Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

26 Mar 2001

Mac OS X: Core Technologies Overview -1

Continued from:

In this series will be be detailing Mac OS X from a "system overview" perspective. Many readers have never had the chance to fully delve into Mac OS X's technical background beyond the material posted at Apple.com.

Aqua

To achieve the second goal of surpassing the existing Mac's user interface (UI), Apple adopted different navigational characteristics that complimented and enhanced the existing Mac OS UI as well as develop a whole new "graphical system", Aqua.

A primary goal of Aqua was to make it more "appealing". Many existing Mac users think the old UI was just fine, highly refined and functional. But what many fail to see is that to a Windows user the existing Mac UI is not apparently superior aesthetically. A Windows user would need to use the Mac some time to discover its UI advantages over Windows, from the point of view of both function and aesthetics.

Aqua is vastly superior to any other graphical system, even the old Mac's. This is noticeable very quickly. You don't even have to use OS X yourself to see this. Just see it over someone's shoulder.

New Mac OS X Interface Sample

Old Mac OS 9 Interface Sample

Finder Improvements

Mac OS X borrows from Windows in one major area. It has a Dock or bar at the bottom. However, unlike the Windows dock the Dock in OS X is more active and can inform you of the status of items. For example, you can view movies in little icons in the Dock or see how many new emails you have without launching your Mail application. You can also see which apps are active versus which ones are just kept in the Dock for quick use.

Although the Dock will need to be refined more to reach the level of functionality and elegance of the existing Control Strip, over time it seems more promising. The Dock can also act like a Pop-Up window, however the old Mac OS Pop-Up window could be sorted by type of file, for example, while the new Dock can be "navigated" like a regular set of menus.

By far the most practical and cool Finder UI feature is the adoption of the NeXT OS's "Column View". Experienced Mac and Windows users are going to love this view of the file directory. Expect Bill Gates and Co. to copy this one.

Next: Application Services and Extensibility