Pogoing to Damascus
March 23, 2001
Like the rest of the Mac Taliban, The Gay Blade is giving his rocket launcher a vigorous spit shine in preparation for Saturday’s official commencement of the Mac OS X jihad.
While he’s reluctant to don the mantle of prophet (since it clashes badly with his pumps), this whetted utensil has received a vision: thousands of true believers streaming down from the treacherous mountain country around Redmond, Wash., on a holy mission to lock down the GUI high ground and push the Windows Entity back into the Pacific.
Ahlan wa sahlan! The Blade calls dibs on lighting the fuse beneath the giant granite effigy of Steve Ballmer!
Lifting the veil
Tehran wasn’t built in a day, of course. Like all good tacticians, the Blade is already looking far beyond the first skirmish in the mother of all OS battles. Hence, this color-coordinated crusader is profoundly heartened by word that Apple this week sent forth another camel-trainload of munitions to its guerilla army of server farmers.
The second beta version of Mac OS X Server 2.0 (which is apparently still on track to reach Kabul city limits by May's Worldwide Developers Conference) is allegedly based on the golden master of the Mac OS X client slated to ship March 24.
Turkish towel-draped members of the Blade’s personal Ba’ath party point to several enhancements since the initial beta was seeded back in October: The new release packs Version 3.0 of QuickTime Streaming Server; NFS support, for file sharing with like-minded Unix boxes; and support for Java Server Pages and Java servlets wrought in the image of Apache’s Tomcat reference implementation.
Mac mullahs will hail the new version’s support for the ACGI protocol, which should make migrating vintage AppleScripts a cool breeze, and administrative ayatollahs of every stripe will appreciate their newfound dominance over Web site permissions. Now that’ll put starch in your hijab!
Meanwhile, Apple’s keepers of the ancient faith continue to wind fresh layers of resinated linen around the mortal remains of Mac OS 9, aka the “Classic” Mac OS. According to the Blade's retinue of jackal-headed dogsbodies, Mac OS 9.2, code-named Moonlight, turned alpha just this week; the upgrade nails some persistent issues in the old-school OS and will run on the nouvelle vague of Mac hardware due to ship this summer.
Hey: That's not hummus! Spread your Mac contraband to The NMR Report, and an extra-chunky souvenir mole rat could be yours!