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Comment by pornel | Hacker News Reader

Apple could help by documenting this stuff. I remember the good old days when every Mac OS X came with an extra CD with Xcode, and Apple was regularly publishing Technical Notes detailing implementation details. Today the same level of detail is treated as top secret, and it seems that Apple doesn't want developers to even think beyond the surface of the tiny App Store sandbox.

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Even back in the day, those technical notes would not cover private APIs like this, because they’re subject to change or are for internal use only.

These are the same in any closed source OS

I really wish Apple would do another "Snow Leopard" - go an entire year WITHOUT any new features and just fix bugs and documentation.

This twitter thread is a perfect example of why it's needed

https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1557357661171204098

Ahh yes, that "just fix bugs" release that would delete your main user account if you used a guest user https://www.engadget.com/2009-10-12-snow-leopard-guest-accou...

Besides, rebuilding/redesigning the settings screen is a perfect "snow leopard" thing. That's not an actual Feature.

The problem isn't doing features, the probably is doing a bad job.

We've had several.

• Mountain Lion / Mavericks

• El Capitan

• High Sierra

Yes, these releases had new features, but so did Snow Leopard. Behind the scenes there was grand central dispatch, and in front there was QuickTime X, App Exposé, and Exchange support.

I also happen to think Snow Leopard is overrated, its legacy largely due to the fact that Lion was really bad.

This isn't to say Apple shouldn't do another polish release. They're overdue for one.

Snow Leopard had few user-facing features, but it did have new APIs, such as Grand Central Dispatch and OpenCL, and also an optional 64-bit kernel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X_Snow_Leopard

OpenCL is not an OS level API. I guarantee you they were basically just redistributing Intel and NVidia implementations. GCD isn't OS level either, it's just a library, but it is at least a new API.

> I guarantee you they were basically just redistributing Intel and NVidia implementations.

OpenCL was created and open sourced by Apple.

>OpenCL was initially developed by Apple Inc., which holds trademark rights, and refined into an initial proposal in collaboration with technical teams at AMD, IBM, Qualcomm, Intel, and Nvidia.

OpenCL 1.0 released with Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28, 2009.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenCL#History

I think you might not understand what OpenCL is. It's not software, it's a spec. Apple created the original spec and probably an initial reference implementation. Then they brought it to Kronos Group where the spec was changed and made ready for production. Then the vendors made non-reference implementations, which is thr actual code that makes OpenCL more than a curiosity. It makes no sense to say that you open sourced OpenCL because OpenCL isn't software, and it was worked on by more than Apple before its release.

I'm talking about the GPU OpenCL implementation. Implementing OpenCL on the CPU is not really a big deal. I can guarantee you that these implementations were Intel and NVidia and were just redistributed.

I mean, the other poster "guaranteed" it, so I don't know who to believe here.

You don't have to believe anyone. Try to run code on the GPU using OpenCL on Snow Leopard, you will be using NVidia or Intel implementations. I know as much because I've been there done that 13 years ago.

libdispatch/GCD has kernel side integration in some parts for performance, though it can live without it.

I mean that thread is looking at pre-release software

There is software that approaches barely functional after dozens of rounds of QA testing, and then there is software that is implemented on a solid foundation with care and happens to have a few bugs. Unfortunately that many bugs in a beta implies the former. I think the thread comes from a disappointment that Apple is moving from the second category to the first.

But it is not even a "Consumer Beta" it is a developer beta- for catching bugs and allowing devs to create applications for new APIs while Apple polishes the build for release? Was snow leopard ever released as a dev beta even?

There wasn't a customer beta program at the time IIRC. Either way, as a dev you'd still want to test on an OS after a year of work even if there weren't "new features".

Bug fixes and performance work on the OS are even more likely to break your app than feature work is! Bug fixes in the OS are pretty likely to cause new bugs too…

Apple Platform Security: May 2022. 242 pages.

https://help.apple.com/pdf/security/en_GB/apple-platform-sec...

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