Mac OS X Beta To Come Out Sept. 13

A reader writes "At his keynote at Seybold today, Steve Jobs announced that Mac OS X beta will ship on September 13th. More details at MacNN's site." This is the beta - but the Sept. 13th beta launch is the first day of Paris Mac Expo, meaning that it probably will happen. He also confirmed that they are on target for an "early 2001" release of OSX.

Comments

OSX an "early 2001" release

[Hairy_Potter]

in other news, leaked photos of the new OSX server reveal it to be large, black monolith.

Re:public beta?

[Slad]

It will be availalbe for $15-$20 for a CD. So much for *free*! On September 3, ten days before the release date, you can order it through the Apple store.

Interesting other note from the Jobs demo

[maggard]

From the linked story

Other features highlighted include a new Aqua Pro Mode option, which changes all the Aqua elements to Graphite, to help reduce the graphic distraction that some graphic artists expressed displeasure over in Aqua.

This is new as Apple has to date refused to support alternate interfaces under prior Mac OS's. There was an Apple project for supported themes that even got shipped with a few demos included but Jobs scrapped it as soon as he returned to power. To date the official word on Aqua was that it's "lickable" interface would be the only option and there was fear Apple would do something to actively block alternatives (Aqua themes appear to be trivially edited text and graphics files.)

What's even more interesting is that the alternate theme is not Apple's previous "Platinum" theme but a new one. As Platinum is already supported under Aqua in "Classic" applications this means that there will now be three different UI's shipping - Platinum under Classic, the default "lickable" under Aqua and it's alternate "Graphite".

Re:Interesting other note from the Jobs demo

[gwernol]

What's even more interesting is that the alternate theme is not Apple's previous "Platinum" theme but a new one. As Platinum is already supported under Aqua in "Classic" applications this means that there will now be three different UI's shipping - Platinum under Classic, the default "lickable" under Aqua and it's alternate "Graphite".

I think you're reading more into this than is really there. Choosing the graphite look just changes the Aqua widgets to monochrome. For example, the three standard window title bar widgets (close window, minimize window and zoom window) are now all the same graphite gray color, rather then being red, yellow and green.

This is simply Aqua with a more muted color scheme. It is not a separate UI at all.

Re:Performance problems

[TheInternet]

But so far running OSX on high end hardware only produces medicore performance. It takes a lot of horsepower to this baby march. I'm eager to see if this "beta" version is an improvement.

This is something I noticed as well, but apparently these are more due to high-level issues rather than the OS/kernel itself. For example, I believe the Cocoa and Java libaries are still being optimized, which explains why the little applets take so long to launch. At least at some point, some of those sample applications (TextEdit, I think?) were actually Java apps, so the JVM loads first, then the application. I would not be suprised if this was still the case with DP4, and possibly even in the final public release.

The OS itself is obviously a quite capable system performance-wise. It does an admirable job serving pages via Apache from what I've seen. It just seems that some of the higher level user-level stuff needs tweaking, which is probably what most of the debug code is attached to, anyway. I don't imagine the BSD layer, etc are changing nearly as much.

- Scott


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Scott Stevenson

Well...

[TheInternet]

Question is, will it run on my SuperMac clone with Newer Tech G3 upgrade?

Can you ride a bike across a tightrope?

You could probably figure out a way to do it, but I wouldn't recommend it.

- Scott
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Scott Stevenson

OSX: perfect "linux" distro?

[nehril]

All the distro makers are trying very hard to make a luser friendly yet powerful unix system, but that exactly describes OS X. Except for the hardware constraints, anybody interested in linux from a user standpoint is better served using MacOS X. Why give Grandma Redhat when you can give her OSX?

RedHat/GNOME/KDE & crew have a loooong way to go before they match the user experience of OS X. It will be hard to even try to match level that since Apple controls the hardware too.

Throw in all the standard OSS tools (gcc/gmake/perl/apache/etc..) and what is there for a geek not to like too?

Mac OS X seems really cool, unfortunately Apple needed this about 4 years ago. Still, OS X makes me seriously consider picking up a mac (ibook perhaps) just to play around with it.

