NO "Top Secrets"

[t3mur]

Okay.. I will make this as short as possibel, but I really think that the "TOP" secrets wont really be as TOP as Jobs made it sound. Everytime, before he is about to eather present a new product or a new feature, he makes a BIG deal out of it, and then its not that big.. Like the "revolutoionary internet communications device" in iPhone presentation.. Or "world leading computing system" "or cingular, #1 service in USA"

 

I just think that.. when he said "TOP SECRETS" we will just see some more apps like front row or expose remix or something.. nothing revolutionary, nothing a secret..

[Fizzeh]

I sort of agree. He could pull something unexpected. Probably just something really nice with "iLife Leopard."

[hecker]

As long as he replaces the Finder, I'm good. I don't think I would trust a system like time machine anyway.

 

hecker

[Sabr]

Keep the faith. I suppose we wont know for sure until it's released.

 

/me is still keeping his fingers crossed

[Adrian Fogge]

Well, Apple NEVER spoke of ZFS at WWDC06. They do not even have it documented in their acknowledgements, where they have EVERYTHING including their new Package Format, a shout out to the developers, a description of what it is, etc.

 

A "revolutionary new file system that allows you to store data far more efficiently, reducing file sizes, accounting for changes over the life of the file and speeding up system performance" is definitely one of those "revolutionary" things that will be kept until release day. I mean, hell... Apple has even stripped out ZFS entirely from one of their builds that they send out and replaced it with UDF renamed as ZFS. UDF, the format used on BluRay, HD-DVD and even conventional DVDs that need to be able to store files whose sizes are greater than 2GB.

 

It is one of those things that they hint about left and right, but they are keeping it surprisingly quiet anyways, having never actually mentioned it anywhere in any piece of documentation anywhere.

 

And ZFS with it's ability to track how files have changed over time and keeping all versions VERY efficiently is certain to wind up in Time Machine, possibly the reason why Time Machine has not been updated since the late 200's (believe it was 283 but would need to check to make sure). So, "Top Secret Feature 1"

 

Then we have finder, while it has a few changes over Tiger's builds, they are not really that significant (Quicklook and the other additions are not Finder). Sure, it is possible that Apple will just give us a new skin to Finder having fixed netmount and call it done, but it is CERTAIN to be spoken of, so tack that down as number two of the "Top Secret Features".

 

We know that AppleTV's interface is tagged as Frontrow 2.0 (thank god for metadata). Tack that on as "Top Secret Feature 3" since Apple did say that Frontrow would be on all Macs in Leopard. Reasonable to assume that they would choose something a little newer than 1.3. It will obviously have some slight re-design as to remove the AppleTV hardware icon from everywhere and remove some of the unnecissary sections like setting up a wireless network and the like.

 

As for "Top Secret Feature 4", it would seem reasonable to assume that there would be the inclusion of iLife if only to counter Microsoft's multimedia apps like Movie Maker, DVD Maker, and the like. It is still something that Microsoft is using as a bulletpoint for why Vista is better than Tiger just because it is not a "guarenteed" component of the operating system, just something that was tacked on after the fact for all new sales.

 

Anything to make Microsoft look like a {censored}, Apple will do. I mean hell, think about Jobs saying "It is so much sexier to just stick your earphone in the girl's ear." when talking about Zune's wireless squirting feature. Microsoft droped that line item pretty damn fast after that.

 

I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel here, and all the other things that I can think of are far from sure things, so it may be better just to keep from mentioning them until there is some substantiation.

 

~Adrian

[twoodcc]

i agree with you Adrian, or at least for the most part.

 

hopefully there will be more of course. we just have to wait and see....

[Jeezoflip]

Then again who knows. This is their big anniversary year, and they are going a bit nuts. You never know what steve will pull out of his ass at the last minute.

[mr.manatane]

Well, I can't agree about ZFS. In what ZFS is a 'top secret' feature that Apple don't want microsoft to copy ?

