Things To Know When You Install OSX
By Tristan Moore

Mac OS X is the first official release of a truly revolutionary new new OS from Apple since the original Mac OS in 1984.

Apple has been trying to produce a replacement for the original Mac OS since 1987 when they started a project code named "Pink." Then came Taligent, Copland, and Rhapsody. Sadly none of these projects ever got out of the development stage, but parts of them live on in Mac OS X.

By the mid 90s Microsoft Windows had eaten away Apple's market share until they were just a small fringe of the personal computer market.

Windows wasn't that great, some would even say it was horrible, but it was apparently "good enough" for the average computer user. It is similar to how people will buy a cheap new subcompact, instead of looking for a slightly used, nicer, more powerful and cheaper up-market Chrysler, or a Cadilac. Microsoft has always used Apple as their "research and development department" and stolen their ideas for the Windows interface, doing a really bad job of copying.

When the Copland project was put to death in 1996, Apple was a big mess. Mac users had been disappointed too many times. Copland could have been Apple's last kick at the can but the acquisition of the NeXT operating system and Steve Jobs with it gave Apple one more chance.

Many people, including me, were skeptical about Apple's promise to deliver Mac OS X. They missed several release dates, and still there was nothing. Finally in mid summer 2000, Apple released a public beta of Mac OS X, and after many more months of developer releases we finally have a completely NEW Mac OS.

But this article is not about the history of Apple. It is an article to help people install, set up, and troubleshoot Mac OS X. I know from the number of questions that get posted to the Mac OS X section of the Applelinks Mac Boards that many people are confused about how to install and use OS X.

Installation

The $129 OS X retail package comes with three CDs: Mac OS X, Developer Tools, and Mac OS 9.1. Many people may wonder why Apple is selling an old OS with a new one, but OS 9.1 is required to run the Classic environment which allows applications written for OS 9.1 and earlier to run inside OS X.

Before installing OS X it is best to install a copy of OS 9.1 on your HD if you don't already have it installed. Some people suggest a reformat, and a clean install of OS 9.1, but it's not necessary. It is, however, a good idea to run Disk First Aid to make sure your HD is not damaged. If your HD is not formatted HFS+ (also known as "Mac OS Extended Format") then you will need to back up all your files, and reformat your HD. OS X can not run on a HFS, or "Mac OS Standard Format" HD/

After installing OS 9.1, put the Mac OS X CD in your CD ROM Drive. Once it mounts you should see an installer, and when you double-click on it a dialog should pop up with a "restart" button. The only purpose of this is to set the startup disk to the OS X install CD and then restart. Unfortunately, clicking the restart button often just produces an error message saying that the startup disk can not be changed. If this happens to you, don't worry, just restart your Mac, and hold down the "c" key on your keyboard, and wait. Your Mac should boot up into the Mac OS X installer after, at most, a few minutes. If it doesn't, you will need to reset your Mac's PRAM by restarting and holding down Command-Option-P-R all at once. Your Mac should make its normal startup chime three times and then you can let go, and hold down the C key again. If you don't let go of the keys your Mac will continue to restart over, and over, and over again until you do.

The Mac OS X installer CD boots into Mac OS X, and you have the option of installing the following Packages:

• Base System - 288,662K
• Essential System Software - 592,980K
• BSD Subsystem - 82,867K
• Additional Print Drivers - 78,885K

I chose not to install the Print Drivers, as I do not have a printer, but most users will probably want them. Once you have decided which packages you need, click install, and wait; the install process takes a while, and its predictions of how long it will take are not very accurate.

Booting up from Mac OS X for the first time produces a cool welcome movie with background music. When the movie is over, a setup assistant appears with questions about how you want to set up your system. You must enter your name and address, some information about how the computer will be used, your network connection type, the current date and time, your time zone, your email address, and your iTools information. The set up assistant does not check to see if your information is correct, so if you are very concerned with not letting Apple know who you are, make something up. Most users however will want to enter their real info as Apple uses this to contact you with news about updates. You must also set up a user account for yourself with a password that you will use to make changes to the configuration of your Mac. OS X is configured to automatically log in under this account, but you can set it not to auto log in with the System Preferences program.

