O'Reilly Network: OS X

Published on O'Reilly (http://www.oreilly.com/)
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/ask_tim/2000/osx_1000.html
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Date: October 2000
Subject: OS X
From: Stephanie Wright

Got an OS X book in the works?

Yes. We have planned a volume in David Pogue's Missing Manual series: MacOS X: The Missing Manual. It's still only a gleam in David's eye, though, and we don't have a firm schedule for publication. But expect it some time next year.

In addition, we'd certainly be interested in entertaining other proposals. As one of our employees, Meerkat developer Rael Dornfest, noted, "If the beta is anything to go on, it's going to be a hit! I've been using it since Wednesday and am hooked. I could see, first, an in-depth ORA book on the innards and outards: chrome, Unix underpinnings, programming, etc. of Mac OS X; and second, a Missing Manual: OS X for the end user."

As noted above, we already have plans for the Missing Manual, but we might also be interested in books on programming and administration. However, as is normally the case, we're less interested in quick proposals from professional writers looking to put the latest notch on their pen (or word processor), and more interested in hearing from users and developers who've pushed the envelope. It's amazing how many books about popular software packages merely rehearse the obvious. We want books that help people get more out of their computers.

I do find it fascinating to see the Mac moving to a Unix foundation, and wonder what that marriage will enable. We also see that marriage in a company like Eazel, where Andy Hertzfeld and some of the other early Mac designers are building a next generation interface for Linux. I like to think that these two great operating systems have a lot to teach each other. The Mac has always had great user interface design (although I have to say that the interface has grown in complexity over the years, and is nowhere near as intuitive as it used to be), while Unix has always had great strengths in programmability and in automation of user tasks. Both systems have had very clearly defined architectures that have enabled a level playing field for developers.

I don't know enough about MacOS X to know where the "information pain" is, but I do know something about the kinds of areas that interest me overall, and suspect that the intersection of OS X and these areas might prove most fertile:

Networking. We're past the era of standalone computers. What are the interoperability issues on mixed networks containing OS X, Linux and other Unixes, and Microsoft operating systems? How does it work with the Web, and especially the emergent world of Web services? How does it work with PDAs like the Palm, RIM Blackberry, PocketPC, and so on? How's the wireless support? How's the support for Java and other network programming languages?
Multimedia. We've lived with this buzzword for so long that it's become debased. But rich media are definitely becoming a bigger part of the user experience. As bandwidth increases, technologies like streaming media and file-based multimedia formats like MP3 have become commonplace. We're seeing the early signs that speech recognition and speech synthesis are catching on as a part of the developer's toolbox. We're seeing massively networked multiplayer games. We're even seeing the beginnings of some fairly radical technologies like smell and touch output. (Check out Logitech's new "haptic mouse.") Who's going to push the envelope here with new applications that enrich the user experience?
Applications as services. While most people still think of applications as something that run locally on their computer, I find that many of the most interesting applications of the past five years are actually application services accessed remotely over the net. Almost everyone I know uses MapQuest (or one of its OEM derivatives) to get maps and directions. We use sites like Amazon, Fatbrain, E*trade, EBay, and so on for e-commerce, or just to get information. These are the killer apps of the past few years. Now, we're starting to see the emergence of programming frameworks like Microsoft's .NET that allow for the creation of distributed applications that access these online services in other ways than through the Web browser. How does MacOS X play in this game? To the extent that it does or does not have an answer to .Net, it is going to be more or less interesting.

Obviously, MacOS X is going to have to be out for a while before we can know for sure what its strengths and weaknesses are. I'll look forward to hearing from users about how they're putting it to use. Ideally, O'Reilly books come from the people whose peers look at them in awe and say, "How did you do that?" After you guys figure out how to make MacOS X stand up and do tricks, after you figure out what it can do that no other OS or application framework can do, let us know. Those are the books we'll be interested in seeing proposals on.

Tim