MacRumors

In May, forum user neven had correctly predicted that Web applications might be the only way to get apps into the iPhone. He developed and posted a demo application to the forums to get feedback.

OneTrip
OneTrip is an iPhone-optimized web application (a simple shopping list). Since third-party apps won't be available on iPhone for a while, I thought I'd create a website you could load in Safari on iPhone to approximate having a custom widget.

With Apple's announcements that web-based/AJAX applications are the only way to develop on the iPhone, this example application has been making the rounds.

Now that Intel has moved their processor line primarily to multicore, most of Apple's shipping Macs have at least 2 cores (and as many as 8). According to Apple's Leopard pages, Apple has introduced significant performance improvements into Leopard to take advantage of all these multicore processors.

The new Leopard scheduler is very efficient at allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors. So Leopard spends less time managing tasks and more time performing computations. A new multithreaded network stack speeds up networking by handling network inputs and outputs in parallel.

Apple's applications such as Mail, Address Book and Font Utility have been updated to be multicore ready:

Each of these apps breaks up processor-intensive actions into a series of more manageable steps that execute one by one on single-CPU computers and in parallel on newer, multicore systems. Cocoa uses that same technology to speed up Spotlight searches and Dictionary lookups.

Apple also introduced a new API (NSOperation) which makes it easier for programmers to take advantage of multicore processing: "You simply describe the operations in a program along with their dependencies. Cocoa takes care of the rest."

According to one unverified first hand report, the new finder has also seen improved performance:

The new finder is absolutely the best part. How many years have we wanted a cocoa finder? ... Proper multi-threaded support. ... No more beachball so far.

One promising feature that wasn't mentioned in Apple's keynote speech about Leopard is a feature that was originally described on Apple's Leopard Bootcamp page:

New, faster restarts.
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.

Curiously, the feature description was removed from Apple's web page since it was posted, but a Google cache was available.

Update: One comment indicates that this features has indeed been pulled from Leopard:

I have it on good report from someone attending WWDC that this feature has been nixed.

He mentioned this feature to the Apple BootCamp build engineer. Who responded that this feature will not be supported. The engineer then called the Apple BootCamp program manager who "freaked out". Within an hour it was removed from the website.

Informationweek followsup on their previous quote that ZFS was not on Leopard. Brian Croll, senior director of Mac OS X Product Marketing, clarifies:

"ZFS is not the default file system for Leopard. We are exploring it as a file system option for high-end storage systems with really large storage. As a result, we have included ZFS -- a read-only copy of ZFS -- in Leopard."

This means that Leopard will be able to read ZFS volumes... assuming there was a way to write to one on Mac OS X, which there isn't... yet.

"Read-only means that at a later date, if there are ZFS volumes, those systems would be able to read ZFS volumes," Croll added. "You cannot write data into the system. It will allow you to read ZFS volumes later."

Not even a day after Apple unleashed its Safari 3 beta into the wild, security researchers have found a host of security issues for both the Mac OS X and Windows versions.

Security researcher David Maynor (of Black Hat Airport vulnerability fame) details on his blog 6 vulnerabilities, 4 of which were denial of service and 2 were remote code execution. In addition, Maynor claims that one of the bugs found is weaponizable.

Separately, Thor Larholm writes in his blog (which is mentioned by Maynor) another vulnerability involving the Safari beta on Windows, where Safari does not properly validate command-line input. To round out the vunerabilities, Aviv Raff discovered a memory corruption issue that caused Safari on Windows to crash.

In each incident, the researchers seemed to take issue with Apple's claim that "Apple engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one." To be fair, the software is still in beta, although the beta on OS X overwrites the user's previous version of Safari.

Apple sent out an email today to subscribers about the iPhone with tips on how to get ready for the iPhone. The email reads:

Get Ready for iPhone
iPhone arrives on June 29. iPhone features an amazing mobile phone, is the best iPod we've ever created, and puts the Internet in your pocket with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching, and maps. And iPhone makes it all easy to use with its revolutionary multi-touch user interface. iPhone syncs with your PC or Mac just like an iPod, so organizing your content now will help you start calling, texting, emailing, surfing, listening, and watching even faster when you get your iPhone. Here are a few suggestions to help you get ready:

Contacts
Making a call with iPhone is as simple as tapping a name. You won't need to re-enter all your contacts because iPhone syncs with the address book you already use on your computerAddress Book or Entourage on a Mac, or Outlook or Outlook Express on a PC. If you keep your contacts on the web using Yahoo! Address Book, iPhone can sync with them, too. To get ready for iPhone, organize your contacts in one of these applications and make sure they're up to date with the latest phone numbers and email addresses. If you don't have contacts on your computer, don't worry. You can still enter them directly into iPhone.

