Mac OS X

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Exerpted from the NYT weekly newsletter Circuits

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From the Desk of David Pogue: A Sneak Peek at Mac OS X =========================================================

In just 48 hours, Apple will release a three-CD set that's been years and millions of dollars in the making -- a new product that has fans whipped into a frenzy of anticipation, fear and confusion. It's a new operating system called Mac OS X (which Apple hopes you'll pronounce "oh-ess-ten") that runs on all recent Apple models and, by this summer, will come installed on every new Macintosh.

In appearance and operation, Mac OS X isn't much like the previous Mac operating system. It is based on UNIX, a time-tested, corporate-caliber, almost crash-proof system architecture. On top is a beautiful, animated and graceful front end that looks little like the user interface Mac fans have known over the last 16 years.

On the Internet, there's been plenty of hand-wringing over Mac OS X. "Is Apple nuts? They spend years cultivating the original Mac system -- the one that changed the world and spawned imitators -- and now they're throwing it away?"

In truth, Apple had no choice. Over the decades, each passing generation of programmers piled new features onto the steel OS beams first laid in 1984 -- an infrastructure that was never designed for the Internet, heavy-duty networking or the massive graphics files generated by digital cameras. The current Mac operating system may appear polished, but underneath, the wiring is a mess.

It's not that Apple was shortsighted; this is simply the way the software industry operates. Every year, developers add more features and software companies sell more upgrades. (Microsoft is certainly no different. Indeed, Microsoft has almost perfected the software-upgrade treadmill as a business model.) This fall, Microsoft, too, will throw away an operating system millions of consumers already know and replace it with something essentially brand new, a consolidation of Windows Me and Windows 2000 called Windows XP.

I'll be reviewing the finished version of Mac OS X in next Thursday's State of the Art column, but I'm pleased to leak this much in advance: Mac fans have a lot less to worry about than they thought. The final version of Mac OS X puts back almost every one of the features that were missing from the early versions, including the Public Beta version.

Much of the concern centered around the Dock, an icon-based equivalent of the Windows taskbar. This row of icon tiles was designed to replace the traditional Apple menu (where Mac fans build a list of frequently used disks, files and programs), Application menu (which lists your open programs), Control Strip (pop-up shortcuts to frequently adjusted control panel settings) and pop-up windows (tabs at the bottom of the screen that pop up to show folder contents).

Surprisingly enough, the Dock performs all these functions just fine. (In this regard, the Dock has changed considerably since the Public Beta.) Disk and folder icons in the finished Dock sprout lists of their contents, just like pop-up windows, and a new class of Dock tiles work exactly like their Control Strip predecessors.

There are plenty of other surprises in the final version, too. For example, Mac OS X offers a networking feature called multihoming, which means that it can communicate with three different networks at once. In practical terms, this means that when you're home with your laptop, you use your home cable modem, if you have one. When you take the laptop downstairs, it switches seamlessly to the AirPort wireless network. And when you're in a hotel room, your laptop switches automatically to its built-in modem. You never have to change a setting.

For most people, there's no rush to switch to Mac OS X. Every major software company, including Microsoft, has promised to adapt its programs for Mac OS X compatibility, but most won't be available until the late summer or fall.

Even if you're not a Mac user, it's worth paying attention to Mac OS X, Apple's rising star. As history has shown, Apple's innovations can wind up setting the tone for the rest of the software industry.

Visit David Pogue on the Web at: http://www.davidpogue.com

-- Lars (larsguy@yahoo.com), March 22, 2001


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