moonrockreptiles- OS X DP3

Mac OS X DP3 Report Part 1 : The Finder/Aqua.

I recently acquired a copy of Mac OS X DP3 and figured I would share all the info I could dig up with the readers of my favorite site: moonrockreptiles! This report will most likely be spread out over a period of AT LEAST 2 days, if not more. Keep checking back!

The installation begins by starting up from the DP3 CD and launching the installer, just like DP2. That, however, is where the similarity ends. DP2 did nearly half the installation in Mac OS 9 and the rest after it rebooted in Mac OS X, the Mac OS 9 installer in DP3 basically just restarts the computer into Mac OS X where we find a fully aquafied installer. Installation was NOTABLY quicker than a Mac OS 9 installation, though I could see this changing as Apple adds all the stuff they will be shipping with the final version. The install takes around 750 megs. As you watch the installer you are struck by Aqua. Neither screenshots or words can quite do it justice. The way everything moves is SO smooth, truly a fluidic interface. In any given situation the default button (The one that will be pressed if you hit return) pulses gently from light blue to dark. The fill in the progress bars is animated, reminiscent of flowing water. Resizing a window is not done with a window outline, the window itself grows and shrinks as you resize. When you expand the window whatever was beneath the previously unviewable area is instantly visible, and if you cover something up it is instantly covered up. All the fonts are beautifully anti-aliased. Unfortunately there is no way to access the "Grab" utility while doing the installation or else I would have screenshots for you.

After the installation you go through the setup assistant (More on this in the next article). Then you are ready to use DP3! It feels very odd when it first boots up to a blank desktop. Nothing there. Your menus at the top, your dock at the bottom, but not an icon in site, just a blank Quantum Foam desktop. Not sure I will ever get used to not having all mounted disks show up on the desktop, that is one of my favorite things about the classic MacOS. Sure, you can put an alias of each disk on the desktop, but it just doesn't feel the same. As you open a file browser and begin to look around you see MacOS X's UNIX underpinnings. I hope Apple changes the file system to be more Mac-like by the final release. My biggest complaint about Windows, UNIX, and most other OSes has always been a billion files in a billion folders all of which are in some way essential, each with totally non-descript names. Unfortunately DP3 is like this. The file system seems totally illogical to me, it feels as though I am accessing the computer I am sitting in front of through a network... This about the only real complaint about DP3... Any others I might have are all things that will most likely change by the final release, but somehow I doubt this will.

Obviously they got at least some of the graphics acceleration code done as DP3 is SNAPPY. Everything is animated and all animations are smooth regardless of what you are doing. From what I have heard all the debug code is still in place and is making the OS run slow compared to the way the final release will run. If this is truly the case I would estimate that OS X will have an overall speed increase over OS 9 of at least 200% by the final release. As we have all seen from screenshots, EVERYTHING produces a drop shadow and there are LOTS of transparencies. It truly is gorgeous. Open GL is not included though the read me suggests that it will most likely be released as an update to DP3 from Apple's developer web site. The genie effect is absolutely fantastic. The colored buttons make the OS very intuitive. The way the save dialog pops out of the window you are working in looks really sweet; however, it is not system wide yet, and I don't think it's fully implemented the way it will be in the final version.

The navigational tools built into every finder window and the go menu make it very easy to pop around to different folders on your hard disk. The search field built into the finder windows is handy as well. I hope that by the final release clicking on an image file in the browser view will produce a preview of the image as in Windows 98. There are clearly a number of things not yet built into the OS, or possibly intentionally left out so as not to reveal some surprises. Firstly while the background tab appears in the Desktop View Options, you cannot select it. I suppose it may be possible that if you find the Quantum Foam file that is the current desktop picture you could replace it with an image of the same filename, but I have not yet tried to tackle this. There is no simple, built-in way to change the desktop picture that I can find at the moment. Also you cannot bring up the View Options for any of the finder windows, only for the desktop. This means that all icons in the finder windows are always huge and there appears to be no easy way to change this. You CAN adjust the icon size for icons on the desktop, and the cool thing is as you move the slider the icons scale right before your eyes. Icons look gorgeous, I just can't wait till I can make them smaller! Even Mac OS 9 icons are scaled to the larger size, and they look remarkably good.

You do have immense control over the dock. You can choose it's maximum height, whether or not you want magnification with a mouseover, and how large you want the magnification to be. You can also choose whether you want the dock on screen all the time, or if it should disappear when your cursor is not at the bottom of the screen like the Windows 95/98 task bar. The dock seems far more intuitive and useful/functional than the taskbar.

The help center, though quite incomplete, looks like a fantastic reworking of the OS 9 help center. I especially like the troubleshooting section.

