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?

[dthirteen]

Nobody scoops Steve Jobs...

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[Raindance]

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:

[Black-Man]

Just makes the doubters of him as CEO material all the more relevant. He should of known better.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[jeffasselin]

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

spelling

[Gary W. Longsine]

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:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

I could care less about the English language.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[Reality Master 101]

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?

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: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?

[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:

[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 du

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.

Re:

[PygmySurfer]

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?

If? The issue with Jobs dropping ATI occurred in 2000. Apple has been dealing with ATI for several years now (though since the AMD/ATI merger, Apple seems to be using NVidia GPUs in new products).

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:

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Although it's more like Apple holds 2% market share and Ati 50%.

Do a quick Google search for their relative market shares. Apple has 4-7% of the US market sales. ATI has 22-26% of US market sales. If you want to look at global market sales, Apple drops to 3% and ATI drops to 8%, since globally the high end market makes up a much smaller chunk of that market then it does in the US, with on the board solutions predominating.

Now before you waste my time with redefining the market definition to exclude on the board solutions, remember that is the percentage computers we'

Re:

[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?t a 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.

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[htakashiro]

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

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.

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:

[ahg]

Sun Micro probably does not have the same motivation as the other two companies you mentioned above to keep things secret. Afterall, with ZFS being open source, Apple doesn't have to pay royalties or licensing fees to them. They may have some sort of consulting contract with Apple, as they have the most knowledgable people on ZFS working for them. That and bragging rights may be good for Sun, but it's not likely a major contract will be lost.

Re:

[sootman]

The first rule of ZFS is... you do not talk about ZFS!

Re:

[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

Re:

[Abcd1234]

No, they're modding down posts that are clearly nothing more than contentless flamebait. But you just keep on fightin' the good fight against "the man".

Re:Haven't you learned anything Sun?

[TheWizardTim]

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?

[adisakp]

I predicted this a week ago:

PREVIOUS POST [slashdot.org]

Wow, 10 years old?!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:

[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:

[rainman_bc]

I'm with you on that too - UFS has been around forever as well, only seeing incremental updates from Sun and BSD - adding stuff like journaling and support for larger drives. Why go with a whole new fs?

Re:Wow, 10 years old?!

[Megane]

...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]

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Problems with old file systems

[Anonymous Coward]

FAT stopped counting after a stroke. FAT can still write down a number, but can no longer verbalize them.

Old file systems also have other problem. They are always repeating themselves and losing things, they get cranky all the time, and telling stories that go nowhere instead of simply reading and writing. And they start to get this weird smell.

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"...

Re:

[seebs]

Oh, come on. It's Zonk. Of course the comment at the end of the story is painfully stupid.

He'll eventually die from trying to upgrade to a more modern metabolism instead of this crappy carbon/oxygen system, a system MUCH older than HFS+.

Re:

[gEvil (beta)]

Oh, come on. It's Zonk. Of course the comment at the end of the story is painfully stupid.

Too bad it was javipas that wrote that and not Zonk, otherwise your rant might have meant something. I find it very sad that someone who's been here for so long still can't figure out which parts of the summary are user-submitted and which parts are editorial commentary.

Re:Ooookaaaay...

[seebs]

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. :)

Re:

[drinkypoo]

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

Is there any doubt that ZFS would provide superior functionality as compared to HFS+?

Are there any drawbacks to using ZFS as a replacement for HFS+?

Re:

[Trillan]

Yes, I have doubts. Not long term doubts, though, just short term doubts.

Re:

[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 p

Re:

[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.

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.

Senior Director of Product Marketing

[lbmouse]

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

[earnest murderer]

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:

[SocietyoftheFist]

It sounds retaliatory. Seriously, Apple doesn't like things to be pre-announced and I'm sure that they had a contingency in place just in case of such things.

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?

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: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:

[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.

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:Err...no he didn't.

[Overly Critical Guy]

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.

Apple Confirms No Confirmation of ZFS in Leopard

[Sketch]

So basically, Apple confirmed that it did not confirm ZFS in Leopard.

Also, they have no comment on what that other guy said.

What the cat said

[Rakshasa Taisab]

"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.

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:

[casualsax3]

And what are you doing with your 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo? What's more important - 2% of your dual core CPU, or 100% of your normally non-redundant data?

Re:

[Otterley]

Have you actually *used* ZFS? It is not CPU intensive in the least. I've run it on a 700MHz PIII with no problems. From the developer's mouth: "Assume 1 2GHz Opteron for every 200 MB/s, including ZFS *and* the NFS stack". [opensolaris.org] 200 MB/s is an order of magnitude (10x) faster than any hard disk installed in a desktop or laptop. And, that's for a continuous I/O load, which most users never see.

