Biggest Apple Release in Over a Decade and a Half

“Mac OS X is the future of the Mac. This is really important to us,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said when announcing the beta on Aug. 29.
But the release may not be for everyone yet. Rather than clamoring for the rather buggy beta test version, average home users will probably want to wait until the official release next year, said prominent Mac columnist Bob LeVitus.
“I would not install it on a Mac that you depend on for productivity,” he said.
Appeal
An operating system controls all the basic functions of a computer, from managing applications and memory to interacting with peripherals such as disk drives, printers, and other computers.
The Mac OS also includes the Mac’s famous look: the shape of windows, the size of icons, how menus pop down from the top of the screen.
OS X (Apple says to pronounce it as “Oh Ess Ten”) will change all that.
In preview releases, buttons have transformed from dull gray to round, jeweled colors. Menus are elegantly translucent. A “dock” at the bottom of the screen functions a lot like the bottom of a Windows screen, allowing users to reduce applications to icons so they can run quietly in the background.
Under the hood, the changes are even more dramatic. When the core of the current Macintosh operating system was laid down, Ronald Reagan was running for a second term, Culture Club was still spinning hits, Microsoft’s operating system, DOS, relied on cryptic text commands, and nobody had heard of Windows.
The new operating system is rewritten from scratch based on an industrial-strength core called Mach 3.0. OS X walls off programs from each other, so when one crashes, users don’t have to reboot the computer. Windows NT does this, but not Windows Millennium Edition. OS X also provides a much more efficient way of running several programs at once, bringing the Mac up to standards enjoyed by partisans of the Linux operating system.
“Crashes should be, in theory, a thing of the past,” said John Norstad, a computer administrator at Northwestern University who has programmed the Mac for more than a decade.

X a ‘Must’ for Some
OS X will be a must for owners of the new dual-processor Macs, announced in July. The current Mac OS 9 doesn’t automatically use two processors together to double a computer’s speed. OS X does.
The Mach base — Mach, like Linux, is a relative of the UNIX system — also means that for the first time, Mac users will be able to ignore the icons and use exclusively text commands to run their system, if they choose.
Old programs will still run on the new Mac, Apple says — but they won’t be able to use the new features. Though 200 developers have committed to releasing new versions of software by the time the final OS X system comes out in “early 2001,” very few programs are available right now that use the power of X. Apple has always fallen short of Microsoft’s Windows in available programs, so having enough new software available when OS X launches is key to selling the operating system.
One program that will be ready for the launch is Microsoft Internet Explorer, which will be included on the beta test CD. Microsoft will have the rest of its Mac applications available in OS X-powered versions “as quickly as we can,” said Irving Kwong, product manager for Microsoft’s Macintosh business unit. “Apple has done some really great work in regards of trying to make the process of Carbonizing [converting Mac applications to OS X versions] as smooth as possible,” he said.

X’s Rating
Analysts say OS X is critical to Apple’s survival. Chris Le Tocq, an analyst with the Gartner Group, said it may not convince business users to switch to Mac, but the increased reliability and power will help Apple’s position with its existing home, education and publishing users.
“This is very important for Apple, and I think that in terms of the industry it’s important, because it sort of raises the bar in terms of what a user experience and an OS should do,” he said.
Microsoft seems to agree on the industry perspective.
“I think both Apple and Microsoft are innovating in the operating system space, and that’s a good thing for consumers,” said Windows Me product manager Greg Sullivan, who said he hadn’t had a good look at the new OS.
Last year, Mac OS had 5 percent of the operating system market, compared to 90 percent for Microsoft Windows, according to research from International Data Corp. That’s still a rise from Apple’s 4.1 percent share in 1998. But Linux is coming up quickly from behind, with a current 3.9 percent share, according to IDC.
Linux has been handicapped, though, by being difficult to use. OS X tries to take some wind out of Linux’s sails by providing a similar UNIX core, but a much more friendly front-end.
“[OS X] could cop some market share from both Windows NT and the Linux/Unix communities,” LeVitus said.
But the key question will come in January, when the final version of OS X comes out and users see how many software companies have lined up to support it. Next year will be a battlefield year in the operating system world, Le Tocq said, with OS X duking it out with Linux and a new consumer version of Windows for consumers’ hearts and machines.
“This is a very big deal for Apple, its developers and its users,” Norstad said

Source ABCNews