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Apple Businesses

Mac OS X Officially Previewed 629

Posted by CmdrTaco from the thats-pretty-smooth dept.
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.
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Mac OS X Officially Previewed More

Mac OS X Officially Previewed

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  • Regarding Icon Sizes (Score:4)

    by Gothmog ( 21222 ) <gothmog@c o n f u s t i c a t e.com> on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:22AM (#1398663) Homepage
    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?

  • Wow (Score:2)

    by British ( 51765 )
    If you want to see huge icons that go overboard, one word: WORKBENCH. I believe Workbench(for the amiga) let you have icons as big as you wanted, and its GUI was 10 times as uglier as X Windows.
  • Check out this little tidbit from the MacOS rumors coverage of SF2000
    http://macosrumors.com/?powerexpress=mwsf2K

    At the bottom they claim John Carmack said that
    the next id software game will be exclusively for MacOS X!!!

    I can't believe that would mean no Windows or Linux version??

    Or does he mean that it will be developed on MacOS X as the primary dev platform? Quite likely as JohnC is a big fan of NeXTStep and there's still a lot of nextishness underneath MacOS X Doom was developed first under NeXTStep for example.

    Must admit the user interface looks damn nice, lets hope they leave an accessable CLI in the consumer version.

  • Apple Human Interface Guidelines (Score:4)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:29AM (#1398675)
    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.

  • Re:Wow (Score:2)

    by Masem ( 1171 )
    Workbench icons were whatever size you wanted them: there was no fixed icon size for it, so tthat one icon could be 10x10, another 1000x1000. Of course, most smart people got icon sets back then that had consistant looks and sizes to make the desktop look unique.
  • From all the "rumors" floating around the web, it seems that you will be able to access a CLI in the consumer version of OSX. It does include (or at least it is _supposed_ to include) a full blown version of BSD. Let's hope that all the rumors are true.

  • power and simplicity (Score:5)

    by sowsinsk ( 133995 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:32AM (#1398681)
    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.

  • It's about time mac woke up to the world of protected memory and pre-emptive multi-tasking.

    As crappy as M$ Win XX is, at least it has pre-emptive multi-tasking.

    I am a dedicated [U/Li]n[i/u]x and Xwindows user, but would still rather use Win XXXX than deal with Mac's crappy co-operative multi-tasking.

    Now maybe Macs will finally enter into the realm of serious computers and take advantage of all that yummy hardware.

  • Objective C API's? (Score:3)

    by LizardKing ( 5245 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:34AM (#1398684)
    There was some talk on the Objective C newsgroups about Apple dropping ObjC for C++. I also heard that they had reversed this decision. Does anyone out there know how closely Mac OS X is tied to NeXTSTEP and the OpenSTEP API's?


    Chris Wareham
  • I think he means that the only Apple platform that they will support will be OS X. Which makes sense because by the time the release their game the Transition to Mac OS X should have begun. So what support the old system that is being phased out?
  • Actually, what MacOS X ought to have is "predefined" desktop themes for people who have vision problems (it's similar to Windows' Accessibility Features configuration).

    That way, with one mouse click older folks who have serious vision impairment can still read the MacOS screen without fiddling around with all those options in the MacOS Control Panel.
  • Looks are one thing, but is there a one-button-mouse-mac-HOWTO? Its like chopping off all fingers and your opposable thumb, but one, and trying to navigate one menu that controls everything. I like how macs look, but I like my mouse buttons.
  • As for the anti aliasing issue, I am increasingly coming to suspect that this will happen, not via changes to X itself, but rather via implementation of structures that manage this.

    Note:

    • GNOME Canvas [gnome.org] ;
    • It's not clear what there may be that is equivalent with KDE, [kde.org] but there will likely be something, whether in KDE or in Qt;
    • GnuStep [gnustep.org] will support whatever the underlying infrastructure does, and it would make a lot of sense to get Display Ghostscript to do anti-aliasing...

    Long and short is that it may be quite appropriate to have antialiasing managed within application libraries as opposed to directly in X.

  • . . . is the apparent fact that the "dock" icons have a zoom effect when the mouse rolls over them.

    So if your dock has tiny 4x4 icons, they'll zoom up to a readable size when you pass the mouse over -- I believe that this is the effect being shown in the screenshot.

    I don't know how well that will actually work, but it'll be interesting to see how it all turns out . . .

  • This comment is being widely misinterpreted around the web. I believe he meant that Id's next game will appear on many platforms such as Linux and Win32, and on the Mac side it be written for Mac OS X only, not the legacy Mac OS 8 or Mac OS 9 versions.

    He has been waiting for a stable Mac development platform for quite some time and I'm sure he will use his position to jettison support for the old versions of the operating system as soon as possible. A side benefit is that because Id's games are so popular this move will help speed acceptance of the platform among gamers.

  • Apple interface (Score:5)

    by engel ( 80827 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:40AM (#1398698)
    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!
  • It's interesting to ponder about the (perceived) graphics performance in Mac OS X, something Steve made a big point about, versus the separation of kernel and user space code as is common in Unix OS design... What I'm saying is that if Mac OS has such great graphics performance, that should come at the same cost as it would in e.g. Linux. As everyone no doubt knows, graphics drivers are kept out of the kernel in Linux because of fears of lessened stability (among other things, no doubt, but that is a major thing). I wonder how the Apple people solved this.

    One interesting, related, thing was that during the keynote, they should demo Quake 3 Arena running under Mac OS X, and it crashed... OK, no big deal, but then they just abandoned the demo instead of showing us how Mac OS recovers from a crashed full-screen OpenGL app. Makes we wonder...
  • Mac OS X and Windows aren't really much different, with respect to icon sizes. The difference is that Windows opts for a default of small icons (changable in the control panel) and Mac OS X opts for a default of large icons (also changable, though I believe the size is a good deal more controlable than in Windows).

    As far as multitasking, Mac OS X is based on Unix. Unix is a true multitasking environment. Thus, Mac OS X must also be true multitasking, if they've kept even a smidgen of the Unix source.

    Desktop style - I like. It looks nice, seems cleaner than Windows (and definitely crisper), and has a much better layout. Personally, I -still- think RiscOS blows all other desktops away, but whether we'll ever see a "real" RiscOS-style front-end for anything other than a dying PC that Acorn murdered in cold blood is yet to be seen.

  • Linux like OS :-) (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:48AM (#1398714)
    In the press release they said that Mac OS X is a Linux like [newsalert.com] OS. Things have really changed. Not long ago we said that Linux was a Unix-like os, but now it is changing at instead the Unix-based OS are Linux like :-) On the other hand I have problems seeing how Apple hopes to come out ahead with this. Having a nice GUI isn't a real competitive advantage for long, with the progress being made in GNOME and X-windows, the advantages of Mac OS X will not last many months. AFAIK anti-aliasing is beeing added as part of XFree 4.0 and is already part of the GNOME canvas. The scalable icons is also something planned for the next release of GNOME, and AFAIK it is already at least partially implemented in the CVS version.
  • Its like living in a room where all the walls are black. I change my desktop theme quite often to keep my eyes from being bored. VIsual ergonomics as well as the interface's design are VERY important.

