New Mac operating system is delayed, but free beta may appease fans

Apple's new OS X operating system, to be released next year, will be available in a beta version this summer

May 16, 2000
Web posted at: 11:39 AM EDT (1539 GMT)

In this story: Try it yourself this summer Software companies sign up QuickTime goes big time RELATED STORIES, SITES

From CNN San Francisco Bureau Chief Greg Lefevre

SAN JOSE, California (CNN) -- Another of the "Steve Jobs Revivals" came to town this week and the Macintosh faithful, as expected, forgave a minor sin while continuing to sing hosannas for their platform savior.

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Jobs told the annual Apple World Wide Developers Conference that he will delay the release of Apple's mother of all operating system upgrades, OS X, until next January. Speaking from a huge stage at the cavernous San Jose Convention Center, Jobs said he wants to give the developers more time to get more programs to work on it.

Jobs says the new operating system will run differently than Macs of the past, but some features will look familiar.

Months ago Jobs promised a "gentle migration" from the OS of old to the new. But early reviewers complained about the lack of a "finder," that collection of symbols on the screen that told users what is running. Monday, Jobs smiled slyly and told the crowd he heard, and the finder was back on. The most important feature of the new OS remains: a software crash won't lock up the whole computer.

Jobs met the anticipated hostility toward a delayed release of OS X by announcing he'll give the public a beta version of the Operating System this summer. Anyone can have it, based on the hope that they'll feed ideas for improvements back to Apple.

The OS X is based in part on the open-source system, like Linux. Anyone can see all the lines of code and tweak and fix to their hearts content. So, Jobs hopes, people worldwide will feed in ideas and fixes for OS X.

Mac OS X will show the name of the program that's open on the menu line, left of what we now see as the File and Edit menus.

The on-screen dock at the bottom gets even cooler. Programs or documents can be dragged to the bottom of the screen to sit there until needed again.

The new Apple OS X features a dynamically changing desktop with morphing documents and icons

To the whoops and applause of the audience, Jobs delighted in showing how a document slinks and morphs from full size on the screen into the tiny square shaped icon along the bottom. A near infinite number of variations allows the icons along the bottom to grow and compress, change shape, color and sizes, and even rearrange themselves.

"Fit and Finish" were themes Jobs repeated throughout the hour-long presentation. The programs must look cool and run smoothly. This day they did, with no glitches or freezes. It did take one Web page a while to come up the first time, CNN.com. "Must be a busy day at CNN," Jobs mused as the browser on the huge display above him took a long pause before the text and graphics cascaded down the screen.

Reliability was the other theme. Make it work well and make it work more easily, he repeated. To that end, he says Mac OS X is based in part on the Linux operating system, known for its crash resistance and reliability.

Jobs gave each of the developers Apple's newest version of the OS X developers materials, called Preview 4. He said it contained about "99 percent" of what software developers need to write their products to run on Mac OS X.

These Previews are software written specifically for programmers who want to make their products work on Macs. Apple says so far more than 200 major software companies have announced they will write new programs or convert their present ones to run on OS X.

Jobs repeatedly used Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 to demo the products, putting to rest any thoughts of dumping IE5 as the installed browser. "The (Microsoft) IE5 team worked their tails off to do this," he said, "besides, it's a great product."

Mac OS X is rapdily developing a fan base of its own. One newbie to the Mac and an old veteran drew cheers from the usually hard crowd. The three thousand attendees who filled the hall to standing room only cheered the loudest when Jobs showed Apple's latest convert, Alias/Wavefront's Maya.

Maya is a monster animation software package most commonly associated with "industrial strength" motion picture computer animation. It will join the Mac fold next year. Movie fans who saw Mighty Joe Young rampage through the carnival saw Maya's work. Remember the pod race in the The Phantom Menace? Maya worked on that. So what are these guys doing adapting their software to run on a store-bought desktop Mac?

"(Apple's) OS X is powerful," Maya's Richard Kerris said. He cited three reasons for what will be a nearly year-long effort to convert 25 million lines of code to play on the new Mac OS. His customers demanded it, he wants Apple users as his customers and he likes OS X.

Maya is what is called "command line" software. An animation artist types in instructions for each phase of the animation. In the Mac version demonstrated for the developers, a click and pull of the mouse an operator reshaped an animated face, watched it change shapes as he pulled it through a virtual knothole, twisted it and turned it.

Maya's press statements say the conversion to the Mac OS will allow an animator to "do in five minutes what it used to take him half a day to do." And, Kerris says, the desktop Mac G4 is extremely popular with web animators and a lot of film and motion picture post-production artists.

Jobs also touted the addition of Adobe's InDesign to the Mac OS fold. Adobe's Daniel Edmonds showed off InDesign's graphics and page layout program using Mac OS X.

The new version of QuickTime, due this summer, will feature some design and interface changes

Apple says users have downloaded 50 million copies of its video and audio software QuickTime. Jobs debuted some changes due this summer, including changes in the "channels" panel that used to slide out of the bottom of the picture. Criticized as one of Apple's few poor design decisions, it has been removed. Channels now appear on the playback screen itself, more in the look of a browser. QuickTime is rapidly gaining favor with Internet programmers for its clearer video and ease of use. Jobs joked that he should distribute the new copies on boxes of breakfast cereal, taking a cue from America Online's mass distribution of software disks for its service.

The new version of QuickTime this summer will feature MPEG1 video compression for higher definition video, Flash 4 for more dramatic animations and a spiffed up QuickTime Virtual Reality that can depict scenes in all directions.

QuickTime VR now shows panoramas or images in full circle. The new version shows an image or place in all directions. The example shown depicted a church image where the viewer could pan right and left in a full circle, look at the ceiling and study the floor. QTVR is already in use by some real estate sites to show off homes.

Apple promotes QuickTime with pages of movie trailers (previews) at Apple.com. The company says Nielsen net ratings list theirs as the net's most popular site for movie trailers.

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