Mac OS X Public Beta: Revisited

[dricci]

With the way Mac OS X keeps progressing, many of us forget the roots and how things used to be. Today I decided to do some exploring in Mac OS X Public Beta.

Since I just happened to have a useless Lime iMac 266 laying around, I decided I'd use that as my patient. I grabbed my old trusty Public Beta CD out of my locked Fire Proof Safe and began to boot and install.

About 30 minutes later, I had an installed OS X Public Beta system. I couldn't get the login screen to appear, probably because it was passed the hard coded experation date. I didn't stop there, not all hope was lost.

I switched the startup volume back to OS 9 (this took some work off of an OS 9 cd since I couldn't get to the startup control panel).

I was back in 9, and ready to go exploring. I turned on file sharing and headed on over to my PowerMac running 10.1.3. I connected to the root share, and began exploring around in the mess Public Beta threw on the Hard Drive. It was time to start switching files (dun-dun-dun!)

The first thing I did was copy the "Music Player.app" from Public Beta (remember that little pre-itunes app we were stuck with?). Once it was on my Power Mac, I put it in Applications and attempted to launch. Bounce, Bounce, Crash. It wouldn't launch. I'm guessing Apple intentionally did this in later OS X updates to prevent it from being used inplace of iTunes.

Status: Failure.

Well, now that I knew that was out of the way, I decided to get REALLY dirty. Remember how Public Beta used a picture of a PowerMac Side for the "Computer" icon? I wanted this in 10.1. That little blue malformed iMac ain't cutting it anymore! So doing some digging in Desktop.app in core services, I was able to find the computer.icns file and with the help of sudo and grace of jobs.. er god, I was able to copy it in place of my Finder.app's computer.icns file. I now have a PowerMac computer icon! Retro style, baby!

Status: Success!

There was one other thing I had been meaning to try for a while: Replacing the 10.1 finder.app with the Public Beta "Desktop.app".

Well, I decided to use my iBook for this experament as it is not as mission-critical as my powermac. I made backups of the current finder in OS 9 (10.1 gave me too many permissions and running finder.app problems). Then I copied the Desktop.app over the network and renamed it to Finder.app and placed it in the 10.1 core services folder.

Rebooted into 10, logged in. I was stuck. It tried to log me in for 5 minutes before I decided to go back into OS 9 and reverse what I had done. I wish I could have done this successfully, as I'd like to play around with the old Public Beta finder/"desktop". Sure, it'd be slower, but it would have some cool older stuff like folder searching. Ah well.

Status: Failed.

It's interesting to note that trying to launch some older Public Beta apps like the installed QuickTime totally locked up my powermac. A frozen, non moving spinning ball mouse. I had to do a total reboot to get everything back to normal.

All in all, It was a fun experience, but I really wish my finder transplant and Music Player.app would have worked. If anyone has sucsesfully gotten any of this to work, please let us all know how!

Just a warning, if you want to play around like this, MAKE LOTS OF BACKUPS! You can easily screw something up, and a backup is almost always needed.

 

[RacerX]

Why did you clear the PRAM and in 9 set the date back to... oh, Feb 2001. Seems like it would be more interesting than just looking at the files. I may try doing the same thing, but with Developer Preview 4.

As for living in the past, I still use Rhapsody. The was a system that felt like Mac OS 9. My next big upgrade is from moving from Rhapsody 5.1 (Rhapsody Developer Release 2) on my ThinkPad to Rhapsody 5.6 (Mac OS X Server 1.2) on a Wall Street G3.

Here is a shot of Euclid back when it was still running PB.

 

[ksv]

Hehe, I got inspired, wanted to try the Public Beta again, and I'll never do that again on my machine. I booted from the beta CD, and the screen went half green, half dark red. I thought my Open Firmware password with full security on could have something to do with it, so I booted in Open Firmware and turned it off, then shut down. Then I tried starting the Mac again. Nothing happened. I pressed the button once more, the button lit, and dimmed out. Tried again 5 times or so, nothing happened. Next step was to open the machine and do something. I pulled a RAM module, tried to turn it on again, but it still didn't work, so I though I may had killed my processor with overclocking and voltage modifications, although that would be strange, as the temperature never got too high.
So, I put the RAM module in its place again, took out the battery and put it in again after a minute or so, to make sure everything was reset. Then tried booting again, and fortunately it worked
I guess the latest firmware update, 4.2.8, must have made the PowerMac incompatible with the Public Beta
So, appearently it's not a good idea to try installing it on a Mac with Firmware 4.2.8, at least not on G4s. Just to let you know...

 

[googolplex]

I never had the public beta, but the music player looks kind of cool

 

[Pascal]

Originally posted by dricci
With the way Mac OS X keeps progressing, many of us forget the roots and how things used to be. Today I decided to do some exploring in Mac OS X Public Beta.

You should have booted in the Public Beta and timed the boot time, app launch time and such... To give us the feeling of how much the Mac OS X has progressed !

 

[dricci]

I tried changing the clock and still had a lot of problems trying to get it to do anything past the boot up status screens. So something is seriously long.

It does take a long time to boot, though. And I think I like the Public Beta boot screen better than the 10.x ones. It seems more compact rather than over sized. Or maybe it's just the difference between my 17 inch screen and the little iMac screen that's throwing off my sence of size off.

Also, attached is the "Music Player.app" icon file from the app in Public Beta. Some people have requested it from me so I decided to post it up where everyone can get it. It's a nice icon.

 

[simX]

Just so you guys know, Music Player was basically the precursor to iTunes. iTunes is much better than Music Player, and there's no reason you would ever want to run Music Player on the newest version of OS X unless you just wanted to see what iTunes was like in the OS X public beta days...

 

[Jasoco]

One of these days, just for fun, I'm gonna buy an old G3 and find a copy of the Beta. I never tried it. Missed my one chance and regretted it. I only first touched OS X when 10.0 came out. So I always wanted to see what they did to it.

I would have liked to see earlier beta's too. (Before the Pub Beta, the ones Steve would show on stage. Remember the solid non-transparent Dock?)

One of these days. Before the Beta becomes a collectors item.