Overview

Mac OS X is Apple's next generation operating system (OS) software. It is a total departure from the old Mac OS 9 code and ushers in a new era of computing for the Macintosh. If you are a long-time Macintosh user and have stuck by Macintosh through thick and thin, this is the operating system you have been waiting for. The new Mac OS X sports a Unix-based core called Darwin that provides many important features such as protected memory, preemptive multitasking, and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). Unix has been the industrial strength OS for workstations and servers for many years, and now it is available as the core of Mac OS X.

To ease users into the new OS, Apple has created a "Classic" environment that runs as an application in Mac OS X. Under this environment, you can install all your old programs written for Mac OS 9. However, applications run under this environment do not take advantage of OS X's unique features.

For those developers wishing to upgrade their applications to take advantage of Mac OS X features, Apple has provided software developers new tools to "Carbonize" their applications. Carbon is a traditional procedural API based on the original Mac OS toolbox. With only minor adjustments to the code, traditional Mac OS 9 programs can run in Mac OS X and take advantage of all of its modern features.

Completely new programs created for Mac OS X should be written with the Cocoa framework. This can be done in either two languages, Java or Objective-C. Since Mac OS X was built with Objective-C, this is the preferred way to build truly native Mac OS X applications. Accordingly, as new applications are released for Mac OS X, Apple expects people to depend less on the "Classic" apps and more on the "Carbonized" or "Cocoa" ones.

As this is a very new operating system, the number of new features is endless. Here is a partial list of the important ones: Aqua (Mac OS X's new GUI), Quartz (a new 2-D graphics system), Java 2 (built-in), BSD networking, and QuickTime 5.

How Long Did It Take to Learn to Use It Productively?

As with the previous versions of Mac OS, OS X was very easy to install and start using immediately. There are two CDs. The first is Mac OS 9, which must be installed first. Mac OS X is then installed via a separate CD. As always, there are no boot disks to create; just pop in the CD and install. For my system, installation probably took a total of 1 hour, which included the formatting of my hard drive.

Many people have had trouble with the installation of Mac OS X. You must follow the instructions exactly or you may have difficulties. For example:

(1) You must use the OS 9 version that comes with OS X. If not, you may experience problems installing OS X.

(2) If you are using only one hard drive and it is larger than 8 Gb, you must have a partition of less than Gb on that drive, and it must be the first partition. Otherwise, when you try to install OS X, all the possible disk partitions will not be selectable and you will not be able to proceed any further.

(3) Make sure your computer's firmware is completely up-to-date. Check to see if there is a firmware update on the Mac OS X installation CD or on Apple's Software Update Web site.

(4) Always back up all your data before attempting anything.

Installation is smooth, despite these few installation quirks. Obviously, to install Mac OS X you must be familiar with reformatting and creating partitions.

Once installed, Mac OS X may look a bit different from Mac OS 8 or 9, but your increased productivity will be noticed quickly. Perhaps the most important productivity feature is the Dock, which is Apple's answer to Microsoft's Start Bar. Located at the bottom center of the screen, the Dock is the command center for your Mac OS X applications. Opened application icons are displayed on the left side of the Dock. When you control-click on a particular icon, a contextual menu offers various options such as Quit, Show in Finder, and Keep in Dock. On the right side of the Dock are minimized application windows and other items such as hard drive partitions and mounted CDs. One great feature is when you control-click on one of your hard drive partitions in the Dock, the resulting contextual menu displays all the files and folders on that drive for quick and easy access.

If you have numerous items in the Dock, a magnification feature enables your cursor to magnify items in the Dock. Most useful about the Dock is its visual presentation. For example, when Apple's new email program Mail is opened, the Mail icon in the Dock shows you how many received mail items you have in your inbox. In addition, when you minimize application windows, they are displayed in preview mode. This is really convenient if you have 5 QuickTime videos running concurrently. If you minimize them, you can see them all playing in real time in the Dock, so distinguishing between them is as easy as watching the video. Trying doing that in Windows.

Also included with Mac OS X is the software update feature. Instead of installing system updates manually, you can have Mac OS X check for updates automatically and install them. To date, Apple has released three updates which have added features, increased system performance, and tightened security.

Product Quality

Customizability

Apple has done a nice job of letting you customize your Macintosh. Even more important is how simple and easy it is to do. To select a desktop picture, choose preferences from the Finder menu and click Select Picture. In order to change the Finder toolbar, just click "customize toolbar" in the Finder menu. Then just drag and drop your selections onto the toolbar. There is also an option to choose how the icons are displayed (icon and text, icon alone, or text only). Of course, Mac OS X supports multiple users, so all these settings are saved for each individual user.

