Mac OS 8 Leaps Forward with a New Look and Finder Albert Willis

In January, Apple announced a dual- operating system strategy. One 
track of that strategy is the evolution of the current Mac OS through 
three upgrades, code-named Tempo, Allegro, and Sonata. The first of 
these, now known as Mac OS 8, is due for release by the end of July. 
Beta testers report that the new operating system represents a big 
leap forward, and is stable to boot. 
 
A Brand New Finder
The most noticeable feature of Mac OS 8 is the brand new Finder. It 
sports a 3-D grayscale look and feel, called the platinum appearance. 
Beneath the surface, the Finder has been completely rewritten. 
PowerPC native, it runs noticeably faster on PowerPC-based 
Macintoshes. It is also multithreaded, meaning that it can perform 
several operations at once. It can now empty the trash, copy files 
from a server, and launch an application at the same time.
 
Other new Finder features include pop-up windows, spring-loaded 
folders, and contextual menus. When you drag a window to the 
bottom of the screen, it leaves a tab that you can click on to pop up 
the window. The window also pops up automatically if you drag 
something to it. 

Spring-loaded folders make it easy to navigate your folder hierarchy. 
When you drag and hold a file on top of a folder, the folder opens 
automatically. You can do this through a series of nested folders until 
you get to the folder where you want to drop the file. Once you do 
that and release the mouse button, all of the windows close. 

When you hold down the control key while clicking the mouse button 
to select a file or folder, you get a menu of commands that fit the 
context. Applications that are Mac OS 8 savvy can support these 
contextual menus. Developers can also extend an application's 
contextual menus by creating plug-ins. For example, there are 
already plug-ins that extend the Finder's menus.

Two new options work well for novice users. Simple Finder shortens 
the Finder menus to essential commands. View by Button turns icons 
in a window into large, single-click buttons.

The Desktop now supports view options like other Finder windows 
do. For example, you can have all of the icons on the desktop in small 
icon format or in button format. Each folder retains its own view 
options.

Networking Updates
Less noticeable, but still important, are improvements made to 
networking. Mac OS 8 comes with Open Transport (OT) 1.2 and OT 
PPP 1.0.1. Two important fixes include those for the Ping of Death, 
which caused previous versions of OT to crash the operating system 
when under attack, and denial-of-service attacks, known as SYN-
attacks. OT PPP 1.0.1 fixes a bug that erroneously reports the modem 
port as being busy.

Complete Internet Support
Mac OS 8 offers full Internet support. The Apple Internet Connection 
Kit includes, among other applications, NCSA Telnet and the ftp client 
Fetch, both of which are supported at MIT. Mac OS 8 also comes with 
a choice of three Web browsers: Netscape Navigator 3.0.1, CyberDog, 
and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0.1. The default browser is 
Netscape, the browser that IS supports. (You can install one of the 
others by doing a custom install.) 

Claris Emailer Lite, also bundled with Mac OS 8, doesn't operate in 
the MIT environment. However, an application called Internet Config 
lets you designate Eudora as the email program of choice in Mac OS 
8.

The new operating system also includes two "push" clients: PointCast 
Network and Marimba's Castanet Tuner. These applications let you 
select and customize Internet news channels (e.g., CNN, The Wall 
Street Journal, The Boston Globe) that send fresh news to you 
throughout the day.

Castanet Tuner is written in Java. Mac OS 8 comes with full Java 
support in the form of Macintosh Runtime for Java. This "virtual 
machine" environment lets you run Java applets without a browser.
To round out the Internet offerings, Mac OS 8 comes with Web 
Sharing, a built-in Web server. By selecting a folder and clicking one 
button, you can publish the HTML files in that folder on the Web. As 
with file sharing, you use a control panel to set access. For security 
reasons, it's best to keep these shared folders inside the default 
folder - Web Pages - on the top level of the hard drive.

Other New Things
Mac OS 8 has yet other goodies. The Mac Information Center, an 
HTML-based help system, includes live links to Apple's Web site. The 
Mac OS Setup Assistant configures various control panels, based on 
your answers to a series of questions. The Internet Setup Assistant 
steps you through configuring a PPP or network connection. How-
ever, in the MIT environment, IS recommends that you configure 
PPP or network connections via the PPP and TCP/IP control panels.

System Requirements
Mac OS 8 runs on 68040 and PowerPC-based Macintoshes. A base 
installation requires about 95MB of free hard disk space. You can get 
away with less hard disk space if you do a pared-down custom 
install.

The minimum RAM requirement is 16MB, of which 8MB must be 
physical RAM (the rest can be virtual memory). With this 
configuration, you can run most common applications. However, to 
run Netscape Navigator 3.0.1, you need 20MB of RAM, 16 of which 
must be physical RAM. IS recommends that Macintoshes used for 
administrative computing have at least 24MB of RAM.

Availability 
Institute faculty, staff, and students can get Mac OS 8 for free, 
courtesy of MIT's site license with Claris. By the time you read this, 
the new operating system should be available at 

http://web.mit.edu/ist/help/macos/  

For in-depth coverage of Mac OS 8, see
Robyn Fizz
http://www.macos.apple.com/macos8/