There are a number of things that will take a little getting used to. First, I keep forgetting that quit is in the application menu instead of the file menu. Option clicking outside of the open program no longer hides it (Or in this case docks it). No restart option is a pain, when you choose shutdown (which seems to me to take kind of a long time) the OS shuts down and brings you back to the login screen where you can choose "Restart". Another complaint about the file system is that it seems like most of what you use is aliases and I have tended to hate aliases except for aliases of a select few utilities on the desktop. Time is always in military format. Save and Shut down, a feature said to be built into any UMA Mac motherboard still does not seem to be an option. I like that 640x480 resolution is not considered to be "Recommended", which is fine by me. Default is 800x600. Startup Items has apparently become the preference panel "Login Items." "Undo" is funtional in the finder which is tre-awesome.

Well, these are my initial impressions. My next report will include anything I notice between now and then, and I hope to cover the programs that come with DP3, including Quicktime, Sherlock, Mail, and Fetch. I am sure much of what I have reported here will change in the final version. Overall I would say Mac OS X is shaping up to be a great OS, but I have a feeling that at least a few of the things that irritate me about it will remain in the final version.

DP3 Screenshots

SCREENSHOTS REMOVED AT THE DEMAND OF APPLE LEGAL

Menus

Application Menu: Here you find the About this Mac command (Which now tells you OS Version and the amount of RAM in the machine. Since Virtual Memory is ALWAYS on, and Mac OS X handles how much RAM a program needs, you no longer see a list of open programs and their memory usage. The preferences option is next, more on this further down the page. You also find the logout option.

File Menu: Here you can create a new Finder window. This makes the OS kind of feel as though it is a web browser. You have several options that stay the same as OS 9: New folder, Open, Close Window, Duplicate, Make Alias, and Show Original. Also new to this menu are Move to Trash, and Add to Favorites. I think both of those speak for themselves.

Edit Menu: Undo works in the Finder, and the Clear and Preferences for OS 9 are no longer here.

View Menu: View as Columns uses the NeXT style browser, as Icons and as List work like they have previously, clean up is still there, and apparently you can ONLY arrange by Name from this menu. Gone are As Buttons, As Window, As Pop-Up, and Reset Column Positions.

Go Menu: this menu is like the bookmarks menu in Netscape, or the Favorites Window in IE, or the Hotlist Window in iCab, or...

Special Menu: Empty Trash, Eject, Erase Disk, and Shutdown all work as would be expected. Gone are Sleep and restart.

Help Menu: Brings up the HelpCenter, more on this later.

Preference Panels

Appearance Panel: A couple of the options available in OS 9's Appearance Control Panel, but not many. I sure hope they support themes (Though this is unlikely), imagine animated themes. Gosh that would be cool.

Classic Panel: This panel offers you the option of booting classic from any disk with a valid Mac OS 9 system folder.

Time Zone Panel: Allows you to select your time zone from a menu or a map of the world.

Network Time Panel: More or less like network time part of the Mac OS 9 Date and Time control panel.

Energy Saver Panel: Looks more or less like the MacOS 9 Energy saver.

Keyboard Panel: Not much new here either.

Localization Panel: Choose your preferred language and keyboard layout.

Monitors Panel: As with many things is this OS, Aquafied but nothing new here.

Mouse Panel: Same story.

Network Connections Panel: Looks like an Aquafied cross between Open Transport and Windows networking.

Network Services Panel: This is very nice. It looks like by next year every Mac will ship with the ability to easily be a full on Internet (And Intranet) server. Smooth.

Password Panel: Choose your login password.

Sound Panel: Much like the current sound panel, but you can adjust input gain and balance.

System Disk Panel: Basically the same as the Startup Disk Control Panel in OS 9.

Misc

Blank Desktop: This is what you see when you first start up DP3. No disk icons, none of the usual browse the internet or e-mail icons... Nothing.

Desktop View Options: The only place you can get the "View Options" is the desktop. Doesn't work for any windows. The Background tab is not functional yet.

Finder Preferences: Here you can the desktop icon size, you can control the size of the dock, the size the dock magnifies to with mouseover, turn on or off Dock Magnification, enable auto show/hide of the dock, and choose whether you want to have to click or double click items in the dock to maximize them. This is the "Preferences" item in the Application menu.

Help Center: This is what you see when you first launch the Help Center.

Help Center Troubleshooting: A neato but incomplete section of the Help Center.

Icon View: A shot of a window in icon view. Note the somewhat browser-like view. Apple taking lessons from Microsoft? That's a reversal. Fortunately, it looks like Apple did it RIGHT though...

Inspector: This is the OS X version of the Get Info window. You no longer have the option to adjust preferred and minimum memory a program uses.

Save Dialog: Wish I could capture a movie of this coming out, it looks smooth... Course I think Apple already has a movie of this available on their Mac OS X page.


