MacOS X DP3 306
Rourke McNamara writes, "Some screenshots and my reactions after using Mac OS X DP3 for a few hours.
" Several interesting things: like seeing tcsh running top on MacOS. It's chock full of BSD goodness, but with that pretty interface on top. It'll definitely be interesting to see where this one heads.
My own experiences with it (Score:1)
First and best, it's pretty much just bsd in there. The first thing I did was compile ssh, followed by compiling a few other tools I like which hadn't been there. It usually requires a bit of Makefile-tweaking, as configure tends to not recognize the system, but I haven't yet found anything which I couldn't get to build.
As far as the ui goes, it's surprisingly beautiful. Very smooth, subtle drop shadows on all windows, nice and snappy solid window dragging, good use of transparency. I hadn't been all that excited by the screenshots of aqua, but using it is great.
Security:
On the good side, it defaults to (and recommends against) having all standard services running after install. Better than Redhat, there. On the down side, Apple specifically disclaims the security of this preview release, and recommends against installing it on an internet-accessible machine. Portscans show about fifty bizarre ports open, so I'm sure that they have some strange devel/debug stuff running. This doesn't speak to the security that the final product will have, but please don't trust this one yet.
My only other gripe: NetInfo. Sucks to not be able to just edit the standard unix text config files for many things. In fact, I still can't su, as I can't figure out how to add myself to the friggin wheel group.
Re:Mac OS-X Rules! (Score:1)
I've spent a little time in front of OS X DP3 over the last few days, and this is the WORST thing Apple could have done.. It's nearly impossible to differentiate between a Sherlock and a finder window.. God help you if you have multiple Sherlock windows sitting in the DockBar.. Note: OS X will also throw minimixed snapshots of your terminal windows in the dockbar..
The biggest complaint I have is the fading of menus, windows, etc.. Everything pulses, magnifies, or fades out.. It's slow, sucks up extra CPU cycles on my little G3, and generally is unneeded.. Hopefully Apple will give us the option to turn this off.
There are still a lot of bugs to be worked out, but I think Apple's on the right track with OS X.. It's a little slow to launch applications on a G3/300, but the GUI seems much smoother than the last version of GNOME or KDE I tried on LinuxPPC (that was a little while ago)..
Re:Developers, Large Shops in Panic: OS X ain't Ma (Score:1)
1) Drivers
Hunh? You mean for peripherals? Try IOKit, due out this week to developers. Drop dead easy driver development in embeddedC++. (Okay, so that part's a bit suspect, but the scuttlebutt is that the vast majority of USB/FireWire/ATA/SCSI devices should Just Work, and modifying an existing driver for vendor specific features (or bugs) is about as trivial as it gets.) Don't forget, this is a Developer Preview, NOT a finished product. Jeez.
2) Seamless integration
One word: Services. As a long time (since 1984) Mac user, I've totally fallen in love with the idea of these... the implementation could be improved (contextual menu, for instance), but the idea is superb.
Another word: AppleScript. Still there, still kicking.
3)Ports to Carbon.
Talk to the developers that are whining. Sorry, I've looked over the Carbon APIs, and the only things that are missing are problems, errors, and bad programming practices. Anyone griping about the new technique (as opposed to lost APIs such as QuickDraw GX), needs to get out of software development. These are *nice*, and short little hop away from full-blown OO, without making all the developers jump in with both feet. Guess what... they built in a transition ramp to OO as well. Nice touch.
4) UI
From what I've seen, Aqua provides a vastly simplified and *intelligently* simplified UI. It takes all the various pseudo-similar ideas from the MacOS UI, distills what's similar, and makes it into a unified interface element. Eg: the Dock. *IF* the dock elements support drag and drop ala tabbed windows (which is the rumor), then you have a single element that incorporates: the Application Menu, the Apple Menu, tabbed windows, control strip. New users have *one* thing to learn, not four. I think they've done an outstanding job of taking that simple idea and enhancing it to make it powerful at the same time (magnification, tooltip type names, window snapshot minimization, etc). There are still a couple of points I want clarified (the current line under an app's icon to indicate running status is iffy), but 90% of it is wonderfully improved.
Apple is directly on the right track, IMNSHO.
Re:Are details of the internals of OS X available? (Score:1)
Why do you need OS X when: (Score:1)
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:1)
If they had been using Microsoft SQL Server running under Windows 2000, then this would not have happened. This whole incident just goes to show that open source DOES NOT WORK and DOES NOT BELONG in any self-respecting software shop. As a result, I've ordered my network guys to hunt down and eradicate all Linux machines at the office. Back to Windows for them. They had their chance to run an experiment, but as this proves, open source is a miserable failure.
Re:My 2.something cents CDN (Score:1)
Not as much as you might think...
no vertical menu - the horizontal menu wastes space, doesn't provide a text title for the current app and can't be moved or hidden---nor easily configured for use with multiple monitors
No argument there.
no top-level print, hide or quit
Now there is. :)
no built-in faxing and file saving at the print panel - under OPENSTEP I never have to waste time picking printers from the chooser or control strip, or going in to page setup to set the destination to file
MacOS X Server has the file saving at the print panel... faxing was lost somewhere along the way.
no rich set of clients for Services, no Webster.app for definitions, nor Oxfords.app for quotations
What do you mean by this? There are plenty of Service under MacOS X Server. This is just FUD.
In addition, Webster.app and Oxfords.app, etc, have been replaced and made much nicer by the good folks at Omnigroup.com... and it's free.
no Shelf - having this would address most of the complaints regarding the awkwardness of copying
I'm holding out judgement until I get to use the UI. I haven't had any problems under MacOS X Server
no icon headers at the top of the Browser columns---these make excellent drag and drop targets.
Even better targets are the folders themselves, ala MacOS. I've never understood why the icon headers were necessary... they're incredibly limited in comparison.
no desktop as void into which UI elements are dropped to remove them---no manual deletion of aliases in NeXT/OPENstep
Again, not sure what you're alluding to here... if you mean to cancel a drag n drop, the menu bar offers that purpose.
no pre-licensed PostScript or Pantone color libraries---the latter was especially nice since all NeXT apps use the same color panel and have access to Pantone swatches, moreover, one only has to pay for them once.
I'm not suprised by the lack of Pantone... that's a rather high-end feature in most folks' eyes, and MacOS X is being targeted at the consumer.
Not sure about system-wide address book or spell-checking....
Services. See above.
save status in window close button---the greyed out proxies don't show up in a torn-off window menu
Dimpled close for unsaved changes would be nice.
and that's just off the top of my head.