    ---

  • Reaffirms my Apple support (Score:5)

    by Sleepy ( 4551 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @05:50AM (#1398719) Homepage
    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)


  • Well, if you want to run linux apps, there's a reason... Most linux apps will run on OSX, but if they use Posix threads, OSX has to emulate that which will slow it down a hair. You might also want to use X. XNext has been ported to OSXServer, but isn't overly stable in my playing. Oh, don't forget the camp who will use linux because non-free software is a mortal sin.

    I think if you have a mac, OSX is a clear winner, mainly cuz no matter what they say, all the mac linux distros do wierd things on my powerbook... Maybe a desktop is better, but MacOS is too damn pretty and well thought out to leave for long...

    Every OS has it's merit. I don't use linux on my daily desktop machine (because netscape is so ugly and there is no decent gui mail client) and I don't use MacOS on my server... Use what fits your needs.
  • is there a one-button-mouse-mac-HOWTO?

    Ask and ye shall receive:

    1. Go to CompUSA or visit your fave online catalog.
    2. Order a 5 button scrolling mouse.
    3. Wait a bit, receive shipment.
    4. Open the box, upack the materials.
    5. Install and/or download the drivers.
    6. Plug in the mouse.
    7. Use the mouse.
    8. Quit whining about the state of the mac 10 years ago. Stuff changes.
  • I think you are right.

    I believe that Mac OS X is by far the most serious challenge to Linux, and on purely practical grounds it is probably a superior OS.

    It remains to be seen whether Apple can get the OS into the mainstream in a sensible way. If an intel version is released (I'm not sure why they appeared to halt it, since early betas were released for Intel) I would consider it a very serious choice.

    My experience with version of the server product were positive, and although they have done some semi-radical stuff (like rip out the config files from /etc and stick it all in a nice organised directory), it is basically a good unix base with a GUI that leaves KDE and GNOME looking like two bit shareware projects, frankly.

    So, we'll wait and see.
  • My first impression is that it looks like Apple finished the Berlin project. (Just had to say that. ;)

    Regarding anti-aliased fonts: There's actually a simple way to do that, but it eats RAM like a wumpus. The simple way is not to use fonts at all, but instead to create pixmaps (e.g. XPM format) that have anti-aliased text. This would only be useful on a system with lots(lots) of RAM and then only useful for largely static content like menus, dialogs etc.

    Regaring themes: (By Jove, I'm getting sick of that word!) There's more involved in emulating the Mac interface than drawing pretty pictures, even if you manage to get the translucency. One of the best features of the Mac is its respect of screen real-estate. For starters, you'd have to code an app to place it's menubar at the top of the screen, but then the inconsistency across various apps would defeat this.

    Themes look nice, but there's more to a GUI than looks. (Beauty is only skin deep, eh? Why do I feel compelled to say this to geeks? Geeks my age (I won't say) certainly appreciated that. Maybe the difference is that 'geekness' is now the 'cool' thing, whereas it used to be the 'right' thing?)

    Well, I've got a library to write; "Next workspace!" :-)
  • Actually, they're not useless. Apple has for a long time offered hooks to make multiple buttons work universally. They've simply been careful to ensure that more than one button isn't required.

    If you get a good multi-button mouse, the right button should work. The middle button may perform no function, but you could always assign a macro of some sort to it (ie. map it to command-C, which copies text).

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Re:Linux like OS :-) (Score:3)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:00AM (#1398736)
    Having a nice GUI isn't a real competitive advantage for long, with the progress being made in GNOME and X-windows, the advantages of Mac OS X will not last many months.

    I disagree entirely, The Mac OS GUI is many YEARS ahead of what is offered in Linux, not only due to the GUI but the fact that Mac applications integrate with the GUI seamlessly and consistently. In addition the anti-aliasing feature you mentioned is only a tiny part of the advantages the Mac OS X display technology will have because of it's adopting of PDF.

    People can make up Mac OS X themes all they want, but until the application software all integrates with the GUI, Gnome and K are not going to be a patch on the Mac OS X UI. Hell, you can't even cut and paste, or move a mouse cursor around consistently in Gnome or K, and these are things the Mac had on introduction in 1984, fifteen years ago.

  • LinuxPPC (latest version) run fine on current Powerbooks (mine is a Lombard).

    There are a few minor issues, but those are pretty minor. Check out the web site for more details:

    http://www.linuxppc.org

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • To be honest, I have just one big problem with Apple's Open-source policy... They have this quicktime standard, which is being embraced by everyone, but I think it would explode within the Linux and Free software community if they would release source to a quicktime client.

    Even if they would release a couple of unix QT clients, it would really make my day.

    If they have it running under MacOSX, std MacOS, and windows, I would imagine it wouldn't be too terribly hard to make other unix ports.

    As far as open-sourcing the whole thing -- there may be code in there (i.e. the particular codecs) that they can't open up due to copyrights, and/or perhaps couldn't truly be free because of patents, but if they at least gave us the unencumbered parts, perhaps arrangements could be made, a-la xanim, to incorporate binary "plugins" for the encumbered parts.

  • Two things immediately come to mind after reading reports of the keynote speech yesterday.

    1. I like most of the interface changes and eye candy in OS X, as long as the operating system is fast enough to implement them smoothly. From what I hear, this is the first Apple product to fully take advatange of the PowerPC chips inside almost all Macintoshes so that shouldn't be a problem.

    But what happens if we're all overexposed to the "make everything translucent and multicolored" fad during the next few years? Will Aqua (Apple's name for the new interface style) suddenly seem dated or too cute? I sincerely hope Apple has added some hooks to Aqua's API to make the style customizable.

    2. What a shrewd move Apple made by giving all Mac users 20MB of web space on their servers. (See http://itools.mac.com/itoolsmainpc.html or http://itools.mac.com/itoolsmain.html if you're on a Mac.) Suddenly, the iMac's galling lack of external storage doesn't seem as important anymore. I still need a way to make backups, but some people may be happy with the small amount of public space that lets them store and share stuff.

    Mike
  • How can you say that the MacOS GUI is years ahead of Linux when I can't even do SloppyFocus or select-goes-into-clipboard? I find MacOS *extremely* hard to use. It's easy to learn, sure, but I can't use it on a day-to-day basis.

  • Objective-C is here to stay

    That's fantastic news. Unfortunately my access to a news server is sporadic, so I can't check whether the C++ rumours were well founded. I suppose I could check Deja News, but I find it painfully slow.

    What we need now is for Apple to sponsor an atempt to get an ANSI standard for Objectove C. Ideally Stepstone, the GNU Objective C people and Apple should form the committee. If they ever do, and a good standard results then I might be able to remove -Wno-import from my compiler flags under GCC!