	Mac OS X DP3 Report Part 1 : The Finder/Aqua. I recently acquired a copy of Mac OS X DP3 and figured I would share all the info I could dig up with the readers of my favorite site: moonrockreptiles! This report will most likely be spread out over a period of AT LEAST 2 days, if not more. Keep checking back! The installation begins by starting up from the DP3 CD and launching the installer, just like DP2. That, however, is where the similarity ends. DP2 did nearly half the installation in Mac OS 9 and the rest after it rebooted in Mac OS X, the Mac OS 9 installer in DP3 basically just restarts the computer into Mac OS X where we find a fully aquafied installer. Installation was NOTABLY quicker than a Mac OS 9 installation, though I could see this changing as Apple adds all the stuff they will be shipping with the final version. The install takes around 750 megs. As you watch the installer you are struck by Aqua. Neither screenshots or words can quite do it justice. The way everything moves is SO smooth, truly a fluidic interface. In any given situation the default button (The one that will be pressed if you hit return) pulses gently from light blue to dark. The fill in the progress bars is animated, reminiscent of flowing water. Resizing a window is not done with a window outline, the window itself grows and shrinks as you resize. When you expand the window whatever was beneath the previously unviewable area is instantly visible, and if you cover something up it is instantly covered up. All the fonts are beautifully anti-aliased. Unfortunately there is no way to access the "Grab" utility while doing the installation or else I would have screenshots for you. After the installation you go through the setup assistant (More on this in the next article). Then you are ready to use DP3! It feels very odd when it first boots up to a blank desktop. Nothing there. Your menus at the top, your dock at the bottom, but not an icon in site, just a blank Quantum Foam desktop. Not sure I will ever get used to not having all mounted disks show up on the desktop, that is one of my favorite things about the classic MacOS. Sure, you can put an alias of each disk on the desktop, but it just doesn't feel the same. As you open a file browser and begin to look around you see MacOS X's UNIX underpinnings. I hope Apple changes the file system to be more Mac-like by the final release. My biggest complaint about Windows, UNIX, and most other OSes has always been a billion files in a billion folders all of which are in some way essential, each with totally non-descript names. Unfortunately DP3 is like this. The file system seems totally illogical to me, it feels as though I am accessing the computer I am sitting in front of through a network... This about the only real complaint about DP3... Any others I might have are all things that will most likely change by the final release, but somehow I doubt this will. Obviously they got at least some of the graphics acceleration code done as DP3 is SNAPPY. Everything is animated and all animations are smooth regardless of what you are doing. From what I have heard all the debug code is still in place and is making the OS run slow compared to the way the final release will run. If this is truly the case I would estimate that OS X will have an overall speed increase over OS 9 of at least 200% by the final release. As we have all seen from screenshots, EVERYTHING produces a drop shadow and there are LOTS of transparencies. It truly is gorgeous. Open GL is not included though the read me suggests that it will most likely be released as an update to DP3 from Apple's developer web site. The genie effect is absolutely fantastic. The colored buttons make the OS very intuitive. The way the save dialog pops out of the window you are working in looks really sweet; however, it is not system wide yet, and I don't think it's fully implemented the way it will be in the final version. The navigational tools built into every finder window and the go menu make it very easy to pop around to different folders on your hard disk. The search field built into the finder windows is handy as well. I hope that by the final release clicking on an image file in the browser view will produce a preview of the image as in Windows 98. There are clearly a number of things not yet built into the OS, or possibly intentionally left out so as not to reveal some surprises. Firstly while the background tab appears in the Desktop View Options, you cannot select it. I suppose it may be possible that if you find the Quantum Foam file that is the current desktop picture you could replace it with an image of the same filename, but I have not yet tried to tackle this. There is no simple, built-in way to change the desktop picture that I can find at the moment. Also you cannot bring up the View Options for any of the finder windows, only for the desktop. This means that all icons in the finder windows are always huge and there appears to be no easy way to change this. You CAN adjust the icon size for icons on the desktop, and the cool thing is as you move the slider the icons scale right before your eyes. Icons look gorgeous, I just can't wait till I can make them smaller! Even Mac OS 9 icons are scaled to the larger size, and they look remarkably good. You do have immense control over the dock. You can choose it's maximum height, whether or not you want magnification with a mouseover, and how large you want the magnification to be. You can also choose whether you want the dock on screen all the time, or if it should disappear when your cursor is not at the bottom of the screen like the Windows 95/98 task bar. The dock seems far more intuitive and useful/functional than the taskbar. The help center, though quite incomplete, looks