Calendar
Using its built-in calendar, iPhone lets you check your appointments with the flick of a finger. iPhone uses iTunes to sync with the calendar application you already use on your computeriCal or Entourage on the Mac, or Outlook on a PCjust like it does with your contacts. If you don't already use one of these applications to manage your appointments, now is a great time to start, so you'll be ready to sync when your iPhone arrives. If you choose not to use a calendar program, that's OK. You'll be able to enter appointments directly into the iPhone calendar.

Email
iPhone is the first phone to come with a desktop-class email application. So now your phone can display rich HTML email with graphics and photos alongside the text. iPhone will even fetch your latest email every time you open the application and automatically retrieve your email on a set schedule, just like a computer does. iPhone works with the most popular email systemsincluding Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, AOL, and .Mac Mail. If you're not already using one of these services, now would be a great time to get an account. iTunes will make email setup on iPhone a breeze by automatically syncing the settings from email accounts stored in Mail on a Mac or Outlook on a PC. Don't worry if you're not on one of these email services; iPhone also works with almost any industry-standard POP3 and IMAP email system.

Photos
iPhone has a 2-megapixel camera and a gorgeous 3.5-inch display, so it's a great way to enjoy and show off your digital photos. iPhone uses iTunes to sync your photos from iPhoto on a Mac or Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop Album, or any picture folder on a PC. You can carry thousands of photos on iPhone, but you can start by creating an album or two with 50 to 100 of your favorite photos, so that when you first sync your iPhone, you'll be ready to quickly show off some of your best shots.

Music and Video
iPhone is the best iPod ever. Its beautiful, 3.5-inch widescreen display allows you to easily enjoy the music, TV shows, and movies you have in your iTunes library. If you already use iTunes, you can start getting ready for iPhone by creating a playlist of a few hundred of your favorite songs. If you don't have iTunes, now is a good time to download it and start a music and video library. That way, when you sync your iPhone with iTunes, you'll be able to take your favorite music, as well as a few of your TV shows and movies, with you wherever you go.

iTunes Account
To set up your iPhone, you'll need an account with Apple's iTunes Store. If you already have an iTunes account, make sure you know your account name and password. If you don't have an account, you should set one up now to save time later. To set up an account, launch iTunes, select the iTunes Store, and click the Sign In button in the upper right corner of iTunes. Sign in and you're ready to go.

Update: Apple has posted a web-version of the email on their website.

Walt Mossberg picked up his review iPhone yesterday according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

During a speech, Mossberg pulled the phone from his pocket:

"I dont know whether Ill give it a good review or not," he said, noting that he will use the phone for the next couple of weeks before writing his review. "I can already see some things I dont like about it. I see some other things that I do like a lot about it."

He felt that the key aspect of it was whether or not the iPhone's touch screen keyboard would be an adequate replacement for traditional keypads. His first impression is that "it works a little better than I thought, but Im still not sure it works as well as a regular keyboard -- and the first hour is not a very fair test, so Im going to keep going at it."

Mossberg's full review will likely come on June 29th, the day the iPhone will be publicly available.

InformationWeek claims that Brian Croll, senior director of product marketing for the Mac OS, has said that "ZFS is not happening" when questioned about ZFS's inclusion in Leopard.

This contradicts a statement made by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz during a speech last week:

In fact, this week you'll see that Apple is announcing at their Worldwide Developer Conference that ZFS has become the file system in Mac OS 10.

Prior betas of Leopard included evidence of early ZFS formatting availability. No word whether the WWDC build of Leopard has any signs of ZFS.

Coming out of WWDC are reports that Apple has officially admitted that the Apple iPhone will not support Adobe's Flash plug-in in Safari.

Flash support has been a long unanswered question about the Apple iPhone. Steve Jobs had made comments early on that we might see Flash in iPhone according to David Pogue:

Markoff: Flash [in the iPhone]?
Jobs: Well, you might see that.

Of note, Jobs did say that Youtube support would be in the iPhone... but by sidestepping Flash altogether:

Jobs: Yeah, YouTubeof course. But you dont need to have Flash to show YouTube. All you need to do is deal with YouTube. And plus, we could get em to up their video resolution at the same time, by using h.264 instead of the old codec.

This portion of Jobs' plan came true with the Youtube addon for Apple TV which will require Youtube to convert their catalog of videos into the h.264 format.

As the dust settles from today's announcements at WWDC, we take some time to make a few additional notes on some details of Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard."

Where's Screen Sharing?
One feature that was present in previous Leopard builds but is no longer advertised is screen sharing via iChat.

This is would not be the first time a previewed feature of Mac OS X has been axed prior to launch. Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther's" Home On iPod feature was mentioned on Apple's site, but then pulled without explanation. Currently, all Leopard pages feature a disclaimer stating that "all features referenced in the Mac OS X Leopard website are subject to change."