    Chris Wareham

  • I've got a challenge: How long before someone creates E and GTK themes that mimic this?

    Mimic is the right word, X Window environments tend to adopt the look of a particular OS without coming close to the functionality. This one will be hard to beat. I give 'em about 15 years!

    (Seriously, the PDF, antialiasing and media support along with the required consistancy in the interface would be hard as hell to engineer)

  • Re:Objective C API's? (Score:3)

    by qsi ( 131140 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:06AM (#1398749)

    There are three API's supported in MacOS X:

    1) Classic (basically the old MacOS 9.x API)

    2) Carbon (a modified offshoot of Classic)

    3) Cocoa (the enhanced & updated OpenSTEP API)

    Programs using the Classic API will not benefit from the "new" features such as memory protection or pre-emptive multitasking; essentially, it's a MacOS 9.x emulator (with a performance hit?). Carbon apps will reap the benefits of the BSD stuff underneath, and porting from Classic to Carbon tends not to be too difficult. Even better, Carbonized apps will also run on MacOS 9.x machines, albeit without the memory protection, etc. So developers can maintain one codebase for both 9.x and X. Lastly, the Cocoa API is the evolved and improved version of the OpenSTEP API, and does AFAIK support Objective-C and Java. Cocoa and Carbon apps will be "equal citizens."

    More information can be found at Apple's OS X site [apple.com] and its developer site [apple.com]. I suspect StepWise [stepwise.com] will have more information on MWSF before long.

  • While recent developments have helped (with Gnome in particular), they have more or less been stuck to copying Windows' faults along with its benefits.

    Apple is reinventing itself, with a nod to its NeXT and MacOS roots. Outside of Apple and maybe Be, there just isn't much going on in the UI arena.



    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Re:Also nifty . . . (Score:3)

    by chadmulligan ( 87873 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:12AM (#1398761)
    So if your dock has tiny 4x4 icons, they'll zoom up to a readable size when you pass the mouse over -- I believe that this is the effect being shown in the screenshot.

    While much of the "new" interface is evolutionary - a refinement and consolidation of many ideas from past iterations of the Mac OS - there are some indications of what the future GUI will look like. IMHO this is one of them... while this will unsettle many people who have grown used to static screens, dynamically changing depending on context - what you're pointing at (and in the future, what you're looking at) - will be the way to go.

    BTW Netscape's buttons that stay flat while you're not pointing at them were a preview of that, although personally I consider them a good idea badly executed.

    The three colored buttons which grow indicators may not be that great, since there are many color-blind folks out there - there should be an option to keep the indicators permanently. Large icons are great, as long as the user can scale them down. It's been getting progressively harder to design distinctive and good-looking icons - now we can go into detail and color, which was just not possible with 32x32 and 14-color icons (yes, I know lately 32-bit color icons have been possible).

    Using animations, sounds, translucency and so forth will also be a hit, although of course the CLI set will hate wasting cycles on that sort of thing... and also, amateur interface designers will be able to shoot themselves in both feet very easily. Just call it evolution in action :-)

  • One possibility, and I'm not claiming Apple is supporting this, would be to have multiple bitmaps for different sizes, and interpolate between them for intermediate scales. You could have some sort of feedback in the scaling to highlight when you're at one of the optimal positions.

    The icons all look like they're true color though, for which I think downscaling problems are less significant. The problems you mention are most dramatic when you want sharp edges or have a limited palette.
  • I think the fact that it only runs on PowerPC iron is going to kill Apple's chances of destroying Linux. If they went cross-platform, things might get very scary indeed (for Microsoft in particular - Linux might be immune to some degree due to its userbase).

    Right now, it makes no sense from a business perspective for Apple to offer it to X86. They make their profits on hardware, and the R&D required to support the wild world of drivers in that area wouldn't be worth it. I guess that's where Darwin could come in, though.

    I'd like to see Apple open up cloning again. Keep better control over it (sorry folks, pulling an IBM is - rightfully so - not in Apple's interests), but don't kill it outright. This won't happen for a while yet, but it's something to think about in the future.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Developer Pledge Support (Score:3)

    by freakinPsycho ( 23459 ) <david.inducedreality@net> on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:18AM (#1398773) Homepage
    Did anyone else notice that at the bottom of the page, under Developer Pledge Support, it says:

    Not surprisingly, Mac OS X debuts with public pledges of support from more than 100 developers, including Adobe Systems, Microsoft, Quark, Macromedia, Palm Computing, id Software and many others. Together, we're taking everything you love about the Mac and making it better.

    does this mean that those companies are going to be making software for the MacOSX? and as it is a unix based system, would those then be portable to the other unix based systems? could we finally be seeing support from these major companies in software design for non-windows/mac based machines?
    -freakinPsycho

    ----------------
    "All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening."

  • Re:Ah ha! (Score:3)

    by Stradivarius ( 7490 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:18AM (#1398776)
    Easy to spot the linux folk

    Not necessarily...I for one am not convinced that the AC is a Linux user (he/she very well may be, but not necessarily). I know longtime Mac users (read, MacOS, who don't run linux because they don't like the UI) who bitch about the sole mouse button thing. The reason being this:

    Sure, MacOS will work with just one mouse button. It was designed such that one mouse button is all that is *necessary*. But for contextual menus, this requires the pressing of a key while clicking. This is the sort of thing *better* done with a second mouse button, rather than requiring the user to reach for the keyboard and perform two tasks at once. That way, ppl with one button can still do it the old way, but those with two buttons don't have to.

    So, yes, you only *need* one button, but two makes life (or at least, MacOS) a little easier.

    As a bonus, two buttons make it a little easier on converts from Windows or other multi-button environments. However, this is just a bonus, not the reason for thinking Macs should come with a second mouse button.
  • 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.

    So does someone want to tell me how to change the menus in Enlightenment? Or sawmill, for that matter. Seems I can change just about everything else...

  • 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...

    This was supposed to be implemented in MacOS 9.0 (well, OK, it was supposed to have been implemented in Copland :-)) as "Themes" for the Appearance Manager. Indeed, MacOS 9 betas for a long time shipped with various Themes, which did allow for very far-reaching customization of the GUI, far more than what is possible with, say, Kaleidoscope [kaleidoscope.net]. This was apparently nixed at the last moment (by Steve Jobs Himself, the lore goes). Since it was never officially included, no reason was given, but the thinking goes that such Themes would have made helpdesk support a complete nightmare, as one would not be able to describe UI elements generically. Anyway, I suppose comes back to the difference between full customizability for power users, and providing a good, generic solution for, eh, "normal" people. :-) We'll probably see some Kaleidoscopish for MacOS X too, although I am not familiar with Aqua's patching mechanisms.

