Mactalent - Articles

The Jaguar Review
To OSX or Not to OSX, that is the question!

by: Avi Learner - Miami beach, FL - Jan. 16, 2003

The other day I was called into a clients office to do some service for an overdue MAC OS machine update to OS9. The client is a publisher working primarily with PageMaker, Photoshop, Illustrator and the like. They don’t use Quark in his shop, but we will talk about this later. Their entire office runs on FileMaker Pro and Intuit’s QuickBooks. They have only 2 PCs, one for QuickBooks, the other acting as a “gateway” to the Internet.

This client is lagging a bit behind the times a little in that quite a few of the machines in his office are still running some flavor of MAC OS 8.xx. While all of his office equipment machines are PowerPC, many of them are of the older G3 models, and won’t run OSX that well. He has asked me a few times, when will OSX be ready for “prime time”. To the publisher, the OS he is using is at the core of his “bread and butter”, so if it has failings, it detracts from his ability to perform, ergo he loses money.

So I was a bit miffed as to why he wanted to spend the time and money to upgrade to OS9? His response was “I have heard so many problems people have had with OSX, that I am reluctant”. I can understand this, because as I said before he relies on his equipment “running” in order to make to make a living. My response to him at this time was, “Yes Roy, OSX is ready for “prime time”, but it’s now a matter of “scale of economy”. They have the latest version of Adobe’s In Design – the successor to PageMaker and quite the competition for the publishing monster Quark.

Let’s face it; our economy is in the crapper as far as it comes to growth. Every company and industry I know of is scaled back, especially in IT expansion or equipment upgrades. Companies cannot afford to retool with new machinery and software at the pace, which the computer industry pumps out new stuff. In the MAC world we have come to expect Apple to WOW us every 6 months with new hardware and software. And we all know that our beloved MAC cost us more than the average PC.

So, I talked him into making an OSX partition and setting up In Design and Photoshop and any other software he was using (Word, Entourage, Explorer, etc). He has since called to thank me saying, “I loathe going back into OS9 now, OSX is great and it doesn't’t crash! When can we switch the rest of the office?” He has a pretty fast G4, but many of the machines he has are older MACs or Performas.

Then I told him that the older machines would all have to go, in order to convert to OSX. At $799, the current crop of Snow iMacs would surely fill the bill for most of the non-art, or editorial staff he has, but replacing 20 or more Macs is still a commitment of some cash. I imagine they will convert their Art Department where the “meat and potatoes” are made first, then gradually phase out the older MACS in favor of newer machines running OSX.

If you are undecided about whether or not to switch to OSX, I highly recommend it, providing your current machine has the horsepower (at least a 400mhz G3 processor). If your box isn’t up to the task, consider a new MAC or a processor upgrade from OWC. If you are using a tower, you need a graphics card with at least 32 megs of ram, 64 or more is better in oreder to enable Quartz Extreme. These upgrades are all a better value then ever before, and a fraction of the price for a new MAC with similar performance. I think fairly low priced considering the power and features. The Jaguar Review - top

Browser Wars – GUI History
Which Browser do I use now?

by: Avi Learner - Miami beach, FL - Mar 4, 2003

Spending a lot of time with my Internet web browser, as I am sure many of you do, I welcomed Steve Jobs announcement of the Safari web browser with delight. It is great to hear Apple was paying attention to this ever so widely used, and ultimately necessary piece of software. I wonder if they will integrate it (as some 'other' companies do) with the OSX operating system?

Like many of you I started browsing the Internet with Netscape. (note: actually it was with LYNX a text only hyperlink type browser used from within a terminal window or Telnet client - pre GUI) Back then, few of us die hard Mac users wanted anything to do with ANY product emanating from Redmond. Fortunately for us the "darkside" was a bit slow on its Internet awakening, so it's complete domination of the Internet was thwarted. Not that it hasn't tried. The original internet running on top of UNIX servers was operational years before we regular people began using it. When the Internet started serving some commercial purpose, MS (and Apple) woke up. And Bill said, "I want that!"

The first graphically based browser Mosaic, became Netscape (Mozilla). It had nearly ALL of the GUI browser market and were actually charging for the product. I remember paying for a license, once. Then Internet Exploder came along and Microsloth started making it integral to their Windows operating system. Of course we all know about the anti-trust lawsuit that really accomplished nothing. Maybe it made MS play a little nicer with the MAC OS. We finally got a decent functioning version of Word and Office compatible with the Windows versions. MS also released a free version of Internet Explorer (IE) for MAC.