Update: Forum member lancestraz notes that Screen Sharing is still being shown on Apple's site, however modestly.

Performance Optimizations
The addition of the 8-core Mac Pro saw benchmarks that demonstrated diminishing returns with some applications. Barefeats had speculated that this was due to inefficiencies in Tiger's scheduler. It appears that Leopard will be addressing this with a scheduler further optimized for multi-core systems, as well as built-in support for Message Passing Interface (MPI) 2.0.

In addition to multi-core enhancements, Apple states that other various portions of the OS have been optimized including a self-tuning TCP stack (eliminating the need for specialized tools such as Broadband Tuner), and a multithreaded 'autofs' filesystem layer.

Apple states that all these technologies are universal, meaning both Intel Mac users and PowerPC users will benefit from the enhancements.

Apple has posted the Quicktime stream of the 2007 WWDC Keynote.

Apple's announcements are detailed in our earlier stories:

WWDC: Game On
WWDC: Leopard Details
WWDC: Safari for Windows
WWDC: iPhone Release Time, Developer Access

As first noted by AppleInsider, it appears that TransGaming's Cider development technology is fueling EA's return to the Mac.

Cider is a development technology that allows Windows game manufacturers to "wrap" their unmodified code in Cider, which translates the Windows API calls. From TransGaming's Cider FAQ:

Cider works by directly loading a Windows program into memory on an Intel Mac system and linking it to an optimized version of the Win32 APIs. TransGaming's Cider implements common multimedia Windows APIs such as Direct3D, DirectInput, DirectSound and many others by mapping them to Mac equivalents. This allows games to run with equivalent game play and performance but without the typical brute force porting effort typically required to bring games to Mac.

However, Cider is only compatible with Intel-based Macs, meaning that EA's releases will be likewise Intel-only as long as they rely on the technology.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced at the end of the WWDC keynote that the iPhone would be released on June 29th at 6pm at AT&T and Apple Stores in the United States.

Also announced was that Apple was making it possible for developers to write small, Widget-like programs for the iPhone. A demonstration was given showing a corporate LDAP directory lookup application. All such applications will run within Safari to maintain the security of the iPhone.

The New York Times had previously reported that a developers kit would be forthcoming.

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Citing Safari's increasing market share (currently 4.9%, according to Apple) and Apple's desire to see increased adoption of its innovative browser platform, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that Apple has ported Safari to Windows (XP and Vista).

Experience the web, Apple style, with Safari: the fastest, easiest-to-use web browser in the world. With its simple, elegant interface, Safari gets out of your way and lets you enjoy the web -- up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer.

The Safari 3 Public Beta is available for download for both Mac and Windows.

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At WWDC today, Apple CEO Steve Jobs dedicated most of his keynote address to overviewing Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" and detailing some of its top-secret features, including a new desktop user interface and a new Finder.

Desktop
Leopard's new desktop will feature a variety of enhancements, including:
- Enhanced, 3D Dock. Slimmer and more functional.
- Stacks (organization tool similar to a stack of paper). Can fan out or pop up in a grid.
- No more brushed metal. Consistent look.

Readers with keen memories may recall that Stacks (aka "Piles") was originally rumored to be included in OS 10.3 "Panther".

Finder
Leopard's revised Finder has a new sidebar and numerous improvements to searching, including the ability to search shared computers. Also added was a Finder feature called Back To My Mac for connecting to Macs not on the same LAN, using .Mac to identify the computer's IP address automatically, so remote connections can be created more easily. Cover Flow has also been incorporated into the new Finder.

Other
While Mr. Jobs spent a considerable amount of time reviewing features previewed at last year's conference, he did note that iChat would include AAC-LD (AAC low delay), which promises enhanced audio quality in iChat conversations.

Leopard will be available in October for $129 USD.

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As one of the first orders of business in today's WWDC Keynote address, Apple CEO Steve Jobs invited EA CCO Bing Gordon and id Games Owner and CTO John Carmack on to the stage.

Citing that EA customers were moving to the Mac in droves, EA announced that it would once again begin developing games for the Mac platform with simultaneous releases as their Windows counterparts. Command and Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix are coming in July 2007, with Madden 08 and Tiger Woods 08 to follow.

id Games also previewed forthcoming technology that allows for unprecedented texture detail. The technology was being shown first at WWDC, and would be given more in-depth demonstrations at E3.

MacRumors would like to thank our sponsors, who made live coverage of the WWDC keynote possible.
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Apple's 2007 WWDC Keynote is about to kick off.

Live coverage to start at 10am Pacific at MacRumorsLive. We'll have continuous text updates (no refresh required, no refresh interval), and live photos.

MacRumors.com will redirect to MacRumorsLive as the time approaches.