  • The operative term is 'reasserts'. To Mac fans at least, Apple has always had the lead in usable operating systems (the foundation is another matter - I don't think anyone is seriously contesting that). Back in the early 80's people were playing catch-up with Apple, in the early 90's Windows took the lead. Not by doing anything particularly interesting, but it was 'good enough' to justify the cost. Now, Apple is attempting to wow the audiences again and shoot well past Windows.

    Don't take it too seriously though, it's just marketting-speak. There's more than a kernel of truth to it, though.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • The whole point of the Mac interface has always been a consistent look and feel. User customization is not consistent with this concept. One advantage of the Mac is that I can sit down in front of any one and the desktop looks and works pretty much the same as any other Mac. Try moving between two Unix stations and doing that.

    Sometimes having an Interface Nazi forcing one standard is a Good Thing. Linux/BSD/etc are never going to win on the desktop as long as they have so many window managers.

  • Re:Wow (Score:2)

    by Squid ( 3420 )
    640x200 was the official limit and I've seen icons use a BIG chunk of that. I once had an old AmigaWorld Disk whose icon was larger onscreen than the disk itself, and I've seen games where the icon occupied more bytes than the executable AND more pixels onscreen than the game.

    It really does no harm to have an OS lift all size and shape restrictions on its icons.
  • John said that if OS X lived up to its promise, he would adopt it as his primary OS for development and general use.

    It appears it has. He is obviously very happy with it and the next id game will be written for the Cocca API and will only run under OS X with no backwards compatibility.

    This is not a good thing for Windows, but great news for 'nix users and Mac gamers everywhere.

    Actually, the deal is that the future id games will still support Windows, Linux, etc. The difference is that the only *Mac* operating system that will be supported is OS X (so OS8/9 users would have to upgrade to run the next id game).

    Think about it: id isn't going to throw away its primary source of revenues - Windows games.
  • I realize things will be different at the interface level, but does Apple's use of a BSD-like kernel mean that the meat of device drivers for Mac OS X will be similar enough to the needs of Linux/BSD/Unices that porting drivers between them will be fairly easy? Anyone have any idea?

    At work we do a Mac/Windows application, and I've got to say, OS X has me tempted to switch from doing most of my work in Windows...
  • Since when is NT Unix based?

    I've heard it has some degree of POSIX compliance, but 'Unix-based' that does not make.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • On Mac CLIs... (Score:4)

    by SvnLyrBrto ( 62138 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:27AM (#1398792)
    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



  • One possibility, and I'm not claiming Apple is supporting this, would be to have multiple bitmaps for different sizes, and interpolate between them for intermediate scales.

    This is the essence (sp?) of mipmaping, a technique commonly used to scale textures in 3D graphics. Guess what... OpenGL supports this thru some simple funktion calls, and most implementations do it in hardware. C'mon Apple...
    -

  • The scoop on multitasking (AFAIK) (Score:5)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:31AM (#1398799) Homepage Journal
    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
  • My guess is that 'themes' will make it into MacOS X. At least, under the scenes.

    Themes are alive and well in MacOS 9 - Apple simply decided to refrain from bundling any, and has not encouraged developers to make their own (you can download some from a few sites, however). Jobs is really big on 'total user experience' - since themes didn't replicate very well across all apps, rumor was that Jobs cut it out at the last moment.

    By the time OSX ships, theme capability will have been in some variant of the MacOS since v8.5 - over 2 years earlier. Developers have been slowly getting their act together as far as Appearance Manager compliance goes, so things may go smoother now.

    Also, recent builds of OSX have been shipped with the old dark platinum appearance - only since yesterday has Apple been public with their new UI. It would appear that there is some sort of plug-in theme enabler to make the switch so easy and transparent (even Microsoft hadn't seen it, supposedly - I can understand why :>).

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Also that will hit low-mem machines bigtime.

    Yes, but who's going to run OS X on low mem machines? We're talking about serious work horses here. 128x128 icons won't even be noticeable.

    -Brent
  • I have a 1.5 year old Pbook G3 that runs Linux and MacOS. Linuxppc isn't as nice as I would like (the development stuff sucks in my experience, although I could have screwed up the install) I've had great luck with yellow dog linux though. My only complaint is the lack of accelerated video drivers. Again, that may be my inexperience. I have found linuxppc and YDL a little more difficult to get up and running than INTEL or SPARC, but in general things run great.
    --
    Mike Mangino Consultant, Analysts International
  • Actually, many of us ('us' being Mac users) do wish for great customizability.

    However, we don't want to come at the cost of usability, nor do we want to have to edit a text file for the privilege. It's a hard line to walk for Apple.

    That said, I think Kaleidoscope-like theme capability will go a long way. That's pretty much a given though.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • Does anyone else here think thiat there has been far too much effort put into making macs look pretty.

    No. That's what Apple is about. Not just a high quality server platform, like Sun. Not just a mainstream so-so consumer platform, like Microsoft. But a real quality, high value, usuable interface. They did it again, and they did it well. Apple has the most defined most usable interfaces in existance.

    -Brent
  • 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

    Amen, brother. I watched Steve play with his toys for 2 hours on Wednesday, and the 2nd biggest disappointment was that OS X probably won't let you modify The Look very much. The new colorful bubbly UI is kind of cute, and Steve really has saved the Mac, but after QuickTime4, Sherlock2, and the color "tangerine", I can't trust his judgement when it comes to interface design.

    For example, my friend Stephan is totally red-green color blind. The OS X "traffic light" metaphor for window controls will be a massive problem for him. He'd be much Much MUCH happier with the UI he uses in LinuxPPC.

    FWIW, my #1 disappointment was the complete lack of new or improved hardware. What I really Really REALLY hoped Steve would say:

    1. the G4 line bumps back to its original stated speeds of 400/450/500. Motorola should be ashamed about this!!! And the re-pipelined 700MHz chip is also a ways off.
    2. the iBook gets 64Mb RAM and a bigger HD. It's such a huge success, and chip prices have come down. Also, replace the Tangerine!
    3. Pismo, the new Powerbook!!! Or failing that, at least give a $200-500 price break on Lombard

    Ah well. So it goes.

  • Isin't there something in the Bible about people appolgising on /. after flaming eachother...and after makine Apple related comments?

    I think it's the sign of the 2nd seal being broken, the 3rd seal is people not flaming eachother in a KDE vs Gnome debate.