 

It's open source, already in use with Solaris 10. Ported to FreeBSD. There is nothing revolutionary here. Even if they want, Microsoft can do so and port ZFS on Windows.

 

With this port, Apple will only catch the other big Unix in the server domain, nothing more.

[alicheusz]

And ZFS with it's ability to track how files have changed over time and keeping all versions VERY efficiently is certain to wind up in Time Machine, possibly the reason why Time Machine has not been updated since the late 200's (believe it was 283 but would need to check to make sure). So, "Top Secret Feature 1"

On WWDC06 was axplained how Time Machine works, there was nothing about ZFS, it is just bunch of alias on master copy. If Time Machine will work on ZFS (and I thing he should) then why Apple explain quite detailed how Time Machine works Using HFS+

[htdefiant]

I do wish, though, that we'd see some "top secret" features...

[Adrian Fogge]

Uh, there is one thing that stops Microsoft from releasing ZFS for Windows, and that is the CDDL. If Microsoft adds the code to their OS, then they will need to port back code that they change or is used in conjunction with the CDDLed code, along with who made the change, why they felt it was necissary to change, what the change addresses, etc. Sure, they COULD do it, but as Microsoft uses their Kernel as the catch-all, they would either need to go with a modular system (no more patching directly into the kernel) or risk having to open source their kernel.

 

On another note, no other company including Sun has an OS booting natively off of a ZFS partition. Sun's Solaris is set to have this support in "Nevada", version 11.

 

As well, just because ZFS was not developed in house does not make it not revolutionary.

 

And as for WHY Apple will do this: ZFS gives Apple major bargaining power when it comes to Hackintoshes. If they require a EFI/OF update to allow booting from ZFS partitions rather than just using a boot partition, they have effectively locked OS X again to their hardware in an entirely new way making it difficult for someone to bypass if they want everything that Leopard has to offer.

 

Think about it, if you knew that by using a Hackintosh you had lower speed and performance, lacked new searching ability and needed an extra hard drive for handling backups that fill up extremely quickly, would you really bother with Leopard on a Hack? Sure, most would just disable Time Machine, however at that point they may loose much of what makes Leopard Leopard.

[twoodcc]

well if ZFS will help Apple "lock" os x, then i think they'll do it

[hmurchison]

I'm thinking that Time Machine will eventually move to ZFS from Jounaled HFS+.

 

I don't think that ZFS is a Top Secret feature as it's too geeky. The Top Secret feature is going to revolve

around Apple's new focus. Core Animation thus far has been shown in very basic ways. When Apple shows CD covers

flipping around and making shapes it doesn't spark the imagination of users. They are doing this because their usage of

Core Animation in Leopard will be interesting and useful IMO.

 

Next I believe Apple will be delivering some Web 2.0 stuff. It could be .mac 2 or something seperate. Apple is hyping AJAX heavily

at WWDC. The best way to show developers that the tools work is to have an Apple application that provides glimpses into the power.

Apple could turn a new .mac or AJAX application into one of the Top Secret features.

 

It's clear that Apple wans to "Wow" consumers. I'm not thinking that what they will offer will be revolutionary but rather flashy but still

useful. Apple generally knows when to tone things down.

[Adrian Fogge]

Time Machine being able to store every version of every file forever with negligable increases in filespace utilization is a REVOLUTIONARY thing. Forget everything else. Apple can say Time Machine DOES your backups for you, it makes it super easy to find, and it takes NO extra space.*

 

They can actually get away with the NO extra space statement in most circumstances as most files will occupy a smaller area on a ZFS partition than they would on a HFS+ partition due to a variable cluster size, making it so if you have a 180 byte file, it only takes 180 bytes on your filesystem instead of 4,096 bytes. You can store quite a bit of information in 4096 bytes if you REALLY need to. Raw text you are looking at a page and a half. And that is if you never actually bother compressing that, which ZFS is capable of on the fly, making that figure into just over 4 pages. 4 pages in the additional padding that would normally be used by a single cluster.

