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Why Install Mac OS X in Computing Labs?

As lab administrators, we're very excited about the new strengths and flexibility that Mac OS X offers. Even as it paves a new path, Mac OS X is built on foundations we are already familiar with: Mac OS, UNIX, and standard protocols.

Years of development have been put into Mac OS X. The improvements for education environments are unparalleled. The ease-of-use interface we have come to associate with Apple is now built on one of the most powerful systems: BSD UNIX. This combination allows both novice and power users to work on the Mac in the way they are most comfortable.

Some key points that apply to enterprise installations needed in Higher Education:

  • Open standards: Support for a wide variety of platforms and protocols
  • Open source: The Darwin OS core is available for inspection and contributions
  • UNIX foundation: Stable, efficient, and well-known in the education community
  • Training for support staff: Combination of UNIX and Mac OS allow for us to build on current knowledge base
  • Software: Tremendous flexibility to run new, optimized programs as well as older applications in the Mac environment, plus the ability to run applications in UNIX environment and Windows emulation

Open Standards

Open standards are very important in higher education where multiple platforms must co-exist. Generally there is an established computing infrastructure that Mac OS X must work within. Mac OS X ships with support for LDAP and Kerberos for centrally managed users and authentication. Mac OS X fits in with other directory products including Active Directory and Novell Directory Services. Its open architecture allows for extensions that further integrate the OS into the local environment (e.g., OpenAFS file system). Many other standard protocols are supported: SMB/CIFS, WebDAV, NFS, LPR, AFP, Java, etc.

Open source

Apple has embraced the concept of open source development by turning the entire UNIX core of Mac OS X into the Darwin open source project. Making the source available opens the door for peer review and serves as the "ultimate documentation" for system programmers. By accepting changes back from the community, Apple is leveraging the talents that are often available from higher education staff and students.

Apple also takes advantage of several open source projects by including them with Mac OS X. The Apache web service is the best example. Apple gets a very mature web server that is well understood and well documented. They contribute back any changes needed for Mac OS X so it becomes part of the Apache source code release.

UNIX foundation

The UNIX foundation provides many benefits for both users and administrators of the operating system:

Modern memory management brings all the benefits of Mac OS 9's virtual memory system without the significant performance drawbacks. Applications no longer have individual memory allocation and automatically share physical memory when the system runs low. Memory is protected by the operating system so an application that crashes will rarely destabilize the system or other applications.

Preemptive multitasking makes the system much more responsive. While navigating through menus or dragging scrollbars, the rest of the system is no longer frozen. Many operations that took over the CPU in Mac OS 9 can now continue in the background while the user switches to another application.

Multiple user support is now built in to the system, making it an ideal fit for lab computers shared by many students. Each student's settings and documents are stored in their own home directory. Students don't have access to system files or other student directories so less clean up is required. Home directories placed on a central file server allow each user to experience a customized environment no matter which lab computer is used.

Training for support staff

Mac OS X's use of open standards helps us deal with resource limitations by maximizing our utilization of support staff. Since Mac OS X combines many familiar technologies (Mac OS 9, BSD UNIX, Kerberos, NFS, etc.) the learning curve is shorter than expected for a brand new operating system.

Software

Mac OS X is an incredibly flexible OS that runs new applications that are fully optimized for Mac OS X and older Mac applications under Classic. With third-party applications we can run UNIX-based applications (under X Windows) and Windows software (under Virtual PC or Citrix).

Many UNIX command line applications are being ported to the Mac OS X environment with an Aqua interface (e.g., RsyncX is a version of rsync with HFS+ support and a GUI interface).

Carbon programming creates an easy path to port Mac OS 9 software to Mac OS X, while Cocoa, an incredibly fast development environment, helps create applications that can take full advantage of Mac OS X features.

Native Java 2 support allows Java applications to run on Mac OS X.

Software bundled with Mac OS X includes a web server, an FTP server, other remote access tools, network utility, digital video editor, music player and encoder, CD burning software, DVD player, email application, and digital camera image download software. Hardware models with DVD burners also come bundled with DVD authoring software.

Multi-language support makes it easy for exchange/foreign students or departments that study other languages.

Native OpenGL support for 3D graphics is being used by scientists to visualize theories of matter and energy (see http://www.apple.com/scitech/stories/cornell). It also makes 3D modeling and animation quick and easy for software developers (i.e., Maya and LightWave 3D).

Native PDF support means that anyone can create PDFs from any application and view them without additional software.

Computer Science departments will benefit from all the development bonuses of Mac OS X, including: the ability to program in a large variety of computer languages, the power of UNIX, the open source Darwin kernel, and other open source bundled software and technologies.

More Information

For more information on how Mac OS X can be used in education, check out these links:

http://www.apple.com/education/hed/macosx/
http://www.apple.com/scitech
http://www.apple.com/creative
http://www.apple.com/smallbusiness/legal/
http://www.apple.com/smallbusiness/health/