Leopard running on an Atom Processor
May 27, 2008
Using PC_efi technology (a means to run OS X on a PC without kernel modification), an anonymous source for netkas.org has managed to run and benchmark Leopard on an Atom chip, which is rumored (and denied) to be headed for Mac.
The Atom Processor would certainly make a good candidate for a mini-tablet. It’s small enough to fit any form factor, and low power enough to run for long periods in small devices. According to netkas, you can even run one of these on solar power. Here are the results of an Xbench test, courtesy of netkas:
More details are available at netkas.org.
(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)
Joost looking for Plug-In developer with OSX/Linux experience
May 27, 2008
I was looking through Joost web site tonight and noticed a link for a Plug-In Developer.
I taught, this look like something that might be linked to the possible future video web site. So I went ahead and followed the link. I noticed something interesting in the “Desired” section:
- Experience of OSX or Linux installation and configuration would be an advantage.
- Experience with scripting applications including FLASH.
Babelgum, now for Mac
March 10, 2008
Guess what just showed up in my mailbox? An email from Babelgum inviting me to have a second look at it! And what new platform just got added? Right, Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5! And apparently there is support for both PPC and intel processors!
This is great news and will certainly please the PPC Mac users. At least they can run Babelgum while they are still waiting for their Joost PPC client support.
The client is very clean and the integration on the OSX environment is well done. I particularly like they way it start… by showing at 50% transparency over the desktop.
I guess Linux users are getting no love from Babelgum and Joost.
So when will we see a Babelgum and Joost client for the iPhone now that the SDK has been released?
Apple to release latest Leopard beta to developers who couldn’t make WWDC
June 24, 2007
A little green and blue TUAW birdie has just informed the web that Apple is planning to release the Leopard beta that WWDC attendees received last week to the rest of qualifying ADC members. As to when developers can fire up their browsers and download managers, the only language we have to go on is ’soon.’
We’re also told that this secondary release is happening quite a bit sooner than it did at last year’s WWDC, so I guess this might be a win for developers, all things considered.
[Source: TUAW]
ZFS is part of Leopard after all
June 12, 2007
Seeking to clarify a statement made on Monday by Brian Croll, senior director of Mac OS X Product Marketing, to two InformationWeek reporters that Apple’s new “Leopard” operating system would not include the ZFS file system, an Apple spokesperson indicated that ZFS would be available as a limited option, but not as the default file system.
[Via Information week]
OSX Leopard will not run on ZFS
June 12, 2007
Much to the dismay of those Macheads who’ve started hitting size limits in Tiger’s HFS+ file system (all ten of you), Apple has confirmed to InformationWeek that Leopard will not in fact adopt the more capacious ZFS alternative as promised last week by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz.
[Via Engadget]
ZFS will be OSX 10.5 default file system
June 6, 2007
Perhaps overcome with excitement (and forgetting that Apple doesn’t like such pre-emptive disclosures), Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz announced today at Sun event in Washington D.C. that Apple would be making ZFS “the file system” in Mac OS 10.5 Leopard
ZFS is a new kind of filesystem that provides simple administration, transactional semantics, end-to-end data integrity, and immense scalability. Thousands of filesystems can draw from a common storage pool, each one consuming only as much space as it actually needs.
The combined I/O bandwidth of all devices in the pool is available to all filesystems at all times. A scrub traverses the entire storage pool to read every copy of every block, validate it against its 256-bit checksum, and repair it if necessary.
ZFS provides unlimited constant-time snapshots and clones. Any snapshot can generate a full backup, and any pair of snapshots can generate an incremental backup. In addition to reducing space usage by 2-3x, compression also reduces the amount of I/O by 2-3x.
It should therefore be no surprise that Apple adopt this file system as the basis for “Time Machine“.
[Via MacRumors]
Update:
Sorry for the typo in the title 
Now corrected!
