So Steve had no new hardware to show off. No problem-- he had plenty of software to keep our attention, not the least of which was Mac OS X. Yes, Apple's next-generation operating system has finally been officially announced, only just over three years after Apple first purchased NeXT as the basis for a replacement for the ill-fated Copland. By our watch, Mac OS X is late, late, late-- but given the cool stuff we saw, we're perfectly willing to wait a bit longer. Damn, that was jaw-dropping.

First of all, let's talk about the new interface. The good news is this-- at least it ain't "Brushed Metal." It's called Aqua, and it makes all Mac interface elements look suspiciously like Robitussin Liqui-Gels. It's the "liquid look," a look that Steve described as "when you saw it, you wanted to lick it." It's the interface equivalent of the iMac: fruit flavors and "Ice" with lots of transparency and translucency. It'll take some getting used to, but so far we like it. From what little we've seen, it may well violate a slew of Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines, but from the sound of things, Apple's writing a whole new set of rules starting with Aqua.

Then there's the Dock. This thing is amazing. It's the Windows Task Bar, only attractive and well-designed-- it's a floating row of icons centered at the bottom of the screen; each icon represents a minimized window, a running application, an alias of a document, or just about anything else you want to drag into it. As items are added, it grows horizontally. When there are too many items to fit and the Dock hits both sides of the screen, adding items to it causes all icons to shrink slightly, so the new icon fits. If you put so much stuff in the Dock that all the icons are quite small, simply moving the mouse cursor over the icons causes a nifty rippling magnifier effect. You really have to see it working to appreciate how neat this is-- Apple's posted a 6 MB QuickTime movie showing the Dock in action.

There's plenty more to like-- the way that legacy "Classic" applications retain the Mac OS 9 Platinum look, the crazy things that are possible with Quartz (Mac OS X's 2D graphics architecture based on Adobe's Portable Document Format), the way that all interface elements move to give elegant visual feedback about what's going on, etc. But it's not all perfect. Things that get the AtAT "thumbs down" so far: well, there's the new "Finder" for one. Anyone who's spent time with NeXTSTEP or Mac OS X Server knows that Apple's new "Finder" is mostly just the old NeXT file browser redone in Aqua with the name "Finder" slapped on it. So much for the flexibility of multiple windows and putting things where you please; the new "Finder" restricts you to a single window in the interest of "simplicity": "Now, double-clicking on items in the icon or list views no longer brings up separate windows. Instead, the view on the new folder replaces the old folder view within the single File Viewer window. By focusing the file system into a single window view, Mac OS X makes smarter use of screen spaceŅand eliminates the problem of proliferating windows." Ugh. Why can't I just drag this from here to there? We're still hoping that Apple puts a real Finder in place before Mac OS X actually ships.

Overall, though, Mac OS X is shaping up to be a real winner. There are going to be growing pains, to be sure-- after all, the Mac interface hasn't changed fundamentally all that much since 1984, and Mac OS X introduces some real startlers. But it'll be worth it-- if for no other reason than Mac OS X will look about a gazillion times better than Windows 2000 when viewed side-to-side. If Bill isn't nervous, he probably should be...