Product Reviews

This year will go down in computing history as the year of Apple's comeback. The launch of the iMac and the announcement of Mac OS X have now been followed by the release of Mac OS 8.5, arguably the most important OS upgrade since System 7.0 arrived in 1991. With Apple clearly focusing on taking its operating system into the future, version 8.5 is a real landmark release. It heralds the end of support for 680x0 Macs, a legacy which, although it has kept ageing Macs going well after their PC counterparts became landfill, has also been an undeniable liability.

Installing the new OS is easier than before, with a streamlined interface which allows individual sections to be customised without requiring further attention. It's also fast: the standard install with a few selected additional items took us less than 15 minutes. Once installed, Mac OS 8.5 can be registered online, and Apple is offering a free QuickTime 3.0 Pro serial number, which normally costs $30. This comes on top of the greatly reduced cost of the OS, which is priced at just £59.56 (£69.99 inc VAT), compared with £99 (£116.32 inc VAT) for the previous version.

The Mac OS Setup Assistant, which launches the first time Mac OS 8.5 is run, is essentially the same as that found in Mac OS 8.1. By contrast, the Internet Setup Assistant has been noticeably improved. This launches immediately after the Mac OS Setup Assistant, and walks users through a series of questions. It covers creating an Internet account from scratch, as well as helping to configure existing accounts, and handles both modem and network connection set-ups with ease.

New users are asked to pick an Internet service provider (ISP) from a list of 14 national and regional ISPs, including BT Internet, Demon, Direct Connection, Ireland On-Line and others. Once the relevant details - including a credit card number - have been gathered, a connection is made with the selected ISP and a new account is created. Apple hasn't charged these ISPs for inclusion in Mac OS 8.5 - instead, the ISPs are obliged to offer Mac OS 8.5 users some sort of special deal that's not generally available to other users. Naturally, you can configure your system for a different ISP if you wish.

Look and feel

At first glance, the OS's interface looks identical to Mac OS 8.1. Although the Appearance Manager has been greatly enhanced and supports some extensive customising via Themes, the only Theme included with this release is Apple Platinum, the classic Mac OS 8 appearance. The rumoured Gizmo and Hi Tech themes were dropped at the last minute. However, Apple has asked the authors of Kaleidoscope, a popular third-party interface-enhancement tool, not to distribute any Themes similar to Gizmo or Hi Tech, so it seems likely that these will appear in the next OS release early next year.

Although the weirder themes aren't supplied, there are a number of variations on the core Apple Platinum look, with different interface fonts, highlight colours, desktop pictures and patterns, and even sounds for different actions such as menu use, window resizing and item drag and drop. Apple is expected to release the specifications for creating new Appearance Manager themes, so we should see third-party experiments in the near future.

Finder views are a little more flexible: at last it's possible to change the order of columns in list views, as well as the width of individual columns. Icons in window titlebars can be dragged to different places as if they were the actual items themselves. Live scrolling is a standard feature, while proportional scrollboxes are an Appearance Manager option.

The Application Switcher takes the familiar Application menu concept and presents it as a palette, superficially similar to the NextStep application 'dock'. This is a palette-style window that floats above all other windows in the Finder or any application and lists running applications as clickable buttons.

This Switcher palette can be configured via AppleScripts, included in the new Mac OS Help pages, to appear as a Windows taskbar-like strip along the bottom of the screen or as a set of icons in the lower right of the monitor, as well as the default floating palette. It's quite simple to make your own AppleScripts for further customisation, and as the Application Switcher supports file drag and drop, this customisability will prove useful whichever way users decide to configure it.

Internet

The Internet Config extension has been made redundant by the new Internet control panel. This provides a centralised place for information, such as your email user name, address and signature, preferred email client and Web browser, Web start and search pages, FTP client, helper applications, and so on. Applications such as Anarchie 3.0, which have a link to Internet Config in their preferences, now automatically launch the Internet control panel instead.

Switching between different accounts or access settings is done via the Location Manager. This is something PowerBook users have had for some time, but it's the first time this has been a standard part of the OS installation for desktop Macs. Different location settings covering areas from AppleTalk to Time Zone can be set up, along with different TCP/IP, modem and Internet control panel configurations, and even 'auto-open' documents and applications. Switching between complete 'location' settings then involves a single click.