Re:OSX: perfect "linux" distro?

[nconway]

RedHat/GNOME/KDE & crew have a loooong way to go before they match the user experience of OS X

Steve Jobs and crew have a 'loooong way to go' before they even release MacOSX. When it's released, then it will be fair to compaire with a GNU/Linux distro. Considering the pace at which Linux is improving, it's very difficult to predict the future.

All the distro makers are trying very hard to make a luser friendly yet powerful unix system, but that exactly describes OS X. Except for the hardware constraints, anybody interested in linux from a user standpoint is better served using MacOS X. Why give Grandma Redhat when you can give her OSX?

I think MacOSX will be cool as hell, but it's nowhere near a 'better Linux than Linux' (not necessarily worse or better, just different). OSX will only run on Apple hardware. That means tossing out all that cheap, plentiful x86 hardware and starting over. It also means that old SparcStation in the corner isn't going to be running MacOS X any time soon. OSX is closed source (Darwin not withstanding - I'd say the majority of MacOSX will be closed source), and only runs on a closed hardware platform. If you use GNU/Linux for philosophical reasons, you won't want to have much to do with OSX. Once MacOS X is finally released, it will be brand new, 'fresh' code (stuff taken from BSD notwithstanding). Which is great from an 'innovation' standpoint; but I know I'll definately be hesitant to run MacOS X on any important servers anytime soon.

Then again, I don't really know much about OSX, so go ahead and correct me. One quick question - is the GUI integrated into the OS? If you're running X on it, will you need to load Apple's GUI (for lack of a better term), as well as X? Can you forego a GUI entirely? Throw in all the standard OSS tools

Have they actually been ported to OSX? How stable are they? OS X makes me seriously consider picking up a mac

Me too!

Re:OSX: perfect "linux" distro?

[ahg]

Then again, I don't really know much about OSX, so go ahead and correct me. One quick question - is the GUI integrated into the OS? If you're running X on it, will you need to load Apple's GUI (for lack of a better term), as well as X? Can you forego a GUI entirely?

Well, Yes, and No.

Darwin, Apple's open source edition of their new operating system is CLI only and is FreeBSD 4.0 "compatable". IIRC, Carmack has ported XFree86 to Darwin, providing your X interface. This is a totally open source option but I see no compelling reason to chose this path over x86 based BSD.

MacOSX is the union of the BSD/mach foundation, Apple's closed source Display PDF GUI, and their Carbon* and Cocoa (Nextstep) APIs. The OSX install CDs will probably not have a CLI only install option.

So... from a kernel/process standpoint the OSX GUI will be separate. From a delivery standpoint, you're probably going to get them both, like it or not, if you install from an OSX CD. Additionally, the option to open an interactive shell is rumored to be an "advanced" install option; the average Mac user never see the CLI.

As for X over Apple's GUI - AFAIK, only Tenon systems has annnounced a commercial X server that fully integrates with Quartz/Aqua (the Apple GUI). It's only a matter of time before someone builds off of Carmack's work and has an OSS X server that runs on top of Quartz/Aqua.

I think it will be a compelling hybrid of classic *nix and GUI. It's not perfect for everyone but for Apple's core markets, Graphical Design and Publishing, this is as good as it gets. Tight integration between display and print, along with Apple's advanced color managment software, makes for a system that fills their niches really, really well.

* Note for those not yet familiar with Apple's OSX: Carbon is the API set all current Mac apps are being written to, and is part of today's MacOS9 as well. Future apps will be written to the "more native" Cocoa. -- Carbon can be thought of doing for OSX what Winelib does for Linux. There will be a Classic Interface as well which will run apps that haven't been "Cabonized". This is basically a VM running OS9 and any apps that have not been updated over the new interface. The Apps and the old OS appear as single process to the underlying system.

Keynote transcript available here:

[WillAdams]

http://www.key3media.com/seyboldseminars/sf2000/pr esentations/keynotes/apple/jobs.html

Should help clear up some of the confusion about, e.g. ``Pro Mode''/Graphite Aqua.

William

PS - mentioned this before, but www.macthemes.org says in their Developer notes that themes for Mac OS X are quite feasible.

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