World of Apple

Following disappointment at WWDC earlier in the Month, Apple appears to have taken somewhat of a U-turn.

Apple seeds disk image allowing developers full read/write access to ZFS in Leopard

Just before WWDC Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz touted that ZFS would become a usable file system in Mac OS X and that Apple would announce it at WWDC. This never happened but Apple senior director of Mac OS X Product Marketing, Brian Croll confirmed that ZFS would be present but read-only.

Now Apple has published a disk image on its ADC site allowing developers to use full read/write capabilities of ZFS.

In a PDF released with the seed Apple writes:

ZFS is a new filesystem from Sun Microsystems which has been ported by Apple to Mac OS X. The initial (10.5.0) release of Leopard will restrict ZFS to read-only, so no ZFS pools or filesystems can be modified or created. This Developer Preview will enable full read/write capability, which includes the creation/destruction of ZFS pools and filesystems.

Think Secret is offering an exclusive look at the new build of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard released to developers at WWDC last week.

Desktop in Build 9A466 of Leopard | Image Courtesy Think Secret

Think Secret offers a gallery of screenshots from build 9A466 of Leopard as well as some details on applications included;

Safari 3, which has been part of Leopard since day one, sees a further rev in Leopard to version 3.0 (5522.8.3). For those keeping score at home, the beta of Safari 3 for Tiger is at version 3.0 (522.11).

Leopard also continues to grow considerably in size: build 9A410 was roughly 5.4GB in size, while 9A466 tips the scales at almost 6.1GB.

The University of Washington’s Emerging Technology group has published a collection of notes from the Developing Web Sites for iPhone session from WWDC last week.

Apple says that the iPhone offers the following for websites:

• Most desktop class websites will work on the iPhone
• Browsing the web is easy
• Pan around page using one or two fingers
• Two finger pinch used to zoom in and out
• Page view feature allows multiple websites and documents to be viewed by scrolling through them one after another
• New telephone links allows you to integrate phone calls directly from your webpage
• Full PDF support

Also listed are Safari’s capabilities and limitations on the iPhone:

• Support for all the latest web standards
• WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group)
• HTML5
• 10MB max HTML size for web page
• Javascript limited to 5 seconds run time
• Javascript allocations limited to 10MB
• 8 documents maximum loaded on the iPhone due to page view limitations
• Quicktime used for audio and video

It has been officially confirmed that the iPhone will not have Flash or Java.

Apple spoke about good design practices for websites designed to be viewed on the iPhone:

• Separate html and css
• Use well structured and valid html
• Size images appropriately don’t rely on browser scaling
• Tile small images in backgrounds
• Don’t use large background images
• Avoid complicated framesets, better yet don’t use framesets at all
• iPhone supports both EDGE and WiFi. EDGE pipe is smaller then WIFI pipe so think about bandwidth when developing
• XHTML mobile documents supported
• Stylesheet device width:480px
• Apply different css for the iPhone. For example displaying a one column page for iphone vs a 3 column page on a desktop
• there are no scroll bars or resize knobs. the iphone will automatically expand the content
• Scrollable frames are automatically expanded to fit the content
• Frames exploded to the full scale and then fit to the screen

Apple has revealed the winners of this years Apple Design Awards.

Apple Design Awards are given annually at WWDC, they are described as recognition for “technical excellence and outstanding achievement in OS X software design and development”.

Below are the winners of this years Apple Design Awards, congratulations to all who won from World of Apple.

Best Leopard App Winner: Delicious Library 2.0
Best Leopard App Runner Up: iBank

Best Mac OSX Developer Tool Winner: CSS Edit 2.5
Best Mac OSX Developer Tool Runner Up: rooSwitch

Best Mac OSX Dashboard Widget Winner: Bart Widget
Best Mac OSX Dashboard Widget Runner Up: Pemdas

Best Science Computing App Winner: Papers
Best Science Computing App Runner Up: Single Crystal

Best Mac OSX Game Winner:WOW Burning Crusade
Best Mac OSX Game Runner Up: Wacky Mini Golf

Best Mac OSX Student Product Winner: Picturesque
Best Mac OSX Student Product Runner Up: Pathway

Best Mac OS X User Experience Winner Coda
Best Mac OS X User Experience Runner Up Sandvox

Apple Posts WWDC 2007 Keynote

Apple has posted today’s WWDC Keynote online.

