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Q3T on Mac First
Wyatt Earp
wrote in to tell us that macnn.com is
reporting that Q3T is coming out this weekend for Macs first,
then Linux and finally Windows according to
Zaphod's Plan.
According to Carmacks's Plan
OS X is nice but "MacOS still sucks."Update: 04/25 01:36 by J : It's gone live. Go swap them servers.
Well, I can try. First, I would like to note that I am a Mac User, but I really like the power/stability of Unix. However, here is my attempt at a fair review of the OS I have been using constantly for about a week now (note: if Apple tells you 2-4 weeks for delivery, expect delivery on the 28th day :} ) I may put up a longer, more detailed one later, when I put off some assignment or another.
The installation was a snap, even on my non-supported PowerBook G3. Everything installed properly and once it was properly configured, the computer booted up in less than half the time it takes my MacOS partition to boot up. Before I configured it, it kept trying to get my network info off a system called NetInfo, which I had never heard of until this came out. I could be wrong, but it seems a bit silly to automatically try to get information from a scheme used by an OS which came out a month ago. But it was easy to switch over to bootP, and I have seen instructions on how to use DHCP.
Since I started up, for the past week, I have only had the OS crash twice--both times involved Apple's Blue Box, usually when I tried to exit it. Users of VM ware may have experienced similar things (I know my roommate has). Of course, one week is not a very long amount of time for testing.
It took me a bit to get used to the UI. IMHO, it has a ways to go, but it is very functional. It does have a problem with ignoring some of my settings, like Icon view instead of NeXT columns. Once I got past trying to convince it to remember that setting, and decided I actually liked the columns view better anyway, I was able to move on.
Moving files and directories around can be a bit strange. Sometimes, it lets you move it, other times, you copy it, and sometimes it defaults to linking. All of these can be overridden with modifier keys, and I imagine that the defaults have to do with partitioning/permissions, but it was confusing, and irritating when I tried to move a large file, and it copied it instead. Of course, all of this can also be done with the command line.
I keep hearing that this OS is very fast on other computers, but currently I have not seen it. I suspect that it doesn't like sharing the HD with a 2gig Mac partition, and I think it wants more than 64MB of RAM. I plan on ordering a 128MB SIMM, so we'll see if that helps. The biggest speed problems are all in loading software, and opening menus. I often get the feeling that I'm not expected to use the Apple menu, because it takes a second to open until it is either cached, or placed in physical memory. Or maybe my G3 266 just can't handle the load...
Configuring users is where I was really happy. Permissions, shell settings, passwords, whether or not the user should be able to log in remotely--all can be done from within network manager. The only thing which makes it strange is the obvious design slant toward people running a network. I am not, so many of the settings just aren't useful to me. Others probably have other opinions (inevitably). It seems easy to set up a network with, though it is focussed at Macintosh style network schemes (NetBooting and NetInfo). I'd like to try NetBoot, but I think my campus network admins would not appreciate the bandwidth it is supposed to take (Apple recommends a 100 baseT ethernet connection). Any user can open the Network Administration panel, but in order to change anything, one has to authenticate. So configuration is easy.
Once I got the system set up (this took me a total of maybe an hour, from the beginning of installation), I went to download some more software (games & stuff), by checking out Stepwise.com, and moving to ftp.peak.next.org. There isn't all that much there right now, but I am confident that things will swiftly be ported over. As it is, I got myself a handful of games (at one point, I would like to try to run Windows on Virtual PC on the BlueBox, and try to play some PC games...)
As a mac user, I was most pleased by the availiability of Quake2 for MacOS X Server, which OmniGroup ported a while back. OmniGroup also makes the only (AFAIK) web browser for OS X Server. Actually, this was the biggest problem, and one of the 2 reasons I am currently booted into MacOS. While their webbrowser is execellent, it is still beta, and missing a very important feature for me--secure http. I need that to sign up for my classes for next semester, and to check my account. It also means I can't log in to the Apple Developer web-site. However, I will note that I think OmniWeb is one of the nicest browsers out there, with a very nice interface. They do things a bit differently than Netscape, though, which caused me some confusion at first (pressing the down arrow goes down the list of all the hyperlinks on the page. You could navigate the whole page with arrow keys and return, but I expected it to just scroll down.
The other reason I'm back on Mac is because even dimmed, my Powerbook's monitor throws off enough light to see well in my room at night, and OS X Server does not support certain controls on the Powerbook. There is no sleep mode, there is no power management, and I cant dim the display so there is no backlighting. The biggest part of that is that I have to log out and shutdown before I take the Powerbook anywhere, or it will overheat with it's top shut. But that's why Apple doesn't support the Powerbooks with OS X Server (OS X most likely will).
The next thing I did was to look for the much-vaunted developer stuff--Interface Builder and Project Builder. These, along with the API, where and are the reason there are still devoted NeXT developers out there. I couldn't find them, because Apple put them on the CD labelled WebObjects for Developers. But I found them, and now I understand why NeXT had their following. Those tools are amazing. I know very little about the API (I haven't had time yet), but Project builder is one of the nicest development environments I've seen. Users of Microsoft's Visual development suites will find it familiar, since MS based those on Interface Builder and Project Builder. Every function call/declaration is availiable for viewing with a few clicks, and if you ever scroll by, and see a function that you don't know the meaning of (even/especially Yellow Box functions), you can just open the find panel with a click, paste in the name, and tell it to find the definition, or all references to the function. If it is a Yellow Box function, it will also list a little book next to the declaration, clicking on which takes you to an html file (opened inside Project builder) which explains the use of that function. Apple also includes help files on using the tools.
All in all, I'm happy with my purchase (of course, I got it for $99 through Apple Developer Connection) I hope other developers start to port things over. I would like to take a crack at getting one of the PPC X Servers running on this thing. Anyway, being as it is day, and I'm done checking my student account, I will go boot back into it now.