Jonathan Schwartz of Sun has been telling the world (video) that Apple will be using the ZFS file system - capable of storing 18 billion billion times more data than a 64-bit system, which most of us don't have anyway - in its forthcoming version of Mac OSX, 10.5, known as Leopard.
With the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference due next week, and Apple having cleared some of the hardware decks by announcing new pro notebooks yesterday, it's clear that it must have something important to talk about. As well, that is, as what the iPhone will do.
The Wikipedia article on ZFS (which we'll assume for now is sufficiently accurate) notes that "If 1,000 files were created every second, it would take about 9,000 years to reach the limit of the number of files."
Among the many advantages of ZFS is that it can create snapshots of your system, and particularly files, at any particular point very easily because it uses a copy-and-write method rather than edit method. (This would be useful in Apple's Time Machine feature.)
There are many other features, most of which seem more useful to servers than clients (from a quick scanning) but if correct - and all the signs from Sun are pointing that way; crowing is such fun - then it will mean a very subtle but far-ranging and future-proofing overhaul to Mac OSX. However, the list of "current implementation issues" is rather long. Too long, perhaps, for an OS that needs to be solid.
Bonus reading: the New York Times on Bertrand Serlet (Apple's king of OS development) vs Steve Sinofsky, Microsoft's head of OS development. "Like jazz compared to martial marching music," in the words of one person who's worked for both.
