After another panicky start to the year for the MacOS, Martin Russ asks what happens next.
Now that Apple have weathered another shaky first few months of the year, it's probably time to look beyond the obituaries of the mass media and the reassurances of the specialist Mac press.
Probably the first question is 'What happens next?' Apple have gradually been refining their ideas about the likely course of MacOS development over the next couple of years, and the plan is beginning to take shape. It looks as though we can expect two parallel developments: six‑monthly releases of System 7.6, 7.7, 7.8 and so on, coupled with the gradual release of an entirely new and different Apple/NeXT Operating System called Rhapsody, starting some time early in 1998, with the major changeover of users to the new system happening by the middle to end of 1998. The System 7 increments are likely to last at least a couple of years, and represent the only route for 68K‑based Macintoshes. PowerPC‑based MacOS computers will be just one platform for the new OS, because it may well run on Intel‑based PCs too.
Which brings us to the crunch. It now looks increasingly likely that Apple will gradually introduce more software that's intended for the Windows/Intel computer platform as well as their own. Claris' cross‑platform packages, such as Clarisworks and Filemaker 3.0, are only a taster of the future. Depending on whose rumours you believe, Apple were due to release a PC clone early this year, mysteriously code‑named the 3400 — or was it an even lower‑cost version of the 4400? Either way, Apple's attempts to make the PC go away have failed spectacularly, and it now seems that they've decided to take a more pragmatic approach — and it may involve hardware too. Microsoft have won the hearts and minds of most personal computer users, and the MacOS is likely to live on only in niches: publishing, multimedia, music, MIDI and audio.
The roots of the Mac come from a Xerox prototype called Star, and the roots of some of the distributed networking software used by newly acquired NeXT also come from Xerox. But, once seeded, the user interface of the MacOS seems to have become more or less fixed. A few improvements and a slight 3D appearance have been added in System 7, but otherwise the MacOS seems to be stuck in the 1980s. In contrast, Microsoft have continued to refine their Windows user interface, and the latest version, Windows 95, incorporates many neat and clever ideas from a variety of leading‑edge user interfaces. The result is that Windows 95 looks modern and has a wealth of features, while the MacOS looks basically unchanged from 15 years ago.
...we can expect to see a continuation of the gradual merging of MIDI, music and digital audio programs across the MacOS and PC platforms.
With the desktop appearance of the forthcoming new Rhapsody MacOS due to incorporate some of the enhancements that were due for the now‑abandoned Copland OS, as well as some of the advanced features of OpenStep, NeXT's OS, Apple may well soon be challenging for the user interface lead again. But with many of Apple's best user interface designers now working for Microsoft, it should be an interesting contest.
Music
So where does this leave musicians? Copland seemed to be working towards breaking the bad news that 68K Macs would be abandoned quite rapidly. Now the two‑year respite for 68K Macs means that those of us who are still reluctant to move to PowerPC have more time to put it off — but the end may be more traumatic. Perhaps the end of the 68K road will involve adopting the new Rhapsody OS and a PowerPC together in two years' time. For PowerPC users, the path looks much more like a repeat run of the remarkably smooth transition from System 6 to System 7, with a gradual transition over the next year or two.
Application‑wise, we can expect to see a continuation of the gradual merging of MIDI, music and digital audio programs across the MacOS and PC platforms. The MacOS may well continue to show the way forward for musical applications: when you hear reports about Windows being unable to support more than 10 or 11 MIDI ports, you begin to appreciate the ongoing rivalry between Opcode's OMS (Open Music System) and MOTU's FreeMIDI, which has resulted in two powerful and very useful competing technologies working for the overall benefit of the MacOS MIDI musician.
The music programs themselves will probably continue to grow, and if other areas of software are anything to go by, we can expect a convergence of tools into complete integrated packages — rather like the Microsoft Office suite for business use. Third‑party plug‑ins, like those for Digidesign Pro Tools TDM, could well become adopted as a way of adding functionality when and where it's needed. Alternatively, OpenDoc's Java reworking may provide the same document‑centric result from a different direction. The Sound On Sound of two years hence may have a very different collection of computer notes pages...
Send In The Clones
In SOS's February issue I made the mistake of mentioning the new PowerMac 4400/160, and commented that this was Apple's boxiest Mac so far — which translates to 'most PC‑like'. My recommendation that this might be a case when 'low cost is not necessarily a good reason to buy' may have been too Mac‑centric. I've noticed that whenever I advise enquirers to buy a MacOS computer to do MIDI and digital audio, they come back several months later and tell me that they've just bought a PC instead.