Sherlock

One of the major changes in Mac OS 8.5 is the Find File utility, now called Sherlock. As well as the standard Find File abilities, Sherlock includes a Find By Content feature and a Search Internet feature, each in its own tabbed panel within Sherlock's window. Sherlock initially shows whichever Find option was selected last, so those used to calling up the old Find utility in previous versions of the OS may find themselves inadvertently searching the Internet for their misplaced documents. It isn't possible to specify a default find mode, but each mode has a keyboard shortcut available inside Sherlock. Switching to the classic Find File panel is done via command-f, Find By Content via command-g, and Search Internet via command-h (see Sherlock box, opposite).

The basic Find File section is almost the same as before, with a few extra keyboard shortcuts for good measure. But that's just the start: Find By Content allows you to look for something by what you remember was inside it, not just what it might have been called, while Search Internet brings the world's online resources within your reach. Adding Internet searching to the Find utility in this way is an excellent move. It very quickly becomes the most obvious way to find stuff online, and is much faster overall than using a browser to check each site yourself.

Compatibility

Apple has recently stated that it won't support Mac OS 8.5 on Macs running CPU upgrades. This may sound fairly alarming, but Apple is just playing safe. The OS ran perfectly happily on the third-party 604e daughterboard upgrade cards we tested it on, and it's unlikely to have any problems with CPU upgrades that perform properly under Mac OS 8.1. We installed our copy of Mac OS 8.5 on an external hard disk, and it ran on everything from an old Power Mac 7500 to a G3 minitower without any problems.

Although the OS won't run on non-Power Macs, this doesn't mean it'll have problems running older software. Most moderately recent software worked without a hitch, including odd shareware products in both PowerPC and 680x0 form. We tried out a few virtually prehistoric applications, but even using a 1991 version of Aldus Digital Darkroom to acquire images from an old FotoMan camera didn't give the OS any problems. Of course, there will be a few exceptions, and it's best to avoid older versions of programs that perform low-level tricks with drives or the OS itself. Earlier this year, many

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conflicts were reported with Apple's new HFS+ disk format and third-party tools such as Norton Utilities, so in these cases it would be wise to ensure you only use versions declared officially 8.5-safe. (Keep an eye on Bug Buster in the Know How section of MacUser.)

However, although you may not encounter any actual problems, older software may not fit in perfectly with some of the new OS features. For example, Eudora Pro 2.1.4 performed as normal under Mac OS 8.5, but it didn't handle the new double-clickable Internet Location files properly (see Internet Location, p49). The more recent Eudora 3.1 handled this well, as did PowerMail 2.1 and the bundled email client, Microsoft Outlook Express 4.01.

Speed

The general speed of Mac OS 8.5 is greater than Mac OS 8.1, so anyone with a reasonably up-to-date Power Mac should experience an overall improvement. Apart from some hesitation about the content of a few windows, the Finder performed snappily, and the general feeling was as if the Mac had been subtly clock-chipped. Interestingly, iMac owners should get a perceptible performance boost by simply installing the new OS. Of course, if there isn't an adequate amount of installed RAM in your Mac then performance will suffer, but as the RAM requirements of Mac OS 8.5 don't seem significantly different from Mac OS 8.1, this shouldn't be a major problem. Those with 24Mb of RAM should consider getting more - 32Mb should be regarded as a practical bottom line for software of any significance. At today's prices, this is quite reasonable.

QuickDraw has been accelerated, so images and text should be displayed and scrolled faster. TrueType font antialiasing is also provided by the QuickDraw enhancements. Disk copying for both fixed and removable disks is a little faster than before, and network performance has been dramatically improved with the use of Apple's latest Ethernet drivers, included with Open Transport 2.0.1. Independent tests have shown these drivers to be fully capable of all but saturating a 100Base-T Ethernet connection, something Windows NT is still unable to do. These drivers are also included with AppleShare IP 6.0 (Reviews, Vol 14 No 21, p46), so with Mac OS 8.5, Apple now has a full range of network capabilities the industry can hang its hat on.

AppleScript

Part of the overall speed boost is down to improved AppleScript performance. As an increasingly important part of the OS, AppleScript is now entirely PowerPC-native, and has been through a round of bug fixing. The result is a claimed 500% performance boost, which should make developers' eyes light up. AppleScript provides an amazing set of tools for automating and controlling the Finder and many third-party applications, but for years its performance has been lacklustre. Apple has begun adding support for even more natural language-style scripting, and now AppleScript is so much faster to run, developers should become more interested in using it professionally, both in mainstream applications and for bespoke solutions. Apart from the major speed boost, one of the important changes in the new AppleScript is the ability to create Folder Actions - AppleScripts attached to folders which are triggered by certain events, such as adding, removing or renaming files. Folders can become intelligent, making the Finder itself a potentially dynamic part of a workflow set-up.

