Nonetheless, what amounts to an experiment: Rhapsody, essentially the NeXTStep/OpenStep OS with Mac interface elements bolted onto it (sometimes), was incredibly interesting. Yellowbox was to represent the new app platform (with built-in multi-architecture support) while the Bluebox, for compatibility with Classic Mac apps was to be added before release.

Shortly I will outline instructions here for getting Rhapsody DR2 (x86) up and running in VMWare. OK, it turns out this process is exactly the same as for installing NextStep. In case it wasn't obvious, these two OSes are very closely related.

I understand why they did Snow Leopard, and I dutifully shelled out my $35.99 CDN, but I wasn't surprised when a few of my apps didn't work after the upgrade:

• AutoMount Maker didn't work right away, but after I installed Rosetta (via an in-OS download) and rebooted it came back to life. Likely its a PowerPC compiled binary.
• Google Reader Notifier didn't work, apparently due to some uninitialized variables in the code. A patch has been posted in the comments of the author's website, and it works great.
• Windows Live Sync is the biggest casualty. It won't sign in once you go to 10.6. This is frustrating, since I'm quite dependent on it. Microsoft has acknowledged the problem, but there's no ETA on the fix. I may have to switch to DropBox.

I also have an older version of Photoshop (CS2) that I haven't tried yet, but expect it won't work. Additionally, if you (like me) keep your apps organized into folders, all the Apple apps' new versions will be put in the root of the Applications folder again. If you're Dock items link to the organized executable, you may find that they don't work. Simply over-write them with the new versions.

Its nice to have native Google Calendar syncing, but the way it handles calendars other than your main one (it calls them delegates and puts each calendar under its own header) is ugly and annoying.

Over-all, I'm sure this is an important release, and I know Apple did a lot of work with 3rd party developers to get them ready for this -- app breakage, at this point, is the fault of the application creators. But still, without much new eye candy, this was a pretty annoying upgrade, with not much apparent user benefit. Good thing it was so cheap.

To connect and print to a Leopard printer from Vista, don't bother trying the built-in stuff. Just download and install Bonjour for Windows, and use the Printer Wizard to add the Mac's printer.

I've just finished writing my own version of the AppleTV screen saver called QTV. After lots of searching I couldn't find anybody that had a working version that actually did the same stuff the real AppleTV version did. QTV will work on both Tiger and Leopard (10.4 & 10.5) and has a random array of photos that you specify floating vertically across your screen at varying 3D depths and moving at varying speeds while periodically rotating as a group. My version also allows you to optionally have a glimmering sun cast it's glow across the entire scene. You control everything thru various settings including: speed of front, middle and rear photo scrolling, the folder to search for images in, spin to the left or right, cast shadows from front and middle photos, the rotation interval speed, and whether to show the glowing sun or not.

Read more about QTV and download from his website!

Click for a bigger picture.

In fact, the technology is so close that I used a tutorial for developing a sample Mac app, to develop a sample NextStep app. The notion of "FAT Binaries" that work on multiple hardware architectures came from NeXT as well, since it ran on any number of platforms by the end.

When Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple, he set out to create a new company that would deliver elite hardware, and a revolutionary operating system. NeXT was started to build powerful hardware and software that would leapfrog the Mac (and everyone else on the market.) They eventually had to kill off the hardware line (after making some very nice, uber-high-end machines) but the software they made changed the industry. It was on a NextStation computer, using the NextStep OS that Tim Berners Lee would invent the World Wide Web, and its the true Object Oriented approach of the OS that many companies have imitated or borrowed.

By the mid-90s Apple was in truly rough shape. Their archaic OS, once the greatest thing on the market, was showing its age, and Apple had tried, and failed (mostly due to mismanagement) to replace it. It was determined that they should buy an existing next-gen OS, and re-build on top of it. After flirting with IBM and BeOS, they settled on a deal with NeXT. A deal that grew until Apple acquired the company, re-acquiring Steve Jobs in the process. He became the iCEO (interim CEO) and the de-facto leader of the company. Existing ideas were rapidly brought over from the Mac onto NextStep/OpenStep, layered on top of its rock-solid BSD Mach microkernel, Object Oriented underpinnings, and a re-vamped version of its graphics layer, was a new Interface, and a Classic emulator to allow old Mac apps to run.

The end product, after many variations, pre-releases, betas, and one or two fairly ugly general releases, was what we know today as Mac OS X. Much of NextStep is still intact, including low-level OS APIs, visual and development concepts, and culture.

