As the Ars team convenes for two days of meetings in Chicago, we're reaching back into the past to bring you some of our favorite articles from years gone by. This story originally ran in January 2010.
The latter half of the 1990s was a dark time for the company then known as Apple Computer, Inc. Windows 95 had dashed any remaining hopes of mass-market desktop dominance for Apple. The big profits of the earlier part of the decade had given way to some huge annual losses. The future of the entire company was in doubt.
Epic Games’ desktop client offers Mac-compatible games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Borderlands 3, Disco Elysium, Fortnite, Layers of Fear, Tacoma, Torchlight II, and more. Fearful is a first person puzzle prototype with horror elements in which you must face your childhood fears in order to advance and grow. Light will guide you through the journey of personal growth, as you use it to solve puzzles and defeat monsters. This is a result of a 2-month prototype for lectures and thus not a complete experience. For many years, Mac users’ biggest fear is that the OS would somehow be subsumed into or “unified” with the more popular iOS. Fourteen years into the iPhone’s existence, that fear has largely.
Like injured animals, corporations are adept at hiding the true magnitude of their injuries. As grim as things appeared from the outside, few Apple enthusiasts knew at the time just how close the company came to fiscal ruin. But the software picture was always crystal-clear—clear, and terrifying.
The Mac operating system lacked two important features essential to remaining competitive past the end of the decade: memory protection and preemptive multitasking. Over the course of many years, Apple made severalabortiveattempts to create a modern successor to the classic Mac operating system, all of which crashed and burned before the horrified eyes of Mac fans everywhere. Regardless of its financial issues, it was clear to the geeks that Apple was on the road to technological ruin.
Apple made its final play for salvation in 1997 when it purchased NeXT and, after one more false start, announced at WWDC 1998 what would be, blessedly, its last next-generation operating system strategy: Mac OS X.
By all rights, the Mac faithful should have been, if not ecstatic, then at the very least relieved at this turn of events. Finally, a modern operating system for the Mac. But there was another, equally common reaction: fear. As a body of code, Mac OS X was not an evolution or enhancement of the Mac operating system that we knew and loved. It was an entirely different—albeit not exactly new—operating system to which the Mac name and, presumably, user experience were to be retroactively applied.
Fear of just how badly this undertaking could turn out is a big part of what motivated me to not only learn as much as I could about the future of Mac OS, but also to write about it. As a freshly-minted Unix nerd, I couldn't help but be somewhat excited at the marriage of my two favorite operating systems. But laid over that optimism was a blanket of mild hysteria regarding every part of the project above the core OS.
Now here we are, a decade later, and Mac OS X has matured into a fine product. This ten-year marker presents an opportunity to do something technology writers usually avoid. I'm going to look back at some of my hopes and fears from the early days of Mac OS X's development and compare them to the reality of today. Was I right on the money, shrewdly warning of future disasters that did, in fact, come to pass? Or do my predictions now read more like the ravings of a gray-bearded lunatic? It's judgment day.
Advertisement1999: Mac OS X DP2
The path to the Mac OS X project was littered with broken technological promises and missed ship dates. As it turns out, Apple was about to turn the corner and start actually hitting its dates and keeping its promises. But in 1999, I still had my doubts.
The current party line has Mac OS X on store shelves some time in 2000. I fearlessly predict that it will not appear until 2001 at the earliest.
('Nailed it'…though predicting that a software product will be late isn't exactly a tough call.)
It wasn't really fair to make any sort of judgement about Mac OS X based on the second 'developer preview' release, which Apple acknowledged upfront existed only to help developers begin their work and did not represent the final user interface. That's a good thing, because my evaluation of DP2 was not kind.
Actually using DP2 is akin to logging into a demented Xterm running a poorly designed window manager theme meant to look something like Mac OS. Launch a Cocoa application and you feel like you've been warped into NEXTSTEP, again running that funny window manager. Run a classic applications and it's like being in a slightly odd version of Mac OS 9, with that alternate NeXT universe still visible in the background. Pull up the command line and you start to think that all of this is one big facade running on top of good old Unix.
Given how far the final Mac OS X user interface diverged from the one in DP2, this harsh criticism hardly seems relevant. But none of us knew what 10.0 would look like back then. Something called Mac OS X Server 1.0 did exist as a shipping product in 1999, and it and looked a hell of a lot like Mac OS X DP2. It was not beyond the bounds of reason to imagine that the final Mac OS X user interface might be a cleaned up, refined version of this very same interface—and that would have been a bad thing.
Ever looking for the silver lining, I went on to opine that 'I'd much rather be stuck using Mac OS X DP2 on a daily basis than Mac OS X Server. They both completely fail the 'Mac-like' litmus test, but DP2 is closer to that goal.' Reading that now, it's clear to me just how desperate I was to find something good to say about the UI of this new OS.
The image below is a good distillation of my already slightly desperate attitude towards the Mac OS X user experience. Practically speaking, it compares the mouse movement allowed by Mac OS (green) when selecting an item from a sub-menu to the movement required by Mac OS X DP2 (orange). (Following the green path in DP2 caused the sub-menu to immediately disappear.)
AdvertisementThe subtext was this: 'Hey, NeXT guys. This is just one example of the kinds of things we Mac users appreciate—nay, expect—in an operating system that bears the Mac name. Slapping a Platinum coat of pixels on your existing NeXT code base is obviously not going to cut it. User interface design is not just what it looks like; design is how it works.'
