Adaptability
An adaptable program is one that adjusts appropriately to its surroundings; that is, it does not stop working when the current conditions change. If a network connection goes down, an adaptable program lets the user continue to work offline. Similarly, if certain resources are locked or become unavailable, an adaptable program finds other ways to meet the user’s request.
One of the strengths of Mac OS X is its ability to adapt to configuration changes quickly and easily. For example, if the user changes a computer’s network configuration from the system preferences, the changes are automatically picked up by applications such as Safari and Mail, which use CFNetwork to handle network configuration changes automatically.
Table 7-5 lists some Mac OS X technologies that you can use to improve the overall adaptability of your software.
Technology | Description |
|---|---|
The FSEvents API lets you detect changes to the file system easily and efficiently. You might use this technology to update your application’s internal data structures whenever changes occur to specific directories or directory hierarchies. For more information, see “FSEvents API.” | |
Core Foundation provides services for managing date, time, and number formats based on any locale. See Reference Library > Core Foundation for specific reference documents. | |
Quartz Services provides access to screen information and provides notifications when screen information changes. See Quartz Display Services Reference for more information. | |
Bonjour | Bonjour simplifies the process of configuring and detecting network services. Your program can vend network services or use Bonjour to be a client of an existing network service. For more information, see “Bonjour.” |
The System Configuration framework provides information about availability of network entities. See System Configuration Framework Reference and System Configuration Programming Guidelines for more information. |
Last updated: 2007-10-31
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