Featured Article: StrangeCharm - Particle Debris And No Soup For Microsoft (Week of Sep 1)
Apple: Leopard Will Include ZFS... Kind Of
by , 7:50 AM EDT, June 13th, 2007
Apple's revolving door on ZFS has spun back around again. Now the word out of Cupertino is that the ZFS file system will be included in Mac OS X 10.5, but in a limited capacity, according to InformationWeek.
Several days before the Steve Jobs keynote at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz claimed that Mac OS X 10.5, or Leopard, would include his company's 128-bit ZFS file system. On keynote day, however, Mr. Jobs said nothing about ZFS.
Afterwards, Brian Croll, Apple's senior director of product marketing for Mac OS, commented "ZFS is not happening."
Later, an Apple spokesperson attempted to clarify Mr. Croll's comments to InformationWeek by stating that ZFS actually will be included in Leopard, but only as a read-only option from the command line.
And finally, Mr. Croll added his own clarification to the spokesperson's clarification. "ZFS is not the default file system for Leopard," he said. "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."
It appears that, at least for now, Apple's HFS+ file system is here to stay. Macs will continue to use the familiar file system that has been a part of Apple's operating system for about ten years, but ZFS may be an option for some high-capacity storage systems.
In the end, it looks like both Mr. Schwartz's and Mr. Croll's original comments were right... at least a little bit. ZFS will be included in Mac OS X, but it "is not happening" in the sense that it won't be Leopard's default file system.
Observer Comments
Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:05 am Subject: Wiki - Can't format local drives and can't boot with it.
From the ZFS Wiki:
Apple, Inc. is porting ZFS to their Mac OS X operating system, according to a post by a Sun employee on the opensolaris.org zfs-discuss mailing list, and previewed screenshots of the next version of Apple's Mac OS X.[18] As of Mac OS X 10.5 (Developer Seed 9A321), support for ZFS has been included, but lacks the ability to act as a root partition, noted above. Also, attempts to format local drives using ZFS are unsuccessful; this is a known bug.[19] On June 6th 2007, Sun's CEO Jonathan I. Schwartz publicly announced, days before Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference, that Apple will be making ZFS "the" filesystem in OS 10.5 Leopard[20]. Marc Hamilton, VP for Solaris Marketing later wrote to clarify that, in his opinion, Apple is planning to use ZFS in future versions of Mac OS X, but not necessarily as the default filesystem for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. [21]
Recent Headlines - Updated Monday, September 8th, 2008
- Mon., 1:30 PM
- UBS Sees Softness in PC Unit Growth, Favors Apple
- 1:00 PM
- iPodObserver - Say Where, Voice Recognition Coming Soon to iPhone
- 12:40 PM
- Studiometry 6 Adds Multi-project GANNT Charts, More
- 12:00 PM
- Monday's Mac Gadget - Need to Free Some Disk Space? Check out Xslimmer!
- 11:15 AM
- iPodObserver - Best Buy Now Selling Apple's iPhone 3G
- 10:25 AM
- Hot Forum Topic - Apple's Missing Take Down Notices
- 9:55 AM
- OmniGrowl 3.4 Improves RSS Support, More
- 9:05 AM
- Microsoft to Copy Apple's Geniuses with Gurus
- 8:15 AM
- iPodObserver - Apple Tapped Media Player Inventor in Burst Case
- 7:30 AM
- iPO Quick Tip - iPhone: Preview URLs in Mobile Safari
- 6:00 AM
- iPO Review - Case-Mate Signature Leather Case for iPhone 3G
The Mac Observer Reader Specials
- Download Typestyler, still the Ultimate Styling Tool for Internet, Print and Video Graphics. Works great in Classic with a Native OS X Version on the way. Free Tryout: www.typestyler.com
- OWC: Juice up your iPod w/NewerTech High Capacity Battery from $19.99 Free Installation Videos for most models. Pro Installation Service w/FedEx Shipping From $57.95 (Battery Included). - www.MacSales.com
MacPro Memory 667Mhz With Apple Spec Heat Sink 2GB $ 82 / 4GB $128 / 8GB $256 - Click to Maximize your Macs...
Mac observers can now play Party Poker for Mac as well as Mac casino games by going to MacPokerOnline.com.
RamJet Memory: Mac Pro FB-DIMMs: 2Gig kit $115, 4Gig kit $179, 8Gig kit for $355! 500G Seagate Hard Drive $129! Click hereFor the latest Apple products use Ciao a comparison website to find laptops like MacBook Air. Then find the best prices on MP3 players and use our comparison tool to evaluate cell phones.
Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

