“Since the public unveiling of Mac OS X 10.3, codenamed Panther, during June’s World Wide Developer Conference, Apple has provided developers with a pair of updates for the forthcoming OS that remains under active development. The latest distribution, dubbed Panther 7B21, was frozen last week and was briefly distributed to developers over Panther’s Software Update module. Soon after, the release was made available via a 3 CD image set on Apple’s Developer Connection servers. Coupled with the 7A202 build released a few weeks earlier, the two seedings provide a number of speed and user experience enhancements over what was already made public in June,” reports AppleInsider.com.
Of particular interest in this report of Panther 7B21 (besides the “Quartz engine is said to be almost 40 percent faster than Jaguar’s on desktop machines”) is the mention that “the fate of Aladdin System’s StuffIt suite may be up in the air with Apple’s embodiment of Zip compression functionality built directly into the Finder’s contextual menu system,” AppleInsider reports.
The full article, with screenshots and small quicktime movies of new features, is here.
The first compression/archival tool for the Macintosh was a product called “PackIt” which predated StuffIt by at least one full year (if not more). PK-Ware (in my neighboring state of Wisconsin) began development first for DOS PC’s before its compression schemes became available in tools on the Mac. And it did not use “zip” to describe its first efforts. The “zip” name came later.
People in the know are generally agreed that the StuffIt algorigthms do a better job of compression than ZIP. But, like everything else which is Windows, zip is omnipresent.
By the way, in addition to my list below of Microsoft products not originated with Microsoft, you can add Hotmail. It, too, was acquired.
I agree with another poster below that the “not invented here” mentality harmed Apple (until it abandoned it several years ago). Where I depart, however, is in the idea that Microsoft’s delay in adopting technology was about its concern for “standards.” Microsoft’s only interest in standards is in defeating them. Examples are MPEG, Java, and open web standards and protocols which Microsoft seeks to modify by means of its omnipresent web browser. Already many web developers give no thought to compliance with any browser but Internet Explorer. And this plays right into Microsoft’s hands.
The whole idea behind the internet and web is that it is platform-independent, so that no matter what computer you use, it can communicate with any other (via openly defined standards). But Microsoft seeks to defeat all of this — so that one day everyone will be feeding at the Microsoft trough. It troubles me to think that a single company — no matter which one — would be the keeper of “standards” for the global internet. Too much is at stake here for one company to control this — not least of all one which can’t seem to innovate much of anything. (See my list below).
Compact Pro also predated Stuffit and maybe even PackIt. It died in Dec. of 2001.
Hey Jeff Mincey,
I have one small correction to your Apple “firsts” tech intros. The Lisa, circa 1983, had preemptive multitasking. Otherwise, enjoyed seeing the info listed.
steve
Yep, the Lisa had preemptive multitasking in ’82 and the Amiga in ’85 also, so this definitely wasn’t a NT first.
To Steve Pissocra, I was unaware of this — thanks for pointing it out. It’s lost on me, however, why Apple would not seek to implement this technology into its first incarnations of the Macintosh. Indeed, it took several major releases of the Mac OS before even co-operative multitasking was made available (to say nothing of pre-emptive).
Be that as it may, I had meant to confine my remarks to the Mac and Windows platforms — sorry I didn’t make this clear. (I spoke of “Apple firsts” and not “Mac firsts,” so you are quite right to correct me. Of course, let’s not be under any illusion that the Lisa was the first pre-emptive multitasking computer of ANY kind — but perhaps the first PC. Obviously other operating systems — such as from IBM, AT&T, and DEC — had pre-emptive multitasking well before the Lisa.
As a side note, I’m familiar with Compact Pro and PackIt does predate this software as well. But thanks to “Unix rules” for reminding me about this product; I had nearly forgotten about it. For a while there the Mac platform had a multiplicity of compression tools available — PackIt, StuffIt, Compact Pro, and an offering from Symantec and also what then was called Now Software (which made a product called “Now Compress”).
Jeff Mincey,
The list I provided was not one of my own. That is a list of some of the “new” features in Windows XP according to Microsoft TechNet. Follow the link.
I also never implied that Apple invented those technologies, only that they existed in Mac prior to XP’s introduction of them. Don’t read too much into a very innocuous post, dude.
To Atomic Bomb, If the Microsoft web site claims that pre-emptive multitasking is a feature which is new to Windows XP, then it is simply wrong — yes, that’s right, Microsoft’s own web site. Now maybe it claims simply that this is a feature in XP — and not necessarily a NEW one. But if claims it is new, then it is incorrect. Windows 2000 had full pre-emptive multitasking from top to bottom, and so, for that matter, did the very first version of the Windows NT microkernel back in 1992. Ask some Windows experts who have actually USED other Windows operating systems — they will tell you.
In any case, Apple didn’t offer pre-emptive multitasking on the Mac platform until OS X. Prior to that there was no such capability on a Mac.
Still, to your larger point, I agree that Apple is far more innovative than Microsoft — not that this is saying much. I rank Apple, Sun, and IBM as the three remaining computer companies which actually do innovate today. HP and SGI once did, but they do so no longer — especially HP which is foolishly trying to out-Dell Dell.
Jeff Mincey,
Heres a short (and likely incomplete) list of compressors/decompressors for the old macos (9 and below)…now OS X can probably handle just about everything…But the old macs were very facile with decompressing all kinds of files… and I think StuffIt Deluxe could decompress many formats not listed here…
http://asgard.actrix.co.nz/macintosh/archivers/@files
Jeff Mincey wrote:
>In any case, Apple didn’t offer pre-emptive multitasking on the Mac
> platform until OS X. Prior to that there was no such capability on a Mac.
Um, would you claim that Apple’s A/UX 1.0, released in 1988 was not a fully multi-tasking Operating System ?
What does it have to show for “innovation” — Word and Excel? That’s it?
YES – But don’t forget those two Microsoft applications began as Macintosh applications – and were later ported over to the PC, after MS developed windows (Licencing some Apple code in the process to achieve this).
At the time Apple’s OS software was several years ahead of MS.