So, given the apparently rapid take‑up of the PowerMac 4400, its three PCI slots, and the matching price reduction from competing clones, my tip this month is to buy the new, even faster, 200MHz PowerMac 4400 (or a similar clone). It will look so much like a PC that you may well buy it by mistake, so my advice to buy MacOS computers for music and MIDI may finally be heeded by accident. Go on, move that 68K Mac to one side (they make great Web browser and e‑mail platforms) and buy a new PowerMac 4400 — most people will think it's a PC anyway!
On The Net
Waves are one of the leading companies making innovative plug‑ins for Digidesign's ProTools, but here's a utility that has a wider application. TrackPac is a simple drag‑and‑drop audio utility for compressing audio files. It uses proprietary 'lossless' compression technology — which means that you get back exactly what you put in. File size reductions of 50% or more are claimed on on 16‑bit sound, and 8‑bit material should be squashed down to 20%‑30% of the original file size.
TrackPac supports the widely used Sound Designer II (SDII) file format and does not require any additional hardware. (A WAV‑file‑format TrackPac is also available for Windows 95 and Windows NT.) A cut‑down but still functional 'lite' freeware version of TrackPac is available on the Net, from www.waves.com
News In Brief
- PRO TOOLS
Digidesign's major rework of the Pro Tools software (version 4.0) is due to be announced at the AES meeting in Munich about now. With PCI and NuBus hardware support, plus native PowerPC programming, it has a new visual appearance, new mix automation features and dynamic automation of TDM plug‑in parameters. - QUICKTIME MPEG
After a long, long gestation, the Apple QuickTime software MPEG decoder extension has finally made it out into the real world. Although hardware MPEG decoding is the best way of not thrashing your processing power just to get video onto the screen, the software MPEG decoder should finally give QuickTime the combination of cross‑platform and cross‑standard support it needs to be ubiquitous. - MAX 3.5
Opcode Systems Inc have released a semi‑major (3.0 to 3.5) upgrade to MAX, their graphical programming toolkit software for multimedia and music. Version 3.5 provides native Power PC code and some new and enhanced multimedia creation tools, including new support for the interaction of MAX users over the Internet (in addition to the MAX mailing list, of course!). One of the new objects is a graphical MIDI file editor which uses the piano‑roll timeline approach to provide visual editing. Apple Notes eagerly awaits a review copy, to see if this new MAX overcomes the stability problems that have affected previous timeline‑based objects.
Opcode also seem to be reinforcing the multimedia aspects of MAX rather than just the musical appeal: MAX 3.5 comes with Stat‑Media's Instant Buttons & Controls 2.0 CD which includes over a thousand graphical user interface images, so perhaps more people will consider producing kiosk and CD applications using MAX instead of Director...
Opcode are at listserv@vm1.mcgill.ca containing just the words 'SUBSCRIBE MAX'.
Smaller System
As part of the ongoing 'Make your System folder smaller and free up space for real work' series, this month's topic involves some of the less obvious space‑wasters.
- SOUNDS. If you've ever played with anything that allows you to map silly sounds to key presses or disk ejects, or even alternative beeps, then you may well have quite a few sounds lurking in your System file. I bet that the initial novelty wore off quite quickly, and you soon returned to a quieter computer — but did you remove those sounds? Check by going into the System folder and double‑clicking on the System file itself. After a pause, it should open and reveal all those sound files, plus lots of international keyboard definitions which are probably too small to bother about. Depending on what you used to produce all those sounds, you may well have a folder or two in the System folder full of nothing but sound files. This is a good time to move them somewhere else — onto a removable hard disk?
- PATTERNS. Desktop patterns are another area where it's all too easy to collect a large number of neat patterns, use just one of them and forget about all the other huge 24‑bit graphics files that are occupying space and doing nothing constructive. Throwing away the Desktop Patterns control panel is a drastic solution — a much better one is to prune its contents by using the 'Cut' menu command.
- ICONS. Custom folder icons are another source of problems. Not because of the space they occupy, but because they can slow your MacOS computer down — the Finder can be kept very busy keeping track of all those custom icons for folders. There are Extensions that force the Finder to ignore custom folder icons, but a much simpler solution is to use them sparingly in the first place — use the colour Labels instead. Removing them is easy, but a little counter‑intuitive. Use the 'Get Info' menu option or the Command‑I shortcut, and then click on the folder icon in the 'About' dialogue box. Now 'Cut' it, 'Clear' it, or use the Command‑X shortcut, and you should see the custom folder icon replaced with the plain, simple and ordinary icon.