As are my answers. :)
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:1)
Apple uses FreeBSD. Combine that with WindowMaker and it will look NeXT-ish, and by extension, Mac OS X ish.
Apart from small details. Like using X instead of Apple's render engine. And the fact that the 'lickable' OS X interface looks very little like the NeXT interface. And the lack of OpenStep APIs and hence feel. No Display PDF technology.
But apart from that, practically identical!
<flamebait>Is this some wort of measure of how desperate FreeBSD advocates have gotten to try and get people using FreeBSD, or is this guy just thick?</flamebait>
Re:My 2.something cents CDN (Score:1)
In small part, I agree. As a 14-year Mac user, it seems the designers of OS X don't quite grok some basic interface concepts that Mac users take for granted. Reading various NeXT users' posts on mailing lists, it appears that a lot of really cool NeXT features were broken by designers who didn't understand them either.
So, I wonder, if the designers have little Mac experience, and little NeXT experience, no wonder OS X is so confused!
I haven't used OS X DP3, I'm not under NDA for that; what I have used is Mac OS X Server, and Mac OS 8/9.
So, to respond:
no top-level print, hide or quit
no built-in faxing and file saving at the print panel - under OPENSTEP I never have to waste time picking printers from the chooser or control strip, or going in to page setup to set the destination to file no rich set of clients for Services no Shelf Pantone color libraries---the latter was especially nice since all NeXT apps use the same color panel save status in window close button---the greyed out proxies don't show up in a torn-off window menu Anyway, I really hope all the stuff in DP3 gets cleaned up - right now the interface looks like they just assigned a whole lot of people to port whatever was there to OS X, and not really do any designing or rethinking. They seem to have kept the Network control panel exactly as is in OS X Server - a bad design if I've ever seen one.Here's hoping...
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Mirror anyone? (Score:1)
Did anybody mirror the pictures while they were available?
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:1)
So yeah, there are some differences in the user base -- there's some weeding out and some reseeding -- but it's still a vastly different situation than what Win developers asked to move to OS/2 experienced.
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:1)
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:1)
So Apple are punishing users for the non-action of developers? An interesting theory, and given Apple's history not totally inconceivable.
I think you underestimate Mac users. How are they being punished because some widgets won't be as pretty as others? And I think it's a very safe bet that the best way to get action out of developers is to turn the wrath of the Mac community on them.
Case in point: MS Word 6 for the Mac was severely vilified, because MS used their own libraries instead of the Mac libraries, and Word 6 had the "look and feel" of Word for Windows. Microsoft touted this as an advantage ("works the same on both platforms!") but the Mac users would have nothing to do with it. Word 6 was destroyed in reviews, and sales of Word 6 stunk. People either stayed with Word 5 or switched to WordPerfect.
Microsoft "got it" and the next version of Word used the Mac look and feel, and got a cover on Macworld (or was it MacUser) that shouted "Microsoft Repents!"
Don't underestimate the power of the marketplace to get the attention of developers, even the almighty Microsoft. Mac users are a picky bunch, and vote with their wallets. If Mac OS X catches on, developers will port their code to Carbon. Bet on it.
Re:Mac OS-X Rules! (Score:1)
John
Re:Developers, Large Shops in Panic: OS X ain't Ma (Score:1)
This thing hits store shelves in less than 6 months. Six months for all the major peripheral vendors to get their ducks in a row, and less than a year before there is no other choice. Apple's been dragging their ass on this since X Server hit the scene. Just another example of Apple's inability to put development support behind X.
<em>One word: Services.</em>
One word. Control Panels. No longer there...everything from third party font management tools to aftermarket graphic card controls are gone. Mac users will either have to do without, or not upgrade.
Another phrase. Plug and play. Gone, daddy, gone. Apple expects you to learn shell programming. Write yourself a script to kill -hup inet.d, because the built in tools ain't bright enough to do it on their own. Serious. The way it stands, you need to reboot. Less than six months until this puppy is on store shelves, and they aren't even near "Cross the t's and dot the i's". This is supposed to be for the Mac user? Fuck that noise, man...Unix in all it's dot-file glory is lurking just beneath the surface.
<em>Sorry, I've looked over the Carbon APIs, and the only things that are missing are problems, errors, and bad programming practices. Anyone griping about the new technique (as opposed to lost APIs such as QuickDraw GX), needs to get out of software development.</em>
You mean shops like Microsoft, Adobe, Qualcom and Macromedia? I'll pass the word along. I'm sure they'd love for us Mac users to wither and die so they can bask in the glory of wintel. Bleah. You aren't a developer in a major shop, are you? Bet you've never even seen more than five macs in one place. Come back when you are ready to rejoin the real world, where people are expected to get work accomplished with their tools.
<em>Then you have a single element that incorporates: the Application Menu, the Apple Menu, tabbed windows, control strip.</em>
It does indeed...but it's an unusable mess by all accounts. It's a dessert topping! It's a floor wax! It's a taksbar! You can't tell what is there because it's open, becuase you put a shortcut there, or even which file is which if you have more than one open. You have to mouse around, play hide and seek to guess which is what, and hope to god you haven't lost something you really need when all you wanted to do was close an extra file. The window controls break fifteen years of user familiarity...for a leap -backwards- in usability. Destructive "go away" box on the left, non-destructive resize or hide controls on the right. Now we got an arrangement like Windows...and as any Mac user who has used windows before, we are going to hide when we want to close, close when we want to zoom, and zoom when we were just mousing over the controls to find out what the hell each one does again...
<em>New users have *one* thing to learn, not four.</em>
Yeah! All they need to do is jump into differential calculus...no wasting time with addition, subtraction, multiplication -and- division!
Complete geek think, and utterly counterproductive to people who need to get real work done.
SoupIsGood Food
Developers, Large Shops in Panic: OS X ain't Mac. (Score:1)
Where the hell are the drivers? Where the hell is the seamelss integration of previous tools and applications? Where the hell are all the ports to carbon? Most of the big development shops have found carbon to be all but unusable, incorporating only a laughably simplified subset of the Mac APIs. Managers of large sites are planning on locking in 9.x as the 3 year standard until they need to migrate...and WindowsNT looks a hell of a cheaper in terms of manpower and money than X. I know a major developer who's trying to arganize a "Boo-down" at the Jobs keynote.
Apple axed everything that was great about the Mac for buzzword compliance. Bad, bad mojo.
The only people happy with this are the NeXT and Unix folks...but Apple ain't selling technical workstations, now are they?
Apple's gone off the rails. It's a damn shame after they almost seemed to have pulled off a complete turnaround.
