Mac OS X is built around a powerful, integrated stack of graphics technologies that provide a solid foundation for application developer to create great applications. Mac OS X's graphic system is composed of separate subsystems that handle application windowing, 2D graphics, 3D graphics and multimedia. These subsystems synergize with one another to enable applications with graphics capabilities that far exceed what is possible on other desktop operating systems.

Mac OS X's graphics stack is composed of three different technology components: Quartz, OpenGL, and QuickTime. Quartz is Mac OS X's high quality 2D rendering system that is integrated with an industry leading compositing windowing system. OpenGL is Apple's and the industry's choice for high performance 3D graphics. QuickTime is a comprehensive multimedia architecture that is designed to handle the full breadth of any audio, video, or Internet multimedia experience.

About Quartz

Quartz is the powerful graphics technology family that forms the foundation of the 2D imaging model for Mac OS X. Quartz offers two integral parts, the sophisticated Quartz 2D drawing engine and the Quartz Compositor advanced windowing environment. Quartz's feature-rich drawing engine leverages the Portable Document Format (PDF) drawing model and offers Mac OS X applications professional-strength drawing features and performance. The Quartz Compositor windowing service provides low-level functionality including window buffering, event handling and dispatch, and the translucent and drop shadow effects found in the Aqua user interface.

Quartz 2D is a high-performance graphics rendering library that acts as the primary imaging model for Mac OS X. Since it is based on version 1.4 of the multiplatform PDF specification, developers can easily import, embed, and export PDF data in their applications. Quartz 2D also delivers high quality anti-aliased rendering of text, bitmap images, and spline-based vector graphics. Quartz 2D is also extensively used by Mac OS X's printing system where its device-independent and resolution-independent nature creates professional quality printed output.

The Quartz Compositor is an advanced windowing system that manages the onscreen presentation of Quartz 2D, OpenGL, and QuickTime content. Where other windowing systems merely broker screen real-estate out to an application, the Quartz Compositor acts as a "visual mixing board" to composite each application's graphic content into Mac OS X's hallmark look and feel. The Quartz Compositor actually "owns" all of the pixels in the frame buffer and works in conjunction with each application to gather window content and move it to the frame buffer in an optimal fashion. This centralized approach allows for full and pervasive compositing support, live window dragging, and frees the application from the burden of double buffering animated screen content.

On systems with recent display cards, the Quartz Compositor harnesses the power of OpenGL technology to leverage the display card's Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to accelerate window updates and compositing effects. This functionality, known as Quartz Extreme, frees the system CPU to focus on application code as opposed to moving pixels, thereby dramatically improving system performance and application responsiveness. Quartz Extreme also allows for new classes of applications that need to seamlessly composite 2D, 3D and video together into a seamless display. Before Quartz Extreme, on-the-fly compositing of the various media types was too CPU-intensive to attempt without specialized hardware. The power of Quartz Extreme makes such applications relatively simple to develop.

About OpenGL

OpenGL is "the" industry standard 3D graphics API for creating powerful entertainment, visualization, and content creation software. Mac OS X features a highly optimized implementation of OpenGL 1.5—far more up-to-date than what is typically found on other UNIX-based systems. The latest 3D capabilities of ATI and Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) are exposed through a number of OpenGL extensions. Through this mechanism, advanced techniques, such as vertex and fragment programming, open the door to a whole new class of GPU-powered applications.

About QuickTime

QuickTime is Apple's multiplatform multimedia technology for handling video, sound, animation, graphics, text, interactivity, and music. As a cross-platform technology for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows, QuickTime supports every major file format for images, and every significant professional file format for video. You can use QuickTime to author professional-quality, ISO-compliant MPEG-4 audio and video files. AAC audio brings true variable bit rate (VBR) encoding to the QuickTime platform, and provides audio encoding that compresses much more efficiently than older formats such as MP3, yet delivers quality rivaling that of uncompressed CD audio.

If you are ready to begin learning about the APIs and tools available on Mac OS X for Java, go to Getting Started With Graphics & Imaging, for a guided introduction and learning path.

For news, updates and links to other ADC content related to Graphics & Imaging on Mac OS X, return to the Graphics & Imaging topic page.

Updated: 2004-09-08