Apple Announces Mac OS X 10.1 Upgrade

July 17th, 2001 at 3:00 PM - Macworld Expo by John F. Braun

Since the release of Mac OS X 10.0, Apple has released 4 minor updates (10.0.1 through 10.0.4) to the operating system. Although these updates offered minor speed and functional updates, OS X still canit match the performanc of Mac OS 9, which has had years to mature and be fine-tuned for the Mac. But all that will change with the release of Mac OS X 10.1. According to Apple:

Mac OS X v10.1 delivers improved performance, with dramatically faster application launch times, blindingly fast menus and window resizing, faster logins and a more responsive feel overall. In addition, Mac OS X v10.1 features an enhanced Aqua interface, with a moveable Dock, which can be placed on the right, bottom or left edge of the screen; Dock menus that enable running applications to present a menu from their Dock icon providing fast access to commonly performed functions; and new menu items for frequently used system controls like battery, AirPort, monitors and sound.

• dramatically enhanced system performance, especially application launch time and window resizing;
• fine tuning of the Aqua interface for a more customizable experience that includes the ability to position the Dock on the left, the right or at the bottom of the screen;
• data CD burning capabilities within the Finder and DVD video playback and authoring capabilities to support iDVD, making Mac OS X the ultimate engine for the digital hub;
• broadened support for hundreds of third-party peripherals such as printers, cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, rewriteable drives and storage devices;
• unprecedented network integration with Mac, Windows, Linux and UNIX environments through AFP/AppleTalk, SMB/CIFS, WebDAV and NFS file services running on Mac OS X Server, AppleShare, UNIX, Linux, Windows NT and Windows 2000 servers;
• greatly enhanced 3D graphics performance with updated OpenGL software and full support for NVIDIA GeForce3;
• a more powerful and efficient iDisk leveraging the Internet standard WebDAV protocol to allow users to stay connected to their iDisk, even behind corporate firewalls;
• substantial improvements to AppleScript throughout the system and full support for Internet scripting using SOAP and XML; and
• the final version of Internet Explorer 5.1 with full support for Mac OS Xis Java 2 runtime.

Mac OS X v10.1 will ship this September.

Mac OS 10.1 will be available for free. You can find more information at the Apple Web site.