Well, it's been a long time coming...but what a rush! MacOS X is gonna be great! Of course, it's not great yet. I've just installed the new Public Beta on my new Macintosh G4/450SP Tower with 256MB RAM, 47GB storage, new Apple 15" Studio Display (LCD), and Harman/Kardon SoundSticks, so it's a good standard platform to see how it works, and all is not pretty.
First up, my installer experience.
The installation took about eight minutes, at which time the installer said it would reboot and displayed a pretty, colorful spinning disk in the upper left of the screen while I waited...and waited...and waited. Finally, I gave up, pressed the hard reset button on the front of the Mac, and restarted...back into OS 9.
I thought something was wrong with the installer, or perhaps something was wrong with my Mac's hardware configuration. I had read the many early postings concerning MacOS X, and noted that the Public Beta was pretty picky about the target machine's hardware setup. I had a bootable 5GB MacOS 9 partition on the first partition of my master IDE hard disk (MacOS X will not install on the slave drive, yet, or so Apple says), another bootable 5GB MacOS 9 partition as the second partition of the same drive (to install MacOS X over), and a blank data partition on the rest of the drive, so it should have worked...and probably would have had I known...
MacOS X has virtually NO USB support yet. Yep, that's right. The company that forced us to all convert to USB has not yet incorporated it into their own shiny new OS. Not realizing this, I proceeded to reformat the drive, Retrospect a copy of MacOS 9 back onto the first 5GB partition, create a second blank 9GB partition for the future MacOS X installation, and create yet another bootable MacOS 9 copy on the last partition (Yeah, I know, I'm ultra-conservative about fallback options!). And then, just to be safe, I Norton Disk Doctored all the partitions, then Speed Disked them, to make the installation as simple as possible for the installer. Meanwhile, about three hours later...
I was now ready to try again. Interestingly, I still didn't know about the USB problem, and so hadn't disconnected them, but this time I was installing MacOS X on it's own partition, alone. Once restarted successfully, I would be using the MacOS 9 copy in the first partition for my new "Classic" environment (to run old Mac stuff). This time it worked...sort of.
I mean, the installation completed successfully, and the Mac restarted successfully, but again, not into MacOS X...back into 9. Fortunately, I had read the previous week that MacOS X required a special System Disk utility to select the proper MacOS X startup partition. And, being the technoweenie that I am, I had downloaded it, "just in case," and had a copy on my MacOS 9 startup partition. (Note: You MUST use the System Disk utility provided with MacOS X to select it as a startup drive. You CANNOT use the Startup Disk Control Panel in MacOS 9.) So, I double-clicked on the System Disk utility, and up popped a blank window, which filled after a few seconds with all the bootable partitions on my Mac's drives. I selected the MacOS X partition, crossed my fingers, and restarted my Mac.
Voila! MacOS X was finally booting up successfully! It was now about 11:30, but I wasn't giving up. I was pumped!
MacOS X is BEAUTIFUL.
The 2D Quartz rendering system is amazing. Transparencies everywhere...real time scaling in a flash. NOTHING has ever appeared this pretty on a computer, ever. The much-maligned Dock at the bottom of the screen is a work of art, at least for MacOS X icons (the new fully scalable 128x128 ones, vice the old fixed 32x32 ones we're used to). The icons are not so much icons as scalable photographs. After playing a few minutes swooshing my mouse back and forth across the Dock just enjoying the icons swelling and shrinking back to normal size as we've all see in Apple's presentations, I got down to some serious customization, and began digging into all the Preferences dialogs I could find.
By 3:30 a.m. I was bushed, and called it a night. But my mind was racing, and it was difficult to sleep. So, up I bounced at 6:30, partially refreshed (yes, it's tough being retired, at least temporarily), and began playing around some more. In all my excitement at playing with the interface, I hadn't noticed that something was missing...sound. I have Apple's new Harman/Kardon SoundSticks (a wonderful birthday present, by the way!), and they weren't working. This was not good. And to top it off, when I tried to shutdown the Mac, it wouldn't. It would just sit there, with the colorful spinning disk spinning away, forever. Now, not only would my new OS not crash, it wouldn't even turn off!
A couple of weeks earlier I had installed the SoundSticks on my Mac and been mesmerized with their good looks and fine sound. Now DVD movies, Quicktime movies, and just any other sound, had a depth it didn't have before (The SoundSticks included a couple of desktop speaker transparent cylinders, and a transparent iSub with an interior blue glow for under the desk.). After playing around with them that fine evening, and attempting to shutdown the Mac, a problem occurred. A few seconds after shutdown, the Mac automatically restarted. The only way I could shutdown completely was to disconnect the SoundSticks. At the time they were connected to the back of my 15" Studio Display, so I tried plugging them directly into the Mac. Same problem. Finally, I plugged them into my externally powered Entrega 7-port USB Hub, and the problem ceased. Some signal over USB was feeding back from the speakers to the Mac and getting it to restart.
Since I was having sound and shutdown problems again, I immediately suspected USB. And, sure enough, when I completely disconnected all USB devices, except for the keyboard and mouse, the Mac shutdown properly. Additionally, a number of anomalies in the interface that I had attributed to bugs in the beta release just went away.
Last night and this morning I poured through the MacOS X forums at MacCentral and MacAddict and confirmed that Apple has not provided generic USB support in this release. That means no attached scanners, compact flash readers, gamepads, joysticks, or any of the other indispensable goodies that we need for the complete Mac experience. But, heck, we now have an operating system that doesn't crash!
