Mac OS X Internals

Tasks Explorer 1.4 released

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 09:28:13 GMT

Tasks Explorer 1.4 has been released.

New features:

The list of opened files used by process;

CPU usage tray icon;

Process' description.

Download Tasks Explorer 1.4

Tasks Explorer 1.3 released

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Mon, 10 May 2010 03:56:22 GMT

Tasks Explorer 1.3 has been released.

New features:

Filtering processses list;

CPU usage graph;

Download Tasks Explorer 1.3

Tasks Explorer 1.2

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:19:18 GMT

Tasks Explorer 1.2 has been released.

New features:

Displaying an application's symbol table;

Displaying the information from Mach-O object files or libraries;

Download Tasks Explorer 1.2

DTrace and Mac OS X

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 05:43:43 GMT

Introduction.

The main article's goal is the complete overview of DTrace from its architecture to DTrace scripts development and libdtrace library use. This article provides examples of DTrace scripts that can be used for software optimization and collecting information about applications in real time. All examples were tested in Mac OS C 10.6.

MachoViewer 1.0 released

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:57:48 GMT

MachoViewer 1.0 has been released.

Download MachoViewer 1.0.

Debugging the application as root within Mac OS X

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:10:31 GMT

Xcode cann't run the debugging application as root by default, but it's not a problem in most cases. Nevertheless, root rights are necessary in a few isolated instance. The simplest way is to run Xcode as root.

How to obtain processes list

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:42:41 GMT

There are two ways for processes list obtaining on Mac OS X (at least, I know two ways).

Let's start from the first way, which is easier but potentially has bugs. In BSD part (it is BSD part which manages processes in Mac OS X) of XNU kernel there is kinfo_proc structure that contains a lot of processes information including such information like process’ PID and name.

Objective C singleton pattern

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 12:17:33 GMT

On the process of reading iPhone OS official documentation, it produce the illusion that there are 2 designed patterns: Model View Controller and Delegate. In general I agree with this way, because a lot of patterns descriptions disorient, especially in new domain. None the less, I like to use suitable and habitual approaches in new platform too.

Tasks Explorer 1.1 released

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Tasks Explorer 1.1 has been released. This is intermediate release version and it doesn't have any new big features. Application was ported to 64bit, the optimization of GUI part was made and auto-updating (Sparkle framework has been used) was added.

Features:

Auto-updating;

Porting to 64bit;

Bug-fix:

GUI optimization;

Memory leak on resorting in flat-view.

Download Tasks Explorer 1.1

Tasks Explorer 1.0 released

info@macosinternals.com (Alexander Stavonin) — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Tasks Explorer 1.0 has been released. At the moment the following features are included:

Hierarchical or flat view of active processes;
Highlighting of new and terminating applications;
Ability to kill any active applications;
Active processes information obtaining: version, copyright, application CPU architecture, user name, process arguments, environment, etc.
Revealing in Finder any directory from path to an application;
Working without administrator's password (nevertheless, you must enter administrator password during installation);

Download Tasks Explorer 1.0