 

ZFS has a much larger address space, making it possible to have clusters that are much smaller, including having multiple files per cluster. What that gets you first is more efficient storing of small files.

 

Next up, you have support for data snapshots, a filesystem level versioning system where you can keep track of individual changes that take place in a file over time.

 

Example:

"Something trluy interesting happened today, do you want to know what?"

- changed to -

"Something truly interesting happened a few hours ago, do you want to know what?"

 

What ZFS stores would be the original file, and an ansilary hidden file saying the equivilant to

20070222-121800: 0.0 - /a "Something trluy interesting happened today, do you want to know what?";

20070222-121937: 0.12 - /d 1, 0.13 /a "l", 0.37 /d 5, 0.37 /a "a few hours ago";

 

In turn, what you have is a Datestamp, a location in the file described as Line.Character, what needs to be done at that location (add, delete), in the case of add, the string that should be put in place, in the case of delete, how much needs to be deleted.

 

That way, you are only storing the changes that have happened to the file over time, not multiple copies.

 

Sure, there I actually stored 2 ansilary files in the same area, but you get the idea.

This gives a little extra overhead to the file system, but nothing compared to using something like HFS+ or NTFS which use larger cluster sizes.

 

Instead of taking up 4KB on the filesystem (minimum cluster size), you are now only taking up 180 bytes on the filesystem, the remaining space ALL usable because of ZFS's ability to have multiple files per cluster.

 

That is monumental. Especially think of all the people who keep multiple revisions of the exact same document all so that they can look at how it has changed over the weeks/months. This gives them that option without the waste, in a VERY easy to use manner.

 

Imagine opening a document in Pages, clicking on your Time Machine icon and seeing how the document has changed at every AUTO-SAVE point as the light tick marks and at every Official Save as the dark tick marks instantly.

 

What ZFS gets you is the ability to do EVERYTHING on the same partition transparently.

[lookmark]

Interesting speculations!

 

I'd *love* to see ZFS in Leopard, but it may be too optimistic to see such a dramatic internal change if they're really going to release the thing sometime in the next 2-3 months (I believe Apple's work on ZFS began only around a year ago). I think we'll probably be waiting for this one until 10.6. But here's hoping.

 

What I do expect is a seriously refreshed UI (including both Spotlight and Finder), the biggest graphic change since Aqua, and plenty of usage of delicious CoreAnimation. Everywhere.

 

I think Apple will also pull out all the stops and try their hand at something that *feels* very next-generation -- e.g. vastly improved speech recognition integrated in a fun (if supplemental) way, or clever use of built-in iSights to detect gestural movement for navigation in a very CA-enhanced specialized application (e.g. Google Earth with an Apple UI). Apple's been working on this version for the last 2-3 years to prepare for the Vista comparison. There will be some seriously cool stuff.

[lord_muad_dib]

i agree adrian, usually peops think that a new skin is a new feature. actually there are a lot of improvements under the skin that a user doesn't care of

[mr.manatane]

But do not forget the big issues of ZFS, today, you can not remove a disk allocated to a ZFS pool. So once you said there will be 3, 4 of 5 drive to your pool, it will be forever (unless you reinstall the whole system).

[Adrian Fogge]

And how is that different than a Raid Array how? That is what a Pool is.

 

You do not NEED to pool your disks. You can keep independant ZFS volumes, and even keep them perminantly mounted to a folder inside your filesystem.

 

The only reason that you have to pool your disks is if you have a multi-drive configuration where you need the reliability of a raid configuration where information is mirrored across multiple drives and striped to increase performance.

 

I personally do not see this as a deal breaker, as if you use it as it was designed as a Raid replacement.

 

Just don't do something stupid like formatting all your thumbdrives to ZFS and add them to your storage pool.

[twoodcc]

i agree about the storage pool. good point adrian

[t3mur]

Well, Apple NEVER spoke of ZFS at WWDC06. They do not even have it documented in their acknowledgements, where they have EVERYTHING including their new Package Format, a shout out to the developers, a description of what it is, etc.

