Mac OS 10.0

1999–2004May 11, 1999Macs Only!Mac OS
Yes, that's what Steve said when he introduced the Mac OS X client schedule. He recounted that the server version was released in January and announced that developer Preview Release 1 would be given to every WWDC attendee. There will be a Preview 2 release in the fall and Mac OS 10.0 will be released in final early next year. From the description and demos, Mac OS 10.0 really looks super! While Microsoft has been trying to monopolize the browser market in a silly battle with Netscape and the Justice Department by clumsily kluging Internet Explorer into the awful Windows OS, Apple has been hard at work making the most incredible truly integrated and futuristic personal computing operating system.

Darwin is the foundation and it will be open sourced to allow developers ultimate access to the basic Mac OS engine. The main piece of that engine has been updated from the Mach 2.5 to the Mach 3.0 kernel, one of the reasons for a quarter or so slippage.

Quartz sits on top of Darwin. It will replace the present windowing and graphics technology and is based on Adobe PDF technology and Pixar animation technology. Including Quartz is another reason for the Mac OS 10.0 slippage. The demos were absolutely astounding. Typing on a cloud image background produced anti-aliased lettering with blurred drop shadows in one operation. The text and an image were selected and moved or rotated through space at will. A slider allowed a selected image to become more transparent. All this in an OS, not an application!

Three Application Environments on top of Quartz -- (1) Classic (former blue box) will allow existing apps to run but without any of the new features; (2) Carbon, largely complete today, we heard about last year that with an average 5 percent change in coding (carbonizing) will allow classic apps to use Mac OS 10.0's new features; and (3) Cocoa (former yellow box) that will include a full implementation of Java.

Apple via its "Eat Your Own Dog Food" policy announced by Steve is developing new applications for Mac OS 10.0 -- none for Classic, a new Finder for Carbon and an integrated e-mailer in Cocoa -- to make sure Mac OS 10.0 works well. Two were demoed.

New Finder (labeled Finder Viewer) finally breaks out of the constraints of Chooser. It lets one look in a hierarchical, organized and integrated fashion across hard drives and networks, gives previews of images and has an icon view as well.

Mail Viewer works with POP, IMAP and LDAP servers. Emails can contain PDF files without attaching them and needing an additional viewer. Email content, even PDF files can be searched.

Finally, the code compiler was changed from gnu to egcs (?), anyway the latest C++ compiler. What a great operating system to look forward to!

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