If you're interested in getting NextStep up and running in VMWare (I'm using a Windows Vista 64-Bit Host OS, but these steps should work with most versions of VMWare -- including Fusion) you'll need to find an ISO of the NextStep OS somewhere, and maybe these steps will help you...

Configuring VMWare

After much frustration, I finally got past the initial hurdle of configuring it so the installer would run off a CD image. Here's what I had to do:

Get the NextStep 3.3 floppy disc images from this great resource site, nextstepcomputers.org. It has pretty much everything you need, plus some forums that you may or may not find helpful. You're going to need at least:

- Boot Disk
- Driver Disk
- Beta Drivers
- Core Drivers

Configure a new VM, and tell VMWare that the Guest OS will be BSD.

Create a virtual hard drive no larger than 2GB -- and it must be pre-allocated.

64MB of RAM will be more than enough

"Insert" the Boot Disk floppy image (rename the extensions of all the disc images you downloaded to .flp to make VMWare find them easily) and "Insert" the ISO for the Install CD.

Your Hard Drive and CD-ROM should be configured as IDE. The Hard Disk must be configured as IDE 0:0 and the CD-ROM MUST be configured as IDE 1:0 due to the primitive driver support.

Installing NextStep 3.3

Start up the VM, following the prompts until you're asked for driver discs.

Start with the Core Drivers. It'll only need that disk for a second to load keyboard support, and other basics.

When asked for SCSI drivers, first use the "3.3 Driver Disk" and tell it to use option 4 -- Adaptec 2940. This isn't really present on your VM (no configuration in VMWare will let you use the SCSI drivers) but we just need to make the installer get past this step.

You'll be asked a second time for SCSI drivers. I assume the first time is about the CD-ROM, and the second time is about the hard drive. In any case, this is the important driver. Insert the "3.3 Beta Drivers" disc, and press 1 to list its drivers. Press 7 to go to the next page, and press 2 to choose "Dual IDE" option.

Finally press 1 to skip loading any other drivers, and continue...

The installer will ask a whole bunch of times if you really want to wipe out your hard drive (just the hard drive image, don't worry!) and then it'll copy the files it needs. When its done, it'll ask you to remove (disconnect) the floppy and reboot.

The OS will begin to load, and then notice it needs some drivers again. It'll list the devices it doesn't know about on its own. Supply the "3.3 Beta Drivers" disc, and then the "3.3 Core Drivers" disc to continue...

Soon you'll see the Graphical OS Loader kick-in...

It'll take a few minutes and then it'll want the "3.3 Beta Drivers" disc again. At this point you should have mouse support, so things get a little nicer. Following that, it'll want the "3.3 Core Drivers" disc again too.

You'll see the famous beach ball from OS X (but in grayscale instead of color) and then a Summary of Devices.

Just to start out, I clicked on Monitors and added the Default VGA Adapter. I'll have to mess with this, and what's available online. I've heard its possible to get a much better resolution than VGA.

The mouse was working, so I didn't mess with that. Network is another whole ball of wax (apparently DHCP support needs to be hacked in) so I skipped over this for now.

In sound, I added Sound Blaster 16, since that used to be very compatible. I don't know if it'll work, but its worth a try. I didn't touch the SCSI or Hard Drive drivers, since the ones I was using got me this far!

In the next step, I unchecked the languages I didn't want, and installed everything else so I could play with it. It struck me that much of the terminology used in the installer looked similar to that used in the OS X installer.

When its done copying, remove the floppy (like it tells you to!) and go ahead and reboot.

Pretty soon you'll be up and running inside NextStep! Check your e-mail -- there's a note there from our old friend Steve!
I have had some mouse problems -- it behaves erractically, so I'll be searching the forums for fixes on that. I found that if I hit "Ctrl + Alt" to release the mouse, then click inside NexStep again to send control back to the Guest OS, that clears up the problem... for a bit. Obviously I'll be working on display and network drivers, but thats outside of the scope of this article. It's alive, and that's all we were after today.

From here I'm going to point you to a couple links that should help you finish up a good install. I've also made a drivers ISO that will simplify things greatly.