 

A "revolutionary new file system that allows you to store data far more efficiently, reducing file sizes, accounting for changes over the life of the file and speeding up system performance" is definitely one of those "revolutionary" things that will be kept until release day. I mean, hell... Apple has even stripped out ZFS entirely from one of their builds that they send out and replaced it with UDF renamed as ZFS. UDF, the format used on BluRay, HD-DVD and even conventional DVDs that need to be able to store files whose sizes are greater than 2GB.

 

It is one of those things that they hint about left and right, but they are keeping it surprisingly quiet anyways, having never actually mentioned it anywhere in any piece of documentation anywhere.

 

And ZFS with it's ability to track how files have changed over time and keeping all versions VERY efficiently is certain to wind up in Time Machine, possibly the reason why Time Machine has not been updated since the late 200's (believe it was 283 but would need to check to make sure). So, "Top Secret Feature 1"

 

Then we have finder, while it has a few changes over Tiger's builds, they are not really that significant (Quicklook and the other additions are not Finder). Sure, it is possible that Apple will just give us a new skin to Finder having fixed netmount and call it done, but it is CERTAIN to be spoken of, so tack that down as number two of the "Top Secret Features".

 

We know that AppleTV's interface is tagged as Frontrow 2.0 (thank god for metadata). Tack that on as "Top Secret Feature 3" since Apple did say that Frontrow would be on all Macs in Leopard. Reasonable to assume that they would choose something a little newer than 1.3. It will obviously have some slight re-design as to remove the AppleTV hardware icon from everywhere and remove some of the unnecissary sections like setting up a wireless network and the like.

 

As for "Top Secret Feature 4", it would seem reasonable to assume that there would be the inclusion of iLife if only to counter Microsoft's multimedia apps like Movie Maker, DVD Maker, and the like. It is still something that Microsoft is using as a bulletpoint for why Vista is better than Tiger just because it is not a "guarenteed" component of the operating system, just something that was tacked on after the fact for all new sales.

 

Anything to make Microsoft look like a {censored}, Apple will do. I mean hell, think about Jobs saying "It is so much sexier to just stick your earphone in the girl's ear." when talking about Zune's wireless squirting feature. Microsoft droped that line item pretty damn fast after that.

 

I am starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel here, and all the other things that I can think of are far from sure things, so it may be better just to keep from mentioning them until there is some substantiation.

 

~Adrian

 

 

Uh, there is one thing that stops Microsoft from releasing ZFS for Windows, and that is the CDDL. If Microsoft adds the code to their OS, then they will need to port back code that they change or is used in conjunction with the CDDLed code, along with who made the change, why they felt it was necissary to change, what the change addresses, etc. Sure, they COULD do it, but as Microsoft uses their Kernel as the catch-all, they would either need to go with a modular system (no more patching directly into the kernel) or risk having to open source their kernel.

 

On another note, no other company including Sun has an OS booting natively off of a ZFS partition. Sun's Solaris is set to have this support in "Nevada", version 11.

 

As well, just because ZFS was not developed in house does not make it not revolutionary.

 

And as for WHY Apple will do this: ZFS gives Apple major bargaining power when it comes to Hackintoshes. If they require a EFI/OF update to allow booting from ZFS partitions rather than just using a boot partition, they have effectively locked OS X again to their hardware in an entirely new way making it difficult for someone to bypass if they want everything that Leopard has to offer.

 

Think about it, if you knew that by using a Hackintosh you had lower speed and performance, lacked new searching ability and needed an extra hard drive for handling backups that fill up extremely quickly, would you really bother with Leopard on a Hack? Sure, most would just disable Time Machine, however at that point they may loose much of what makes Leopard Leopard.

