Next Version Of Mac OS X To Concentrate On Performance Improvements

Here’s the deal. I am actual an independent Apple Systems engineer and I have had my hand on the pulse of this for a while,

Apple will add Grand Central, Open CL, finally re-write the Finder as an Xcode / Cocoa app, etc. All things that will make Snow Leopard even more solid and pack serious horsepower underneath.

There is another aspect here however. If all Apple does is add this robustness, with no obvious visual GUI changes, improvements, it will look exactly as is does now in Leopard, and this is not a good thing.

If this happens, IMHO Apple will not sell many copies of “Snow” Leopard at $129.00.
I know for one, I would not personally buy it (although I still have access to it at work).

This is what worries me. Apple can easily fix some of the glaring and obvious GUI issues, to make it seem better / different on the appearance side. Perception is reality, and if Snow Leopard does not LOOK different, not many people will actually buy it.

This is what is see still needs to address in OS X in two areas: Appearance and Function,

Appearance

- The folder icons in Leopard are absolutely horrendous. They are blue, muted, flat and look like folders from System 7, a joke really. I have no idea how Steve Jobs actually likes these icons.

Look at the “Float” folders in Candy Bar and you get an idea of where Snow Leopard icons should look like, for a start.

- The “blue” pill Aqua buttons, slide bars MUST absolutely removed. They are old looking. Basically unchanged since OS 10.0, and that was 2001.

- These absolutely hideous ” candy cane stripes” must be removed in Progress Bars, or in any other part of the GUI.

- The “Pink” iDisk icon is again a head scratcher. Who approved of this horrendous icon, it must go.

- New Desktop Pictures / Screen Savers.

When a new Mac OS 10x comes out, I always look for new Desktop Pictures and Screen Savers. For some reason this makes it “Feel” like a totally new OS X, even if nothing else was touched. And for some inexplicable reason, Apple just fails to understand this basic concept. Yeah, we got a few new Screen Savers and Desktops in Leopard, but not that many. More new ones in Snow Leopard and take away the old ones.

- The Mac icon in the Finder, come on. It reminds me again of System 7. Kill it once and for all.

- The blue shading in the left column of the Finder or Mail app is another head scratcher. New in Leopard, at least give us an option to turn it off

- Not sure about you, but it seems to me the font size is just too big, when doing a left click objects (icons, etc.) some how can it be resized to be smaller.

Function

The Finder absolutely must be re-written in Xcode. And it is. Why it has taken so long is ridiculous. The Finder is the heart of the Mac OS X, and it is also basically the “Front Man” of Mac OS X. If it is slow, crashes, etc., for all intents and purposes, people conclude, Mac OS X is slow, crashes and sucks.

The Finder must be fast, fluid and as independent as possible of core system services, copying, network connections, etc.

- Fix how the Finder windows open / appear on the desktop. Apparently Finder windows drop onto the desktop totally randomly. Not good.

- Give us an option to Snap the Windows to Grid, Vertically or Horizontally. Windows has done this for years and is quite helpful when copying / comparing files

- Active Directory Binding still sucks and is mostly unreliable, we will see if this is finally fixed in Snow Leopard

- Apple Mail App still sucks on Exchange Server. Of course this is something Snow Leopard is supposed to address, but IT departments will have to have (upgrade) to Exchange 2007 for it to happen.

- Fix the damn issue with the Finder and networking and copying files, particularly with WebDAV, iDisk.

Leopard has done a better job, but we still see issues even with fast connections, where WebDAV, slows or crashes the FInder. Unacceptable. De-couple this from the Finder. If the service is going to time out, let it time out, but the user should just be moving the Finder window around going about his other business on the desktop.

- Finder copies. The Finder apparently uses ditto when copying files. But something is amiss. When I use ditto from the terminal, 100 % of the time, ALL of my files copy. When I do a Finder copy of larger folders, etc, one can get a error message from the Finder complaining about a file, and guess what?

Does it continue to copy your files, skip that file and keep going. No, the copy stops.

So your 300 GB did not copy overnight. This has to be fixed and fixed now.