    Note - I've got that danged Sydney Flu real bad...am on inhalers and vikadan cough syrup, please moderate this down to...oh a -6

  • GUI Makeover nightmare (Score:3)

    by Jonathan C. Patschke ( 8016 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:46AM (#1398834) Homepage
    How many times have you heard a Macintosh zealot give Windows users a hard time because nearly every Windows user-interface feature appeared in MacOS first? It is just me, or does the new Finder look a lot like the hideously-slow Microsoft "Active Desktop"? Everything's contained in one window (that looks strangely like a web browser). Big, hideous buttons/icons for everything. Lots of extraneous eye candy. As an ex-Mac user, I always loved the way Apple kept their UI clean. Things were kept simple (IE: fast and well thought-out) yet elegant. Even the idea of "exploding" windows was a great UI clue to the user to answer "What made that pop up?". But this? Have they any idea how many long-time Mac users they will alienate by tearing up the user interface that was even present on the old Lisa and Apple (not Mac) IIgs? The site mentions extending the "one window" metaphor to the entire operating system because "you can only interact with one application at a time". Doesn't this sound a lot like the days before the Multifinder? Wasn't one of System 7's greatest achievements the ability to multitask visually? The idea of BSD running behind it all sounds excellent, as Apple's OS has had a lot of holes in its design (seeming inability to use the hardware MMUs correctly, for one thing). However, they've taken what seems to be an obvious leap backwards in UI design by eliminating the clarity of pupose that every visible item in the Mac UI used to have. As a user, and as someone who has to provide support for users, I certainly hope there's an "Old Finder Look-and-Feel" option in "General Controls". I mean, come on. Apple's incarnation of the "Desktop" metaphor has propogated to OS/2, Windows, and who-knows-how-many window managers. Isn't tossing all this out the window just "thinking" a bit "too different"?
  • Summer, 2000.



    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Regarding anti-aliased fonts: There's actually a simple way to do that, but it eats RAM like a wumpus. The simple way is not to use fonts at all, but instead to create pixmaps (e.g. XPM format) that have anti-aliased text. This would only be useful on a system with lots(lots) of RAM and then only useful for largely static content like menus, dialogs etc.

    I've used a system (Acorn RISC OS) which makes extensive use of fully-anti-aliased fonts (including sub-pixel alignment both vertically and horizontally) and its solution was both elegant and not a memory hog. Starting with vector-based fonts (I'll call them outline fonts) which additionally had hint lines so that thin parts of the letters were not lost at small font sizes, it built pixmaps on the fly and cached them in a pre-allocated font cache. As the text was written to the screen, pre-pixmapped fonts were pulled from the cache and plotted direct: where pixmaps had not been calculated, a block (32?) of characters were rendered into the cache from the relevent font and then plotted. Fonts above a user-defined point-size limit were always calculated and plotted direct from the outline font rather than being cached as pixmaps, and vertical and horizontal sub-pixel alignment could be toggled on and off at will. When plotting the anti-aliased fonts, the pixmap was alpha-blended with any background texture present to avoid strange artefacts. For most of the time, 512K was complete overkill for the font-cache size, and since most documents contain maybe 96 characters in two fonts in two font sizes, the pixmaps don't take up as much space as you might expect. If you change the font in the document, the new font will end up in the cache, and the old one may be discarded if the cache is full, or left in place if the space allows.

    Anti-aliased fonts make a huge difference to font readability when done properly, and make a significant impact when sub-pixel alignment is enabled for viewing whole pages of text. No more lines of text separated by one extra line of white pixels, or strange staccato problems when faced with a row of ......... I often had friends comment that the text looked like it had been scanned on a high quality scanner from some postscript output, rather than rendered on the fly, and scrolling speeds on a 200MHz machine rarely, if ever, hiccupped except on documents with vast collections of fonts and font sizes.

    Cheers,

    Toby Haynes

  • Extreemly cool! (Score:3)

    by eshefer ( 12336 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:51AM (#1398845) Homepage Journal
    The Keynote yesterday was extreemly cool. And the User interface for mac os X will set standards.

    the coolness ocares when you minimze and maxime windows.. the window just liquifies and funnels it self into the icon doc window smoothly when being minimized you simply have to see this happening to fathom the whole coolness of the UI..

    checkout the real Video stream here [yahoo.com] (start from about 1/3 into the stream to see the UI demo)

    It really is extreemly cool.

    This perticular story submision pisses me off. I hate it when cluless people write FUD about stuff they know nothing about whether it's about apple, linux, or what ever.

    It's obvious that the guy who wrote the submission to slashdot did NOT see the keynote and does not understand the importance of what Jobs showed yesturday.

    And the Icons size can be resized, they can be extreemly small, and then you can magnify them.. that magnification thing is also total coolness.

    **********************************************
    watch that realvideo stream, it's damn cool! **********************************************
    -- ------------------------------
  • Well, a lot of these things are optional. For example, the icon size and window style issues are all options. The dock is admittedly new, though.

    The way the new control panel functions is actually a throwback to old-school MacOS, where the control panel actually was a single app with a list of items in it.

    I'd personally like to see the Apple menu come back. It is so heavily ingrained in the Mac user psyche, it should stick.

    As for the drive icons on the desktop, I believe that's going to be 'fixed' in the final. I kind of hope so, in this case. It fits the desktop metaphor much better.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • I have been asking myself the same question.

    I run Mac OS 9 at home, and I have a dual boot 95 and CalderaOpen Linux PeeCee. Oh I have another box running RedHat 5.2 also. At work I have OS 9 and a MacOS X Server running on an iMac C.

    I'm not really sure what I want to use as a Server. OS X's installer is a dream, even compared to Caldera. I've tried YellowDog Linux PPC and it kept crashing and burning on my "Beige" G3. I'm really trying to decide if I want to slap all my time and effort into Linux, or do I want to work more with OS X Server and WebObjects?

    I've horsed around with KDE and I'm not sure how much I like it compared to MacOS and OS X Server, theres just something lacking to me in the UI.

    As for OS X Server, I really like it as a Server. I'd use it as a desktop OS, but I can't play my OpenGL games under it.
  • People bitch when Apple doesn't update their OS forever, then bitch when they do. Innovation doesn't mean doing things differently just for the sake of doing things differently. Apple has in the past, frankly, hurt itself by ignoring other technologies. Finally Apple gets something damn near out the door, and still receives flak.

    Face it, Apple is doing the best thing for itself and its customers. I love the MacOS interface, but I don't want to be stuck with its foundation for much longer....

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • How dificult to port X APPS to this? (Score:3)

    by Pengo ( 28814 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @06:57AM (#1398862) Journal
    I suppose that any console based applications / daemons .. servers would be fairly portable because of the BSD Kernel, but what about the interface? Is it going to be possible to port (easily) X-apps?

    Maybe this is the reason that Apple has delayed (or Sun?) a Jdk 2. Hopefully they will have it for OS-X.

    If the UI is anything close to X, hopefully this will mean that with industry efforts in porting software to the Mac, it will be no big deal to port it to Linux.


    I am just happy to have more choices! :)

  • MacWEEK [zdnet.com] reports that in Aqua, the new Apple GUI, windows will have red, green and yellow buttons in the top left for closing, maximizing, and minimizing the window, respectively. [Screenshot] [zdnet.com]

    This replicates one of the most annoying features of the Windows interface -- putting the "close" and "minimize" buttons side by side, instead of at opposite corners of the frame. You can't say Apple is changing its design to make life more comfortable for people used to Windows, since Windows uses a different corner.
    --
    "But, Mulder, the new millennium doesn't begin until January 2001."