SoupIsGood Food
Mac GUI? Big deal (Score:1)
In all honesty I still am not very enthused about the UI. It's way too sugar coated and they still have that damn annoying-always-there tool bar at the top of the screen. I want my application toolbars in their OWN windows, not using some shared one! It wastes space that would otherwise be spent better on having another window situated behind a primary one (I tend to cascade my windows so I have instant access to them without having to alt-tab and remember which is which).
The application rest bar, while allowing live windows, seems less useful than the ones found in Windows NT 4/98/95/2000 or KDE. I generally keep my Windows "start bar" at 4-5 rows deep and always have plenty of room to see what application is what. I also generally know them by order.
Apple seems to just be going for more eye candy than it's competitors. I'm sure a lot of people will buy into it but it just seems more a waste in memory and CPU power than anything truly useful. How many people are going to realize that their little mac's shrunken windows are actually live mini versions? Better yet, is grandma (whom several users love to mention as being able to use this with ease) with her 17in screen setup for 800x600 because her sight is going) going to even be able to really see anything going on? Moreover is she even the least bit interested in running more than 1 or 2 apps at a time?
Lastly you still run into the same problem you always have with Mac's. Software availability. Can't get Roller Coaster Tycoon for Mac's. All that at a cost higher than that of a PC. Sure the g4's are fast but does "grandma" need a Mac that can run Quake III at 1280x1024x30fps with no slow down?
I use Linux. When I need to I use NT. Mac's don't even register.
Re:threat to linuxppc (Score:1)
(Not that there aren't other good reasons for LinuxPPC to survive.)
Re:Are details of the internals of OS X available? (Score:1)
Re:But how stable is it? (Score:1)
Umm, yes. Keep in mind that OS X is not really a new version of the same OS as 8/9.
Not really. As a matter of marketting, OS X is the successor to OS 9, but as a matter of code history, it's not really related to MacOS at all. It would be better named NeXTStep 6.0 than MacOS X.
Think of it this way: forget MacOS. OS X is NeXTStep using a BSD kernel instead of a Mach kernel.
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Re:My 2.something cents CDN (Score:1)
Aqua is not hard-wired to Carbon either (Score:1)
Re:Actually, it's pretty damn hard... (Score:1)
Folks like Apple and Be already have solved the UI problem resonably well, imho. Due to the abundance of choice in Linux, and the backlash that will be generated if the choices are whittled down to 1, I think there'll be room for all of us. After all, the only "Human Interface Guideline" a given user has to follow is that of their own preference. Too bad it's not nearly as simple for the developer, who is charged with making the best choice.
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Re:Impressed (Score:1)
If Apple was happy with its market share, it would market only to existing Mac users, but that's beside my point. The "Perfect OS" won't be enough, and I fear that we'll be standing graveside one day, sniffing about how the market killed a superior product once again.
Personally, I'd like to see Apple gain market share and influence so that Good Things like this are more widespread. But, their single-supplier strategy puts them at a disadvantage against the commodity-hardware world of Windows and Linux.
Re:Impressed (Score:1)
Perhaps, but a perfect OS that works its perfection on hardware available from a single supplier has the odds stacked against it from the start.
Re:Your wish is granted (Score:1)
To support X-based applications on the local LAN, silly.
My job for example involves using ClearCase. Sometimes I'd like to access it when dialing in from home, including its graphical front-end (from a 56K modem -- yep, I'd have to be pretty desparate). Running an X server will let me do that from OS X.
I hope the Darwin developers will slap in FreeBSD's Linux executable handling capabilities. Then I can have my choice of, say, Microsoft Excel for Mac or the GNOME gnumeric-spreadsheet for PowerPC Linux. Pardon me while I have a seizure during this wave of techno-lust (drool)....
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Re:Well, I'm still kinda iffy (Score:1)
As for oversize icons and such, you can set how large they are and what they do in the Finder Preferences, but real estate wasn't an issue from what I could tell. And I don't think having 4 windows up would be a big issue.
But then, I am a typical Windows endluser - (and I did get mocked indirectly by those showing me DP3 when they maximized a window, because...) I like all my windows maximized and taking up all my attention for the moment.
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:1)
Considering my preference for NeXTSTEP, I consider this to be a plus...
And the lack of OpenStep APIs and hence feel.
GNUstep implements the AppKit and FoundationKit. It's not finished yet, but that's the goal...
No Display PDF technology.
No, but there is a Display-PostScript alternative.
Re:Blaaa (Score:1)
OK... (Score:1)
The original NeXTSTEP GUI blows both the original MacOS interface and the Aqua interface out of the water. It's simple, and it's clean. Need I say more?
Re:MachOS Mach performance penalty (Score:1)
Why is it that everyone that says such has never really spent any time on a real mach based system. A 68040@33 NeXT was a damn impressive machine. It ran incredibly well under low and high load. However if you check the raw #s on the 68040 you will see its 486 land power... but the boxes always felt more like low end pentiums
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Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
Re:Mac OS-X Rules! (Score:1)
Dude, go get a 400MHz G3 CPU from one of the many sites that sell them. I got mine via http://www.macselect.com. The G3/300MHz only has 512k worth of cache, compared to 1M on the 350s, 400s, etc. Trust me, it makes a big difference.
Re:Are details of the internals of OS X available? (Score:2)
It's not a traditional BSD4.4 because it's been modified to run on top of a Mach microkernel, so there are differences. Their version of Mach is modified from the original source too, I think.
Actually... (Score:2)
Re:My 2.something cents CDN (Score:2)
no vertical menu - the horizontal menu wastes space, doesn't provide a text title for the current app and can't be moved or hidden---nor easily configured for use with multiple monitors
no top-level print, hide or quit
no built-in faxing and file saving at the print panel - under OPENSTEP I never have to waste time picking printers from the chooser or control strip, or going in to page setup to set the destination to file
no rich set of clients for Services, no Webster.app for definitions, nor Oxfords.app for quotations
no Shelf - having this would address most of the complaints regarding the awkwardness of copying
no icon headers at the top of the Browser columns---these make excellent drag and drop targets.
no desktop as void into which UI elements are dropped to remove them---no manual deletion of aliases in NeXT/OPENstep
no pre-licensed PostScript or Pantone color libraries---the latter was especially nice since all NeXT apps use the same color panel and have access to Pantone swatches, moreover, one only has to pay for them once.
Not sure about system-wide address book or spell-checking....
save status in window close button---the greyed out proxies don't show up in a torn-off window menu
and that's just off the top of my head.