The video which is only available as streaming at the moment is typical of Apple but at Macworld 2007 Apple offered a Podcast video of the Keynote for download from iTunes.

Leopard Site Reveals Extra Features, Lack of ZFS

Although Steve Jobs revealed a few more features during today’s Keynote, Apple has updated the Leopard section of its online website with a few more hints at what is to come.

In particular Boot Camp now allows users to “freeze” the system state and switch between OS’s.

Apple describes the feature as follows:
Leopard brings a quicker way to switch between Mac OS X and Windows: Just choose the new Apple menu item “Restart in Windows.” Your Mac goes into “safe sleep” so that when you return, you’ll be right where you were. It’s much faster than restarting the computer each time. Likewise, a “Restart in Mac OS X” menu item in the Boot Camp System Tray in Windows makes for a faster return to Mac OS X. With Windows hibernation enabled, you can pick up where you left off.

Front Row in Mac OS X 10.5

Front Row has also received an update, sporting a look similar to that of Apple TV. Also iTunes Top 10 lists have been added to Front Row.

Video capture is now supported in Photo Booth, a timeline navigator has been added to DVD Player and a macro recording feature has been confirmed for Automator.

However missing is any mention of ZFS. In a post just days before WWDC we reported that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwart touted ZFS has the next generation file system in Mac OS X.

During today’s WWDC Keynote, Apple CEO Steve Jobs showed off 10 features of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Jobs also noted that Leopard will include over 300 new features when it is released in October of 2007.

Jobs also said that developers attending today’s WWDC will take away a near-complete Beta copy of Leopard.

Desktop and Finder

Mac OS X Leopard features a significantly updated Desktop, including Stacks and enhanced Dock.

• New menu-bar, translucent but otherwise unchanged
• Enhanced 3D dock, slimmer and more functional
• Stacks, similar to a stack of paper, allows anything to be collected together into one Stack, once clicked the content either spreads out into a grid or fans out (this had previously been rumoured as “Piles”)
• Brushed metal has been dropped for a new consistent look throughout Mac OS X

Mac OS X Leopard features a new 3D, reflective Dock

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Apple announced today during WWDC that developers will be able to develop applications for the iPhone.

Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using Web 2.0 standards can extend iPhone’s capabilities without compromising its reliability or security.

“Developers and users alike are going to be very surprised and pleased at how great these applications look and work on iPhone,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Our innovative approach, using Web 2.0-based standards, lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable.”

Apple announced at today’s WWDC Keynote that Safari iwill begin shipping for Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Safari 3.0 will be available in a public Beta on Apple’s website today.

Early benchmarks show the Apple browser to render both HTML and JavaScript at speeds more than twice as fast as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser. Under iBench’s HTML benchmark test, Safari rendered the page in 2.2 seconds compared to 3.7 for FireFox and 4.6 for Internet Explorer.

World of Apple will be offering the usual coverage, no refreshes required, of the WWDC Keynote that will take place on Monday June 11:

• 7:00AM - Hawaii
• 10:00AM - Pacific
• 11:00AM - Mountain
• 12:00PM - Central
• 1:00PM - Eastern
• 5:00PM - GMT
• 6:00PM - London
• 7:00PM - Paris
• 2:00AM - Tokyo (June 12th)

Go here and bookmark the page.

This year has been different to other years for a few reasons, firstly there are a lot of rumours still regurgitating from Macworld and WWDC last year. And secondly, well there is no second reason, lets see how a “slimmer” roundup goes…

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard - Chance of seeing a complete Leopard - 10/10

The biggest news at last years Worldwide Developers Conference was Leopard, Jobs took the stage with several other executives and showed off 10 features of Apple’s newest operating system.

See the future. Then take it home with you.

At the same time Steve said that “Top Secret” features are in the pipeline, to this day we still do not know what these features are and with an almost guaranteed shipping schedule of October it’s about time Apple took the time to show off a finished Mac OS X 10.5. This is bolstered by a promise stated in an email to developers that WWDC attendees will leave with a “near-final” Beta copy of Leopard.

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Moscone West, covered banners can be seen on the second and third floors.

Following the revealing of the banners on the ground floor of Moscone West it appears Apple has also placed banners on the second and third floors but these ones are covered in the famous black cloth.

During past WWDC’s Apple has given away bags of gifts for attendees, this year is no different and one Flickr user has revealed the contents of the goodie bags. The included T-shirts read “Power to the programmers.”

WWDC 2007 Goodie Bags