Apple Core engineering — Core Audio , Core Graphics , Core Image , and Core Video — give software developer a leg - up when creating multimedia system coating and behaviors for OS X. Instead of starting from scratch , developer can take advantage of underlying frameworks to easy sum sophisticated feature to their apps that perform very efficiently . Mac OS X 10.5 brings another point to this list , known as Core Animation ; Apple promise that this Core engineering will make creating complex 3 - D liveliness more accessible .
How it works
Core Animation bring home the bacon a stratum - based liveliness locomotive that dynamically renders different medium layers — ones with text , 2 - 500 graphics , OpenGL renderings , and video — at the same time . The scene it helps create can have transparency effects as well as Core Image filter and gist . A developer can use from and to full stop , central physical body , spline animations , and transitions ( fade in , reveal , and push , for example ) to create complex animations for UI elements including menus , sorting , reordering , zoom and pan , and mouseovers .
Core Animation also takes vantage of the multi - core flake in Intel - based Macs , intend that while an covering itself execute on one core , Core Animation processes run on their own , dedicated marrow .
Why it was added
Apple ’s large selling point to developer is “ get Core Animation take the cephalalgia out of animation”—that ’s on the button why it exists . developer usually need to manage the movement of case-by-case elements on a physical body - by - frame basis .
alive effects like this one will call for fewer lines of codification when built using Leopard ’s Core Animation engineering science , Apple says .
During the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote , Scott Forstall , Apple ’s vice president of political platform experience , show the company ’s iTunes ad in which record album cut through fly around to create a cityscape . Forstall present the same matter made using Core Animation — it took one - tenth part the personal line of credit of code as the original . What ’s more , the television ad was a rendered movie , whereas Forstall ’s Core Animation demonstration was a live animation that he could pilot through — a feat that requires a batch of engineering and a mickle of graphics and processing horsepower .
Who’s it for
Core Animation is an implicit in engineering , and , as such , it ’s not a consumer feature article — it will be used by developers . Apple , for example , is using Core Animation for the cool recreate consequence in both Time Machine and Spaces . At the same time , the grounds Apple creates Core technologies is so developers can make applications with rich features and experience for the drug user , so the ultimate beneficiary are you and me . Users need to have aCore persona - capableMac to draw the benefit of Core Animation .
What’s missing
Until Core Animation is finalized and developers get a luck to put it to the trial , it ’s unmanageable to say what Apple needs to do to make it better .
What it means
provide powerful spiritedness tools under the tough of OS X means applications will see snazzy and perform better . The technology is there to make it easier for developers to do many matter , not the least of which is to wow client and skeptics alike with everything the late Macs and compatible computer software can do .
[ Jonathan Seff is senior news editor forMacworld . ]