William
Re:But how stable is it? (Score:2)
One factor that contributes to this acceptance of frequent crashing is that classic MacOS is very resilient, as is HFS: as a Mac tech I've seen many computers that have been hit with constant crashing for months on end, years even, and still managed to drag themselves along with one good finger despite massive disk damage and being forced to run Microsoft OLE extensions and two different old versions of IE and AOL at the same time plus weird menubar extensions and the dreaded Mystery Souped-Up CD-Rom Driver I kept seeing, thanks to some idiot magazine. A Windows box that badly damaged and confused would just be a doorstop, period. A Unix box that misconfigured would be rm -r * material, yet the Macs that crippled still manage to run for like five to fifteen minutes, and this is amazing! Maybe it's better if OSX _doesn't_ put up with abuse that severe, because it seems like if an OS _can_ put up with abuse that severe, then that's what it gets, and people only seem to see it when it's already a pile of slag and should be a doorstop, not dragging itself gamely along.
Hopefully OSX will either cope with luser abuse or make the abuse really hard to do. MacOS basically did the former, with predictable results. It's possible that OSX will do the latter, at which point you'll have clever magazines offering doubleclickable installers that will blithely replace huge big chunks of the kernel for some daft and vague performance benefit, and people will try them because idiots will be idiots. But extensions and control panels will be gone, gone, gone: and it's just possible that treating specifically the core of OSX as open (but not for desperately bright performance tweekers to meddle with) will result in a platform that, in practice, is as stable as a proper Unix mantained by a clued person.
That's an easy one (Score:2)
This (he says, in Netscape, from a system that returned to the brandname days of Netscape and Eudora and Fetch with splashscreens galore) is the problem. In MacOS, things are convenient and one basically gets by comfortably if you have a clue, but although it's 'your space' more than a Windows box, you still don't get to control it completely- if The Mothership decides You Will Run IE for instance, and makes new OS pieces check for it and not install unless they install it, then you lose- either you jump through lots of hoops to maintain your own choices, or you cave and do things their way. And though they mostly behave *grumble about Cyberdog*, there is ALWAYS the possibility that someday they'll go somewhere that I just won't follow.
That's why I have LinuxPPC installed. It's my safety valve. I learn about it and grow to accept it for what it is, because it can be mine in a way impossible for corporate closed source OSes. It is dreadfully lacking in some ways, but then I feel that the Netscape and Eudora I use now are dreadfully lacking in some ways compared to Cyberdog, and that got taken away from me. Linux can't ever be taken away from me, so I won't ever forget it's there. It's important.
Filesystems question (Score:2)
thanks.
nick
Time Zone preferences-- legal battle awaits? (Score:2)
Timezone screenshot for MacOS X DP3 [xappeal.org]
Are we going to see a repeat here? As far as I know, Microsoft got into some hot water for having something like this.
NJV
Re:Will Apple finally see OpenSource light at last (Score:2)
(a) OpenGL was designed for hardware acceleration,
(b) it's been around longer than D3D
(c) Microsoft still pushes D3D over OpenGL (not surprising, since GL is (somewhat) cross-platform while D3D is Windows-specific) and only grudgingly includes GL support in Windows. (not that I've used Windows recently, so this may have changed)
I haven't used either API extensively, so I can't compare their functionality, but saying that OpenGL only got hardware acceleration after D3D had been around is a blatant falsehood -- had Microsoft put the effort into OpenGL that they had into D3D..well, actually, Windows would be in much more trouble now than it is, due to programs being written to portable specifications. [1] Hmm, maybe that's why they didn't do it?
Daniel
PS - I don't have a SBLive, I don't have a force-feedback joystick, I don't have a GeForce; I just have an AWE32 and an old Number 9 video card, and I'm perfectly happy that way, thank you.
[1] Actually, in an environment that encourages people to use types like DWORD and assume they're 32 bits, this might not be something to worry about..
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:2)
But...
If you look at these screenshots: http://www.xappeal.org/ archive/dp3-2/classicappearance1.jpg [xappeal.org] and http://www.xappeal.org/ archive/dp3-2/classicappearance2.jpg [xappeal.org], you'll see the good ole MacOS appearance manager allowing the user to switch b/w Apple Platinum (normal MacOS) and ClassicX (appears to have Aqua Style menus).
So perhaps there will be some ability to get Classic to look like Aqua.
Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environment (Score:2)
It's not quite the MacOS 8/9 look and feel is it? And it isn't as pretty as Aqua. More like the bastard child of both of them.
Why not go the whole hog and make Classic use the Aqua L&F? If that can't be done, why mess with the locations of the zoom and collapse buttons?
This is all too WinOS2ish for my liking. Different window widgets for different apps is ugly. Poo.
Re:Actually... (Score:2)
How innovative of MS :->
I'd still rather see proper Aqua widgets in Classic though.
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:2)
Think about it. If OS 9 apps are so blatant when running OS X, won't you be more inclined to bug the developer into developing a Carbon or Cocoa (OS X) version of the app so that you'll get all the new features?
Of course.
I was thinking more in terms of usability and general lickability of the UI, but since you bring it up:
Well, Win3.x windows look like Win95 windows when running under Win95 and millions of people still upgraded their apps. WinOS/2 apps looked nothing like OS/2 apps and nobody upgraded to the OS/2 apps.
People are going to upgrade their apps anyway - especially since Apple have gotten into the habit of reminding users of new versions every time you start an app. Damn QT4 drives me insane!
I can't guarantee that the screenshot I linked to was genuine since I didn't make it, but it seemed to be a trustworthy and they were pretty positive about OSX, why bother making an ugly fake?
Re:About X... (Score:2)
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Re:Hardware support... (Score:2)
Apple can't do that, though, or they lose the G4 installed base. They might optimize the OS for the G3, but there's a difference between optimizing something for a processor and using processor-specific instructions.
About X... (Score:2)
Either way, once this is done X apps will be far easier to port over. Given time, it may even be possible to run it rootless. Now that would rock.
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:2)
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"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine [nmsu.edu].
As I expected (Score:2)
Luckily, the Cocoa (OpenStep) interface is nice enough that a simple swap-out replacement can be made, with or without Apples say-so. Unluckily, aqua is probably hard wired into Carbon, the code-portability environment.
I've been waiting for YEARS (Score:2)
I really really hope that it lives up to its promise.
The one downside is that X applications will not readily port, though I'm sure there will be various libraries to make this easier (thus the GNUstep project).
The really interesting upside to this is that, after MacOS X ships, all shipping consumer OSes except Windows (and OS/2, which I don't really count as it's no longer being developed) will be based on Unix.
