Apple: Leopard offers limited ZFS read-only [updated]

Following statements made by Apple officials that openly discounted the possibility of Sun's ZFS for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the company today said Leopard will include limited support for the ZFS file system via limited, read-only functions from the command-line. The news clarifies Apple's previous position that Leopard would not include ZFS support, but emphasizes that HFS+ will still be used as the default file system for the new operating system showed off at Apple's developer conference this week.

The "clarification", made by an Apple official, supports statements made by Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz last week, who said Apple would announce its inclusion of ZFS in the forthcoming operating system software. Apple will incorporate its well-known HFS+ as the default file system, according to the company, which falls in line with industry skeptics who said using ZFS as the default file system for Leopard made no sense, according to InformationWeek.

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Too bad

06/13, 2:02am, EDT

I may have heard this wrong, but I was hoping ZFS would allow for greater file compression. I'd get Leopard for that if no other reason because my HD has reached its capacity, even with an external for the every-so-often files. I would expect that Apple would make migration somewhat simple, but for someone in my situation, I can't see conversion working with only a few GB of disk space left.

Perhaps this is the reason for a lack of switch, or the fact that you'd have to be able to look at systems with both HFS and FAT32 configuration as well as your own ZFS.

Apple is promoting some REALLY space hungry tendencies with music libraries, hi-res photo libraries, video libraries, or friggin Time Machine. I hope they find a way to address this in the future so that "your digital life." Doesn't end up with having to have your files everywhere.

An external drive, even with wireless connection, can be a pain (speaking from experience here). Apple, please offer something up here to us users besides an addiction to mass disk space.

Anyone have ideas on this one?

danviento

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weird...

06/13, 8:42am, EDT

Thats too bad. ZFS sounds killer!!!

And yea, I dont wanna know what time machine will do to my HD space. It's bad enough that i start to lose performance when i only have 80% of the drive full....

eldarkus

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