If everything went well you are now ready to begin installing programs, and working with OS X.

How Do I Use Classic?

The Classic environment in Mac OS X will automatically start when you double-click an application that has not been rewritten to work with OS X. The Classic environment takes about 90 seconds to start up on my 333 MHz G3 PowerBook, and it uses about 30MB of RAM depending on what extensions are installed in 9.1. This means that you basically have two systems using up your Mac's RAM, so if you aren't using a Classic application, and don't have a whole lot of RAM (In OS X a lot of RAM is anything over 512 Megs!) then shut down the Classic environment. I will soon stop using Classic entirely when one of my favorite applications is updated for OS X.

Classic applications cannot access hardware directly, which means if you use a non OS X native application such as Adaptec Toast to burn CDs or operate a scanner, then you will have to reboot from OS 9.1 to use those devices. This problem will be addressed soon when updates are released for programs that require direct hardware access.

Using OS X Applications

OS X applications do not launch particularly fast, unfortunately. A UNIX technician I asked about this problem told me that application launch times on UNIX systems are generally quite poor even on fast hardware. Hopefully Apple can do something about this problem. Fortunately many of the OS X programs are quite speedy once they start up.

OS X has a wonderful virtual memory system, but as good as it is, it's still not a replacement for real RAM. It's still wise to quit applications that are not in use. Mac OS X likes RAM, LOTS of RAM! The official requirement is 128MB and it will boot up on systems with as little as 64MB. The virtual memory system is much better than any Mac OS in the past, but you still can't really make up for not having enough RAM without taking a nasty performance hit.

I'm running OS X on a PowerBook G3 333 With 192 Megs of RAM installed, and I have eight programs open including the Finder, and there are 2.5 Megs of real ram left free. Classic is not running either. I could open every application on my HD, and OS X would not run out of memory, but it would swap to the disk VERY heavily causing system performance to go down the toilet. Mac OS X never runs out of memory the way the Classic Mac OS did, but it just gets slow.

Troubleshooting

Now here are a few tips for keeping Mac OS X running smoothly, and fixing it when it breaks.

If you suffer a really serious crash or a power interruption it is a good idea to run the Disk Utility program which you will find in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder on your HD. Disk Utility is a program that combines the features of Drive Setup and Disk First Aid in one program. If Disk Utility finds problems then you will probably have to boot up from the Mac OS X install CD, and run Disk Utility from there. It can be launched from within the OS X installer.

For those of you who understand something about UNIX operating systems you will probably want to enable the "root" user account in Mac OS X which is disabled by default. This can be easily done from the NetInfo Manager Program located in your Utilities folder. To enable it, run NetInfo Manager, unlock it using an administrator password (click lock at bottom left), pull down the "Domain" menu. Under the "Security" sub-menu, select "Enable Root User."

For very serious damage there is a UNIX utility built into Mac OS X that can only be accessed from the command line called fsck. If you want to run this program you have to boot up Mac OS X in single user mode, by holding down the "s" key while restarting your Mac. Once it boots up type "fsck -y" at the command prompt. You may have to run fsck several times in order to repair the damage. Once the repair is completed type "reboot" at the prompt, and your Mac will start up normally again.

You can also still use your Norton Utilities CD to repair your HD if you have the latest version of Norton Utilities. Hopefully there will be an OS X native version of Norton soon.

If you have problems or questions about Mac OS X visit the Mac OS X section of the Applelinks Mac Boards many very helpful people visit there every day and are happy to answer your questions.

One final tip: Mac OS X installs approximately 30,000 files on your HD, and many of them are quite fragmented after installation. It would be a good idea to boot up from a Norton Utilities CD, and use Norton Speed Disk to defragment your file system. I have not tried this yet, but several sources have informed me that a very noticeable performance boost results from running Speed Disk.

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