_Deirdre
Re:Compatible with X windows (Score:2)
MacOS X is not X-based. While that might seem strange for a new OS coming out, remember this is NeXTStep revamped. At the time NeXT was being developed, X was very very rudimentary and NeXT wanted something more flashy.
So, no, they're not at all the same. NeXT was built on Display Postscript, which, because of Adobe's greed, has been yanked from MacOS X. I don't think that's entirely a Bad Thing, but I don't know how much better MacOS X's display system is than the earlier QuickDraw. I hope one can at least do text sideways.
_Deirdre
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:2)
The "classic" environment looks different so that you intentionally know that you're running a non-OSX app. Think about it. If OS 9 apps are so blatant when running OS X, won't you be more inclined to bug the developer into developing a Carbon or Cocoa (OS X) version of the app so that you'll get all the new features?
Of course.
The only thing Apple changed was to move all three window widgets to the left, like in Aqua. That makes sense, so that you'll get used to it.
I don't expect Apple to change this in the final release of OS X. Having old "classic" apps look different is good move.
By the way, I think that screenshot of IE 5 running in OS X is faked. It doesn't look right. For one thing, the IE 5 icon is wrong. The real Mac IE 5 icon looks just like the old one only it's 32 bit color and looks polished. It looks realllllly sweet when you use the new Aqua finder and view the icon at 128pix.
However, I have run IE 5 under the classic environment on OS X so it does work. Apparently Microsoft is working on a "carbon" version of IE 5 as well. I haven't got my hands on it yet but that seems to be the version that Steve showed off at Macworld (I was there) since it had the aqua-fied windows.
Ben
Re:The beauty is NOT skin deep. (Score:2)
D
----
Biggest question for older Mac owners... (Score:2)
I'm not talking about Darwin-plus-goodies, I mean the commercial, shrinkwrapped-by-Apple stuff.
I'm sticking with Mac OS 8.6 right now on my Mac, and the answer to this will determine if I eventually reformat to put Mac OS X on it or some PPC-based Linux.
On the plus side, I do have three choices! Yellow Dog Linux, [yellowdoglinux.com] LinuxPPC, [linuxpppc.com] or Debian's [debian.org] PPC port...
Jay (=
Not Free (Score:2)
threat to linuxppc (Score:2)
Hasdi
Re:No... why would they? (Score:2)
This is an interview with Steve Jobs [northernlight.com], but the formatting is lost so it's hard to tell who's the asker and who's the answerer sometimes.
This one is jsut about Jobs and Apple's new direction in general. [northernlight.com]
They are both from Fortune/Northernlight, It took me about an hour and a half to find them because I thought I had seen them on forbes.com... ugh.
_________________
No... why would they? (Score:2)
Is Apple beginning to see that, by holding the software close to its vest back in 84, it practically created the M$ behemoth we all know and loathe?
Steve Jobs has said on several occasions that the Mac OS is Apple's Crown Jewel, and despite the hardware, they're really a software company. While they make more money off the hardware, the OS is Apple. I still think it is crazy to expect any "traditional" company to open source its most valuable asset. Especially when so much of the Mac OS is based on QuickTime, a technology Apple will do anything to protect from Microsoft.
Apple has made great strides in Open Source, far more than most traditional closed-source software companies have, but I think it will be a cold day in hell, or at least 5 or 10 years, before Apple Open Sources the MacOS. And I don't think that's really such a bad thing. Why SHOULDN'T they protect their investment?
_________________
How much of Direct X was written by Microsoft? (Score:2)
From what I understood, some of the APIs in the "Direct family" were actually created by companies which Microsoft subsequently acquired. Same with Active Server Pages (ASP). Unfortunately, I don't have a firsthand source..
The good thing about OS/X (Score:2)
If the existing mac user base switches to OS/X.... they will probably discover the wonders of unix sitting underneath it.
Operating systems are converging..
Re:Apple, please fix widgets in Classic environmen (Score:2)
Or have I misunderstood you?
emd
My Bad (Score:2)
Anyway, I should have done my fact checking a little more thoroughly, rather than relying on recollection. Of course, that wouldn't be very
Re:Your wish is granted (Score:2)
Even More screen shots available here: (Score:2)
http://www.macopz.com/rumors/DP3/ [macopz.com]
http://www.thinksecret.com/ [thinksecret.com]
Re:Why do you need OS X when: (Score:2)
> Have they? Or are you just quoting that one guy?
I seem to remember back when OS X Server was announced in 1999, the LinuxPPC page had a fairly negative response.
Re:Why do you need OS X when: (Score:2)
MacNN has an interesting article [macnn.com] featuring a talk with Jeff Carr from LinuxPPC, in which he once again slams OS X needlessly ("Mac OS X is very limited regarding hardware support" - well, duh, it's not actually out yet, but I bet it'll support USB and FireWire sooner than LinuxPPC does natively), claiming Apple can't win against a free OS and that they should throw out the Mach kernel. But OS X is built on a free OS, and BSD appears (have to be careful here) to have an easier upgrade path, something Apple is finally interested in - the Software Update feature of OS 9 took way too long to make it into the system, IMHO.
LinuxPPC has been fairly critical of OS X and Darwin for some time now. Why don't they cooperate instead? Then, everybody wins.
Re:U guyz don't get it.... (Score:2)
c.r.
Impressed (Score:2)
Well! This is it! Photoshop, Dreameaver, Flash, Illustrator... all on BSD! I guess you can even run MS Office (which many of us do, if we admit it!).
Ladies and Gentlemen. I firmly belive that this is going to be something close to the Holy Grail... the perfect OS. I'd heard rumors, now they appear to be confirmed.
Come August, with bugs fixed, and wishlist instated... That was when I was planning on buying a new desktop... Well, guess what I (hope) I'll be getting?
Oh, the MySQL worked fine for me... I did wonder why it was done this way, it was only a handfull of pics... But they looked great!
Yeah, this is it.
Mong.
* Paul Madley
Some replies to the original article (Score:2)
That's what the 'single window view' is for. Just click on the button in the top right of the window (where the resize button used to be) and only one window will show at a time. Click on another app/window in the taskbar, and the current window will drop to the taskbar as the other pops open.
The root user is currently called "root", but root's home directory is "Users/Administrator" and the documentation refers to the "Administrative" user. Please, Apple, don't change root to Administrator.
