powerbook in november.

my PC's are dormant. all my development is done on the mac. i just love using it.

i can't wait for tiger.

now i know why there are apple fanatics.

Re:New Apple User

[rritterson]

I use a Mac, so don't take me as a MS Fanboy, but:

WindowsXP has a built in speech engine. It doesn't need training to understand commands, but you do have to train it to do dictation. I assume any program can use the API, but I only know of one set of programs that do: MS Office.

Dashboard is almost a direct rip off of a third party app, but I forget what it's called.

Desktop search was supposed to be part of WinFS, which MS announced about a year ago. You can't call apple the innovator here, just the fastest-to-market.

I think the true advatages of going with Apple are:

-that OSX gets faster with each version, *on the same hardware*. Think Longhorn will run faster than XP on my P3 machine?

-expose. It works just like you'd expect it to. It's faster to pick out a safari window on a collage of thumbnailed windows than it is from a vertical text list of the window titles (a la XP).

-the .app packaging format. The icon is the entire app. Just drag it to the trash to uninstall it. No registry fragments left behind.

-ability to run as unprivledged. If i need to change a system setting, it will automatically prompt for the admin password. I can also use su and sudo when I need to. (Linux has this too)

-the BSD underbelly. I can use the great GUI to do what I need with a few clicks, but there are some things i just can't do without a terminal. Having rsync, ssh, sftp, cron, etc available to me is great. Unlike Linux, I don't feel like I have to use the terminal unless I want to.

Re:New Apple User

[WMD_88]

Desktop search was supposed to be part of WinFS, which MS announced about a year ago. You can't call apple the innovator here, just the fastest-to-market.

Spotlight has been in developement a few years. Well before the MS announcement. In fact, fragments of it were in OS 9.

You are, however, correct about Dashboard and the speech thing.

Core Data is my favorite new Tiger feature.

[JQuick]

It is an addition to the Cocoa framework and to Xcode which supports a very nice object persistence layer. In a nutshell Cocoa uses the MVC (Model View Controller) design pattern. TO develop an app, one defines ones application data as model objects, build an interface of windows, widgets, etc, and provide controllers which mediate communication between the user and the data model.

In Panther, Apple introduced "Bindings" which obviated the need to actually write most controller objects. Using bindings, the developer can associate object relationships (targets, and actions) between the View and Model layers by essentially using path names. This still enables a clean isolation between the interface and the application data layers, but requires little code (or sometimes none).

In Tiger they added "Core Data". This allows the developer to describe their model data objects, and the object relationships. At run time, using this model description, the model objects are associated with serialized objects on disk in:
XML file format
binary file format
SQLite-based database format

This repository of frozen objects is lazily loaded, and only those objects which are actually required are unarchived and made live. Think NeXT EOF redux, but easier and not tied to WebObjects.

XCode is integrated with a graphical display that lets you explore the object model graph, and also graph the layout of your source code.

This stuff is very sweet. I've been playing with it off and on, and definitely miss Tiger whenever I need to boot back into Panther. (Yes, it's a legal copy. No I won't break my NDA.)

Re:it gets worse

[Bastian]

I was similarly converted to Apple, but I keep a linux box around and use it quite frequently. But thanks to the Mac, I now do everything in GNUStep.

I'm actually amazed that OS X hasn't spurred a renaissance for GNUStep. I figured all the "I like MacOS, but I don't want to pay for Apple hardware" weenies would be hard at work getting around this by using GNUStep as a basis for their Free take-off of OS X instead of sticking with Gnome and KDE (both of which are just Free take-off of Windows in my book).

Re:SQLite part of OS...

[ZackSchil]

SQLite isn't just there for spotlight. CoreData is an interesting set of tools that Apple never really publicized much. Basically, it looks like an API for storing cocoa and carbon data structures into files such that there are two copies (a la the iTunes database). One copy is XML and the other is in SQLite format. The two copies of data are kept synced by CoreData. The purpose behind this is to make an application's files extremely easy to read and manipulate from 3rd party apps but also not have to deal with the overhead of an XML file with 20,000 dictionaries.

