Mac OS X Officially Previewed

bonaldi writes "Steve Jobs publicly announced the new face of Mac OS yesterday, the *nix based Mac OS X. The server-side system has been about for a while, but the client side has some nasty surprises. The worst could well be the all new too-bloody-big icons (which is a failing of a lot of *nix systems). I didn't buy a 21" screen so my icons could look like 640*480. " Check out the screenshot: I've got a challenge: How long before someone creates E and GTK themes that mimic this? It really does make me wish we had better support for anti-aliased support under X.

Comments

Regarding Icon Sizes

[Gothmog]

Just a small comment regarding icon sizes. During the keynote, Steve showed a control panel that allowed you to adjust the icon sizes. Apparently the application icon's are stored as 128x128 pixel images, and the OS will scale the icons to whatever size the user wants them to appear.

So if you want them smaller, all you need to do is adjust a slider. Neat huh?

Apple Human Interface Guidelines

[Masem]

It looks like Apple listened to the flak it got for the 'violation' of it's own HIG in the development of the Quicktime Movie Player, and has made amends in Mac OS X. QT 4's player, both on the mac and the PC side, was pointed out as a bad interface for trying to mimic a real world device when that was not appropriate. A specific example was that a visual thumbwheel was used for volume control, which on a real device makes sense, but is non-sensical on a computer screen. This screen shots shows that the volume control is now a normal slider. Also, the player control buttons are no longer the same color scheme as the background of the window, again a problem with the previous design.

The only thing that I'm concerned about is the amount of 'chrome effects' (not the chrome look, just anything above and beyond functionality). As long as one can turn them off or design their own, I'd be happy with that interface.

power and simplicity

[sowsinsk]

Apple has just done something that no other company has done with the success that Apple will have--taking unix to the mainstream consumer channel. Apple's retail market share has nearly doubled since the introduction of the first iMac, and nearly 30% of mac purchasers now are either new to computers entirely, or switching from a wintel platform--and they won't be losing constituents when macos X arrives. Macos 9 sold a million copies in the last 2 months... macos X should do even better.

the most interesting thing about the situation is that steve jobs didn't speak 5 words of a CLI, or a Unix core (aside from a brief mention of darwin) during his keynote yesterday. It's almost like they're denying the fact that they're masking unix with a UI more user-friendly to new users than any UI on the planet--and the users won't even have a clue.

People can rant about Apple making a bad product... but I think delivering unix to the mainstream consumer is brilliant. I mean, when's the last time you could buy a completely-configured unix box at compusa? sign me up.

Apple interface

[engel]

I know i will get flamed for this, but...

I think that the Mac interface is proably the best GUI around (unless you count CLI as a GUI...)

It is neat, efficient, and has a paradigm that is only broken a few times by certain developers. In general, it is consistent and slick.

I think the reason people like Macs is not because they are faster or more stable or whatever, it is because Apple has always worried about its machine-human interfaces. MS just wants money, *nix just wants a good server running, but Mac has always been about interface.

So i think it is great that apple is trying new ideas (even if they really aren't that new) in their interface.

Use of color as a paradigm, use of transparency now that machine can handle it, use of sizable icons, the dock, several ways of using the finder, etc. etc.

However, there is one thing i DO NOT like about the Mac interface, and what i LOVE about GNOME/Enlightenment: G/E is TOTALLY configurable to my speciifications. As of yetr, there has been no setting that i wanted to change that i have been unable to change. Virtual Windows, mouse behavior, background colors/themes for easier vierwing, etc. etc

The problem with the Mac interface, now, is not going to be whether it is a GOOD interface, it is whether or not you can configure it to YOUR work environment. Most geeks don't like the mac interface because it follows ONE paradigm and they happen to not like that paradigm.

So if Apple were REALLY interested in human-machine interface instead of branding and marketing, they would make slick interfaces with the uber-configurability of G/E and beyond...

THERE IS MORE THAN ONE WAY TO DO IT!

Reaffirms my Apple support

[Sleepy]

I'm not the greatest Apple fan (I have 3 running computers and only 1 runs MacOS), but seeing Apple take these steps is good for everyone, even if you don't own a Mac and never would because you don't know how to install your own floppy drive ;)

Thanks to Loki, Linux is getting some games support. To that I both say 'about time' *and' 'already??' (didn't YOU think it would take 2 more years?).

The Linux software suite and the MacOS software suite have a lot to offer, and a lot of people I think are like me and would like them both on the same OS. For all the talk, NT still does not achieve this and is only good for single-tasks, plus NT only resembles UNIX, with none of the openness, none of the legacy of fine-tuned applications and no freaking compiler of any kind.

Yes, the Mac has no floppy drive and yes it's a proprietary UNIX with some non-core technologies open sourced. So what. Apple COULD have rebuilt their next-gen OS on top of the NT kernel, which is what Bill Gates pressured Apple to select. And yes, M$ would have licensed it.

By selecting UNIX - and a well-respected kernel at that - Apple leapfrogs NT in technology, even if it will take years to convince the skeptics. Skeptics still don't support Linux, so screw 'em.

