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Leopard is another name for Mac OS X 10.5, which was released on October 26, 2007. It followed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and preceded the release of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. What's the difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard? This article is about animals. For Apple's Mac OS X operating system versions codenamed 'Leopard' and 'Snow Leopard', see Leopard (Mac OS X) vs Snow Leopard (Mac OS X). 2) Get a friend who has another Mac that can run Snow Leopard 10.6.8. From this other Mac, with yet another external hard drive, and a Snow Leopard install DVD, make a virgin installation of Snow Leopard on the external drive. Run Software Update and install everything, up to 10.6.8 with all patches. 3) Wipe the hard drive on your MacBook.
Each new release of Mac OS X brings with it a range of new command-line tools, many of which go unnoticed. Not only are these tools useful, they also tell the story of the evolution of the OS. Leopard is no exception, so armed with a couple of old and unevolved commands,
ls
and diff
, I set about finding out what’s new in /usr/bin
on Leopard. What follows is far from comprehensive, but I hope it at least touches on some of the more interesting developments. For those who want more, there’s always ls
and diff
. Here’s what I found…Performance, Performance, Performance
Many have made the observation that Leopard is more a developer’s release than a end user’s release, and looking at the improvements in the new developer tools, it’s hard to deny. From Xcode to Interface Builder and Instruments, developing software on Leopard is a whole lot more attractive than it was on Tiger, and there are just as many improvements under the cover.
One of biggest changes is the introduction of DTrace, which is a platform for profiling your software — and the system — without having to compile with special flags or anything like that.
One way to access DTrace is to use the new Instruments graphical tool (formerly X-Ray). You may not realize it, but Instruments has a command-line counterpart called — wait for it — instruments, which allows you to use the tools you create in the application in your command-line scripts.
Aside from Instruments, DTrace is used in many other tools on Leopard. List the
/usr/bin
directory and you will see many files with the extension .d, which are DTrace scripts. To run one, you can start up the dtrace command with the -s
option, but most of the scripts will take care of this for you in the she-bang, so you can just run the script directly, e.g.,Note that you have to use the
sudo
command, because only superusers can run dtrace.Here are some of the DTrace scripts you will find that may be of use in profiling your system:
- bitesize.d – Analyse disk I/O size by process.
- creatbyproc.d – File creates by process name.
- httpdstat.d – Realtime httpd statistics.
- hotspot.d – Plot disk event by location, look for hotspots.
- cpuwalk.d – Measure which CPUs a process runs on.
- weblatency.d – Measures web latency.
The weblatency.d script is fun to play with: start it up, and then navigate to a web site in Safari or Firefox. Now use Cmd-C to stop the script, and it will print the latency on each of the web site downloads. Pretty cool, even if it is more for web developers than scientists.
In addition to the DTrace scripts, Apple has utilized DTrace to provided a number of new commands. These commands do not have a .d extension, but they do use DTrace, and must be run as superuser.
- dappprof – Profile user and lib function usage.
- dapptrace – Trace user and library function usage.
- diskhits – Disk access by file offset.
- dtruss – Process syscall details.
- iosnoop – Snoop I/O events as they occur.
- iotop – Display top disk I/O events by process.
- fddist – File descriptor usage distributions.
- opensnoop – Snoop file opens as they occur.
- plockstat – Front-end to DTrace to print statistics about POSIX mutexes and read/write locks.
- procsystime – Analyse system call times.
- rwsnoop – Snoop read/write events.
- sampleproc – Sample processes on the CPUs.
- topsyscall – Top syscalls by syscall name.
- topsysproc – Top syscalls by process name.