If you're having CPU issues with ZFS, you're in the HD video business, in which case you'll have a dual CPU machine any

Re:

[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 fil

Re:

[TheRaven64]

ZFS is built in three layers. The bottom layer is akin to a volume manager. The middle layer is a transactional I/O interface. The top presents something to the user. Sun have two implementations of the top layer; one which looks like UFS and one which looks like a block device (I expect one which looks like an SQL database will show up soon).

The easiest way for Apple to use ZFS would be to simply use the interface that appears to be a block device and pop HFS+ on top of it. This would let them take

What's wrong with HFS+?

[wiredog]

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

[hkb]

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:

[Trillan]

Read only NTFS support is in the Tiger build, yet I haven't read any speculation that it will become the default file system in Leopard.

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?

Re:

[moosesocks]

I'd bet that ZFS is in there for some future version of their XServe NAS product, not as a boot partition.

Granted, I am somewhat disappointed by this announcement. HFS+ isn't terrible, but as far as modern file systems go, it's pretty unremarkable (and every bit as poorly supported as NTFS).

HFS is older though

[toby]

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 su

Re:

[Winckle]

I hope Sun are paying you well Toby.

Linux

[javilon]

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

Re:

[EvilRyry]

I'm pretty sure this has been well covered on Slashdot before, but I'll say it again: GPLv2 and v3 will play nicely together.

It's not ready!

[ElephanTS]

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...

[dpbsmith]

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.

Re:

[despisethesun]

That, in my mind, would be a compelling reason not to ever buy an Apple. If the company is so ready to remove features that would be useful to users and advance the state of the art just to get back at someone for leaking word of that feature, they clearly don't have the customer's best interests at heart.

What's more likely is that there were technical troubles getting it to work with the rest of the OS that couldn't be fixed or worked around before the release date. As others have noted [slashdot.org], the support for Z

Re:

[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.

Correction Coming: ZFS to be available (sort of)

[Dotnaught]

I was one of the two reporters in that interview and we both were surprised by Croll's comment. We were just contacted by Apple to say that what we heard (or what we both thought we heard) was not the fully story. The real story is:

An Apple spokesperson seeking to clarify Croll's statement indicated that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

Further detail:
It's only available as a read only option from the command line.

We're still trying to find out what this means, but a correction is coming.

Jives with editorial comments on TFA

[LionMage]

Apparently, one of the editors at InformationWeek (Michael Singer, West Coast Editor) saw several perplexed comments left by readers and added similar commentary to yours, which I thought would be germane:

As to the news, it seems that Croll mispoke [sic] a couple of times when asked about ZFS in Leopard. Despite direct questions about Sun CEO Schwartz's claims that ZFS is there, Croll flatly denied the reports to two of our reporters in a 1:1 interview.

An Apple spokesperson called us Tuesday seeking to clarify Croll's statement. Croll was apparently supposed to indicate that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

We are now writing a separate story to note Apple's mis-statement and hopefully to reveal more about how ZFS would work in Leopard.

We'll update you here when that story is live.

Glad to see there's an effort underway to get the facts out to people.

The story is not accurate.

[Kristoph]

The InformationWeek editor has posted this ...

As to the news, it seems that Croll mispoke a couple of times when asked about ZFS in Leopard. Despite direct questions about Sun CEO Schwartz's claims that ZFS is there, Croll flatly denied the reports to two of our reporters in a 1:1 interview.

An Apple spokesperson called us Tuesday seeking to clarify Croll's statement. Croll was apparently supposed to indicate that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system."

We are now writing a separate story to note Apple's mis-statement and hopefully to reveal more about how ZFS would work in Leopard.

We'll update you here when that story is live.

Michael Singer

InformationWeek - West Coast Editor

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:

[u-bend]

My friend, my friend, though I agree with much of what you say, do you not realize that ./ will now tear you to shreds as a rabid Mac "advertisement-in-a-post" fanboi? What? You're posting anonymously, you say? Oh, carry on, and don't look back at the carnage you left here...
;)

Re:

[sprag]

64-bit apps on 32 bit cpus? Got a source for that? Sounds a bit far-fetched since it would basically mean a pile of emulation that'd make the app slow as molasses.

As far as Fedora 7 goes, I had a single rescue CD I installed from and then everything else just comes in as needed from the net. No "hunting down a different ISO for each and every nuance of processor". I haven't had to compile anything (including getting MP3s, DVDs and other non-free things working).

Re:

[Trillan]

I agree it's doubtful and would have an impact on performance. In fact, I believe I saw the source for this statement, and interpreted it the same way (with some skepticism) at first. The skepticism was eventually rewarded, and I figured out it wasn't meant to be read this way...

However, it seems that if 64 bit operations were implemented as calls to a global table, the cost wouldn't be unreasonably high. It would certainly be slower than code actually tuned for 32-bit CPUs, and it would also have some impa

Re:

[smartin]

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.

For each nuance of processor? hmm, 32 vs 64 bit not really what i would call a nuance.

