"Shere Khan" Due Spring '06

Rumors swirling around 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino have Apple developers abuzz. Mac OS X engineers, currently knee-deep in Mac OS X v10.4.4 development, are gearing up for what comes next. Due Spring '06, the next iteration of Tiger is coming — Mac OS X v10.4.5, code-named Shere Khan.

Shere Khan will be the most significant and wide-reaching Mac OS X update ever. Said to merge all of the post-10.4.3 and 10.4.4 updates into a single package, it will include synchronization with Intel builds, kernel optimizations, re-enablement of Quartz Extreme 2D, and AirPort and security updates.

New features to be introduced with Shere Khan are impressive: SafeSleep for all New World Macs that support Tiger, a new handJobs framework to support a major update to CockBand, and the first iteration of "The 'Burbs," Apple's code-name for its project to move Mac OS X from the CPU to support chips.

More reports suggest other, less-known technologies slated for inclusion in 10.4.5. Among these are support for the mysterious iDong port, a new framework and app to help Mac users get into the Mac scat scene, and Hentai support in the kernel to help migrate 5G iPod users over to penis-tentacled demons raping young girls.

Overall, Shere Khan will have profound effects on the Mac experience and will probably send the halo effect into critical mass, helping to escort the masses to the Mac. The probable release date is late April or early May of next year. Until then, visit back to get the latest on this king of Mac OS X updates!

Apple Moving Tasks to Network Adapter?

New enhancements in future Mac OS X updates — possibly to Tiger but definitely in Leopard — are finally utilizing the powerful gigabit network adapters found in most Macs with "The 'Burbs," Apple's code-name for the move of many, if not all, general CPU processing tasks over to the networking chip-sets.

Sources from Cupertino are excited about the switch, which they say is a natural progression Apple started with Quartz Extreme in Jaguar. Eventually Apple hopes to move all processing over to other chips in the system, freeing Mac OS X from its dependency on the CPU, one source said.

Apple reportedly wants to divest itself of CPU-dependance due to troubles in the past with maintaining processor supplies. Of note in Apple's rocky past were the switch from 68k to PowerPC in '94, the 500 MHz Fiasco in '99, and the Ninety Nanometer Speed-Bump that we're arguably still in the middle of.

Apple had to begin selling the Power Mac 9600 again at one point because the G3 had a piss-poor FPU and couldn't do multiprocessing. Apple's tired of being embarrassed by its CPU and wants Mac OS X running safely on network adapters, graphics cards, and sound chips than face any more ridicule, the same source said.

Other sources gave more insight to the performance Mac OS X would exhibit running on network adapters. It's comparable to running Tiger on a Power Mac 9500/120, a third-party developer shared with us on condition of anonymity. Slower than a retarded kid on morphine. But Apple will have it optimized by Leopard.

These are only the beginnings of tips and insight into the big move away from central processing units at Apple. With Leopard more than a year off, you can be sure Apple will have something special to pull out of its hat when it releases Mac OS X v10.5. Until then, we'll keep you posted on any news coming our way!

The Power Mac G6

"Mr. Jobs?" the small, tinny voice said through the intercom speaker. "It's Fed-Ex, we got a package for ya."

"Sure, sure, come on through," Steve said into the little box, his finger depressing a small, shiny brown button. "Let it off next to the gazebo half-way up the drive."

Steve Jobs smiled so wide his face hurt. The Fed-Ex truck was passing through his gate and would be at the gazebo in his front yard any second now. He stepped through his front door, hopped down his porch steps, and strode down a brick path shaded by willows. Even now he heard a roaring diesel engine and chirping brakes as the dusty delivery truck wandered along his drive. He jumped all three brick steps up to his gazebo and seated himself on a small park bench.

Steve sighed as he crossed his legs, put his hands behind his head, and waited. The sounds of the Fed-Ex truck were getting closer now among his veritable forest of spruces, pines, and firs that dotted his impossibly large lawn. He'd been waiting for almost a month for this delivery, the culmination of painstaking secret meetings with IBM over the course of 2005. And now Steve was just moments from enjoying the unique fruits of his labors and deal-making.

Steve's smile grew even larger.

Say Hello to CockBand

Steve sipped his magic water, brow furrowed, listening with his head cocked to the side to the blather the record execs across the table were vomiting at him. The barfing had been ongoing for the better part of three hours, and Steve was bored. As he set his water bottle down, his mind meandered from the meeting to more interesting things.

Dammit, Steve thought, this is my boardroom. It's about time they heard my speech!

QNX to Support Intel Macs

I work for a company that uses QNX, a real-time Unix-like operating system for embedded devices such as car computers, phones, medical equipment, and air traffic monitoring systems. I personally use QNX to develop QNX apps, as there's a self-hosted version of QNX for Intel that developers can download for free. It's essentially a free desktop operating system, as only the development kit is pay-for.