Internals intrigue
The technical underpinnings of Mac OS X were considerably more interesting. Even ten years ago, I couldn't help but dwell on the possibility of an x86 future.
The OpenStep APIs are cross platform. Mach is cross-platform. WebObjects is cross-platform. x86 builds of Rhapsody, Mac OS X Server, and Mac OS X inside Apple have been all but confirmed. Rumor has it that Apple routinely synchronizes all changes to Mac OS X across both PowerPC and x86 builds of the OS. Clearly, Apple's choice of where to deploy its new operating system is not limited by the technology. If they decided to try releasing a version Mac OS X for x86 processors, it would be technologically within their means.
Before you congratulate me for my amazing prescience, consider the next two sentences I wrote: 'But will they do it? I seriously doubt it.' If you'd asked me to place money on the question, I'd have bet heavily against Apple moving to x86. But I now realize I would have been betting with my heart, not my mind. My brain did get in the final word, however:
The cross-platform card is something to watch for. For the first time, the only thing keeping Apple off of the 'PC' platform will be its business plan. And hey, with Steve Jobs calling the shots, anything is possible.
It's interesting to note that only two short years after his return to Apple, Jobs had already (re)cemented his reputation as a fearless and often unpredictable leader. Age had not slowed him down one bit.
File system metadata (which I was then calling 'meta-information,' for some reason) was also tickling my brain, though mostly in a positive way, believe it or not. I was intrigued by the concept of bundles, especially their use of this shiny new 'XML' data format. But while storing metadata in separate flat files within bundles could work for applications, the future of plain file metadata was still in doubt.
How will Mac OS X identify the file type and creator of 'regular' files? By file name extension, that concept so alien to traditional Mac OS? Or will HFS/HFS+-dependent type/creator meta-information soldier on into the future? Time will tell.
Note the blithe dismissal, the seemingly complete lack of concern. 'Oh well, time will tell.' Indeed it would.
- Refer to Upgrade to macOS Big Sur.
- For hardware requirements, read macOS - How to Upgrade
- If your Mac is too old to run the latest macOS release, that document explains how to install an earlier version of macOS.
- If your Mac is running OS X 10.7 'Lion' or earlier, first get El Capitan from the App Store, install it, and then upgrade macOS.
- Note: Some older macOS versions may no longer be available to download from Apple 🙁 That availability has been known to change, so if one of those macOS versions is not available at the moment, consider checking again in the future.
- Never download any macOS version from unauthorized sources. That will waste your time, at best.
- To upgrade OS X versions prior to Snow Leopard: Apple no longer sells the retail Snow Leopard DVD, so aftermarket sources for the authentic product are the only remaining option. Reputable sources exist, but caveat emptor as always.
Fearful Master
Apple designs its operating system upgrades to be a hassle-free experience. Most people won't have any trouble upgrading whatsoever. Soon after it's installed they're enjoying a faster, more secure Mac with better battery life and a bunch of new features, all for the princely sum of $0.
But you're not 'most people'. You require your Mac to work without interruption, just like the reliable machine it's been. You're cautious about how you use your equipment, you understand an operating system upgrade is a big deal, and you want to be sure everything goes well. Good! That's what brought you to this site, so you're already ahead of the game.
Being cautious about upgrading your reliable Mac workhorse to a brand new operating system is prudent, but there is no reason to fear an upgrade. You can install macOS on an external hard disk drive or other suitable storage device without altering your existing Mac in any way at all. If it turns out that you don't like it, or if something unexpected happens, all you need to do is to shut down your Mac, disconnect the external drive, and start your Mac again. It will return to the way it was. It's that simple.
Start by obtaining an external USB, FireWire, or Thunderbolt hard disk drive, whichever is appropriate for the ports on your model Mac. Connect that disk drive to your Mac and erase it using Disk Utility. Download macOS Big Sur on the Mac App Store, and then install macOS on that device instead of your usual startup disk. Just be sure to designate the proper installation location when you get to that installation step: click the installer's Show All Disks button, and choose the external disk—the one you just erased:
When it finishes installing, the installer will ask if you want to transfer information from your Mac or its Time Machine backup. It doesn't matter which of those two options you choose, but if you want to be certain everything you have been doing with your Mac will continue to work as expected, then choose that option.
Fearful Mac Os X
To use your Mac that way for a while, you may choose to start your Mac from that disk or the internal one using Startup Manager, and evaluate macOS at no risk whatsoever to your existing installation.
Running macOS from an external USB hard disk drive won't be as fast as the Mac's internal one—starting your Mac from it will take several minutes, for example—but once it's up and running your observations will be sufficient to draw conclusions regarding its suitability for your needs. Consider using your Mac that way for a week or two to become familiar with its new system.
Fearful Mac Os 11
Fearful Master Arthur Lawrence
An external hard disk drive of adequate capacity can be purchased for well under $100—much less than the cost of some previous macOS upgrades themselves. When you satisfy yourself that it works for you, then install macOS on your Mac's internal storage, and designate the external hard disk for backup purposes—which you ought to be doing anyway:
Fearful Master Quote
- If you were not already in the habit of routinely backing up your system with Apple's Time Machine, now is the second-best time to start using it.
- Time Machine conveys the ability to 'undo' a macOS upgrade without losing all your Mac's previous content.
- If you don't back up, it means you are unconcerned about the prospect of permanently losing all your Mac's contents. And if you weren't concerned, you probably wouldn't even be reading this, would you?
- Back up your Mac describes backups options in addition to Time Machine.