dricci
Registered
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.
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.