Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

23 July 2001

MWNY: Notes on Mac OS X (10.1 update)

At Macworld Jobs demo'd the upcoming major update to Mac OS X, named 10.1. There are a number of little details that are of interest here that may have been overshadowed by Jobs' emphasis on speed improvements.

Legacy and Windows Network Support

Mac OS X v 10.1 will fully support older AppleTalk networks allowing you to connect to legacy AFP servers over AppleTalk protocol or with Windows NT servers. Additionally there is a new Windows network SMB client allowing Mac OS X users to natively connect to Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Unix-based SAMBA file servers. Like other Apple servers these servers appear right in the Finder.

iTools is WebDAV Based

iTools is now WebDAV based so any annoying disconnection notices should be a thing of the past. Also iTools is now built right into the Finder toolbar. And iTools will now work with ease behind a corporate or school firewall.

A Replacement for the Lovable Control Strip

Let's face it. Chances are you use the Control Strip in OS 9 and love it. We certainly do. Apple has finally realized that the Dock is just not a suitable substitute for the Control Strip and has now allowed similar functionality in the menu bar, far upper right corner near the traditional Finder menu. And what's really nice is that the new CP-like menu icons are brilliantly simple and differentiated from other items. We really like these icons ;)

Column View Enhancements

One of the most useful new changes will be the ability to resize columns in both Column view and List view. And that's good because OS X supports long file names and in Icon view you can see them in automatically text-wrapped form.

And yes, Mac OS X v10.1 will be much faster. Based on our naked eye examination this next version is easily 2 - 3x faster across all tasks averaged. And applications like FileMaker will launch in less than two seconds.