We work with several QNX engineers from time to time and on their last trip in they showed us a preview of the next major upgrade to the system, QNX 6.4. Like its predecessors it ran on Intel, and they said this update will take advantage of Intel's new processor architecture as well as a few new platforms. When I pressed them about it, they said they were 99% certain that QNX 6.4 would run on Apple's new Intel Macintosh.

I asked him the how and when, and he said that Apple's new Macs are going to be very PC-like, and if they can run a stock install of Windows, QNX won't have any problem supporting them either. He said Apple promised the first Intel Macs in the second half of '06, which is when QNX 6.4 would be released. He also said that QNX has at least one Developer Transition Kit that QNX 6.3 runs just fine on.

Things are looking exciting as Apple will instantly have a handful of good operating systems to run on its new Intel hardware. QNX is a good addition, and I wanted to make sure the word got out. We weren't under NDA and the QNX guys said to go ahead and tell anyone we wanted, and that an announcement was forthcoming soon anyway. So there's at least one embedded real-time Unix-like system for new Intel Macs.

My First Month With QNX

Last month, I downloaded and installed QNX Momentics Development Suite 6.3, which is a full QNX Neutrino install for Intel with a temporary license for the commercial Momentics Development Suite that lasts for a month. After working with it for the last several weeks, I have some impressions of the system, both good and bad, that I'd like to share. But let's begin at the beginning, as they say, and go from there.

I was ready to boot and install QNX within an hour of first navigating to the product evaluation program page. Downloading the 500+ MB ISO file is a cinch, including the sign-up that gets your 30-day Momentics license sent to you. After that it's all just burning the image to disc. My license email came before the ISO was finished transferring and the burning went without incident.

Installing QNX was even simpler than downloading it. One thing fans of non-Windows operating systems will note, though, is the lack of a partition utility. The QNX installer is pretty obtuse, allowing you a choice of the whole disk or some fraction of it. This means you should have the disk pre-partitioned before you install QNX. In my case, I was taking the whole disk so the above was moot.

The actual install took about 10 minutes from boot to reboot and the only pause was when I had to enter my Momentics license. As an interesting note, if you choose not to enter your license the rest of the system still starts and runs, and only the Momentics suite is disabled. From what I saw in the installer, it's not even installed without the license. Effectively, QNX distributes a free real-time Unix-like operating system!

Booting was fast, less than 20 seconds. One can use QNX in text-only mode as well as in Proton, QNX's windowing system. Proton's integration with the rest of the system is almost as tight as the Windows or Mac OS X GUI, though it's not as polished. The GUI starts by default, where one enters root with no password to log on. From there you can make your own user account, which I recommend.

After logging into my own account I explored the system. The Proton system uses a panel at the right side of the screen as well as a dock at the bottom. The dock at the bottom is pretty standard, with a Start-like menu and minimized windows; the panel at right is where one can find links to programs, workspaces, and system performance monitors that give real-time feedback on processor, memory, and network usage.

QNX's applications all run very well and work seamlessly with the rest of the system. I really have no complaints. They even have a port of FireFox running as fast as ever for standards-compliant browsing. QNX's file manager is quick and gives an accurate view of the file system, and their software manager easily beats anything Linux has to offer. And everything launched in under five seconds.

My first real disappointment began when I opened the terminal and began playing with the command line. A lot of standard utilities are there, like uname, but a lot are also missing like the ever-important top and du. There's also no sudo and their version of ps is woefully out of date. If QNX wants to make a serious desktop platform, they ought sync their userland with a popular Linux or with FreeBSD as Apple does.

Another area that underwhelmed me was performance. The test system used for this article was a 3.6 GHz Pentium4 with HyperThreading turned on, 1GB RAM, and large 200GB hard drive. Performance felt identical on the second system I installed it on, a 450 MHz Pentium II with 128MB RAM. Windows XP was several times faster on this same hardware, as were several Linux distros, FreeBSD 5.4, and Zeta 1.0.

When I investigated why QNX would perform so slowly, I found — thanks to several users in various QNX forums — that QNX scheduling is much different from a typical desktop system due to its real-time nature. While real-time means that there's a guaranteed response time, this doesn't necessarily ensure lightning-quick desktop responsiveness. I'd recommend QNX allow switching between a few different scheduling schemes.

Support is another front that's confusing. A service pack was released a year after 6.3 was launched, but there's no word on whether there's another service pack in the coming. Launching the software manager is the best a user will get, and with only one service pack, the user feels left in limbo. Understandably, paying users get great support, but more updates for the software itself would be appropriate.

Overall, I give QNX 6.3 three-and-a-half stars out of five. It's stable and does not crash, installs quickly, and is easy to sit down and start using daily. Its unpredictable desktop performance, lack of a rich Unix userland, and simplistic installer are all places the developers at QNX Software Systems would be wise to focus on for the next version, however. Until then it's not quite ready for prime-time.