  • Man this is cool. From flamefest to lovefest in just a few posts. :>

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • I wouldn't say its linux's first real competition. MAC OS X doesn't even run on x86 much less SPARC, ALPHA, IA64, ... and if MACOS X is POSIX compliant, you could possibly run LinuxPPC applications on it. You have to remember... Windows NT is POSIX, that doesn't mean that I can run my x86 linux apps on it (although MACOS X is BSD based and linux binaries will run in BSD, oh well... don't expect them to compile easily.)
  • One button was absolutely 100% the correct choice in 1984. Early experiments with 3 buttons (old X, Windows v1,2,3) were totally miserable. "You want buttons? You can't handle buttons!"

    15 years later, both users and developers can handle the 2nd button. Ge t a 2+ button scroll mouse instead [cnet.com]

  • I don't see how that can be much of a problem. You just always use positioning instead of colours. Does you friend drive?
    Same problem, same solution. It's all a case of just getting used to hitting the right location. Think about all those god-awful Kaleidoscope themes out there! Some change the location and colour of the grow and close boxes, so again it's a case of position, not colour.

    PS about new hardware, don't forget there's supposed to be an Apple Days thing in February(?) :)

    Pope
  • I hope that the funneling trick can be turned off. Some people would not want that for that reason.

    but you have to agree that some people might want it, too..



    --------------------------------
  • Having a nice GUI isn't a real competitive advantage for long, with the progress being made in GNOME and X-windows, the advantages of Mac OS X will not last many months.

    There's a lot of ways in which even MacOS 9 is way ahead of anything X, and has been for years. Just a few off the top of my head:

    • Absolutely flawless multi-monitor support. Yeah, yeah, I know about Xinerama, but it doesn't even come close to what the Mac has had for 10 years. You can visually configure the logical relationship between the monitors by dragging them around. You can have monitors with different sizes and bit depths and still drag windows between them. The color palette subsystem which handles that is very sophisticated. I have yet to even hear about anything in the X world that comes close.
    • Their scriptable, recordable, high-level event model: AppleEvents. It's very powerful to be able to say "record my actions," go do a bunch of things with the GUI, and then have a script appear which will reproduce what you just did. Yeah, yeah, talk to me of CORBA and Perl/Python/Guile/Tcl, I know all about them. They're still not up to the level of usability that Apple's program scriptability is. Recordability of your actions into a program is a huge enabler.
    • Seamless inter-application data exchange. There's a unioform model and a set of common base datatypes behind the Mac's copy&paste, drag&dropediting, clipping files, and publish/subscribe (aka live copy&paste). (And it's a very clean design, not some hack like OLE.) Yes, there are similar protocols in the *nix world (Xt, CORBA), but usually the best you can hope for is being able to move text between applications with the primary X selection. There are some new things which aim in the direction of the Mac's capabilities, but the Mac has had this for 15 years. It's pervasive, extremely flexible, and very robust.

    Most people don't realize just how far ahead of the rest of the UI world the Mac is. Make no mistake, Byte got it right when they said "it would not be an exaggeration to describe the history of the computer industry for the past decade as a massive attempt to keep up with Apple."

  • Ummm. Can I laugh? Linux's first real competition??? What about Windows, *BSD, Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, AIX, BeOS, etc??? I'd say Linux was Windows NT's first real competition... But Linux is also leaps and bounds away from competing with Apple/Mac OS-X.

    They have completely different markets, and anyone that says that Linux can take on Apple at the desktop is living in a different universe... KDE and GNOME are still awefully far out from the Mac's interface, instead emulating Windows which in turn attempts to lift the best from the Mac and X and really just missing the whole point of both.

    And further, dare I say the "A" word? Applications? No MS Office. No AOL. No Adobe Apps (aside from distiller, reader, and possibly framemaker). The list goes on.

    No, Mac OS-X is NOT Linux's first real competition. If it were, Linux would be dead in the water right now... Apples a desktop company. Linux is basically doing what NT did... Starting on the server and migrating towards the desktop. And it's still got leaps and bounds to go, sorrry.
  • I guess so! :>

    I was saying it in the context of the post I was replying to. Right now I don't think Apple is even really competing against Linux (and yes, if Linux were a threat to their market, they WOULD compete). They're more worried about Windows and keeping current Mac users at this point.

    The AC should read more carefully. I said "kill Apple's chances of destroying Linux", not "kill Apple's efforts in destroying Linux". Seems subtle, but there's a big difference. Then again, it is comon with ACs to not read carefully, so I shouldn't be too surprised...

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • It's not like it stores each program and documents icon.... The Application has a set of Icons inside it. When it's installed, the icons are referenced in the desktop DB. Each file has a creator and type code, which references the correct icon.... It really won't add up to much real quick or anything... Besides. In the day and age 300, 400, and beyond MHz processors, 12 GB hard drives and 64 MB being the minimum amount of shipping RAM in most machines, what's the worry? It's not like it took us 15 years of Moores law to finally get machines with enough horsepower to handle larger icons.... there's just a lot of idle CPU time that may as well be used for something constructive.

  • The dock and "genie" effect (Score:3)

    by MacJedi ( 173 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @07:22AM (#1398921) Homepage
    I saw the keynote via a live sat. feed yesterday and MacOS X is truly amazing. You don't get a good feel of it from the pictures; I think you need to see it in motion.

    Firstly, icons in the dock can be re-arranged on the fly- they can be simply dragged from one spot to another and if you drag them off the dock, they maxamize. As you add more icons to the dock, the size of the icons shrinks. This at first disturbed me because the icons can get pretty small and Jobs mentioned something about the dock handling 128 icons. Then he showed the magnify feature and stunned everyone. Yes, it works and yes, it is really slick. I think you have to see it in action to appreciate it.

    Another slick feature that nobody has mentioned yet (I think) is the system wide "genie" effect. I'm not sure if I can explain this, but I'll try: Basically, when a window is mazimized or minimized, you don't just see the outline of the window move. Rather, the window looks like it is being sucked into a smaller size by a black hole (at least to me :). It looks very liquid and very slick. Steve actually demonstrated this with a playing quicktime movie and it didn't miss a beat! I am sure that this type of effect (and the systemwide transparency too) is only possible because of openGL.

  • Supposedly, current OSX builds run just fine on PCI-based 604s. Don't expect Apple to 'officially' support them, however.

    If they do, it'll be well after official hardware support is complete on the G3/G4 platforms.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Re:Regarding Icon Sizes (Score:3)

    by um... Lucas ( 13147 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @07:26AM (#1398930) Journal
    Okay.. I just made a Photoshop TIFF file. 4 channels. 128 by 128 pixels. The size, uncompressed, is 70,541 bytes. That's a far cry from 1/2 a meg, don't you think? And that's a TIFF, with quite a bit of extra garbage along for the ride. Don't agree? I'd email it to you, if you'd like...
  • Supposedly, "power users" will have full access to the BSD layer, including shells and anything else you would typically find in /usr/bin and the like.

