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- Apple Open-Sources Grand Central Dispatch
One of the most compelling new feature in Snow Leopard is Grand Central Dispatch, which can make it easier for developers to write software taking advantage of the multiple cores in our computers. On Sept., 10 Apple released the user library component of Grand Central to the open source community.
We previously discussed Grand Central Dispatch, but the essence is that the operating system’s kernel is the only entity that knows all of the processes that are running on the system, so it’s in the best position to determine how to run tasks concurrently. Developers no longer have to guess as to the most efficient number of threads to spawn, or make assumptions about the available computing resources.
While Grand Central Dispatch is a boon for Snow Leopard and OS X developers, it doesn’t help the rest of the computer world, and certainly doesn’t contain enough of an advantage to convince developers who don’t already develop for OS X to start. However by open-sourcing the Grand Central Dispatch APIs, Apple is most likely hoping that other operating systems like Linux may pick up the technology. This encourages the wider adoption of the technology, which makes it stronger for all parties. It’s a win-win scenario.
One just has to look at the success of WebKit, the underlying foundation of the Safari web browser that was adopted by Google to drive its Chrome browser. Apple is clearly seeing the advantages of open source — and even if it didn’t mean to (Apple didn’t open-source WebKit as it originated from the open source kHTML), it’s reaping the benefits of the open source community’s constant code improvements.
Ultimately, Grand Central Dispatch consists of three components, each of which are now open for public consumption, improvement and adoption:
- In the user-space side is the newly open-sourced libdispatch. This contains the APIs that developers call to schedule blocks of code into queues.
- xnu is the kernel that runs OS X, originally developed for NEXTSTEP before Apple took NeXT and Steve Jobs back. xnu stands for “X is Not Unix” and has been open-sourced from the start because it included code from FreeBSD.
- llvm is a relatively new “Low Level Virtual Machine” compiler technology that is ultimately designed to replace gcc which generally compiles much Unix software. While not technically required for Grand Central Dispatch, it supports a key requirement: blocks. Blocks are an extension to the C programming language that make it trivial to define portions of code that can easy be scheduled and run concurrently.
With all three components of Grand Central Dispatch now available for the open source community, it is an even more exciting prospect. Finally we can really capitalize on our multicore computers. The next 12 months will be interesting.
Переслать - iPod Touch Missing Camera Mystery Solved?
Despite protestations by Steve Jobs that the evolution of the iPod touch has always been towards gaming, the deconstructionists at iFixit may have found the missing camera link in its latest teardown.
Prior to the Apple event last week, rumors of a camera in the iPod touch had been circulating for months. Some of the most convincing evidence included video of a case and circuit board with a camera. However, shortly before the third generation device was unveiled, new rumors of technical problems with the camera module suggested delayed availability. The Apple Event and Steve Jobs interview with the New York Times supposedly cleared all that up, except maybe not.
Source: iFixit
According to iFixit, there is space for a nano-style video camera in the iPod touch, but not enough for a still camera like the iPhone. This new information, combined with previous rumors and photos, suggests the strong possibility of a future touch with a camera. As to why Apple did not include a camera in the third generation iPod touch, perhaps technical issues were to blame, or perhaps it was a desire to keep a certain amount of feature distance between the iPod touch and iPhone. That would explain the other big find from iFixit.
It appears the Broadcom chip in the iPod touch supports 802.11n, as well as containing Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and an FM radio module. The techs at iFixit speculate that if antennas were built in, and if the iPhone OS were to support it, one could stream music in a car that was appropriately equipped with Bluetooth. Those are some huge advantages over the iPhone, which only supports 802.11 a/b/g and has no FM radio.
Seeing as the iPhone earns more income for Apple than the touch through revenue sharing, it would be no surprise if the touch was crippled to protect iPhone sales. Disappointing, but not surprising. We’ll likely see all these features in both the touch and the iPhone in the future, and pay for them in another upgrade cycle, too. That’s expected, but wouldn’t it be great if just once Apple created a product that was as technologically advanced as it could be, rather than as it should be to protect the company’s sacred margins?
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