• More technical information and advice,
• Custom drivers by a guy on the scene that fix things like the mouse (which will get progressively worse with each reboot!)
• Custom NextStep/VMWare video drivers for higher resolutions and color!
• A pre-made disc full of all of these NextStep custom drivers.
• How to copy files onto your NextStep VM (harder than it sounds!)
• How to set-up networking on NextStep (once the custom drivers are installed)

Enjoy your bit of Apple/technology nostalgia...

And I've been a big fan of each major revision of X -- and have run all of them right out of the gate, warts and all. But I'm not sold on Leopard.

The loudest touted features are either useless, or already existed in 3rd party apps for 10.4.
- Spaces is just VirtuDesktops -- and a concept I never had any use for. I'd much rather have multiple monitors then multiple "virtual" screens.
- TimeMachine is just a back-up app -- granted its well integrated and looks pretty. But the method I have in place now is much less intrusive (not to mention more fire-proof) and doesn't require me to be tethered to a local external hard drive.

But nothing bugs me more than Stacks...
Stacks kills a feature I've used and loved in OS X since they killed the Apple menu's hierarchical app-launching capabilities from OS 9.

It used to be, in OS X 10.2-10.4, that you could drop any folder onto the right side of the Dock and turn it into a menu by right clicking on it. In this way I could add my very organized Applications folder to my Dock and use it to find applications in a very simple manor (I'll admit, its kind of like a Start Menu, but come on -- its a good way to organize your apps).

In 10.5 that great feature was replaced with either a silly, and surprisingly static, curved list, or a box full of icons. Now that box can contain subfolders -- but if you click on them, it opens a window. That's a window you have to close after you find your application. Unacceptably stupid.

Know what else is stupid? Apparently there's a massive data loss bug in the new Finder. For years -- literally, we've been complaining about how awful the Finder is (even compared to its OS 9 grandparent) and this is the fix they offer us?

Damage to the Dock and a bad upgrade for the Finder aside (I do like the new sidebar, btw) Stacks are not what they were supposed to be. A "Stack" was designed as a replacement for (or addition to) the folder concept. It was an organizational item that existed in the Finder, had a single icon that could be dragged around like a file, but expanded when clicked to show a collection of items. There are plenty of UI prototype videos on the web showing what Stacks meant to us before Apple polluted the term.

• Sample of what Stacks were supposed to be

I'm ditching Leopard for the time being. The only feature I really wanted was the improved Front Row... maybe there's a way I can run it in 10.4. If not, I'll just hold out hope that Apple gets their crap together with upcoming updates.

Update: Yay! It looks like they fixed stacks... a little bit!

• Greg Westin: Enabling WebDAV on OSX for use with iCal

Step 1: Open Terminal
Usually found in the Utilities folder of Applications (but if you didn't know that already, this might not be the right topic for you!)

Step 2: Create your public/private key pair on your local computer

• At the command prompt type: ssh-keygen -t rsa
• Hit enter to accept the default file name and location

Step 3: Copy your public key contents into the "authorized_keys2" file on the remote server

• Type: ssh username@remoteserver.com 'cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2' < /Users/Youruser/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
• Enter your FTP password for the remote server when prompted
  • If the file didn't already exist on the remote server, it will be created, don't worry.

Step 4: SSH at will!
You will never need a password from your account on your local computer again! Note that you'll need a public key provided for each client computer/computer account you want to use to connect to the server.

The goal of this script was to invoke Address Book.app's Export command on all of the contacts in its database. I found a script online that exported individual vCards, so with a little modification I was able to get it to dump out a single group vCard. The next challenge was getting it up to my webserver.

I'm learning UNIX as well as AppleScript, so I was quite happy to put SCP to work. However, I hit a brick wall when trying to get AppleScript to pass in my server password. It can't do it. I searched all over the Internets, but apparently once AppleScript invokes SCP, it loses control. And SCP obviously doesn't have an AppleScript dictionary of commands. This behaviour is quite different from SSH, with which you do not lose control.

This sucked for a long time, until I finally broke down and decided to learn about RSA key pairs for authentication. I've been avoiding this for quite awhile now, because I frankly like just using a password, and I was scared of learning such an obscure new topic. But I finally figured it out -- although that's a topic for another post...

Anyway, assuming you have key pairs set up with your server, this script will do the trick. As I mentioned, it exports your Address Book to a group vCard in a given folder on your local hard machine, then SCPs the file up to a given folder on your web server. Point vCard PHP to that file, and schedule the AppleScript to run at a specific time using iCal, and you have an updated Address Book online!

Download the Script Here