January 21 - January 28 2001

Approaching the age of X by Alessandro Cancian The most important event to take place in 2001 in Computerland will undoubtedly be the official launch of Mac OS X. After almost 17 years, Apple turns a fresh page and does so in the most radical way possible, by literally reinventing the OS that will run on all its future machines. The purpose of this project was to create an operation system offering the stability and power of Unix systems but at the same time being easy to use. Apple did not content itself with patching a user-friendly interface around a Unix heart, but went well beyond that, creating what I believe could well be the OS of the future. The day I received my copy of the beta version available to the public since last September for about $45 CND my first dilemma was how to approach this OS. Should I look at it with the eyes of a PC user, a Mac user, or someone who never used a computer? Dealing with an incomplete product, I decided to look at it from the standpoint of a Mac user in order to evaluate it as an evolution. Installation on a totally empty hard disk lasted 15 minutes with no trouble to report, and after rebooting and filling some set-up wizard panels I was ready to begin in my first test run. Being an old Apple user, my first impression of the new OS was not good; nothing was in its right place or at least where I thought it was supposed to be. No Apple menu, no Hard Drive on my desktop, not even the Trash can. Panic soon receded, however, and navigating the system became a real pleasure. The new graphical interface, called "Aqua," is definitely captivating: buttons like 3D water drops, windows and menus that can become semitransparent, icons not stylised but derived from real images. The effect would strike the fantasy of anybody looking at the screen. But the most evident new trait introduced with Aqua is the "dock," i. e. a semitransparent toolbar positioned in the lower part of the screen, where you can store and keep track of everything you want. Icons of the most used applications, folders, documents and more, the "dock" summarizes in one application what until now had been accomplished by the Apple Menu, the Finder and the Control strip all together. Perfectly customizable, the dock is something which, despite its current limits, I would not renounce. A new system for browsing ones HD has also appeared. Equipped with some pre-programmed buttons (computer, Favorites, Applications, Documents, etc.) allowing immediate access to the most commonly used features, the new navigation system also includes three different modes (list view, pull-down menu, and a multicolumn view) to see and access files. It should be noted that some of the graphic novelties, such as the grouping of the three buttons for window management, the dock itself, the new control panel, remind us of some characteristics of Microsofts OS. All in all, the new GUI is very relaxing, and the various processes seem to take place in an incredibly uniform way. Stability, however, is the winning edge of OS X. As far as Im concerned, two months werent enough to crash the system even once. Thanks to its multitasking capabilities, in fact, should an application close unexpectedly, the system as a whole would not suffer from it in the least, thus avoiding the need to restart the machine. OS X can smartly handle both processor usage by the different applications and the identification of the quantity of memory needed by the different tasks. For instance, now it is possible to launch applications at the same time, without the need to wait for one to complete opening before doing the same to the other; or we can leave an active process in the background while we do something different. Some applications will have to be rewritten in order to access some of the new characteristics of the OS. OS X can run any application currently on the market for the Mac environment. This is possible thanks to "Classic," an emulation environment that can run programs not written for the new OS with no performance degradation. In my case, the Classic environment worked with such success that from time to time I forget it is only an emulation. Its not yet possible to give a final evaluation of OS X, considering that it lacks several pieces, such as printer drivers, wireless connection drivers, etc., and especially the lack of an adequate number of applications specifically written for the new OS. OS X still needs some polishing and debugging, but even in its present, incomplete state it is full of promises for the future. A future that is not that far, since the Age of X, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs, will begin on March 24. For further information please visit www.apple.com/macosx/

 

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