Mac OS X is Here!

By Dr. Philip Baczewski, Associate Director of Academic Computing

In 1990, when I spent a summer month at Stanford developing computer-based sound compositions, the platform of choice was a NeXT. It was the choice of composers, because of its built-in sound and music generation capabilities, including an on-board DSP (Digital Signal Processor) chip to render creations in stereo CD-quality sound. The NeXT was an intriguing work environment: a fairly sophisticated graphical user interface, a unified display and print environment based upon the Postscript page description language, and best of all, a command line "shell" window to access functions of the system via a set of commands borrowed from UNIX.

A bit of history

Apple Computer recently began shipping copies of Mac OS X (that's "X" as in the Roman numeral 10, and not "X" as in eXperimental, but I suspect "X" as in NeXT). It's not surprising that OS X is similar in concept the operating system which ran on the NeXT. This is because Apple used the NeXT operating system as the basis for development of OS X. The NeXT was the brain child of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, who in a fit of pique in the late 1980s, decided to take his ball and go play elsewhere. The result was the NeXT, supposedly the "next computer" for the rest of us. NeXT had phenomenal support from investors, but unfortunately, never much of a customer base outside the university market which Jobs chose for his initial introduction (I'm sure it was just a coincidence that Apple was the leader in that market at that time). Through the early 1990s NeXT dwindled from being a hardware and software company to being just a software company. Apple, seeking a solution to the development of a modern protected memory operating system, bought NeXT and "reacquired" Steve Jobs in the same deal (Jobs has gone on to reassume leadership of Apple and greatly improve the product line and business practices there).

The basics

Not much of the old NeXT OS is directly visible in OS X. What we do find in OS X is the most dramatic change in Apple's Macintosh OS since the introduction of System 7. Instead of just switching between tasks to provide the illusion of simultaneous execution of programs, it has at its base the OS technology to execute multiple applications in their own protected memory space. The most noticeable benefit to Macintosh users is that when a program misbehaves or crashes, it no longer can take the whole operating system with it (the infamous "An error of type ## has occurred - you 'd better get out while you still can.") Of course, this assumes that there are actually applications to run under OS X, but we'll get to that later.

On top of this foundation is a slick new graphical user interface which bears little resemblance to its predecessor. Named "Aqua," the GUI has shiny ray-traced buttons, semi-transparent windows, and some new features which take advantage of the increased processor speed and graphics capabilities of new Macintosh hardware. Also included is the capability to run applications in an OS 9.1 "Classic" compatibility mode. This feature allows use of many existing applications while we wait for native OS X applications to appear. Mac OS X will only run on later PowerPC G3 systems (iMac and later) as well as the new PowerPC G4 systems. If you've got a poor little 7100/66 at home like I do, then don't bother even thinking about OS X.

So long System 7

If you are a long-time Mac user, then your first interaction with OS X may come as a bit of a shock. There are a number of things which you are used to that you won't find in OS X. The most surprising (shocking?) is the replacement of the concept of multiple Finder windows with one browser-like window with a toolbar to house multiple gadgets and shortcuts. On the face of it this seems like it's borrowed from that other OS that's popular these days until you remember that the NeXT was the first to feature such a file browser in its graphical interface. Still, it's a bit disturbing for a long-time Mac user to double-click on a folder and have the contents come up in the same window.

There are three view modes, however, which may allow you to adapt the Finder to your mode of work. In addition to the icon view which is the default, there is the traditional list view which allows you to open folders in a hierarchical list display and there is also a column view which opens successive folders in a two column display, with a horizontal scroll bar to move forward an backwards in the hierarchy (just to set the record straight, this also was a feature in the NeXT OS which predated any such concept in that other popular OS.)

The Finder windows are customizable to a certain extent, allowing you to choose what tools you want to always see, like "Find" or shortcuts to the Applications folder. In addition to the view selector and back button for navigation, there is a path pull-down button, similar to the Command(Apple)-Click on the window title in System 7 and above. The first rude awakening I had in this environment was when I used Command-N to create a new folder -- instead I got a new Finder window. This is a good thing, since you do have the ability to copy between multiple windows. It's a bad thing that they've reassigned a common keystroke that I use all the time. "New Folder" is now Shift-Command-N. The Command-N seems to be consistent among applications -- that is, it will always open a new window in that application.