What about my old software?
Once I had the Public Beta appearing to be working properly, I began testing stuff out. I successfully tested virtually EVERY software package on my Mac that didn't attempt to control the hardware (an important NO-NO). Here's a list of the software packages I ran successfully from the MacOS X Classic Environment (think of it much like Virtual PC for Windows running under MacOS 9, only for old Mac software running under the new OS.):
| Mac Applications that Work in MacOS X | ||
|---|---|---|
| Application | MacOS 9 Startup | MacOS X Startup |
| MacOS 9 Desktop/MacOS X Desktop w/Classic | 36 sec. | 2 1/2 min; 35 sec. to restart Classic |
| Adobe PageMaker 6.5 | 4 sec. | 6 sec. |
| Adobe Illustrator 6.0.1 | 8 sec. | 10 sec. |
| Adobe PhotoShop 5.0 | 9 sec. | 11 sec. |
| Deneba Canvas 7.0.2 | 9 sec. | 12 sec. |
| AppleWorks 5.0.4 | 3 sec. | 5 sec. |
| FileMaker Pro 3.0v5 | 3 sec. | 5 sec. |
| Graphic Converter 3.8.2 | 3 sec. | 5 sec. |
| HTML Editor 1.1.4 (P.S. - I'm writing this in the Classic Environment) | 3 sec. | 5 sec. |
| iCab Pre2.1 | 3 sec. | 5 sec. |
| iMovie 1.0.2 | 6 sec. | 4 sec. |
| MacVNC 1.2 | 2 sec. | 3 sec. |
| Microsoft Excel 98 | 3 sec. | 5 sec. |
| Microsoft PowerPoint 98 | 2 sec. | 5 sec. |
| Microsoft Word 98 | 3 sec. | 5 sec. |
| Painter Classic 1.0.2 | 3 sec. | 4 sec. |
| Intuit Quicken Deluxe 98 | 4 sec. | 5 sec. |
| TheSky 5.0.5 (Astronomy) | 5 sec. | 10 sec. |
| Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 | 5 sec. | 5 sec. |
| Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 (Carbon) | - | 6 sec. |
| Netscape Communicator 4.7.5 | 5 sec. | 4 sec. |
| Microsoft Outlook Express 5.02 | 5 sec. | 5 sec. |
| VNC Viewer PPC beta 3 | 2 sec. | 4 sec. |
So, for those concerned about using their old applications in MacOS X's Classic Environment, you probably don't need to be. They started up virtually as fast under this MacOS X Public Beta, with the added advantage that should they crash, the Classic Environment can be restarted in about 30 seconds. One caveat: Although each of the above applications started up fine in MacOS X, that doesn't mean they will work flawlessly. So, you'll still have to test more thoroughly those apps most important to you.
What About Games?
I started to compile a similar list of games I have that run, but it seems clear that apps that don't bang the hardware work fine, and I was simply too tired at this point to go through a round of restarts of games and the Mac to test the various configurations. However, I did try a few standard-bearer games in the Classic Environment, and here's what I found:
| Game Title | Setup | MacOS 9 | MacOS X | Comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quake3 Arena | OpenGL | - | - | Looks Great! | |
| Unreal 2.2.4b7 | Flyby/VM Off/ 10x7/32-bit | RAVE | 36fps | 16fps | Looks OK |
| SW | 36fps | 7fps | Looks OK | ||
| Unreal Tournament 413 | Flyby/VM Off/ 10x7/32-bit | RAVE | 23fps | 22fps | Looks Awful! |
| SW | 7fps | 7fps | Looks OK | ||
It's clear Apple is dropping RAVE, with how poorly it performs in the Classic Environment. Interestingly, Unreal played just as fast in MacOS 9, in either RAVE or Software Rendering, and turning off Virtual Memory (VM) signicantly improved frame rates. In the Classic Environment, Unreal dropped from 36fps to 16fps for RAVE, and became virtually unplayable (7fps) with Software Rendering (although both looked OK). Unreal Tournament played at the same frame rates in MacOS 9 or the Classic Environment (around 23fps) with RAVE, but looked terrible. Using Software Rendering significantly improved its appearance, but it became unplayable (7fps). The conclusion: The MacOS X Classic Environment has a LONG WAY TO GO to be useful for games, unless they're written in OpenGL (Quake looked and ran great in Classic).
Final Thoughts
I think this is a great preview of the next OS for the Mac. But, it's defintively not for the faint-hearted. It's VERY picky about hardware. Printing is supposed to work to Postscript printers via AppleTalk over a network (although I haven't tried it yet), but your USB printer won't. Games are still a dream, unless you're hooked on Quake 3 Arena, which looked great, and points the way for OpenGL in Mac's gaming future. DVD movies don't work, but built-in Mac Zip's and CD-ROMs do (PC Zip's wouldn't mount, and wouldn't eject until I rebooted into MacOS 9, mounted it, then ejected it. MacOS X doesn't eject disks at restart or shutdown). Networking worked fine, and I've connected successfully to the Internet via DSL through my home gateway.
I'm going to leave the USB devices unplugged and get used to MacOS X for awhile. I love its interface. I love its stability. Somehow, I now feel a bit anxious whenever I reboot into MacOS 9, a feeling I always had, but which now has risen to the surface since MacOS X is so much more solid an OS.
I'll be sharing more down the road. I think it's going to be a great ride!
- Dave Marsh
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