    Word is that OS X is *not* POSIX compliant merely because they haven't bothered to have it certified as such, and that anything designed to compile on a POSIX compliant system should compile with only the typical hassle involved with porting from any number of *nix systems to any number of other *nix systems. (i.e. if it's a properly designed package, it should work fine).

    I've successfully compiled eggdrop, mysql, and a few other things... I've not tried, but I'd be willing to be that the authors of some libs might have to exert a little elbow grease, especially graphics libraries that access hardware directly... but it shouldn't be too hard.

  • Re:power and simplicity (Score:3)

    by um... Lucas ( 13147 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @07:37AM (#1398940) Journal
    Apple would be unwise to mention Unix in relation to it's consumer OS... Otherwise, I'm sture we'd see Microsoft pointing out this very fact: "Look, the Macintosh Operating System is based on Unix - that 25 year old operating system, that require you to edit text files from the command line in order to do anything at all with it..."

    No. Just let them ship the OS with all the buzzwords people are looking for. If someone is so interested, they will easily find out the underpinnings of their machine. But don't intimidate them from buying one in the first place.
  • Okay, I can see where you are coming from. This is definately late in coming.

    However, it's worth noting that most of the idiots responsible for the multiple failed OS strategies ( specifically those in management) are now working elswhere. The first thing Jobs did upon his return was boot most of the old Apple 'cruft', bringing in a lot of NeXT influence as well.

    If Apple hadn't been purged 2.5 years ago, this Expo's keynote probably would have been Yet Another OS Strategy announcement - assuming Apple would be in business at all. While Apple has kept a number of its better engineers, management has been all but replaced. The people to blame aren't even there any more.

    Anyhow, it sounds like you have a fairly decent philosophy, and should use whatever works (many Macs users stuck with Apple because, in their/our view, there wasn't an alternative to what Apple offered). Now that things are changing, you'd be doing yourself a favor by looking at Apple again...

    (note: this is coming from a macos, beos, linux user)

    Just a thought... :>

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])
  • What intrigues me is the way it does desktop rendering. You'll notice that on the larger screenshot the menus are transparent to the windows beneath them, which is no big deal if its part of the application (this is in the quick time window and the image window) and the finder menu is semi-transparent to the desktop. But what is cool is that where the finder menu comes down and bonks on the quick time window.

    This means that they must do rendering in layers. So why does this matter. IIRC, people were saying that it would be far to inefficient to render a desktop in layers, well obviously it isn't. However, how this works over X is still up in the air because X has the network export option and all.

    Hmm...I only wish I was up to X11 hacking.
  • I find MacOS *extremely* hard to use.

    Ah, but you are not the intended market that Apple was looking for. Sure, you feel comfortable with a UI that allows you to do anything, but what about consumers? They want to know what will happen when they do something. Apple is big on interfaces for the consumer. This is their strength.

    There's a reason there's variety. It's because what you need isn't what others need. Everyone provides something different to the market. No where should one size fit all. You use what you need. Others will use what they need and Apple will provide it for them.

    -Brent
  • They've updates the developer site since the last time I looked at it. The excellent Objective C docment that dates from the NeXTSTEP era is included under the Cocoa section, whereas last time I looked I'm sure it was under the 'Legacy' section. That bodes really well for the future. It's a shame that Apple don't either:

    1) GPL the OpenSTEP API so more apps are written in a cross platform manner (imagine stripping down MacOSX and installing WindowMaker).

    2) Help the GNUstep guys to acheive the same things as outlined in point one.


    Chris Wareham

  • STUPID, STUPID, STUPID! (Score:3)

    by FFFish ( 7567 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @07:52AM (#1398962) Homepage
    Good: the old window controls, with the "close" button a heckuva long ways from the max/min buttons.

    Bad: the OS-X window controls, which put these buttons all beside each other.

    Everyone who's encountered this crammed-together style has suffered data loss by accidently clicking the wrong button... not by way of momentary braindeath, but because the mouse overshot the button that was supposed to be clicked.

    Here's a call to action: the default GUIs for Linux should be designed by Human-Computer Interface experts. Go find a friendly grad student or six, and convince them that they should contribute to the open community through a donation of their expert interface design skills.

    The GUI can be done better! Emphasize lower error rates and higher throughput, and it'll be a superior product. Otherwise, it's just an also-ran, a clone of poor ideas and useless glitz.

  • in current Mac OSes, and in fact ever since I've been using a Mac, icons have been present in multiple sizes. Apple's just adding more, I think...

  • No reason... (Score:3)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @07:55AM (#1398966)
    You want to know how come kernelspace drivers don't decrease OSX's stability? The answer is actually simple. They're done right.

    That's what Linux and company are afraid of. Buggy drivers in kernelspace can totally trash a system. Currently, the Linux community doesn't seem to have the resources to produce video drivers of the same quality as you get from the company that makes the cards. This is mainly the fault of the corporations, mind you; they don't provide the documentation that the Linux community needs.

    I do hope that when KGI becomes stable enough (and it will, given enough time) it is incorporated into the kernel. Speed isn't the only issue with kernelspace drivers, after all; there's security issues too (any program that has to directly access hardware, such as X, has to run as root under the current system, because there's no kernelspace video functionallity). This both leads to potential exploits and puts the system at risk stability-wise, since a root process can still take down the whole system in the event of a crash.

  • Cute. (Score:2)

    by Daniel ( 1678 )
    Just what I've always wanted! Transparent dialog boxes so I can clutter my screen up with windows in front of *and* behind what I'm working on! Great! Clearly a giant stride forwards in technology and interface design!
    This does answer one question, though. When the G4 was released, I wondered: "Well, Apple has an incredibly powerful CPU, and they're working on an operating system that can actually use it (instead of blocking everything to poll the network card, for example). Now, it would be un-Apple to actually make this available to the user. Wonder how they'll burn all those extra cycles? Chrome, I bet." And I was right!
    Daniel

  • Seems awfully wasteful to me. Icons are visual mnemonics, not full-blown full-size images of their own right! Sheesh. 32x32 has always been fine for me. I seem to remember reading something about 48x48 being a possibility because that's what NeXT supposedly used. Even that's a waste, IMO. I want a larger desktop so I can fit more on it! And I don't want my system resources wasted on stuff I'm not using. *sigh*

  • All this chatter about the shortcomings of OS X, and how many of you have done more than just browse at the pretty pictures and actually read up on OS X? Above that, how many of you have even used OS X Server, much less been in the same room as an OS X Consumer machine? Reading your posts on /., I get the feeling that the answer to both questions is "very few".

    The preview of OS X on wednesday was a fleeting glimpse at what OS X has in store. It wasn't a detailed, fine-tuned, in-depth demo, nor was it a finished product being shown. The incessent bitching about the GUI shows that very few of you know enough about Apple in general, nor OS X specifically, to know that "flexibility" is one of the things they're touting in the new OS... Virtually everything you've seen comes with enough options to (hopefully) make just about everyone happy.

