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The MagiCal MacOS tour

Still reeling from the excitement of Mac OS8 which let him put a picture on his desktop Joe Connor has been reading about MacOS 8.5...

Every now and then I get the nagging feeling the grass must be greener on the other side - I usually snap out of it after reading a couple of Mac/PC mags but since Apple invited us to "think different" I will.

Mac OS8.5

After the pre-launch hype, previews and keynote speeches the most exciting new feature in MacOS 8.5 turns out to be - wait for it... Sherlock - a brand new Find utility. I've seen enthusiastic postings from punters citing "Sherlock alone is worth the upgrade fee". I'll admit I haven't tried Sherlock first hand but it's hard to believe - this phrase leapt out at me "it's now possible to search for text inside files instead of just by filename and size".

** SHERLOCK.GIF here **

I remember being impressed by a similar feature in ParaFin, an Atari utility, back in 1995! Sadly ParaFin is no longer developed but it has recently been surpassed by Holger Weet's Finder which can not only search for text inside files but even inside archives!

With a growing sense of d‚j… vous, I read on "Mac OS 8.5's Super Scrolling means your document will automatically scroll as you drag the window's scroll bar. The scroll box will also grow/shrink in proportion to length of the document so you can tell what portion of the document you're seeing at any given time." Neat idea guys, no doubt that's why Atarians have been enjoying proportional scrolling for over a decade and real-time scrolling for years!

It gets worse, there's a new file selector called the "Navigation Services" dialog. It will remember your most recently accessed files and folders as well as a list of your favourite folders you can customise yourself. The new selector will be non-modal, moveable and resizeable which means you'll be able to switch between applications while the window is on-screen. Surely that's innovative? Well it's pretty much a feature list for Freedom which bounded onto the Atari scene some five years ago!

** FREEDOM.GIF here **

There's even more to look forward to in OS X, the Mac OS8.5 replacement, due for release late this year - of course it won't be compatible with any of the pre G3 processor equipped machines but hey, that's the price of progress!

OSX

** UL **
* Pre-emptive multitasking
Currently the Mac OS uses co-operative multitasking. With pre-emptive multitasking (like MagiC) the OS acts as supervisor doling out access to the CPU and you'll no longer have to stare at your screen while the background application takes your processing power away from you (it says here).

* Virtual memory
Mac applications have to be allocated with a fixed amount of memory. If you've ever had an application quit on you because it doesn't have enough RAM allocated to it you'll be pleased to hear Mac OS X will intelligently allocate as much memory as those apps need to run (like MagiC, Geneva, MiNT and so on)...

Smug closet Windows users might prefer to skip this papargraph otherwise they'll be less than thrilled to learn Window pre-emptive multitasking uses a crude timer based pre-emption technique and nearly all the windows kernel routines are non re-entrant which means if one application GUI is running, all others are blocked until it is done, it's much the same for I/O access. Given these limitations a decent co-operative multitasking system like Geneva would probably perform just as well.

I'm feeling better already so I'll admit I do enjoy using Mac machines and some of the applications are truly superb. There are some features scheduled for Mac OSX I'm genuinely looking forward to - Suggestive Remarks readers stand by:

** UL **
* Customisable appearance changes (there are rumours this won't now be included)
This allows the user to customise the scroll bars, window gadgets, windows etc, much like Windows 95 desktop themes and, to a lesser extent, MagxConf.

* Anti-aliased text
System-wide - nice.

* Keychain
This is a database which keeps track of your IDs and passwords so all you have to remember is your Keychain password. It will store log-in information for web sites, ftp and file servers in a file that's password protected. When unlocked Keychain aware apps will be able to lift these details automatically.

* Bigger-better icons
A 32 bit palette and icons upped from 32 pixels to 38 pixels square. TOS Desktops like Thing have supported any size icons for years but are limited to a 256 colour palette (I think).
** /UL **

Emperors New Clothes?

It seems to me Microsoft and Apple are teasing users with features Atarians have been enjoying for years. Maybe there's a parallel universe out there where Atari are king of the hill and everyone browses the web using CAB.