In the meantime, any new Internet user on Windows was steered directly into IE, so most people didn't even know there were other alternative browsers. Thank goodness Apple has focused on getting around to making a new rock solid operating system with OSX! Apple no longer includes Internet Explorer as the default browser in the dock of new machines. New releases of OSX 10.2.5 or higher will most likely install Safari as the default web browser.

I eventually see Apple’s new web browser, becoming integral to the MacOS. The newly announced "suite" of iLIFE programs are integrated to work seamlessly together. I predict MAIL, Browser and Calendar to work the same in the very near future under OSX.

For those of you who are on the fence about switching to OSX - take the plunge. OSX is the “BOMB” OS for today and the future. (no pun intended – “bomb” in this case would mean “great”) There are only a few developer stragglers, holding back transition to OSX for some professional users. But I have noticed flocks of developers who NEVER wrote a single line of code for MAC OS now porting their software to OSX in droves!

Under MAC OS8, we had only two web browser choices initially - Netscape & Internet Explorer. Both browsers were spawned from the NCSA Mosaic project of Mark Andreeson a University of Illinois (Champaign) Computer Science graduate, who eventually went on to form the core of the Netscape commercial project. “Mozilla” and the "Gecko" engine is the software (within the browser) that turns the HTML raw code of the Internet into the pretty text and graphics you view on the Internet.

You may have heard or read Steve Jobs keynote address to MacWorld on January 7th. He said speaking of Safari:

"Some people don't like Open Source, but we here at Apple love Open Source. We took the code from KHTML* and improved on it - for our Safari browser. We are making ALL of the improvements available to the Open Source community".

(* KHTML is a different browser engine than the “Gecko” engine used in Netscape or Explorer. It was originally written for the Linux open source project called KDE (a Linux OS GUI). It is very small code and blazingly fast. Apple has improved their ßeta of Safari which now includes tabbed browsing, a much requested feature. The JAVA implementation is still a bit buggy in my opinion, which cause the browser to freeze or crash altogether.)

So what is OPEN SOURCE anyway? If you follow anything in the news online, you will have undoubtedly heard about an operating system called LINUX. Linux is a variant of the operating system called UNIX, which was originally developed for Bell Laboratories at the University of California Berkeley. There have been a number of variants of this OS, but the most common is called BSD Unix or Berkeley Standard Unix.

This is/was the operating system that the Internet was designed to run on, long before Windows or Macintosh ever even dreamed of it. This OS was designed initially to provide a platform for collaboration, where scientists could communicate about their projects easily with colleagues across the globe. Back then it was all text based, but the idea of hyperlinks (html) came early on, which made it possible for a word or an idea to be underlined and selectable, which could link to another document.

Meanwhile, the MACINTOSH had come along and revolutionized personal computing by making the operating interface graphically (GUI) driven with a device to point to text or objects that the end user saw on the screen called a "mouse". So naturally, someone had to come along and make software that could be used to communicate through the network (internet). Early efforts were buggy at best.

I am not really sure which came first XWindows on the UNIX platform or the MAC. I am leaning toward the MAC as the first commercial GUI. But the idea caught on in the scientific community, and a graphical interface for Unix (called Xwindows) was fairly close at hand. This was long before Windows was even a thought. The Macintosh GUI came from software that was developed by XEROX labs, who had "no interest" in furthering the project and basically waved it's rights to the idea (and the code) so Apple (and ultimately Microsoft), could develop their respective GUI operating systems.

For historical perspective, Steve Jobs himself began the “rift” between Apple and Microsoft when he accused Bill Gates of “stealing Apple’s intellectual properties”. Apple sued Microsoft but then ultimately settled the case when Microsoft invested 150 million in non-voting Apple stock. The following “historical perspective” is quoted from http://www.apple-history.com website, which is independent and unsupported by Apple.

The Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The GUI had its roots in the 1950s but was not developed until the 1970s when a group at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) developed the Alto, a GUI-based computer. The Alto was the size of a large desk, and Xerox believed it unmarketable. Jobs took a tour of PARC in 1979, and saw the future of personal computing in the Alto. Although much of the Interface of both the Lisa and the Mac was based (at least intellectually) heavily on the work done at PARC, and many of the engineers there later left to join Apple, much of the Mac OS was written before Job's visit to PARC. When Jobs accused Bill Gates of Microsoft of stealing the GUI from Apple and using it in Windows 1.0, Gates fired back:
No, Steve, I think its more like we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and you broke in to steal the TV set, and you found out I'd been there first, and you said. "Hey that's no fair! I wanted to steal the TV set!The fact that both Apple and Microsoft had gotten the idea of the GUI from Xerox put a major dent in Apple's lawsuit against Microsoft over the GUI several years later. Although much of The Mac OS is original, it was similar enough to the old Alto GUI to make a "look and feel" suit against Microsoft dubious.