Gadgets galore

OS X features some newly designed and in some cases new window gadgets. Mac users have become used to horizontal and vertical window scrolling gadgets and they work in the same way, but with a much prettier shiny blue slider. Since the beginning, Finder windows have had a close gadget and a maximize gadget, the latter toggling between preset or user set maximum and minimum window dimensions. In OS X, there are three shiny buttons at the left of every window title bar. They are, from left to right, red (X), yellow (-), and Green (+). The red button closes a window, and the little X appears when your mouse arrow scrolls over the button to help you remember its function. The yellow button is new and is roughly equivalent to the "hide application" feature of the multifinder (more on where the application goes later). The green button is a window size toggle which will maximize or minimize the application window (except in Sherlock, which for some reason only maximizes with no going back -- probably a bug). One neat thing about these gadgets is that they work even if the window is not in front. If your mouse button moves over a gadget set for a lower window, you can close it, hide it, or maximize it without having to click it first to bring it to the top and make it active.

Finder windows have a clear elongated button on the right to hide or reveal the tool bar. There is also a resize gadget in the lower right-hand corner of all windows, which can be used via the click-hold-drag methodology, the same as in previous Mac OS versions. It is also worth noting that the Command-click on the finder window title still pulls up the descending folder path as mentioned above. Once you get used to the new gadgets, controlling the windows on your desktop is easy and convenient. In all the applications I've seen so far, the red button only closes the window and does not terminate the application. This is consistent with the previous operation of the close window gadget, however, many software developers for Mac OS 9 and below would cause the application to quit when the last or main window was closed. This did help prevent the novice Mac user condition where 10 applications were open without windows being open and they'd be sitting there wondering why their Mac was running so slowly. It was inconsistent, however, with the design of the OS look and feel and led to an inconsistent operation between Macintosh applications. I hope that the standard can be better maintained in OS X.

Into the dock

In OS X the Apple menu is still at the top left of the screen, but unlike its predecessors, it is not user configurable. Instead, it has a fixed set of menu items, including the sleep (if applicable), restart, and shut down directives. In place of the "Apple Menu Items" folder found in System 7.5 and above, there is a new feature called the "Dock." The dock is a strip of icons which live at the bottom of the screen and represent your favorite or most used applications, the finder, and the trash can. Instead of the upper right-hand pull-down menu to switch between or recall hidden applications, you can do so in the dock instead. In other words, when you click the yellow gadget button described above, the application window goes away, and the application icon appears in the dock. In fact, by default, the application window is animated so that it appears to be sucked into a dock which is suddenly exhibiting the gravitational strength of a black hole.

The dock also has an array of tricks if you want to use them. The icons can be small, large, or any size in between. As you move your mouse arrow over an icon in the dock, it can grow larger than the others, so you can see which you'll be selecting (a bit of a gimmick, since the application name also appears above the icon). The dock can be always present on your screen or can hide and only appear when your mouse arrow moves to the bottom of the screen where the dock lives. With the demise of the Apple Menu Items folder, I thought I'd lost a handy trick which make navigating a drive in or folder easy in OS 9 or below. You can place an alias for the drive in you Apple Menu Items folder, and it can then provide instant navigation within the folder structure hierarchy. It turns out that the dock provides an even easier solution. You can just drag a disk or folder icon to the dock, and it's icon will stay there and provide a browsable hierarchy (click and hold) or open immediately upon a single click.

In addition to the dock, there are differences in menu organization in OS X. The Apple menu now includes functions like shutdown and restart (previously found in the Finder "Special" menu). Recent applications, documents, and servers menus have been consolidated into a "Recent items" menu. In addition to the Apple menu, there is now an application menu which has "about," "Preferences," "Quit," and the hide and show selections previously found in the right-hand application selection menu of OS 9 and below.