Just some of the things I see that need to be changed / fixed. I am compiling more.

macguitarman@mac.com

I am not sure Apple really wants to make Snow Leopard look different. I am also not sure they want to make it a bestseller. More sales are welcome of course, but I think Apple is more concerned about the future.
With 10.4 Apple completed the first stage of Mac OS evolution. It is a stable and mature release.
With Leopard Apple started the new phase. In fact, Snow Leopard is a more significant contribution to the future than 10.5 was.
The new directions (as I see them) are:
- full 64-bit support; improvements to the Objective-C runtime and the kernel along the way.
- taking advantage of the multi-core processor architectures and the power of GPU for general purpose data processing. We are not talking 8 or 16 cores here. The OS of the [near] future must be scalable. Think 64, 128 cores or more. The Intel roadmap suggests that this is what we should expect in few years. Most likely, those cores will not be created equal which represents an additional challenge for the OS and software development in general.
- abstracting the hardware for the developers.
- making the OS ready for new file systems, possibly improving support for hybrid media (SSD and HD). This is what I see behind “dramatically improving the footprint” mentioned on the Apple’s Snow Leopard page. HD are large nowadays. Making an effort to reduce the OS size is almost meaningless in this context. Reducing the footprint, including by using compression, can improve IO performance because the overhead of compressing/decompressing data is small relative to the bottleneck the HD currently is. This could also be used in SSD+HD configuration.

Rewriting the Finder is not an easy step as many have suggested over the years. The main reason for sticking with Carbon was that the OS is not ready for Cocoa-Finder. File-system level support in Cocoa is still more limited than in Carbon. There is no support for aliases for example. Not all file information is accessible from Cocoa so sometimes developers need to use a mix of Cocoa, UNIX and/or Carbon. If the Finder is moving to Cocoa we may expect improvements to the filesystem support in Cocoa.

You were good all the way until the comparison with Windows 7.

10.6 is a tweaking of 10.3-thru-10.5-era code PLUS the removal of 10.0-thru-10.2-centric APIs.

Windows 7 is a tweaking of the new code introduced in Vista, but the crufty old Win16 and Win32 APIs are still around.

Both 10.6 and Windows 7 will introduce some new user-level applications and new underlying code, but putting in new APIs without removing old ones is like putting on a new diaper without removing the old one.

Microsoft should learn that more doesn’t always equal better.

@Macguitarman.

Apple sells hardware. Everything software related it does is to make its hardware more attractive than the competition.

One way is by choosing to not outsource its machine code. Most hardware makers license their operating system, or buy “Systems on a Chip”. Not Apple. For every physical/tangible piece of gear they brand and sell, they write an OS in-house - for their customers use only.

The OS is written for SPECIFIC hardware, to make it more valuable to potential customers… not to make money on an upgrade license in a box.

Apple and MS have different business models and different motivations for writing an OS.

Microsoft makes its money from hardware builders (pro, corporate, and hobbyist) buying licenses. They write new versions to sell new licenses.

Apple doesn’t sell licenses to hardware builders for it’s cash. They write new versions to make their gear look good.

Their hardware to be more attractive tomorrow than it was today. If the 2009 MacBook blows away the 2008 Macbook, no one will care that there isn’t a new coat of paint on the UI. The OS isn’t the product.

Amazing. Mac bashers argue that Macs are all about eye candy and the above rant goes a long way to support that.

Other than rewriting the Finder (which Apple already plans to do), 95% of your rant was about how you don’t like the appearance of scroll bars, icons, desktop pictures, etc. Sorry, but those hardly qualify as “Apple must fix this”.

An authority on Snow Leopard, eh? I would say he has an opinion on the subject, which is exactly what it is, an opinion, but nothing else. No one with authority would be allowed to make comments about the OS.

Whatever he thinks Apple “should” do, it’s too late. I have never understood why comments like this and polls such as “what would you like to see added to Snow Leopard?” come out 1 month before the OS is introduced when it’s too late.

Feh.

All respects, but no one outside of the specific decision makers within Apple–and those doing the actual UI/VI work–have any authority to say what anything will look like and what will be in the final product.

For that matter, no one knows what Snow Leopard pricing will be. There are arguments in favor of a free upgrade in order for expediency and simplification within Apple.

“The Finder absolutely must be re-written in Xcode.”

This makes no sense. I’m sure you meant “Cocoa”. Xcode is the IDE and is not a set of APIs.

I don’t know if I buy this expert ether. He may have some insight but the desire by users to see the finder re-written in cocoa to make it faster! or more stable? Forgive me but from what I have read and my understanding of the underlying OS and API’s, there is nothing intrinsically superior from a speed or stability standpoint with Cocoa over Carbon.

Also, Jobs stated a few years ago that the speed of major releases would slow starting with 10.4 and then 10.5. So ether he has reversed that decision or this will be considered a smaller release and may be charged as such. Time will tell, but changing the default look of finder icons? I agree this should happen over time but if it doesn’t happen till 10.9 and instead we get better features and stability. I’ll be happy.