like a fantastic reworking of the OS 9 help center. I especially like the troubleshooting section. There are a number of things that will take a little getting used to. First, I keep forgetting that quit is in the application menu instead of the file menu. Option clicking outside of the open program no longer hides it (Or in this case docks it). No restart option is a pain, when you choose shutdown (which seems to me to take kind of a long time) the OS shuts down and brings you back to the login screen where you can choose "Restart". Another complaint about the file system is that it seems like most of what you use is aliases and I have tended to hate aliases except for aliases of a select few utilities on the desktop. Time is always in military format. Save and Shut down, a feature said to be built into any UMA Mac motherboard still does not seem to be an option. I like that 640x480 resolution is not considered to be "Recommended", which is fine by me. Default is 800x600. Startup Items has apparently become the preference panel "Login Items." "Undo" is funtional in the finder which is tre-awesome. Well, these are my initial impressions. My next report will include anything I notice between now and then, and I hope to cover the programs that come with DP3, including Quicktime, Sherlock, Mail, and Fetch. I am sure much of what I have reported here will change in the final version. Overall I would say Mac OS X is shaping up to be a great OS, but I have a feeling that at least a few of the things that irritate me about it will remain in the final version. DP3 Screenshots SCREENSHOTS REMOVED AT THE DEMAND OF APPLE LEGAL Menus Application Menu: Here you find the About this Mac command (Which now tells you OS Version and the amount of RAM in the machine. Since Virtual Memory is ALWAYS on, and Mac OS X handles how much RAM a program needs, you no longer see a list of open programs and their memory usage. The preferences option is next, more on this further down the page. You also find the logout option. File Menu: Here you can create a new Finder window. This makes the OS kind of feel as though it is a web browser. You have several options that stay the same as OS 9: New folder, Open, Close Window, Duplicate, Make Alias, and Show Original. Also new to this menu are Move to Trash, and Add to Favorites. I think both of those speak for themselves. Edit Menu: Undo works in the Finder, and the Clear and Preferences for OS 9 are no longer here. View Menu: View as Columns uses the NeXT style browser, as Icons and as List work like they have previously, clean up is still there, and apparently you can ONLY arrange by Name from this menu. Gone are As Buttons, As Window, As Pop-Up, and Reset Column Positions. Go Menu: this menu is like the bookmarks menu in Netscape, or the Favorites Window in IE, or the Hotlist Window in iCab, or... Special Menu: Empty Trash, Eject, Erase Disk, and Shutdown all work as would be expected. Gone are Sleep and restart. Help Menu: Brings up the HelpCenter, more on this later. Preference Panels Appearance Panel: A couple of the options available in OS 9's Appearance Control Panel, but not many. I sure hope they support themes (Though this is unlikely), imagine animated themes. Gosh that would be cool. Classic Panel: This panel offers you the option of booting classic from any disk with a valid Mac OS 9 system folder. Time Zone Panel: Allows you to select your time zone from a menu or a map of the world. Network Time Panel: More or less like network time part of the Mac OS 9 Date and Time control panel. Energy Saver Panel: Looks more or less like the MacOS 9 Energy saver. Keyboard Panel: Not much new here either. Localization Panel: Choose your preferred language and keyboard layout. Login Items Panel: The replacement for the Startup Items folder! Monitors Panel: As with many things is this OS, Aquafied but nothing new here. Mouse Panel: Same story. Network Connections Panel: Looks like an Aquafied cross between Open Transport and Windows networking. Network Services Panel: This is very nice. It looks like by next year every Mac will ship with the ability to easily be a full on Internet (And Intranet) server. Smooth. Password Panel: Choose your login password. Sound Panel: Much like the current sound panel, but you can adjust input gain and balance. System Disk Panel: Basically the same as the Startup Disk Control Panel in OS 9. Misc Blank Desktop: This is what you see when you first start up DP3. No disk icons, none of the usual browse the internet or e-mail icons... Nothing. Desktop View Options: The only place you can get the "View Options" is the desktop. Doesn't work for any windows. The Background tab is not functional yet. Finder Preferences: Here you can the desktop icon size, you can control the size of the dock, the size the dock magnifies to with mouseover, turn on or off Dock Magnification, enable auto show/hide of the dock, and choose whether you want to have to click or double click items in the dock to maximize them. This is the "Preferences" item in the Application menu. Help Center: This is what you see when you first launch the Help Center. Help Center Troubleshooting: A neato but incomplete section of the Help Center. Icon View: A shot of a window in icon view. Note the somewhat browser-like view. Apple taking lessons from Microsoft? That's a reversal. Fortunately, it looks like Apple did it RIGHT though... Inspector: This is the OS X version of the Get Info window. You no longer have the option to adjust preferred and minimum memory a program uses. Save Dialog: Wish I could capture a movie of this coming out, it looks smooth... Course I think Apple already has a movie of this available on their Mac OS X page.
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