It seems like a really cool idea and it has been working great in the iTunes codebase for some time now. Does any OS do something like this already? It seems to me like an obvious solution to a very common development problem. Should really cut down on development time.

I think people are underestimating spotlight...

[GrahamCox]

Many comments seem to think that Spotlight is "just another desktop search". Ho-hum. Of course it is that, but I think what will be killer is its integration into the system. The Steve Jobs demos are cool, but they are not very focused on what I think is the real wow - Smart Folders in the Finder. I truly believe these will revolutionise the way people manage files. If you've used iTunes for any length of time you'll find the smart playlists absolutely invaluable. Having that at the Finder level will be incredible. It'll make the "recent documents" and "recent applications" menu look pretty lame. I think after a while no-one will be able to understand how the hell we managed with only fixed folders all these years.

Re:New Apple User

[Pyrometer]

-the .app packaging format. The icon is the entire app. Just drag it to the trash to uninstall it. No registry fragments left behind.

Not quite true as the 'Library' settings are still left in either the 'System' level library or the 'Users' level library depending on the application. What I would really like to see (and I have just started dipping my hand in development on Mac OS X) is, say an applescript in the .app folder that would detect being moved to the Trash and prompt the user to clean-up the applications settings etc. Does anyone know if this is possible?

Re:it gets worse

[Skinny Rav]

I was similarly converted to Apple, but I keep a linux box around and use it quite frequently. But thanks to the Mac, I now do everything in GNUStep.

I'm actually amazed that OS X hasn't spurred a renaissance for GNUStep.

Well, I am, as you wrote it, "a weenie" - I don't want to pay my 2 months salary for a freaking computer (I live in Poland and in fact my income is quite above average), so I only dream about having a Mac. Well, now with Mac Mini and new prices of iBooks I started to count money maybe to buy one, but back to the point:

I am a long Wmaker user and I tried GNUStep few times, but it simply doesn't work for me. I always do everything the wrong way there, and the menu in the upper left corner just annoys me. Mail.app (or what is it called) reminds me of a mailer program from CDE somewhere in the late nineties. And the whole thing is just ugly. OK, icons are nice, but widgets are terrible: scroll bars, radio button and so on...

Anyway, so far it was always like this: new GNUStep version announcement, apt-get install gnustep, a week or two of futile attempts to like it, apt-get remove gnustep and back to my combo of wmaker/sylpheed/firefox (now replaced by kde 3.3).

Well, maybe not to insightful, but GNUStep has a really long road ahead to be usable to me. And no, I am not a programmer so I am not able to contribute. So maybe I should quit complaining? ;-)

But you are right, it would be nice if more of the MacOS X goodness was available to us in the cheap x86 world :-)

Raf

Re:Autovectorization?

[TomorrowPlusX]

That's what has me tingling!

I do a lot of work requiring realistic physics simulation ( using the Open Dynamics Engine ) -- I don't have the expertise or knowledge to attempt to vectorize ODE, nor do I have the time ( since my work is *using* the engine, not writing it. ). What I *do* know is that ODE, internally, does massive vector operations on float arrays ( float[4] vectors/quaternions, float[16] matices, etc etc ) and it clearly would benefit from SIMD optimizations. The trouble is, all the people who do know how to write such optimizations are on the x86 platform...

Anyway, my simulations are heavily CPU bound, and any improvements that can be had for "free" will make me happy as a clam.

Re:Anyone else worried

[iluvcapra]

there will inevitebly be security flaws that could be exploited if a bad widget gets onto your computer somehow

The potential exists, but in order for the widget to do damage it would have to be downloaded and installed by the user, like any other trojan horse. If the widget wants to do anything outside of your home directory, the user will get a dialogue asking for an admin password.

This will require a certain level of responsibility from users, but no more so than any compiled program.

Then again, making it all javascript-shell script friendly, on top of making it look pretty is dangerous; it makes trojans easier to write and more tempting to the victims (nobody would ever download a .sh file that claimed to output stock quotes or search Amazon.com, but they would certainly download a widget that advertised such features).