Network Browser

The Chooser is still with us, but its days are numbered. The new Network Browser provides a more up-to-date way to access networked servers, showing a hierarchical list of available devices and volumes on the network, with pop-up menus for bookmarking volumes as 'favourites', and listing recently accessed volumes. Opening one of the listed volumes triggers the familiar password access dialog box, and once past that the relevant disk volumes are listed as Finder list-style items. As the Printers control strip module already lists all available desktop printers in a pop-up menu, the Chooser really is close to becoming redundant - something very few users will worry about.

Help

Apple's new Help system is a well-designed HTML-based library of information and links. It's accessed with the new Help Viewer application via the ever-present Help menu, Help button icons in different parts of the OS, or via a simple command-? shortcut. Type a phrase or a few keywords into the Help Viewer and it comes back with a list of different possible topics, complete with relevance-ranking scores.

Once browsing the actual Help pages, links can take you to other pages, launch AppleScripts to perform tasks, or open up Apple Guide for more help. The information itself is clear, very comprehensive, and easy to understand. It'll prove a major asset to any new user and should also help old hands fine-tune their skills.

There are many other easily-missed enhancements to be found within various control panels and utilities. For example, the Energy Saver control panel looks virtually unchanged, with some slight behavioural tweaks. But the speed at which a Mac running Mac OS 8.5 wakes up is remarkable: press any key while the Mac is asleep and the response is virtually instant, with a slight further lag for disk access if the hard disk has also been asleep.

The size of the disk cache is calculated automatically every time the Mac starts up. As the optimal setting depends on the amount of installed RAM, this setting should be changed whenever memory is added or removed. In a few cases it might be better to choose a custom disk cache setting, and this is provided for in the Memory control panel, but the vast majority of users will never need this option.

Even the Date & Time features have been enhanced. The OS now supports automatic time adjustment by linking with online 'atomic clock' time servers, and it can ostentatiously show its continuing immunity to the Year 2000 problem by displaying the year in four figures.

Euro and beyond

Mac OS 8.5's international abilities include full support for the Euro character, a piece of forethought which will be greatly appreciated by a growing number of people. The European Commission-approved character, a rather unattractive 'e'-like symbol (Design Workshop, Vol 14 No 16, p99), is built into all the Apple-supplied fonts in Mac OS 8.5. The key combination required to type the Euro is shift-option-2. This replaces the traditional 'universal currency' glyph, a spiked circle that practically no-one ever knew existed.

On an even more international note, one of the features available through a custom install of the OS is Multilingual Internet browsing. This installs extra fonts, keyboard layouts and so on, and allows the latest Web browsers to handle Web pages which use non-Roman character sets, such as Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Gujarati, and more. This will obviously be of great help to multilingual Mac users browsing the Web, but it goes further than this. With this option installed, users also get fonts and keyboard layouts for a wide range of non-Roman language layouts: Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari (including Nepali), Gurmukhi, Gujarati, traditional and simplified Chinese, Japanese (Romaji), and Korean.

This Unicode-based ability allows for true double-byte type entry and contextual character use in almost any application, where the shapes of a letter can depend on its position in the word or sentence. This doesn't really replace the Language Kits for serious multi-lingual users, but it makes the standard OS support different languages without requiring anything extra. This should make Macs particularly desirable items in institutions such as public libraries: the ability to support key Asian and middle-eastern languages at the operating system level and without fuss has got to be a vote-winner.

Return of the Mac

Mac OS 8.5 stands head and shoulders above OS 8.1. It's faster (QuickDraw, AppleScript, network performance), smarter (Sherlock, Help Viewer, Folder Actions), better-looking (Appearance Manager, anti-aliased fonts), better connected (Open Transport 2.0.1, Internet Assistant, Remote Access), and sells for substantially less than previous versions of Mac OS 8. On top of all this, the UK and several other countries around the world will get their localised versions at the same time as the US. Apple claims that Mac OS 8.5 is a 'must-have upgrade', and we see no reason to disagree. The Mac OS was already good, but it just got much better. Don't look back.