Hard Cider: OS X At Macworld
- Beyond The Bread & Circus Atmosphere And The Blender Salesman,
It's Really About People And Their Work
Wednesday, January 9, 2002
On Tuesday, at noon Philip Schiller, Vice President of Worldwide
Product Marketing at Apple and Avie
Tevanian, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering
(the wunderkind
behind OS X), gave a presentation on the 'Power of OS X'.
It was great to see these two in a relaxed atmosphere, away
from the canned speeches and remarks of a Keynote, talking
about something they are both obviously very enthusiastic
about .... OS X.
It was nice to get into Mac OS X a little more in-depth,
and the two really fleshed out a picture of why this new OS
from Apple is generating so much interest from divergent sectors
of computer technology market. I left the presentation thinking,
thank god Apple did not buy the BE OS when they were hunting
around to find a new foundation for their next generation
operating system. A purchase of BE would have thrown some
red meat to the chattering classes, but it would have been
a dead end for Apple. With the development of OS X, out of
the ashes of NEXT, Apple has opened up opportunities and avenues
to roads that already exist ... and that is smart.
If Apple continues to hold these kind of presentations at
Macworld's in the future (and they should), I encourage anyone
who wants to go beyond the 'bread and circuses' atmosphere
of the Keynote, to attend. You will be afforded a more relaxed,
in-depth and honest connection to the work that is going on
at Apple.
Many of the pictures below may seem the same .... they are
not. You will have to click on them to get the larger version
so that you can read the data. We are going to do several
follow-up articles on this presentation.
At The Power Of X Presentation
Click on images to see a larger version
The 'Power Of X' lecture was a more in depth look at
OS 10 going beyond the sound bites and one liners
Philip Schiller, Vice President of Worldwide Product
Marketing at Apple and Avie Tevanian, Senior Vice President
of Software Engineering, led the presentation ...
... It was great seeing these two guys in a more relaxed
atmosphere where they could put aside the thier pitch
and talk about what they really are enthusiastic about
.... OS X
Geek Speak! Actually it wasn't that bad. The presentation
was aimed at a technical crowd but not at the level
of those that eat, drink and breath programming
The next 13 photos deal with the underlying key structures
and features of OS X. They all look the same in the
thumbnails on this page, but each is different. You
will have to click on the image to get the larger version,
to see what I mean
The UNIX base - why the UNIX crowd will feel right
at home in OS X. Basically, Avie said, that whatever
you could do in UNIX, you could do in OS X. If a service
wasn't built in, it was easy for you to add it.
The features of the Kernel. OK this is the boilerplate
that they hint at during Keynotes, which probably goes
over the head of most of the crowd. But this is the
solid base that gives OS X its stability and power.
The numerous file formats that OS X can work with,
make it easy to integrate with other Systems, according
to Avie
The networking capabilities of the new OS.
According to Avie, OS X has multi-level security built
into the OS
Support for Java in the new OS
In programming in the Cocoa environment, a lot of the
foundation work is done for you.
Avie explained some of the things developers can do
with the Quartz layer of OS X
AppleScript now has a new development tool ... the
'Project Builder.' Apple is bringing an often neglected
AppleScript to the fore, making it easier to use and
more integrated. It will be interesting to see what
they do with this in the future so that mere mortals
can take better advantage of it. It is definitely a
great, under utilized tool for automating tasks.
32 Bit audio in the new OS, with very low latency and
MIDI services
The components that handle media
Support for third-party devices built into OS X is
extensive. This is a great move for Apple as it cuts
down on the effort developers need to make to get their
hardware products compatible.
Avie acknowledged that Mac users like to customize
the look and feel of their machines. He went over how
Apple has accommodated this desire.
Copyright 1996-2007 by Cider Press Publishing LLC all rights reserved. MacReviewZone is not authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Computer. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iPod, iBook, iMac, eMac, and PowerBook are registered trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.
