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They Don't Get No Respect (11/29/00)
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Right now, we bet there's a whole lot of status that comes with being on the Mac OS X development team. Think about it-- this is the operating system that's going to revolutionize the platform. It marks a quantum leap forward in guts-level architecture, finally bringing Mac users plenty of buzzwords like preemptive multitasking, symmetric multiprocessing, and protected memory. It's also a quantum leap forward (or sideways, or backward, depending on your point of view) for the Mac interface; whether you love it or hate it, you won't be able to ignore it. Hands down, the release of Mac OS X is probably going to be the single biggest event in the history of the platform since Steve took the covers off the first Macintosh. So yeah, the people working on the project are probably pretty juiced.
Which means, of course, that the Mac OS 9.1 team is probably playing Peter Parker to the Mac OS X team's Flash Thompson. After all, Mac OS 9.1 is only a 0.96 increase (sort of) from Mac OS 9.0.4, whereas Mac OS X doesn't just get a full whole number-- it ranks a shift to Roman numerals. Mac OS X was rebuilt from the ground up and features an exciting new user interface called Aqua-- while, according to a preview at Think Secret, the biggest changes that Mac OS 9.1 has to offer are a long-overdue "Windows" menu in the Finder, a revamped Mouse control panel which shows icons of the new Pro Mouse (ooooooo), and a redone Startup Disk control panel that-- you guessed it-- makes it easier to boot into Mac OS X. Simply put, Mac OS 9.1 is not exactly groundbreaking stuff. We imagine that the Mac OS X team is, if you'll pardon a politically incorrect and gender-biased phrase used purely for illustrative purposes, "getting hotter chicks."
Still, just like Peter Parker (who sheds his mild-mannered wallflower guise and protects the innocent as the amazing Spider-Man, while that jock Flash Thompson's out bullying the squares or something), the Mac OS 9.1 team deserves a lot more credit than it's likely to get. Remember, True Believers, Mac OS X's not likely to surface until May, and even then it's probably going to be a while before most of us are using it. Plus, there'll be plenty of Mac users with hardware that simply won't run Mac OS X, which means that a big chunk of the Mac community's going to be using Mac OS 9.x well into 2002 and beyond, not to mention the fact that 9.1's almost certainly going to be the basis of Mac OS X's Classic environment-- so you'd better start showing 9.1 a little more respect. Aqua, shmaqua; sure, Mac OS X's the future of the Macintosh, but Mac OS 9.1 is the immediate future of the Macintosh. So start getting ready to take that new Mouse control panel for a spin.
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SceneLink (2710)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 11/29/00 episode: November 29, 2000: Tired of waiting for faster G4s? Mac OS Rumors has some dirt on what we'll see and when we'll see it. Meanwhile, Intel hires the ad wizard behind Apple's "Think different" campaign, and Mac OS 9.1 may not be as sexy as Mac OS X, but guess which one we'll be using first?...
Other scenes from that episode: 2708: Time Off For Good Behavior (11/29/00) Another day, another 24 hours stuck at 500 MHz. It's like we're all doing time in the Half-Gigahertz County Correctional Facility, marking the days on the wall with a crayon. If you want to get more extreme, let's say the Mac's on death row and waiting for a pardon from the governor-- in the form of a press release announcing a clock speed increase to get back into the game... 2709: Hey, It Worked For Apple (11/29/00) Speaking of the Pentium 4, the early reviews citing its lackluster performance in office-type applications may well have given the new chip a black eye in terms of public image. Sure, there will always be uninformed shoppers who only see that 4 is bigger than 3-- er, III-- and 1.5 ("That's one and a half, right?") GHz is bigger than 1 GHz, and will then just plunk down the cash for the "better" processor...
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