February 2000, Vol. 11, No. 2

Oh-ess-ten

New Macintosh operating system will mean changes for the faithful

Aqua -- the new user interface for Apple Computer Inc.’s Macintosh OS X -- seems to take the iMac look and drown your desktop with it.

Though it will probably be more than six months before the new operating system is out, there’s no question that it’s going to change pretty much everything about the little computer with the graphical user interface that arrived 16 years ago this month.

Correspondent George Powell -- an unrepentant Mac-o-phile -- visited his 15th MacWorld Expo last month, and inside you'll find his trenchant views of not only the publishing productivity products that he found on the show floor, but his take on the keynote address by Steve Jobs.

The general press emphasized that in this Expo’s keynote, Jobs finally relented and allowed himself to be named the "permanent" chief executive of Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple (a grateful board of directors rewarded him with a private jet).

But, buried in the rest of the Expo announcements were some more concrete features that will come to Mac OS X, the next-generation operating system that solves a number of problems for people who use Macs in mission-critical applications (say, like publishing).

Powell gives you some thoughts on the overall operating system but doesn't touch on what might be the biggest change -- and biggest set of problems -- that Mac OS X will bring: the user interface.

Jobs demonstrated the new Mac OS X user interface at the Expo and Apple has distributed some screen shots of what it will probably look like.

Taking a page from the user interface of the latest versions of QuickTime and Sherlock, Aqua has lots of bubbles and transparencies. And taking a cue from the iMac and iBook, Mac OS X is all hues similar to "Bondi Blue," the color of the original iMac.

Interface gurus have been arguing amongst themselves after taking a look at Aqua and Mac OS X (Apple hasn't seeded anyone with the new operating system yet; most are commenting based upon watching demos or looking at screen shots). The gripes seem to fall into three basic categories: the loss of the traditional Finder, the oversized new icons and the "gumdrops."

Mac OS X is basically an update of the NextStep operating system, which Apple inherited when it bought out the Jobs-founded Next Computers. There was a browser in NextStep and now there’s a browser in Mac OS X. Is this browser better than the Finder? Those who've used NextStep and Mac OS X say yes; those who are steeped in a decade-and-a-half of Finder are not quite convinced.

The icons, while startlingly beautiful, will demand a 17-inch monitor because they are so big.

And the "bubbles" or "gumdrops" for sliders and buttons? Well, many observers suggest that Apple owes a heavy debt to Kai Krause, the programmer formerly with MetaCreations Corp. Kai’s Power Tools and Kai’s Photo Soap do bear a striking resemblance to the Mac OS X interface.

The point is that Mac users are going to have to get ready for some changes. With Mac OS X, they'll get pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory (that means running multiple applications concurrently and if one crashes, it doesn't take out the whole machine), but to get those two "modern" features, they'll have to get used to Aqua.

Also inside, I visit the Newspaper Association of America’s annual SuperConference and weigh in on the pre-press program, while Correspondent L. Carol Christopher takes a look at newspapers that exist solely on-line, with no ink-on-paper counterpart.

Lastly, we wrap up with Correspondent Steven E. Brier’s take on the digital photo dilemma: now that newspapers are increasingly handling photos exclusively in a digital manner, how will they save the results?

In the rapidly changing world of publishing systems, is one little interface change worth getting upset about? Just stop, think for a moment, and count to 10.

-- David M. Cole