Re:

[hoggoth]

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

Microsoft could take some tips from Apple to make their OS more global. First they should declare Windows will no longer on Dells, HPs, eMachines, SONYs, Toshibas and several hundred other vendors. It will only run on Microsoft's branded machines that will have nice features but cost a little more than they used to.
That should make it easier to make Windows compatible with as many machines

Re:

[CrackedButter]

I can agree on your point to a degree because of the different ways the OS is distributed, but from all accounts people have been managing to get OSX installed on Dells, Toshiba's, tablets and even those UMPC's for a while now.

Re:

[FishWithAHammer]

With custom, unsupported drivers.

Re:

[cHiphead]

Last time I checked the majority of the drivers I install on Windows come back as 'unsigned' with a big ugly warning message.

Unsupported drivers is not a good excuse, WORKING drivers is what matters.

Re:

[rainman_bc]

Microsoft could take some tips from Apple to make their OS more global.

Good idea - let's go after the business model which holds 5% market share and try to be more like them... Honestly, hate or love Microsoft, their model's worked for them so far. Apple might be nibbling at their heels, but there's certain price barriers that Apple just doesn't understand. I can drop $500 and get a pretty kick-ass Windows box. I think $500 gets me an iPhone.

But my post will never see the light of day as I'll be seen as

Re:

[Bearpaw]

I can drop $500 and get a pretty kick-ass Windows box. I think $500 gets me an iPhone.

"I'm thinking! I'm thinking!"

Re:

[Sketch]

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

I like how a "different architecture" is now a "nuance of a processor".

By the way, there are only 3 versions of Fedora. i386, x86_64, and PPC. So Leopard only has Fedora beat by 1 edition.

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:

[MsGeek]

Ein volk, ein reich, ein OSX?

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with thei

Re:

[monomania]

...Leopard dropping ZFS ...

Why do you assume Leopard ever had ZFS?

Re:

[0racle]

It was in (though I don't know if it was usable) several developer seeds. Also it looks like ZFS related tools are included with Leopard.

Re:

[Crazy Taco]

It was in the Leapord beta. I think that's a fairly good reason to make that assumption.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

On the one hand, MS was telling everyone for years about their new filesystem named WinFS. Actually if you consider the capabilities of WinFS and not just the name, MS promised that type of technology in Cairo over 10 years ago. On the other, Apple never said it was experimenting with ZFS much less that it was going to use it. A Sun exec said Apple would use it in Leopard based on the fact that Apple entered into an agreement to use ZFS. My viewpoint is that although Apple got rights to use it, that do

Re:

[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:

[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 sta

You're right, it's not the age, it's the suckage.

[argent]

HFS+ is the only file system I have used on ANY UNIX system in the past quarter of a century where I have had to resort to third-party tools to fix corruption, and where you can corrupt it to that point just by letting it fill up.

Sometimes I really hate it when I'm right. I suggested [slashdot.org] that this was too good to be true when it was originally posted here. Alas, we're stuck with HFS+ until Apple gets over their NIH issues.

Re:

[UnknowingFool]

See, crazy attitudes like that is the primary reason I don't have my jet pack and flying car by now. Usefulness, stability, bah! That's so 20th century, man. :P

Re:

[moranar]

Ext3 was introduced in 2001, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3 [wikipedia.org] . Three years after HFS+ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HFS_Plus [wikipedia.org] Ext2 and Ext3 are compatible, but not the same thing.

A new iChat??

[Disoriented]

Not sure if anyone noticed, but a major feature that was promised for iChat in Leopard has somehow disappeared.

From the Leopard Sneak Peak, still in Google's cache here [72.14.253.104]

Share and share alike

Remote control takes on a whole new meaning with iChat in Leopard. Thanks to iChat Screen Sharing, you and your buddy can observe and control a single desktop via iChat, making it a cinch to collaborate with colleagues, browse the Web with a friend, or pick the perfect plane seats with your spouse. Share your own desktop or share your buddy's -- you both have complete control at all times. And when you start a Screen Sharing session, iChat automatically initiates an audio chat so you can talk things through while you're at it.

However, there is no mention of iChat Desktop sharing on Apple's new iChat for Leopard page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/ichat .html [apple.com]

This sucks. I was really hoping to replace my kludgy VNC setups and NAT tables with a clean, elegant, and free remote desktop solution. Thanks a lot Apple!

Re:A new iChat??

[aftk2]

First off, screen sharing appears to still be supported in the OS:

Image here [apple.com]

Additionally, the button for screen sharing is still present in the ichat screenshots:

Image here [apple.com]
(bottom right in the buddy list window)

Still there

[smurfsurf]

Its description has been moved to the "Finder" page at http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/finde r.html [apple.com] in the "Closer connections" paragraph.

"By clicking on a connected Mac, you can see and control that computer (if authorized, of course) as if you were sitting in front of it. "

It's still there - just not in iChat

[log0n]

It's now integrated into the Finder (Closer Connections on the Finder page).

http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/features/finde r.html [apple.com]