Mac OS X Review/Tutorial
Evan M. London-User Group Ambassador Hastings-on-Hudson
Macintosh User Group (HoHMUG)
Welcome to our future. Darwin means things will never, ever be the same in any of our worlds once we take the now inevitable step of sticking a Mac OS X CD in our G3s and G4s and launching the installer. I say inevitable because the floodgates are open, and 10,000+ developers are pouring in with OS X native applications, a lot of it appearing at MacUpdate and VersionTracker already (yeah, most of it is shareware, but a couple of the big fellas have also posted some updates to date, such as HP with an OS X driver for its laser prnters), and sooner or later we will all have to take the plunge and get this "thing" going. I have been working with OS X for three weeks to date (03/28/01) on my Wallstreet G3 PowerBook and my iMac DV SE. It is to say the least a bit of an eye opener for even the most inveterate Macophile, and harkens back to the dreamy summer days of going from System 6.0.7 to System 7.0 (what a nightmare that summer was; imagine dreams of 17 floppies dancing in your head). It is not quite as bad as that, but it is stretching the ol'faculties as the move from 6 to 7 once did. That was about 10 years ago if anyone is counting. I digress....
OS X, delivered "officially" to my doorstep on 03/21/01 in boxes marked DO NOT OPEN UNTIL SATURDAY 03/24/01 (ha, ha), is in fact delivering the goods. I am able to boot my Macs under OS X and still run virtually every single one of my applications that works properly under Mac OS 9.1. This is astonishing. Think of it as sort of a Virtual PC for Mac OS 9.1 but ever so more sophisticated and friendly because it is Mac OS to begin with (as, uh, opposed to VPC running Windows). Whether it is subjective or not, running the Classic Environment is seemingly faster running under OS X than if you were booted from OS 9.1 on its own. Go figure. What is really cool is if set up with a fairly clean Mac OS 9.1 System, Classic screams under OS X and it is a blast to be able to access 9.1 applications "on the fly" while also having the OS X environment to work in and learn. This is also a good way to figure out what you really and truly work with and can lead to some wholesale (but judicious) house cleaning to make room for all those OS X applications you'll be playing with.
Links to Apple OS X Pages:
Here goes nothing. I am only an egg.
This is a basic screenshot of my PowerBook G3 booted up under OS X. On the left is a Finder Window, while at the right are the two hard drives that are in my PowerBook, the internal 8 GB drive named "Venus" and the 30 GB media bay drive named "X Files" (how appropo).
I have, despite it being the number one no-no ever in the Wonderful World of Macintosh outside of starting up with the Caps Lock key on, TWO SYSTEM FOLDERS on my hard drive Venus. Relax. It is okay. One is my regular everyday Mac OS 9.1 System Folder and the other is my Mac OS X (ten) System (it is a folder but is is called simply System). In the 9.1 Startup Disk control panel (see below; Apple Menu-->Control Panels-->Startup Disk) you can see that I can choose which of these two to startup the computer under. I also have a nice fresh copy of 9.1 on X Files that I can boot from as well (or boot under OS X's Classic Environment). This is available once you've installed OS X. There are some rather strict caveats about what portion of today's larger hard drives OS X can be installed in so watch out for this one as a potential major pitfall.
You have to have Mac OS 9.1 up and running and happy before you can ever think of installing OS X. If you absolutely have a nice 9.1* System going and have a Mac with FireWire and cannot wait to install OS X then do yourself a favor and get an external FireWire hard drive to install it on. It is now possible to boot most G3s and G4s with built in FireWire ports from an external FireWire hard drive. If you want to be absolutely sure this will work arrange to drop by with just your CPU and we'll do the test (heh, heh). This way you can keep your "happy" 9.1 System, applications, and hard drive perfectly happy in and of itself without mixing and matching an OS X System on the same hard drive. Probably the safest way for the average person to get started with X unless they have a brand new Mac and are starting from scratch (or they have a pro set it up).
With this said let's get on with the screenshots of what you'll be seeing as you explore The World of X.
*Soon Apple will release a "codifying" 9.2 which will work even better with OS X. This is probably more for the new 733 G4s with SuperDrives (DVD/CD-RW writer) than anything else; still look for an even more "codifying" 9.5 at some point this year is my bet.