Inside Leopard

Despite the redesigned GUI, marking a real change from previous version of OS X, we should now look one step further, and focus on what is inside Leopard.
First, it is a true 64-bit system while remaining fully compatible with 32-bit applications. Let's face it, Apple engineers have successfully designed a 64-bit system with a native back-compatibility to 32-bit, something achieved by neither Microsoft nor Linux. Both Windows and Linux distributions are available in 32-bits or 64-bits. Once more, Apple thought about the end user who does not want to care or think about if its application is a 32-bit -encoded one or not. Even though the immediate impact on performance level might be limited to Pro users, editing and rendering large photos and video files will be faster.
Core Animation brings Core technology for audio, video and image, allowing developers to easily add eye-catching effect on their 2D application. One will have to wait for the first applications taking advantage of such technology to evaluate if it is really useful or only a good-looking gadget.
Apple wants to bring multi core support. With Intel transition, almost all hardware models are featuring Dual or Quad Core CPUs. Even so Mac OS X is multicore aware since 10.0 (even from Mac OS 9 with the proper system extension), Apple wants to push it further and help developers. One way is to offer technology allowing developers not to think about multicore management or defining multithreaded tasks, as Cocoa will take care of it. Mail.app, Address Book and Font Utility are already coded this way. One will have to test Leopard and those applications to check if it brings a strong benefit, but for sure some iApps or Apple-branded applications will benefit of such system-managed multithreading.
On the Unix side, Leopard is "UNIX 03"-certified. In other words, it follows the last standard guide lines, including specifications for compiling programs developed for other UNIX 03-labelled Unix (Solaris 10, AIX 5.3, HP-UX...). Linux is not UNIX-certified but it tries to reach all standard defined in UNIX 03.
Among other interesting features found inside Leopard Unix:
- automatic TCP optimization: The system automatically adapts the size of the buffer depending on the type of connection. If we will probably not see it with our current internet connection, it will be a noticeable advantage for high-bandwidth connection users.
- Multicore optimization of several system components, including the network layer.
- DTrace, originating from Solaris, allows a fine tuning of resources when debugging software.
Apple also worked on security with Leopard, even though we are much less exposed then Windows users:
- one can launch an application in "sandbox" mode, defining exactly the files and resources to be used/modified.
- as previously mentioned today, file sharing is made easier but also safer as one can quickly define the rights associated to a file or a folder. You can even define it for contacts in your Address Book.
- Leopard is able to identify and report to the user/administrator if an application has been modified from its installation.
With so many new features, the Developer Tools have evolved and XCode is now available in version 3.0 while Objective-C is now in version 2.0. The integration of DTrace also leads to the introduction of a new graphic tool named, Xray, and designed to be deeply integrated in future applications.
As we noticed it already yesterday, there is no mention about ZFS, was it a voluntary leak to internally spot the source spreading information outside Cupertino, nobody knows yet.
To conclude, Leopard brings so many new features and improvement that it can not be compared to previous updates, this is not only a new graphic or rendering design, associated to some gadgets; this is a deeper evolution opening the door to future (r)evolutions.