Apple Inc.

James L Mensch

Ronnie G Misra

Dominic Benjamin Giampaolo

Eric Olaf Carlson

Joshua H Shaffer

Yan J Arrouye

Cameron Stuart Birse

Jerry Hauck

Paul William Chinn

Curtis Galloway

Lisa Louise Davis

Robert E Snow

Mark C Pontarelli

Susan M Bartalo

A cloud computing system can be used to transparently reduce the storage space of an application on a client device. An application can be installed with a minimal set of application resource files. The remaining application resource files can be replaced with application resource file placeholders, which can have the appearance of application resource files but are in fact empty files. When an application requests an application resource file, an application resource file retrieval process installed on the client device can detect the difference between an application resource file and an application resource file placeholder. The application resource file retrieval process can trigger a fault in response to detecting an application resource file placeholder, which causes the client device to obtain the requested application resource file from a remote storage location, such as cloud-based storage. Additionally, installed application resource files can be replaced with application resource file placeholders.

Cloud-based application resource files

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on a computer storage medium, for transferring electronic data. In general, one aspect of the subject matter described in this specification can be embodied in methods that include the actions of identifying a data item to be chunked; determining the type of the data item; determining whether the type of the data item is one of a specified one or more types; if it is determined that the type of the data item is not one of the specified one or more types, performing a first chunking of the data item; and if it is determined that the type of the data item is one of the specified one or more types, performing a second chunking of the data item that is based on the particular content portions of the data item.

Content based file chunking

Systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for updating software applications installed on client computing devices, creating a manifest file describing the differences between multiple versions of application archives present in an application distribution system, and coordinating an update process for updating the applications on the client computing devices are disclosed. A scheme of hard-linking to existing files, downloading new files, and erasing unwanted files can be used.

System and method for updating application archive files

Methods and systems for creating and using data structures for operating systems. In one embodiment, a method includes receiving information indicating that a first installer is being launched for a first application program and storing, in response to the receiving of the information, first data which specifies changes to an operating system (OS) data structure that is used to configure a system to allow execution of the first application program after installing the first application program, the first data being stored separately from the OS data structure. The OS data structure may be, in one embodiment, a registry for configuring a system to execute multiple applications on the system.

Methods and systems for using data structures for operating systems

A virtual installation process and supporting environment. The virtual installation process may be considered a two-stage installation process. In the first stage a pseudo-installation may occur in which a user is provided an installation experience by a virtual installation environment that stores changes to be made as a result of the installation process. In the second stage of the installation process, the changes that were previously stored may be made to the host system. These changes may include changes to the registry, filesystem and/or any other host system components. The second stage may be initiated by a user attempting to launch the application for the first time. Other triggers may also be supported.

Virtual installation environment

A path request is generated by a secondary platform application, such as a word processor, and is received by invention. The path request may contain the location of a library required for the application to function, or a document saved previously by a user. The path request comprises a complete path for the requested file. The complete path is formatted for a file system and file structure for expected by the application. The elements of the path request, such as directories, disks, filenames, file types, etc. are analyzed by the invention in order to provide another complete path. The path provided by the invention is formatted for a different file system and file structure. The file pointed to by the path provided for the invention enables the secondary platform application to find and use the requested file.

Managing file systems

A digital rights management system permits an application owner to cause code to be injected into the application's run-time instruction stream so as to restrict execution of that application to specific hardware platforms. In a first phase, an authorizing entity (e.g., an application owner or platform manufacturer) authorizes one or more applications to execute on a given hardware platform. Later, during application run-time, code is injected that performs periodic checks to determine if the application continues to run on the previously authorized hardware platform. If a periodic check fails, at least part of the application's execution string is terminated&#x2014;effectively rendering the application non-usable. The periodic check is transparent to the user and difficult to circumvent.

Run-time code injection to perform checks

A digital rights management system permits an application owner to cause code to be injected into the application's run-time instruction stream so as to restrict execution of that application to specific hardware platforms. In a first phase, an authorizing entity (e.g., an application owner or platform manufacturer) authorizes one or more applications to execute on a given hardware platform. Later, during application run-time, code is injected that performs periodic checks are made to determine if the application continues to run on the previously authorized hardware platform. If a periodic check fails, at least part of the application's execution string is terminated&#x2014;effectively rendering the application non-usable. The periodic check is transparent to the user and difficult to circumvent.

An implementation repeatedly updates data in a data structure, the data structure having a size larger than an atomic size. The implementation avoids locking the data structure on every update, however. One method accesses data in a first portion of a data structure and estimates, based on the accessed data, an impact on data in a second portion of the data structure arising from an update to data in the first portion. The method then determines, based on the estimated impact, whether to lock the data structure during an update to data in the data structure. In a more particular example, a counter is copied on a regular basis. If only the least significant bits of the counter have changed, then an atomic instruction is used to copy only the least significant bits. However, when the more significant bits have changed, a lock is used to copy the entire counter.

Updating a data structure

A method and apparatus for linking GUI sliders displayed on a computer screen. A master slider and a slave slider are displayed, each including a knob and a guide. The master knob can be moved along the master guide in response to input from a user, such as with a pointing device. The movement of the slave knob of the slave slider is influenced along the slave guide based on the position and/or movement of the master knob. The slave slider can preferably be in a full slave mode or in a partial slave mode. In full slave mode, the slave knob tracks the movement of its master knob and cannot be selected directly by the user. In partial slave mode, a slave knob can be directly selected and moved by the user, but includes a limit to its movement based on the master knob's current position. Graphical indications of the limits and/or influence on the slave slider are displayed, such as half tone displays on the screen and lines indicating the limits to movement. A free mode can also be provided for a slave slider to provide the slave knob with completely independent movement from its master knob.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

James L Mensch