Well, most end-users won't know what 'root' means, but Administrator is easy to figure out. Owner would be even better, but doesn't make as much sense in a corporate environment. Besides, those in the know will still call it root amongst themselves anyway. ;)
There are three view modes: by icon, as list, or in columns. In the icon view I couldn't find a way to set the DEFAULT icon size, which drove me nuts. The default icon size is WAY too big. The list view worked very well, but I couldn't find a way to set the defaults for this view either (why does Apple think that modification date is more important than file size?).
Most users don't even look at the file size of their documents unless there's some specific reason. Most of the time people leave their windows in Icon mode, which doesn't show either of those things. I keep my documents in List view, but turn off everything but the filename. And I'm sure you'll be able to at least turn off certain info you don't need, and hopefully be able to rearrange the columns as you want.
____________________
Tension, apprehension
And dissension have begun
Re:My 2.something cents CDN (Score:2)
nexts rule. if I could get a 500 MhZ next, I would, and that's why I'm considering a g4 now.
Speaking of Apple... (Score:2)
The Ad Critic [adcritic.com] is running the original "1984" ad [adcritic.com] that was run during the '84 Superbowl.
I have to admit, it was an incredibly cool commercial. It's worth watching if you haven't seen it.
--
Re:Repeat after me: OS X != BSD (Score:2)
Mach. However, while Mach played with all sorts
of ukernel-type things before Mach3, there was a
ton of BSD stuff in the Mach kernel. They took
4.2 (and updated to 4.3) BSD, and replaced it
piece by piece as they went. But they only
replaced part of it; there's still a lot of BSD
code in there. It wasn't until Mach 3, after the
NeXT branch, that the BSD code was moved out of
the kernel to make the microkernel Mach we all
know and love. So there is most of a 4.3BSD
kernel in there.
Figure 1.
-----------------------------------
Accent UNIX
| |
| BSD
Mach-----------------(4.2BSD)
(Mach 2)--------------(4.3BSD)
| |
+------------+ (...)
| |
Mach 3 NeXT
(BSD moved
to user-
land)
-----------------------------------
Re:Mac OS-X Rules! (Score:2)
Hey - I do that with enlightenment! It seems that Mac OS X has a whole bunch of cool ideas from other GUI's combined into one gigantically cool one.
"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
My 2DM (Score:2)
"The romance of Silicon Valley was about money - excuse me, about changing the world, one million dollars at a time."
I already have it... (Score:2)
I already have it...
MacPerl [macperl.com]
Re:pretty, yet incomprehensible (Score:2)
Red one closes the window, yellow one minimizes it (puts it in the Dock), green one maximizes it (the window grows to the appropriate size to fill its contents).
Also, when you mouse over the buttons, symbols appear in the buttons (X, -, +)
What is each of the completely textless icons at the bottom supposed to mean? Is it like the "mystery meat navigation" that Jakob Nielsen complains about so much at useit.com?
The name of the item appears when you put the mouse over a dock icon. Also, the icon for minimized windows is the actual representation of the window, minimized (does this makes sense). All done on the fly.
Re:Isnt this a fake? (Score:2)
according to Ars Technica: (Score:2)
This is according to Ars Technica [arstechnica.com]:
It seems as though upon boot-up, the user is presented with a logon window not dissimilar to that in NT, xdm, etc.). As it turns out, if you press Ctrl-Alt-Del, a message pops up saying:
--
Re:Repeat after me: OS X != BSD (Score:2)
I think I trust this source more than I trust you:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/inside.html [apple.com]
One thing I want (Score:2)
Apple comments (Score:2)
Apple is not stupid. It would be stupid for Apple to make icons 128x128. It would be stupid for Apple to make the icons tiff images that use a 512k of RAM for each image. It would be stupid for Apple to write an OS that only their most powerful machine with 256 megs of RAM can barely run.
It is a good thing that Apple is not doing any of those things.
How can people look at an OS and comment it on it without ever looking at anything past the superficial UI.
The icons are RESIZEABLE! Jesus CHRIST! If I read another moron commenting how stupid it is to have huge icons I will have to shoot a windows user.
The UI does not take a 'snapshot' of the window before it is minimized. When anything is minimized it will either show the icon of it or will show the live app in a small winodw.
The entire UI is built on PDF. Everything. From translucency to drop shadows to the genie effect. This UI is not bitmapped based like everything else. This UI is VECTOR BASED! So all of those resource intensive tricks that windows, x-windows, and the macintosh have to do are built into PDF. And are now trivial.
The bitmap UI is now obsolete.
//off subject
UNIX people amaze me. They think running 6 terminal windows on X windows is progress from running one text based terminal.
Hardware support... (Score:3)
Also, remember that OSX is Darwin-plus-goodies (just a lot more goodies than you get with the free version of Darwin). If you can make Darwin run, you'll be able to make OSX run.
For what it's worth, I do have a G3, but I haven't been able to make Darwin run on it. I do hope I'll be able to rectify that before OSX's release.
Isnt this a fake? (Score:3)
The screenshot that you showed was actually a doctored screenshot (aka fake). You would notice this if you look closely at the doc and other areas around the edges where the IE imagne has been stamped over the aqua interface.
Enjoy.
--
Color Me Impressed (Score:3)
But lately, Apple has been redeeming themselves in my eyes. If I can disregard the whole "Tangerine Computer" thing for a moment, Apple is developing and releasing quality hardware, and finally has the quality operating system to run on it. I'm looking forward to purchasing a G4 when MacOS X is fully released and taking the baby for my own test drive, because everything I've seen on it so far has left me breathless. Its interface looks incredibly slick, and hell, it's got BSD Unix at its core.
Anyway, if Apple can successfully keep its old school flock faithful, and at the same time draw in a UNIX techie like myself, then they deserve some credit.
Re:But how stable is it? (Score:3)
It will rival Linux for uptime *as long as* you have allocated enough virtual memory. It gets really really cranky when it starts running out of VM (which is implemented as a physical file). All failures I had of MacOS X Server in more than a year of daily use were related to vm issues and most of those because of browser caching.
Sometimes I'd reboot just to resize the VM down (the VM file will grow in size but not shrink). One of the ways around this of course is to implement the vm as its own partition. Unlike Linux, I have seen MacOS X Server eat up *hundreds* of megabytes of disk space as vm for a desktop machine.
Again, my experience is with MacOS X Server, which may vary somewhat from the consumer version.
_Deirdre
Re:Mirror anyone? (Score:3)
Makes me want a Mac. *drool*.
Re:My 2.something cents CDN (Score:3)
It's a mistake to conclude that once you have something that looks like NEXTSTEP (or some other OS), you will have something that is like NEXTSTEP (or some other OS).