With the MacOS becoming an API on top of BSD, it's far more likely we will see great Mac applications ported to Linux because most of the code will have to be cleaned up for this anyhow. This means a few more games, and lots of applications SOME of us can't leave Windows/Mac for.

Ignoring the people who bitch that the QuickTime client isn't GPL'd or NPL'd or whatever, we'll probably get QT for Linux soon afterwards. Although it seems like APple doesn't listen, they do now, and it would be stupid of them to release QT/Linux BEFORE MacOS was out, and lose all that PR.

I'm very glad Apple's doing this. Everyone wants a version of Linux/UNIX that runs all the major applications - well here it is. AND, it runs on a 21st century CPU not some rickety Intel CPU that requires a 4"x4" heat sink cube with 3 fans.
(My G3 MacOS/LinuxPPC system has a tiny heat sink and no CPU fan)

On Mac CLIs...

[SvnLyrBrto]

Even if a shell is not distributed initially, it certianly will be possible to add tcsh, bsh, or any particular shell you care for.

As we all know, OS X Server already had several shells included by default. No reason whatsoever that the same shells wouldn't work in OS X Consumer.

Now, what Apple MIGHT do, is not include them in the default installation, but perhaps have them available on the CD, or as a free download. Or perhaps make you enable them through a control panel.

Apple has done things like this before, they have a history of hiding advanced tools from the novice user. A perfect example of this is ResEdit. ResEdit is a very powerful tool for the advanced user who knows what he's doing, but a novice could seriously fsck his system if he did something wrong. ResEdit is, therefore, not included in the default installations of MacOS, but is available as a free ftp download, as are quite a few other advanced tools. Apple might treat tcsh, bash, or other UNIX shells the same way.

You might also consider that it's possile to write a CLI shell for ANY GUI OS. I've even seen CLI's for PalmOS. There have, in the past, been various CLI interfaces written for MacOS by third parties, some made to look like DOS, some to look like Unix. None, to my knowledge, ever caught on.

Oh, and one last thing many people don't know about the traditional Macintosh. It comes with TWO CLI's already. You just have to know what you're doing to access or use them.

With a push of the programmers switch, you can put a Mac into debugger mode. This freezes the GUI and opens a large text window. From here, you can directly access the system's memory, usually for debugging and programming purposes. You also use this to do firmware updates and the like.

And speaking of firmware.... If you reboot with command-option-o-f, you boot not into MacOS, but into openfirmware. Basically a FROTH intrepeter, this lets you add or delete devices, and (it's most common use, so far as I can tell) set the default boot partition (say, for booting into Linux PPC without using BootX).

The whole point of Macintosh is not to create a non-complex system. That's impossible with the nature of today's advances computers. The point is to hide that complexity from the AVERAGE, and NOVICE users. Advanced users can still access the full complexity(subject to the limitations of any closed-source OS that is) of the system though, if they want to.



john

The scoop on multitasking (AFAIK)

[jht]

Here's how OS X handles multitasking, as compared to the "classic" MacOS:

OS X is, as we all know, Mach/BSD based. Applications that are written to the OS X API will premptively multitask. Life is good.

Then there's the "bridge" API, Carbon. Carbon is essentially the bulk of the old Mac Toolbox calls, cleaned up and rebuilt to allow reentrant code and to be clean in a preemptive environment. Carbonized apps have had the old, icky Mac code cleaned out and can run on the old Mac OS (OS 9 now, I think OS 8.5 and 8.6 later) through a CarbonLib shared library that allows the app to run. Carbonized applications are kind of a "best of both worlds" solution, and Carbonizing an application is supposedly very easy in most cases.

Finally, there's "classic" Mac applications, which run in a compatibility environment. Basically, OS X spawns a full Mac OS 9 VM as a subtask, and applications run in it without the ability to access hardware directly (it's walled off by OS X). The classic environment can crash just like a Mac today, but if it does it doesn't take down the whole machine.

Classic Mac OS (OS 9.x and below) only supports a very limited form of preemptive multitasking, using the Thread Manager. And the mouse will interrupt the whole system while it is depressed - only a handful of background tasks can continue to function, and then only if they use Thread Manager. The classic Mac multitasking model has always been a cooperative one, like Win16 apps. This is not a problem on OS X, though the OS 9 subsystem will have the same limitations that MacOS has today, only within that subsystem. A depressed mousebutton in the classic environment will still halt processing in classic without affecting the rest of OS X.

In Windows 9X, only 32-bit applications can be preemptive. Win16 apps still can run amok and take over the system - there's no compatibility "sandbox". The good point of this is that almost all 16-bit applications work with Windows 9X - the bad news is that Win16 apps and drivers probably cause more Windows crashes than any other single cause (crappy software aside). Since Windows NT and Win2K keep Win16 apps isolated, a lot of Win16 software doesn't run under NT systems but the system is far more stable as a result. The model NT uses (kind of a Win16 VM emulation deal) is somewhat similar to Apple's, though Apple has the advantage of running on a Mach/BSD kernel instead of the Windows cruft.

I am a crappy coder, and haven't even tried to seriously write an app in years, so I may be a little off (and I tried on purpose to over-simplify, too), so don't kick me too hard, but that's my general picture of things.

- -Josh Turiel