This list includes quite a few tools, but the ‘top-like’ ones caught my eye: iotop, topsyscall, and topsysproc.
top
is a very useful command for getting continuously-updated data on what is occupying your CPU, and the new tools allow you to do the same thing at the system call and the file levels. Have you ever wondered why your hard disk suddenly burst into life for no apparent reason? In the past, I have used fs_usage
to discover the culprit, but from now on, I think I will use iotop to find out which process is thrashing the disk.Parallelism Rules
Apple and other vendors are starting to take parallelism more seriously. Cocoa includes new classes for parallelizing applications, and Leopard now has OpenMPI built in. OpenMPI is an implementation of the Message-Passing Interface (MPI), which allows for SPMD parallel applications to be written for shared- and distributed-memory systems. OpenMPI commands include mpic++, mpicc, and mpicxx for compiling, and mpiexec and mpirun for executing MPI apps. Unfortunately, Mac OS X doesn’t include a standard Fortran compiler, so although you will find mpif77 and mpif90, they don’t do anything. There is also the ompi_info command, which prints information about the OpenMPI installation.
Bridges and Scripting Languages
Another shift in the development landscape brought about by Leopard is better support for bridging to scripting languages like Python and Ruby. BridgeSupport allows developers to write Cocoa apps in languages other than Objective-C, but you can also support scripting in your own frameworks. To do this, you use the tool gen_bridge_metadata to scan the interface of your C or Objective-C framework, and generate the required XML file Virus.
Another type of bridging also snuck under the radar: the swig tool has been included. SWIG also allows you to relatively easily bridge scripting languages to native code, and its a nice addition to the OS.
Leopard includes a number of other scripting-related commands, such as rails, for Ruby on Rails; gem, for Ruby package management; easy_install, for Python package installation; and config_data, for configuring Perl modules. Speaking of Perl, there is now support for building GUI apps with wxWidgets; for a demo, run the wxperl_demo.pl script.
Security Software Development
I have already discussed many tools of use to software developers, but there are many more. For example, if you want to open a file from the command line in Xcode’s editor, use the new xed command.
A couple of other tools point to the security improvements that have been made in Leopard: The codesign command allows developers to sign their code, so that it can be verified when installed on a user’s system. And the sandbox-exec command can be used to run an application in a sandbox, which can be used to restrict access to system resources.
Source control management has been improved with the inclusion of Subversion (svn) and SVK (svk), and the project management tool Maven (mvn) also got a guernsey.
Those developing Quicklook plugins will find qlmanage very useful, and anyone that wants to build text-based categorization into their apps (think Junk in Mail) need look no further than the Latent Semantic Mapping support provided by lsm.
Odds and Ends
To finish off, here are a few tools that didn’t really fit into any of the categories above: A perl-based command called lwp-download is designed for large file downloads from the web, and the xar command provides tar-like archiving in an extensible format. xmlwf can tell you if an XML file is well formatted, and xpath can be used to extract data from XML files using an approach similar to regular expressions.
All in all, Leopard’s got a lot to offer, much of it below the glossy, transparency-rich veneer that many have taken exception to. It’s the first UNIX-compliant version of Mac OS X, and as you would expect from any UNIX system, there’s plenty of command-line goodness for us all, and then some. Next week,
/usr/sbin
… only joking.System Requirements for Snow Leopard vs Leopard
- Snow Leopard (Mac OS X v10.6) only runs on Intel-based computers and not the older PowerPC chips.
- An upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard frees up about 7GB of hard disk space. This has more to do with removing redundant components like printer drivers (which are downloaded on demand in Snow Leopard) than removing code specific to PowerPC.
Mac Leopard Os
Speed and Performance in Snow Leopard
Apple has made operating system components faster with Snow Leopard. Performance improvements include
- Faster startup, shutdown, installation, Time Machine backup and connection establishment.
- Faster PDF and JPEG icon refreshes.
- Improved performance of Finder, which has been rewritten in 64-bit Cocoa
Refinements to the user interface in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)
Snow Leopard For Mac
There was no major overhaul of the existing Leopard interface when Apple introduced Snow Leopard. Minor UI refinements include:
- Stacks in Snow Leopard allow viewing a subfolder without launching Finder. Stacks have also been modified to include scroll-bars for folders with many files.
- Contextual menus which come out of Dock icons have more options and have a new look, with a semi-transparent charcoal background and white type.
- Exposé can display all windows for a single program by left clicking and holding its icon in the dock.
- Selection of columned text in PDF documents by analyzing the page layout.
- Prefixes for bytes are now used in strictly decimal meaning when describing disk space, such that an indicated file size of 1 MB corresponds to 1,000,000 bytes.