Sure, it's lots of fun to play with The Gimp and make some skins. But there are plenty of things beneath the surface that aren't glamorous but have a huge impact on usability. The imaging models that are integrated into NEXTSTEP and Mac OS X make a huge difference for developers, making it easy to develop applications that can produce high quality printed output as well as excellent screen output. Similarly, having a pasteboard that can handle images, mail messages, line art, and so on -- seamlessly -- makes life easier for users and developers alike.
Most people who think it's easy to imitate NEXTSTEP have never actually used the system for any length of time, and have never taken a look at the `under the hood' complexities the GNUStep project is tackling in their attempt to bring some of the underlying functionality of NEXTSTEP to other OSs.
Finally, just because the concepts embodied in NEXTSTEP (like its imaging model) are several years old doesn't make them outdated, irrelevant, or easily imitated today. On my desk I have two machines: a cool dual processor PC running RedHat 6.1, and a 25Mhz NeXTstation that's about nine years old. I do most of my work sitting at the NeXTstation. I think that speaks volumes.
Re:Seeding? (Score:3)
DB
Re:But how stable is it? (Score:3)
Actually, Mac OS X uses a Mach kernel with a BSD layer, just like NeXTStep.
Ingredients for OS X:
- Darwin core (Mach + BSD, in an open source package)
- Classic, Carbon, Cocoa APIs (Classic: for MacOS 8/9 compatibility ; Carbon: updated OS 8/9 apps that take advantage of memory protection, preemptive multitasking and Aqua interface; Cocoa: cool object-oriented API)
- Quartz display system (for 2D)
- OpenGL (for 3D)
- Aqua (the GUI)
Hope that clears things up for those less familiar with OS X.
Re:Seeding? (Score:3)
We've been using OS X since we first got it and it's been one "Wow!" after another. More than worth the cost of membership alone since I almost had to pay $800 for NeXTStep v3.3 way back...
BTW, you don't have to jump through any NDA hoops, you just have to sign the standard NDA that every developer signs...
Will Apple finally see OpenSource light at last? (Score:4)
Now, remember, like VA, they make their money on the hardware. The OS income is almost chump change to them except that without an OS they're dead in the water. Apple will continue to make their money from their hardware.
Is Apple beginning to see that, by holding the software close to its vest back in 84, it practically created the M$ behemoth we all know and loathe?
If Apple had loosed the ROM APIs and licensed the ROM to the extremely competitive Intel world this would be very different planet.
Instead the fate the economy rests in the hands of people whose greed has not shown any sign of abating since Gates whined in Byte magazine that people were ripping off his MITS/ Altair 8080 BASIC interpreter and changed an open source world into a hermetic, failure prone process where a business plan now often reads "Get big enough to be noticed by M$ and sell out!"
Lets hope Apple comes to its senses and sets the APIs free (those that aren't already, what with Darwin, [read BSD,] OpenGL, the data management infrestructure etcetera,) to put a severe kink in the strategies of Redmond.
With luck we'll stop the cash hemmorhage that's made M$ a stomping ground for millionnaires, billionnaires and the richest man that has ever lived.
Apple, OS X and Intel/AMD, Linux have a chance to stop the incredible waste that the Microsoft approach has wrought upon the world.
We have lost or lost access to uncountable lines of code because too many consider them proprietary, secret and their own property. Projects die for many reasons and the code disappears forever regardless of whether it was good or useful and could be so again.
The Microsoft approach has led to the perpetual reinvention of the wheel. Unlike Newton who saw far because he stood on the shoulders of giants, we are perpetually rooting around the sty like nearsighted pigs, wallowing in a shallow mire because we are kept there by people who's greed exceeds their sense of history and they believe that they can coopt the information revolution to enrich themselves.
My 2.something cents CDN (Score:4)
But on the other hand, how amazing is OS X really? AFAICT, it's just NeXT with real pretty graphics. A NeXT that can run old MacOS stuff and has an extra-pretty accelerated GUI. Honestly, things like slightly transparent windows/menus, animated buttons, neato entrance effects for status windows.. In the end, it's mostly glitz. It does actually add to the UI, however. Feedback to the user as to what button is highlited, what window a status popup came from, those all mean something.
So how hard *IS* it to do most of that stuff? In March we'll have an XFree that incorporates hardware acceleration standard. GNOME already has libraries in it that do transparency/animated buttons (gdk-pixbuf).. Who's to bet we couldn't do all this, at a minimun cost to CPU?
After all, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery
How amazing OS X is -- well, not *amazing*, but... (Score:4)
No, it's more integrated than that...a compatability environment for a Windowsesque range of software for end users, a second compatability environment that lets those apps use some of the *nix features, and then the native BSD/NeXT with a thoroughly integrated GUI AND device drivers.
The comparison between my install of Red Hat 5.2 on an old Dell and installing Mac OS X Server (less guified than OS X) is enlightening. It took me the better part of a day to get everything working except networking on the Dell--the networking never worked. Then screwing around as root (which you Shoult Not Do) messed up the system.
For fun, I tried the same thing on the Mac. It was installed and running in 20 minutes flat. This includes having networking and Apache configured and running. There was zero configuration of device drivers, and very little that you wouldn't do setting up a Windows 9x installation.
In short, this was Unix that an end user could conceivably install. Screwing around as root didn't break things. Basically, what will piss off most Linux/BSD enthusiasts is what will be its strength: it doesn't let you screw yourself too badly. Its saving grace is that you can in fact RTFM and get it to do everything your BSD box does. I could do everything through the GUI, too, though sometimes it was more efficient to use the command line.
OK, is this a slam on Linux/BSD/etc? No, because they have a harder job: support a range of hardware that Apple doesn't. Apple's strength and ease of use has always been because they could control both the hardware and the software, and then they made the system usable (theoretically) by grandma. That's going to be too limiting for almost any distro of Linux/FreeBSD.
However, that's going to keep them from taking over NT's market. They can't install on the current hardware, and few companies are willing to replace client and server hardware and software simultaneously, as much as it might deliver on the promises made by NT. An eventual Linux/thin client combo might, though, if it can be easy enough for the secretary to use.
Re:But how stable is it? (Score:4)
Once upon a time, there were two cute little NeXTStations, point & click. point nfs-mounted large portions of click, and click nfs-mounted some portions of point. Together, they shared a NeXT printer and served a happy community of CSitizens.
point & click ran. point & click ran happily. point & click never ever went down. point & click got forgotten several times during major CS-department wide outages (DNS server lunched or replaced, network equipment died). point & click recorded uptimes of 700 days apiece before they were finally shuttled away as "old, obsolete equipment".