 

 

Time Machine being able to store every version of every file forever with negligable increases in filespace utilization is a REVOLUTIONARY thing. Forget everything else. Apple can say Time Machine DOES your backups for you, it makes it super easy to find, and it takes NO extra space.*

 

They can actually get away with the NO extra space statement in most circumstances as most files will occupy a smaller area on a ZFS partition than they would on a HFS+ partition due to a variable cluster size, making it so if you have a 180 byte file, it only takes 180 bytes on your filesystem instead of 4,096 bytes. You can store quite a bit of information in 4096 bytes if you REALLY need to. Raw text you are looking at a page and a half. And that is if you never actually bother compressing that, which ZFS is capable of on the fly, making that figure into just over 4 pages. 4 pages in the additional padding that would normally be used by a single cluster.

 

ZFS has a much larger address space, making it possible to have clusters that are much smaller, including having multiple files per cluster. What that gets you first is more efficient storing of small files.

 

Next up, you have support for data snapshots, a filesystem level versioning system where you can keep track of individual changes that take place in a file over time.

What ZFS stores would be the original file, and an ansilary hidden file saying the equivilant to

20070222-121800: 0.0 - /a "Something trluy interesting happened today, do you want to know what?";

20070222-121937: 0.12 - /d 1, 0.13 /a "l", 0.37 /d 5, 0.37 /a "a few hours ago";

 

In turn, what you have is a Datestamp, a location in the file described as Line.Character, what needs to be done at that location (add, delete), in the case of add, the string that should be put in place, in the case of delete, how much needs to be deleted.

 

That way, you are only storing the changes that have happened to the file over time, not multiple copies.

 

Sure, there I actually stored 2 ansilary files in the same area, but you get the idea.

This gives a little extra overhead to the file system, but nothing compared to using something like HFS+ or NTFS which use larger cluster sizes.

 

Instead of taking up 4KB on the filesystem (minimum cluster size), you are now only taking up 180 bytes on the filesystem, the remaining space ALL usable because of ZFS's ability to have multiple files per cluster.

 

That is monumental. Especially think of all the people who keep multiple revisions of the exact same document all so that they can look at how it has changed over the weeks/months. This gives them that option without the waste, in a VERY easy to use manner.

 

Imagine opening a document in Pages, clicking on your Time Machine icon and seeing how the document has changed at every AUTO-SAVE point as the light tick marks and at every Official Save as the dark tick marks instantly.

 

What ZFS gets you is the ability to do EVERYTHING on the same partition transparently.

 

 

And how is that different than a Raid Array how? That is what a Pool is.

 

You do not NEED to pool your disks. You can keep independant ZFS volumes, and even keep them perminantly mounted to a folder inside your filesystem.

 

The only reason that you have to pool your disks is if you have a multi-drive configuration where you need the reliability of a raid configuration where information is mirrored across multiple drives and striped to increase performance.

 

I personally do not see this as a deal breaker, as if you use it as it was designed as a Raid replacement.

 

Just don't do something stupid like formatting all your thumbdrives to ZFS and add them to your storage pool.

 

Adrian Sure Writes alot..

[mr.manatane]

Yes, and your post is useless ...

[BlackShadowWolf]

It seems pretty apparent ZFS will be included eventually, as they put it in the developer builds already, granted it doesnt really work, but still. I really hope there is a new UI, the whole Illuminous idea sounds wonderful . Though if it is a darken color, it sort of reminds me of Aero, but whatever, as long as it works well .

[twoodcc]

It seems pretty apparent ZFS will be included eventually, as they put it in the developer builds already, granted it doesnt really work, but still. I really hope there is a new UI, the whole Illuminous idea sounds wonderful . Though if it is a darken color, it sort of reminds me of Aero, but whatever, as long as it works well .

 

yeah i agree. ZFS will be here eventually...hopefully soon. and the new UI is what i'm excited about also.....i sure hope it's a bigger change than from panther to tiger !

[mr.manatane]

I hope leopard will boot on ZFS.

[sev7en]

I dunno if Apple will release a conversion utility as MS for FAT32/NTFS anyway Leopard should be the right starting point for this new file system. I won't think it as the postponed-and-still-never-released new MS' file system (missed with Vista launch and... now stopped).