- There’s now a Put Back command in the Trash, just as in Windows’ Recycle Bin.
- You can page through a PDF document or watch a movie right on a file’s icon.
- When you click a folder icon on the Dock, you can scroll through the pop-up window of its contents.
- Buggy plug-ins (Flash and so on) no longer crash the Safari Web browser; you just get an empty rectangle where they would have appeared.
- Snow Leopard also has an impressive trove of tools for blind Mac users, including one that turns a Mac laptop’s trackpad into a touchable map of the screen; the Mac speaks each onscreen element as you touch it.
- When you rename an icon on an alphabetically sorted desktop, it visibly slides into its new alphabetic position so you can see where it went.
New Features in Snow Leopard vs OS X Leopard
- WiFi signal strength: AirPort in OS X Snow Leopard displays the signal strength for all available WiFi networks so you can choose the strongest possible connection.
- Sortable search results: Snow Leopard adds the ability to sort Spotlight search results by name, date modified, date created, size, type of file, or label.
- Annotations in Preview: New annotation tools in Preview allow users to annotate and markup PDF files, including comments, links, highlighting, strikethrough text, shapes, text, and arrows.
- Cisco VPN support: Snow Leopard has built-in support for Cisco VPN connectivity. This allows users to connect securely with corporate networks (if the network uses Cisco VPN) without needing any additional software.
- Automatic update for printer drivers: When connecting to a printer, Snow Leopard downloads the most current device driver for the printer from the Internet. The new OS X also periodically checks for updates to the printer driver via Software Update.
- Nearby printers: When printing Snow Leopard displays the printers that are detected nearby, enabling you to identify and configure the best available device for printing your document.
- HFS+ read in Boot Camp: When using Windows (via Boot Camp) users can now access (read-only) files on the 'Mac side' without rebooting.
Support for Microsoft Exchange
Mac OS X Snow Leopard includes out-of-the-box support for connecting to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers for access through Mail, Address Book, and iCal. Neither Microsoft Windows nor older versions of Mac OS X included this feature.
64-bit addressing
Mac OS X Snow Leopard and most Mac OS 10.6 built-in applications have been rebuilt to leverage the 64-bit addressing space (excluding iTunes, Front Row, Grapher and DVD Player applications), since Apple has started shipping each Mac as a 64-bit system. Snow Leopard supports up to 16 terabytes of RAM.
Grand Central Dispatch in OS X v10.6
Grand Central Dispatch utilizes multiple processor cores for more efficient performance. Due to the technical difficulties involved in making multi-core-optimized applications, the majority of applications do not effectively utilize multiple processor cores. As a result, processing power often goes unused. Grand Central Dispatch includes APIs to help programmers efficiently use these cores for parallel programming.
Snow Leopard For Mac Download
OpenCL
Introduced in Snow Leopard, OpenCL (Open Computing Language) addresses the power of graphics processing units to leverage them in any application, and not just for graphics-intensive applications like 3D games. OpenCL automatically optimizes for the kind of graphics processor in the Mac, adjusting itself to the available processing power.
QuickTime X
In Mac OS X v10.6, Apple has redesigned the QuickTime user interface to resemble the existing QuickTime full-screen view, where the entire window plays only the video and all controls including the title bar fade in and out as needed.
QuickTime X supports HTTP live streaming. Thus, QuickTime X streams audio and video using any web server instead of a special streaming server, and it works reliably with common firewall and wireless router settings.
QuickTime X uses Mac OS X technologies such as Cocoa, Grand Central Dispatch, and 64-bit computing to deliver higher performance and enables QuickTime Player to launch up to 2.8x faster than QuickTime. QuickTime X also takes advantage of ColorSync to provide high-quality color reproduction.
There is a 'Send to YouTube' command built in when you play movies. Users can also record their screen activity as a movie.
Snow Leopard For Macbook
CUPS
Leopard Formal Dress
CUPS (the printing system in Mac OS X and Linux) has been updated to version 1.4 which provides improved driver, networking, and Kerberos support along with many performance improvements. CUPS 1.4 is also the first implementation of the Internet Printing Protocol version 2.1.