I've never seen anything as stable as these machines. They just plain worked.
So to get back to your question about OS X being more stable than OS 8/9, I'd have to say that, if past history is an indicator, OS X will be a real winner. Here's hoping!
The Difference between MacOS X (NeXT) and Linux (Score:5)
NeXT (and MacOS X I hope) on the other hand is more like a perfectly ergonomic, intuitivley simple yet surprisingly flexible single bladed knife. It doesn't have a corkscrew or scissors, But the handle grip doubles as a file and it is perfectly balanced along every axis. Ninjas use it for throwing, Butchers use it for cutting meat. Carpenters use it to score material and Master chefs use it to prepare dishes, but you wont be able to open a wine bottle, it wont loosen most phillips screws and you'll just make a mess if you try to open a can of peas or bottle of beer with it. It also wont fit in your pocket. However, if there was ever a knife that was a perfect balance of asthetics, utility, and well executed engineering, this is it. Again, a wonderful design philosophy. Programmers, bankers, artists, secretaries, they all have their fond memories of how great NeXT was. The people who built NeXT had only the highest standards in terms of design and executed them to the limits of technology, but no amount of good design can make an OS that is useful for everything, there's some things it just cant do. This is becasue efficiency is adddressed at the UI level. I've never used a system as elegant as NeXT.
It's no coincidence that alot of people who have used both try to make Linux look like NeXT and make NeXT as flexible as Linux.
-Rich
Repeat after me: OS X != BSD (Score:5)
In a microkernel, what we'd traditionally think of as a "kernel" is reduced to code supporting a set of abstractions for tasks, threads, memory objects, messages, and ports. Things like file systems, networking code, etc... are all implemented in user space using formal message passing to communicate with the "kernel". As a rule of thumb, if it can be implemented in a platform-independent manner, it's not in kernel space.
Mach is actually "OS Neutral". However, rather than having to port all of the system libraries of an OS to use this new, extremely different kernel interface, it's usually easier to write code which implements a the kernel API of another OS. Here's the BSD tie-in: BSD is one of the OS "personalities" available for Mach. Someone has done the work for a Linux personality too (MkLinux). In this sense, OS X is not BSD at all- the kernel code is completely different. On the other hand, it will include a full BSD 4.4lite environment of system programs and utilities, and uses much of the BSD kernel code to implment filesystem, networking, etc... that is "outside" the kernel.
What I don't know is what API the bulk of OS X is based on. Perhaps the different run time environments / programming models used by OS X (Carbon, Cocoa, etc...) are using diffent base kernel APIs. I'm guessing they didn't port all the old MacOS stuff to the BSD personality- it would make more sense to write a MacOS personality for Mach. How about Cocoa- does anyone know if the new / NextSteppish stuff has the BSD kernel API under it?
More screen shots available here: (Score:5)
http://www.xappeal.org/archive/dp3.shtml [xappeal.org]
The beauty is NOT skin deep. (Score:5)
Take a look at this, for instance, it's the Text System Overview [apple.com] for OS-X. Read that and then come back and tell me that OS-X/Aqua/Cocoa is nothing special, and with the proper skins GNOME provides the exact same thing to developers.
That is just the beginning. There is EOF, which is the most advanced, high level, database independent access framework available. It's so far beyond ODBC, JDBC, and the frameworks available in commercial appservers like Dynamo and WebLogic that it really isn't even funny.
After 11 years, InterfaceBuilder is still without peer. It doesn't generate code. Nobody else seems to get it.
The fact is, Mac OS-X has the most powerful object-oriented API that has been under development and constant refinement for over 12 years. It has been shipping since 1989. It's been through four major revisions since then.
You may be able to make GNOME look something like Aqua, but it's still going to be a pain in the ass to write applications with a decent UI for it. I use GNOME every day and even the cut and paste support totally sucks. It's been 16 years since the Mac came out, you'd think that every GNOME app would have real cut and paste. I use Navigator, GNOME Terminal, and XChat every day. Only Navigator actually has "cut" in the menu. A quick survey of other GNOME apps that come with my system reveals that only a few have cut and paste support (GEdit comes to mind). Of course, Navigator's clipboard only works within Navigator. The others apps use something that vaguely resembles cut and past but isn't even close (middle clicking causing pasting of the selection does NOT count as real cut and paste). You guys really have no idea what you're missing here....
Burris
Mac OS-X Rules! (Score:5)
tcsh isn't running on MacOS. Remember that Mac OS-X is essentially OpenStep 6.0 (the NeXT operating system). Rhapsody was akin to OpenStep 5.0. It really is a NeXT, with Mac compatibility (Carbon and Classic) and Java.
Most BSD source will port pretty easily. The biggest gotcha I've found is that the HFS+ filesystem isn't case sensitive. Like NTFS, it preserves case but you cannot have two files with the same name differing only in case (i.e. you can't have "README" and "readme" and "ReaDMe" in the same directory). Prepare to hack some makefiles.
When you miniaturize a window, a snapshot of the window is taken and placed in the dock. This is where the magnification feature is really handy. You can actually see which document the icon represents before you expand it.
The "sheets" functionality is way cool. Modal dialogs like save panels are attached to specific document windows and do not affect other documents. They scroll down from the title bar and cover part of the window. However, they are translucent so you can still see some of the document behind it.
Another new thing are "drawers" which are sub-windows that scroll out when you activate a control. For instance, in the Mail application, hitting the "Mailboxes" menu item causes a "drawer" containing your list of mailboxes to slide out from the side of your mail reading window.
The finder has plug-in support for document previewing... I was quite surprised to select WAV and AIFF sound files and find that I could play them from within the finder. Writing your own plugins is not that difficult.
Mac OS-X really is going to be the coolest operating system around. I've been waiting years for it...
Burris
I Apologize (Score:5)
I don't have DP3, I used on someone else's machine. I never signed an NDA. But I'm still not sure what the legal ramifications are of posting information about it, so I took down those links. OS X is truly amazing and I can't wait until the release. Then I'll be able to talk about it all I want without worrying about legal issues.
The server is not MacOS X, but OpenBSD on a PIII 450. Admittedly, Linux would have fared better against the /. effect. However, the server never crashed, it just became very slow and the mysql server started to fail.
The images were stored in the file system, but the pages that show them in a "slide show" were generated via php3. This is becuase I just took the uploaded screenshots and ran the same program against them that I use for my other pictures [rourkem.com]. I had not idea how crushing the ./ effect could be. Again, I apologize.