🚀 go-pugleaf

phil@apple.UUCP (Phil Ronzone, A/UX Technical Manager) wrote:
> Remember - it is a Mac. Under A/UX or the Mac OS, you have the Toolbox
> and the Mac look and feel. Ain't nobody else got that ...

This claim requires some looking behind the hype.

Under the MacOS, you indeed get the Toolbox and the Mac look and feel.

Under A/UX, you can run a small subset of Mac applications -- the ones
that strictly follow the latest guidelines for cleanliness.  However,
there is no convenient way to transfer a Mac application from its home
on Mac floppies or hard disk, into the Unix file system.  There is a
program that will read 400K, non-HFS floppies and extract the files
therein.  There is *no* way to read standard 800K MacOS floppies, or an
HFS floppy, or an HFS disk partition, from Unix.  I suppose you could
get a second mac, and transfer the programs and all their data files
over with xmodem, but I doubt many people will bother.  It's easier to
shutdown A/UX and reboot the MacOS.

Under A/UX, you have access to the Toolbox.  It's a library in /lib.
If you have source for a Mac application, you can do some of the
Toolbox calls, compile it, link it with this library, and they work.
However, you can only run one such application at a time -- it takes
over the whole screen, and you can't get to Unix any more, except over
the serial ports or Ethernet.  No control-Z.  No multiple windows.  You
are either in the application or you are talking to a Unix shell, not
both.  There is no equivalent to "switcher" or "multifinder".

When you boot up A/UX, you get a "terminal emulator" on your screen.
This is just like the terminal emulator you get on a Sun before you
bring up the window system -- it looks like an ANSI terminal, with 35
lines and 89 columns, like a slightly bigger VT100.  However, they have
cleverly painted a mac-looking box around the outside of the terminal
emulator.  There's a menu bar at the top -- with all the words in
grey.  You can't hit any of them.  There's a box around the terminal
"window", with a title bar.  You can't hit it.  There isn't even a
mouse cursor.  This is a cute trick, but that's all it is.  It doesn't
do any kind of graphics, it's just a terminal.

So you say you want windows!  Well, Apple has provided them.  The
single Toolbox application, term, that comes with your A/UX port
provides multiple windows.   However, this is just more VT100's on your
screen.  You can have up to 4 ANSI terminal emulators in a variety of
sizes.  They can even overlap.  (They have to, unless you bought a
third party large monitor, or you like dinky VT100s.) There is no
graphics support, however, and you can't run any Mac applications
because you are already running a Toolbox program and you can only run
one at a time.  I would not call this a window system, certainly not in
the sense of NeWS or X or SunView or Andrew or the Apollo window
system.  It's more like "uw".  Also, "term" is not a supported part of
A/UX.  If you find bugs in it, it's your problem.

Don't burn up a lot of money buying color graphics boards for your
Mac-II yet; A/UX doesn't support them.  If your color board supports
monochrome, A/UX can use it -- until you try a Toolbox application.  It
seems that frame buffer manufacturers have to alter the configuration
ROMs on their boards before A/UX can put up a mouse cursor.  Of course,
if your color board does not support a 1-bit mode, A/UX can't use it at
all.  And it can only handle one screen right now, even if you have
several.  They have promised to fix this Real Soon Now.

The Apple marketing effort here is a masterpiece of hype.  I have the
brochure they distributed at UniForum.  The outer folder ("There are
currently more than 50 types of UNIX in the world.") has four pictures
of Mac screens.  Three of them are running MacOS applications (one from
MultiFinder; the others we can't tell), and are photographed from
straight above the Mac, so you can barely see the screen.  The fourth
is running unavailable software from Brown University that brings up
pictures and text from British novels, using the Toolbox.  (By the way,
they are calling the Brown stuff "hypertext" and taking Ted Nelson's
name in vain.  It ain't hypertext, it's just hype.)

Contained in the folder is a short letter and three flyers.  The "Apple
A/UX Operating System" flyer has a single large picture: the Brown U.
software again (which is, of course, *not* in A/UX and not commercially
available either).  The "Macintosh II Personal Computer" flyer, for
once, is free of hype.  The "A/UX Support Services" flyer is headed by
a big picture of a mailing envelope with an "A/UX Update" tape hanging
out of it.  Of course, this tape is in the 40MB Apple SCSI tape format,
which is not supported by A/UX.

In their booth, Apple was demonstrating a version of X windows.
However, if pressed, they revealed that it was X.10, not X.11, that it
was not available for purchase, and would never be available; and that
they could not talk about possible release dates for X.11.

I'd hate to be totally negative in this article, so let me just say
that there *is* a window system for A/UX.  You just can't buy it from
Apple.  We sell it; it's called MacNews, and it's a straight port of
Sun's NeWS, with all of NeWS's problems and all of NeWS's virtues.  The
first test copy went out last night, and it has a firm release date and
a firm price.

I'm a techie through and through and I hate to see people get away with
marketing bullshit.  If you buy A/UX, buy it because you know what you are
getting, not because you believed an Apple snow job.
-- 
{pyramid,ptsfa,amdahl,sun,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu			  gnu@toad.com
		"Watch me change my world..." -- Liquid Theatre