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| This section is for questions that fall into the trivia about Rhapsody and don't play a major role in the operational usage of Mac OS X Server/Rhapsody. Q: So how stable is it? A: I personally haven't had any problems with any of the versions that I have used. To give you an idea, the only time my current desktop installation ever gets restarted is after a power failure... When was my last power outage? Lets see: Riemann> uname -a Rhapsody Riemann 5.1 Rhapsody Operating System Release 5.1: Fri Apr 17 13:07:52 PDT 1998; root(rcbuilder): Objects/kernel-105.6.obj~2/RELEASE_I386 Copyright (c) 1988-1995,1997 Apple Computer, Inc. All Rights Reserved. i386 Riemann> uptime 9:47AM up 111 days, 17:14, 2 users, load averages: 2.58, 2.70, 2.62 Riemann> To say that it is stable doesn't actually reflect just how stable it is. It is the most stable daily use OS that I have ever worked with (which includes the Mac OS, Mac OS X, SGI Irix, Windows 9x and NT, OPENSTEP and NEXTSTEP). Q: Will any Mac OS technologies be ported to the Yellow Box for Rhapsody? If so, will these be made available on other platforms that OPENSTEP runs on? A: To my knowledge the one thing that Apple ported over to Yellow Box from the Mac OS was Quicktime. The display engine in Rhapsody is the same as in OPENSTEP and NEXTSTEP (Adobe's very expensive Display Postscript). Q: Are the current built-in services in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP (spelling checker, graphics conversion library, etc.) going to remain in Rhapsody? A: Services are fully functional in Rhapsody. Q: Will Rhapsody applications run on existing versions of OPENSTEP? A: Rhapsody 5.0 for Intel can run some unaltered OPENSTEP for Mach apps, but beyond that the code needs to be modified to reflect the changes in Yellow Box from the original OpenStep APIs. I have heard that Yellow Box for Windows also has had some luck with OpenStep for Windows apps. Q: Will existing 68K and PowerPC applications run on Rhapsody? A: In Rhapsody 5.0, no. This version didn't come with Blue Box originally. Apple later shipped an additional CD with an alpha version of Blue Box running Mac OS 8 for those running Rhapsody 5.0 on PowerPC systems. Rhapsody 5.1 and later versions for PowerPC had Blue Box as part of the standard install, but the Intel versions did not. Q: When will Rhapsody first deliver SMP? A: No version of Rhapsody was written to use multiprocessing. Q: What will be Rhapsody's primary volume format? A: Rhapsody (5.3 on) does support a wide variety of volume formats, including HFS, HFS+, UFS, and popular network and CD-ROM formats. But Rhapsody's primary format (the only type it can be installed on) is a proprietary form of UFS. Q: How does Rhapsody handle case sensitivity in file names? A: Rhapsody is as case sensitive as OPENSTEP. Q: Will resource forks be supported? A: Resource forks are not supported (seen) by the OS in Rhapsody. Even though later versions of Rhapsody could see HFS volumes, it ignored the resource information. Q: Will hard drive partitioning be supported? A: Not for 5.0 and 5.1, yes for later versions. Q: Will Mac OS applications in the Blue Box be able to recognize that VM is turned on? A: Memory management is completely controlled by the Core OS. In Blue Box the system believes that it has as much physical memory as the Core OS has access to. This was a very nice setup for Blue Box apps and made running them seem (in my opinion) far better than running in the standard Mac OS. Q: Does the Blue Box use the Macintosh ROM? A: Actually the ROM file sits next to the Blue Box disk image in the directory /Local/Library/MacOS/Users/username/. It is loaded before the image is mounted from what I can tell. Q: What will be the performance of existing applications in the Blue Box? A: They seem virtually as fast as if they were running in the Mac OS on the same system (only with better memory management). I ran benchmarks to see how close this setup actually is to real hardware. You can find the page here. Q: What imaging model will Rhapsody use? A: Adobe's Display Postscript. Apple would later make Quartz for Mac OS X that would replace Display Postscript with their own Display PDF so they would no longer have to pay Adobe a license fee with every copy of the OS. Q: Is the OPENSTEP Dock going to be available in Rhapsody? A: It is actually still there in 5.0 to a degree. In 5.1 and later it has been replace with the Applications Menu (but you can get it back using Fiend). Also you have the option to use the minimize to tile for windows like in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP instead of window shade. Q: Are my windows and dialogs going to look and act the same under Rhapsody? A: The theme in both Rhapsody and Mac OS 8 (and later) came from the design that Apple had been working on for Copland. With the exception of icons (Mac OS 8 uses 32x32 icons while Rhapsody uses 48x48 icons) the theme us applied the same for both environments. Q: File types and creators are an important part of the Mac OS experience. Will these work in Rhapsody, or will we be forced to use filename extensions? A: All files require extensions to be recognized by the system in Rhapsody. Q: What will the installer be like in Rhapsody? A: Installer? What installer? (re: Rhapsody 5.0/5.1) Later versions work like the OPENSTEP installer only using pax instead of tar for the items inside the packages. Q: What will Java applets look like when they run on Rhapsody? A: Java is one of the primary languages in Rhapsody/Yellow Box. The version of TextEdit that comes with very version from 5.1 on is actually written in Java. On the down side, it is actually a little slow. Most people who use TextEdit for their work actually use a Objective C version that some people over at StepWise put together (much faster). Q: Will there be an Apple menu in Rhapsody? A: Yes, and in later versions you get the AppleMenuOptions.app to help configure the menu yourself. Apple did release a version that works on both the PowerPC and Intel versions of Rhapsody 5.1 Q: Will Rhapsody have Setup Assistants? A: Yes, and it looks like the Mac OS version. Q: What about fonts? Are they going to be shared between the Yellow Box and the Mac OS compatibility environment? A: No, to each their own. Q: Can we copy and paste between Rhapsody and the Mac OS compatibility environment? A: Yes... limited though. Plain text can be moved back and forth between environments. | ||||||