    As for Open Sourcing key parts of the OS... those of you that want all of this Open Sourced want it so that you can port it to Linux, not so that you can support Apple. What incentive is there for Apple (or Microsoft, or any number of other software giants) to Open Source their work, if the Open Source community isn't interested in working to better the project on the intended platform? Honestly... how many Open Source developers do you know that will get their hands on something like the Quicktime source and develop something for the MacOS? The long answer is "none".
  • If you want to turn off the 3-blink thing, just go to General Controls and set "Menu Blinking" to Off.

    Personally, I don't see what difference the .25 seconds it takes for the menus to blink makes. Then again, I also use keyboard shortcuts when possible.
  • It should be noted that the 'one window' thingy is just a more convenient location to place the #Hide Others menu pick currently located in the Applications menu. Hiding background applications, to me, at least, is much more useful than WindowShading them. Just option-click out of the app, and it goes away. Again, this is something to make it so that if Grandma gets confused as to what she's looking at, she can click on that to make everything go away for a while so she can see Netscape. This is also an option that can be done automatically in the General Controls panel. They took a relatively advanced feature (a simple one, mind you, but one whose usefulness is often overlooked.), and made it easily accessible. It certainly isn't a return to pre-MultiFinder days.
  • was just at MacWorld Expo yesterday and saw the
    demo of it... The icons can be scaled
    realtime     with the drag of the mouse... It
    was kinda nifty... I believe the big versions
    were used to make it easily viewable when doing
    the demos on the super wall sized screens...
    Another nifty feature was a back button like on
    your browser as you traverse the directory
    structure.... that one I liked...

    On a funny note, the demo-dude was showing how
    M$ IE worked on MacOS X. Looked fairly good
    for what it's worth, but the real point was
    that he was demonstrating how the separate
    processes won't crash when one goes bad. IE
    was the process that crashed - and the rest of
    the OS kept on chugging along... it was
    kinda ironic considering M$ booth is not
    that far away from Apple's...

    Oh, the coolest thing was Apple's Cinema display.
    22" viewable area and it's sharp... I really
    wnat one of these!

    And what's the deal with pushing the V-Mail crap?
    If you look at the demo (on tv) and what not,
    the resolution and stuff sucks... sigh...
  • Hey, before that vein in your forehead bursts, chill the **** out!

    NT is competition for linux... or rather vice versa. When Linux surpasses NT marketshare, then it'll be the other way... And plenty of companies run only Microsoft software, so obviously the requirement for a GUI isn't that hard on them...

    And so far as applications go... I was talking in reference to CONSUMER USE... And in general, the Mac market. No imaging professional is going to drop Photoshop for the GIMP, sorry! And no matter how good you think Star Office may be, people will DEMAND microsoft applications for some time to come... And AOL... well, that happens to be the worlds largest ISP... People like AOL... You're right... I do have an AOL account i can't seem to get rid of, but it's been long since relegated to email...

    And sorry, most imaging is not done on Unix... It's done on Mac's... Unix gets the high-end of 3D and Film production, with NT taking the mid-range of 3D and creeping into the film and video world due to the microsoft investment in Avid... But just about every poster you see, magazine you read, they're all done with Macs...

    But mostly, I don't see Mac OS X going after much of Linux's market as a whole... Maybe LinuxPPC, but not really, because OS-X Consumer is just that - a consumer OS. And Linux is nowhere near them in that market. VA Linux even said so.
  • Single user brain damage? Uh, okay... Anyways...

    The Mac is, believe it or not, very very scriptable. You can automate a number of things using Applescript.

    Different tool, same idea. A number of other languages (ie. Perl, Frontier) can be used in a similar fashion.

    Please learn a little more about what you speak. You're obviously not too familiar with this technology that you say is so lacking. Applescript in particular has been used for years to automate common tasks - and not just simple ones at that.

    - Jeff A. Campbell
    - VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com [velocinews.com])

  • Re:Why Linux? (Score:3)

    by Tom Christiansen ( 54829 ) <tchrist@perl.com> on Thursday January 06, 2000 @09:45AM (#1399044) Homepage
    OS X is unlikely to have support for large numbers of users
    Like what, like just two bits for the uid? I can just see it now:
    • uid == 0b00: "root"
    • uid == 0b01: "daemon"
    • uid == 0b10: "luser"
    • uid == 0b11: "nobody"
    The humor-impaired should please insert smileys. I'm not arguing with anybody, just applying levity.
  • What I find interesting is the way the web page brandished phrases like "Preemptive Multitasking" and "Protected Memory" as if they were amazing new tings just developed exclusively for Apple's use, while those of who actually know what they're talking about are saying, "About time, already!" I mean, it's really nice that Apple is moving into modern times and using modern OS features (they're even basing the core of the OS on BSD, which I think is a good decision), but why do the marketing people feel the need to sound like this is amazingly new stuff that no one has ever even heard of before, and all the Apple users should be really happy that they get to use this advanced software?


    --Phil (Just a little marketing-sucks rant. Move along, citizen; nothing to see here.)

  • Recent experiences with OSX server on a B&W G3 (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @10:30AM (#1399068) Homepage Journal
    I recently installed Mac OSX (server) on a blue and white G3, and as a long time Mac and Unix user, it was not the long hoped for uniting of my left and right brain hemispheres. The GUI stuff didn't feel right -- it looked kind of Mac-ish, but it felt a bit off -- not quite right, like watching a movie that was dubbed badly.

    Of course the Carbon system will mean that true Mac binaries will run under the workstation, which will be very cool; maybe that will be the ticket. In any case, I found the server OSX to be a disappointment.

    The server management was irritating; it didn't support either mode of finding things out that I usually use (hunting through the UI on the Mac and hunting through the Man pages or source code on Unix). To top it off, the GUI applications you were suppose to use to manage the thing crashed frequently. After a day of futzing around, I hunted up a copy of yellowdoglinux and was off and running in an hour or so.



  • Re:The dock and "genie" effect (Score:3)

    by Herbmaster ( 1486 ) on Thursday January 06, 2000 @12:46PM (#1399124)

    I am sure that this type of effect (and the systemwide transparency too) is only possible because of openGL

    I think it's a conspiracy to get us all to buy G4s. Realtime shrinking and growing and dimming/translucent-izing of windows and icons is something which could use a lot of CPU overhead - something which is totally unacceptable in an operating system. I'm glad apple has left window movement as a hollow outline in MacOS, it means it can be fast and unbloated. However, I'm betting the OSX/aqua graphic toys can be done using the G4's Altivec instructions ("Velocity Engine"). Using Altivec would mean very little extra cpu load because most of the time in a desktop environment you aren't going to be using altivec for much else. This screws over those of us who "merely" have fast G3s, though.

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