Ability to Program in Scripts, Add Extension Modules, etc.

AppleScript is included in Mac OS X, so you can use your old scripts and create new ones in the same way. In addition, you are not limited to AppleScript, since Perl, Python, and other languages (available on Unix OSs) will run on your system, allowing for more power and flexibility.

Ability to Import and Export in Different File Formats

Like Mac OS 9, Mac OS X reads file formats well with the help of utilities such as StuffIt Expander. Examples of file formats are StuffIt (.SIT), AppleLink (.PKG), Arc (.ARC), Bzip (.BZ), Compact Pro (.CPT), DiskDoubler (.DD), Gzip (.GZ), Lha (.HH), Rar (.RAR), Tar (.TAR), Unix Compress (.Z), and Zip (.ZIP).

Useful or Unusual Features

Two of the most useful features that have finally been built into Mac OS X are protected memory and preemptive multitasking. Protected memory isolates applications in their own memory space, so if for some reason a Cocoa application crashes, it will not affect other applications. The end result is that you will not lose your work in application X due to application Y freezing or crashing. As for preemptive multitasking, this distributes your processor's power more efficiently, giving priority to primary applications while allowing less important ones to continue in the background. This allows you to work on more than one application at a time without bringing other functions to a complete halt.

Another useful feature is the ability for developers and companies to port their Unix applications with few or no changes to Max OS X. This can be done by recompiling the source code with GNU's GCC C Compiler that is included on the Developer Tools CD for Mac OS X. This opens up a huge wealth of software applications and utilities that were previously available only to the Unix and Linux communities. Bioscience software that has already been ported includes NCBI Blast, Clustal W, HMMER software, Primer 3, OpenPBS, WU BLAST, and Xcluster.

To take advantage of some of the Unix features, Mac OS X includes a terminal application that allows you complete command-line interaction. If you need access to the /usr, /etc, /bin, /tmp, or /dev directories, they are all there. However, you will not find these folders in the normal GUI window system, so beginners need not fear messing up their system.

The decision to base Mac OS X on a Unix core will have a profound effect on the Macintosh scientific community. Since Unix software can be easily ported, biologists can enjoy these powerful applications without the learning curve and expense of traditional Unix systems. Moreover, Mac OS X easily integrates with enterprise Unix systems due to their similar file systems and networking capabilities, making this pairing a natural fit. All this potential should be enough to stimulate more scientific software, and I believe the Macintosh community is there to support it.

In my opinion, Mac OS X is the best of all worlds for an operating system. It has the best GUI and is the most user friendly, it has the ability to run Unix programs with few or no complications, and it has core software applications from Microsoft such as Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Office 2001 for Macintosh. No other platform can offer this sort of flexibility.

Limitations

Despite all its advantages, there are some limitations and minor problems. The first is hardware. You must have at least 256 Mb of RAM to make the OS usable. On my test machine, Cocoa apps take about 15 seconds to launch, although once opened, they perform as usual. Menus and system response are slow compared to what you may be used to with a similarly equipped Mac OS 9 system. In addition, crashes/freezes have occurred a bit more than I expected while working in the Classic environment. However, this does not affect the rest of the machine, as mentioned earlier.

Another main problem right now is the lack of released applications. The Microsoft Internet Explorer that shipped with the OS is only a "preview release." On the bright side, most Cocoa-based software should be available by this summer's Macworld Expo.

Also, there are some minor problems that include no inherent multibutton mouse capabilities, no capacity to change the color of folders as in Mac OS 9, and printing only through USB or network ports. If you have a beige G3, your printer port will not be recognized by Mac OS X.

Comparisons with Similar Software

Compared to Windows 2000, Linux, and various Unix variants, Mac OS X stacks up well. The system finally can stand on equal footing in the stability department. Of course, compared to the old Mac OS 9, it is a huge leap forward in capability, efficiency, and design.

Technical Support and Documentation

Online help is adequate, although not as extensive as for Windows 2000, Solaris, or Linux. A problem I have noticed, however, is that my "Mac Help" menu choice does not work in the Finder. I have not found a remedy for this yet, but when I click on a help topic in the Finder, I receive the error: "Specified HTML file cannot be found."

Target Users

For those biologists who need more system stability, have applications that have been ported to Mac OS X, and have the proper system hardware, Mac OS X will be well worth your time and money. An upgrade is not recommended, however, if you do not have the minimum hardware requirements or if you are satisfied with your current platform.