Just to set the record straight, the dock was also an innovation found in the NeXT OS. In OS X it is a center of your GUI activity, allowing you to select applications, switch between applications, and browse your folder hierarchy if you choose. It is also a replacement (albeit a limited one) for the control strip (did I mention that that's gone too?). Apple includes some "Dock Extras" which you can place in your dock to have immediate access to setting video resolution, monitor your battery (if applicable) and airport use, and control iTunes. Once it is configured to your preferences, you'll find the dock a handy addition to the Mac OS features that you are used to.

No control?

Another thing that's missing in OS X are the control panels. Instead of the list of control panels in the Apple Menu, there is now a Preferences application which allows you to control various aspects of the OS X configuration. Here you'll find mouse preferences, network configuration, and a number of the other usual control panel suspects. You can drag your most used preference icons to the tool bar of the preferences window for "instant access" from whatever settings you happen to be controlling.

Some preferences are noticeably missing. The Extensions Manager, for example, is gone because there are no more extensions (they don't exist in OS X). Others have been consolidated. AppleTalk, TCPIP, PPP, and Modem setup is all done in the Network preferences. One handy addition is a screen saver (its about time) which makes clever use of digital images which can be the ones included by Apple or can be from your own collection. It seems that, unlike the old control panels, third-party application preferences will be handled within that application, however, it may just be too early to tell. If you are wondering what to do with some old third-party control panels that can still run in Classic mode, since they are just applications, they can run from a finder window or even the dock. This scheme works well, once you get used to it, but some old-time Mac users may be pining for their control panels menu.

What's in it for me?

All of the bells and whistles mentioned above still don't answer the question of whether it is worth it to upgrade to OS X. Other than a redesigned graphical interface, the primary benefit from this new OS is its new architecture. A single application can no longer cause the whole operating system to crash, although, I have made it crash while viewing a PDF document on the screen and playing with my PowerBook screen brightness and sound volume keyboard controls (which don't work in OS X, by the way) -- no warning -- just a blank screen, a spinning multicolored disk and a restart of the OS. OS X has some documented bugs as well. If you like UNIX, you now have a UNIX shell window which can be useful for debugging and file manipulation, but doesn't add any functionality that you wouldn't get in LINUX or FreeBSD. There are other implications of the UNIX underpinnings of OS X, including the potential availability of a larger number of open source applications, but we'll save that discussion for a future Benchmarks Online article.

Most of these problems are just annoying, like Finder windows which don't remember being resized, and finder windows which don't remember the browsing type you've selected (I like the column mode, but it always goes back to icon or list mode unless you open the root volume, set the browse method and close the root volume without doing any other browsing). The other problem is that it just seems slow. Perhaps it is because I only have a meager 128M of memory in my OS X machine, but switching between programs or completing tasks can seem to take a very long time, which I suspect can be attributed to memory management. In addition, there are some built-in hardware devices that OS X can't address, such as the DVD ROM drive, and apparently the infrared port on a portable.

Aside from the bugs and foibles listed above, the number one reason not to adopt OS X is that there are just no applications for it, other than several hundred commercial, shareware, and freeware programs that Apple list on its Web site (http://guide.apple.com/macosx/) -- those are mostly utilities and are not the major productivity applications that most people use. Yes, you can run MS Word very nicely in compatibility mode, but why not just run OS 9 and get better performance? The advantage will come when applications are native to the OS X operating system, just like the advantage seen when applications were ported from the Motorola 68000 architecture to PowerPC.

Other than the fact that it is "real pretty," I find no compelling reason for a devoted OS 9 user to use OS X at this time. This is a good foundation upon which to build future applications, but that future doesn't appear to be soon. Maybe Microsoft will surprise us all with a OS X native Office suite, but judging from their Mac version development schedule in the past, we shouldn't hold our breath until 2003 or so. Until then, we can be content with native gems such as BBEdit and GraphicConverter, but that's a bit like living in a house, where only the bathrooms are finished -- there's no doubt that you need them, but there's quite a bit more needed to be comfortable.

For more information about OS X see, http://www.apple.com/macosx/