The new Mac OSX Lion preview has thrown up a number of interesting tidbits, the most interesting of which is probably TRIM support for SSDs and the possibility of a HiDPI mode. The first refers to the ability of the system to automatically clean up an SSD drive which often tends to accumulate file fragments which prevents the system from writing to these sectors with fragments instead of overwriting and cleaning them up. This in turn greatly reduces the writing speed to the drive. TRIM allows the system to automatically check for and clear fragments, increasing the read/write speeds to a great extent. This option is enabled by default in Windows 7 and with SSDs gaining worldwide acceptance in the last year or so, this is a much needed update to the OSX platform in order for it to remain competitive in the market.
Though investigations have revealed that this feature is supported for the default Toshiba SSD’s for OSX Lion, it is not so for other third party drives. Developers hope that by the time OSX Lion is finally released, this functionality will be available for all SSDs regardless of make since an SSD tends to get bogged down significantly with usage over time.
The other much vaunted feature revealed in the analysis of the developer build of OSX Lion was the possible support for HiDPI modes. With pixel densities already past the 200dpi mark for smart phones, the ability for the OSX platform to support resolutions as high as 2880×1800 has been envisioned by some Mac analysts. This also points towards possible resolution fidelity for Apple products from different niches, like the iPad, iPhone and the desktop Macs so as to be able to run platforms across all products, especially with the Mac App Store now entering the fray.
