My Mac Special Report
Tempo a3c1 (Mac OS 8.0)
NOTE: This “preview” was based on alpha software, which is in very early development. Various features of the system are subject to change in the final release. My Mac was presented the opportunity to explore Tempo on the Mac of an Apple beta tester (who wishes to remain anonymous.) Also, Tempo was once called Mac OS 7.7, but Apple has decided to call it Mac OS 8.0, as they feel that it is a major upgrade.
Let me start off by saying that I have NEVER been so excited about the Mac. I expect new systems to bring more speed and new features, but Tempo has more then exceeded my expectations. The multi-threaded finder, the grayscale (Copland) appearance, and the numerous other new and exciting features. They all make this a great release. The Mac OS is well on its way back to the top.
Installation
Installing Tempo was much like installing Mac OS 7.6. The “Install Mac OS” program has been slightly revised, and updated to version 1.1. The “4 Step” screen is gone, replaced by a page by page walk through, much like a DOCMaker document. It now forces you to at least read the important information. After that, you pick your disk to install on, select what you want to install, and let the installer do all the work. The normal disk tools, Disk First Aid and Drive Setup, are now accessed by pressing a button appropriately named “Disk Tools.”
New Appearance
Clearly one of the most exciting features of Tempo is the new grayscale appearance, also know as the “Copland default theme.” This new appearance is spread throughout the Finder and its control panels, dialog boxes, menus, menu bars, and throughout the whole system, if you prefer. The new appearance is controlled by the “Appearance Settings” control panel.
The color part of the control panel lets you set the accent color and the highlight color, previously controlled by the Color control panel, which has been removed. As you can see in the screen shots below, 3 of your 11 choices for accent colors are “Forest Green,” “Gold,” and “Lavender.” The other choices are: “Copper,” “Crimson,” “Emerald,” “Magneta,” “Sapphire,” “Silver,” “Turquoise,” and “Black and White.” All of these colors change the progress bars and the scroll bars, except for “Black and White,” which changes almost everything, including the windows and menus. A great power saving feature for PowerBooks.
The options part of the control panel lets you control the WindowShade feature, set your System font, and lets you define whether or not you want the grayscale appearance throughout the system. You can still set that little “zip” sound for WindowShade, and you can still double click the menu bar, if you want. System font choices are “Truth” and “Chicago,” although you cannot control the size. See screen shot above.
I am delighted by the new look, but I did find one minor problem with it: The windows are thicker, so you see less of the program you are working in. I have found that this negatively affects Netscape big time. The advantages of the new windows far outweigh the disadvantages, though. The new thicker windows are nice, since you can now drag a window from any side, not just from the menu bar. They also have a new “window widget” box, that you can click once to collapse the window. I did download the latest version of ~Aaron, and the only differences I found were that the font was changed from Espy to Truth, and that the window widget and the resize window boxes in the top right corner of the window are flipped.
Multi-threaded and Powerful – Finder 8.0
The new finder on the whole is much faster and more responsive, due to the full PowerPC-native code. The finder is now multi-threaded, so copying files, emptying the trash, and updating windows all happens in the background. This means that you can start to copy something and then go back to what you were working on. And the multi-threaded finder is very powerful. At one point, I was copying 4 files at the same time, while Web surfing and using Photoshop 4.0, and the best part is that there was no performance decrease at all.
While copying, you can now view critical information about the copy, including time remaining, bytes transferred and left to transfer, the name of the file being copied, and to and from where the copy is taking place. If you’re copying a folder, a small icon appears in the window header, telling you that the file is being copied (the delete dialog box has not changed from the one in 7.6, aside from the new appearance). Window updating is shown by a small turning arrow in the window header, and this also happens in the background.
New to the Finder are Preferences, found under the Edit menu. Replacing the Label and Views control panels, you can select your Font for Views, select “Simple Finder” and “Spring open folders,” set grid spacing, and pick your label colors.
Simple Finder greatly cuts down on menu length, and is very useful for less experienced users, as some advanced commands in various menus may confuse them. Spring open folders is a great new feature. When you drag an icon over a folder, it will open temporarily, making it easier to store items inside deeply nested folders. When you release the mouse button, the item drops into the folder and all folders except the destination folder close. Grid spacing options are “Tight” (more items) or “Wide,” (neater arrangement). While the wide view does make the items neater, it’s just too wide. I still prefer the tight view.
Windows & Menus
In Finder windows, live scrolling will occur when dragging the scroll box. This will only occur in the Finder windows, as other control panels and programs have to be programed that way. Some programs that have live scrolling today are Netscape 3.0, Internet Explorer 3.0, and BBEdit 4.0.2. This is one of my favorite features, it makes finding files in big windows much easier. Also, the information header in a window is now simpler, displaying only the number of items and how many Megabytes are available on the disk. The amount of MB in disk has been taken out.
There are now only 4 menus to the finder: File, Edit, View, and StrikesBack, a code name for Special. (Apple seems to change the name of the special menu with every new release). The Label menu has been placed under the File menu. The File menu includes two new commands: Move To Trash and Show Original. The Edit menu remains the same, except that Preferences is at the bottom. StrikesBack (Special) has been totally rearranged, as has the views menu. In StrikesBack, the commands are as follows: Empty Trash, Eject, Erase Disk, Sleep (for computers that support it), Restart, and Shut Down.
View Menu
The View menu has been dramatically revamped. You can now view icons in three basic ways. They are View as Icons, as Buttons, and as List. Viewing as Icons is exactly what it says it is, icons. Viewing as Buttons, however, produces one click “buttons,” which serve the same function as icons, except that they are buttons.
Moving down the menu, you find an “Arrange Icons” submenu, where you can arrange icons by: Grid, Name, Date Modified, Date Created, Size, Kind, and Label. To control the icon arrangement and the icon size, you select the last option in the view menu, “Icon View Options.” In Icon view options, you can select to do nothing, always snap to grid, or keep icons arranged by: Name, Date Modified, Date Created, Size, Kind, and Label. Be aware that all of the icon view options apply to buttons. You can view by icons or buttons on the desktop or in any window.
Viewing by list, however, is another story. Instead of seeing an “Arrange Icons” sub menu, you now get a “Sort List” submenu, where you can sort the list by Name, Date Modified, Date Created, Size, Kind, Label, Comments, and Version. (You can also control this in the window header when viewing by list in a window). The “List View Options” window is also different. Here you can select the size of the icons in the list, select to calculate folder sizes, and select to use relative data. You can also control what columns appear in the list view. (Date Modified, Date Created, Size, etc…) You can only view by list in windows, not on the Desktop.
Contextual Menus, which are activated by pressing control and clicking your mouse button, pop up out of the window/desktop/icon, not out of the menu bar. What appears in the contextual menus depends on what you are viewing by (Icons, Buttons, List) and where you are control-clicking (window, desktop, icon). For example, when control-clicking a window, while viewing by icons, you get the following options: Help, New Folder, Close Window, Get Info, Sharing, View, Arrange Icons, and Icon View Options. Note that this is very similar to the View menu when viewing by icons.
Other New Features…
I am sure that you are just dying to see more screen shots of Tempo. Right? That’s why we have many more at our Web site! The URL for the screen shots is index.shtml/tempo_ss
The Summary
I could not be happier with Tempo. When you take a closer look, you really see how many new and improved features there are. A multi-threaded finder, new appearance, contextual menus, live scrolling – they all add up to my pure joy over this new system. Kudos to Apple. Get ready folks, because in July, the Mac OS will take a turn for the better.
Adam Karneboge (webmaster@mymac.com)
Websites mentioned:
index.shtml/tempo_ss
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