There is an additional explanation by Bruce Horn a scientist that actually worked on the “Alto” project at PARC online. Go check it out at http://www.apple-history.com/horn1.html. Jef Raskin who worked for APPLE COMPUTER credits himself in this article http://www.apple-history.com/raskin1.html for creating the “Macintosh” project and name.

In the Mac world we look at the core of our computer's files with SOFTWARE called the "Finder". What could be more obvious? In Windows the way to look at your files is called Windows "Explorer". I think this is where MS got itself into trouble, by naming the two distinctly different pieces of software so similarly. I think non-computer types (i.e. older jurors and lawyers who didn't grow up using computers), have trouble differentiating between "Windows Explorer" and "Internet Explorer". They did one other thing as well in every OS they have released since WIN98 in that you need to have the latest Internet Explorer installed in order to update your Windows software to the latest most secure versions.

I also think that this was Microsoft's intent, to confuse the general public into thinking that the ONLY way to the Internet was through IE. The only other alternative was maybe AOL as they have nearly always included an installer for AOL with Windows installation since Windows 98. They sort of took unfair advantage this way, excluding Netscape and other browsers that have come along.

We didn't really have all that much choice either, up until about a year and a half ago. We could use Netscape, AOL, Internet Exploder or Mozilla (still an academic project from NCSA) under OS9. We all know that advances of these other browsers seems to always come for Windows about a year (exaggeration) before we see it on the MAC.

Which Browser do I use now?

There have been more contestants in the "Browser Wars" in the last couple years, each thinking to make a "better mousetrap". Many have spawned and grown in popularity since OSX inception. OmniWeb (lite) was included with the original release of OSX Server some three years ago. It has a commercial version as well. Opera, iCab, Fizilla, Kiosk, Chimera, Dillo, iCab, OmniWeb and now Apple's Safari seem to be the current crop of Internet Web browsers available for OSX.

So why would Apple want to jump into the fray of all these other competitors? I think this goes back to what I said earlier about "integration" with the operating system. Like the iLife software (taking a page from Microsoft's playbook), I think Apple has a plan with these "free" programs not only to lure Windows users to the "easy to use" Mac platform, but to secure it's loyal base of MAC users for their (Apple's) future.

Ironically, many of Apple's new programs compete with any number of their strongest third party software developers such as Adobe and Microsoft. The success of OSX and the future of the Apple OS have depended heavily on these software developers coming along with OSX compatible versions of their popular software. Up until this point in time - with the exception of the publishing software giant from QUARK, most developers have come online with Apple's plan and released OSX software versions. For the most part, these releases have been significant improvements of OS9 versions. Again according to Apple, "There will be no more development of OS9. All of our resources will be directed towards development of OSX and applications for this OS".

For the most part, it is far simpler now for software developers to "port" their projects for OSX than it ever was under previous MAC (or Windows) operating systems. At least that is why so many of my developer friends are so tickled with OSX. They say that, "it is a slice of "heaven" not to have to run compilers under Windows. The OSX desktop is the PERFECT development environment that neatly 'gets out of the way' without a fight, when you want it to."

For the record - I am using the Chimera browser for now. I like the Safari browser by Apple, but it is lacking a few features that I like and still refuses to load a few pages I visit regularly. I am sure it will be awesome and efficient, once they work out a couple of the "bugs".

One feature I especially like about Chimera that I have NOT seen in any other program or even under the Finder. When you click the green window expander button, it fills the screen (as it should in any window). Not even the Finder windows do that! I wonder why no other programs do this? I have never understood why the expander button has never expanded the window fully both horizontally and vertically, based on the computer screen's resolution. Another feature that should work in OSX, but doesn't really. Back to Articles

Avi Learner is co-owner of ADWEB Services a South Florida web design and hosting service specializing in Filemaker Pro database driven websites and cross platform Networking Integration. He is a regular contributor to the Gold Coast Mac User group newsletter, .

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