Apple's latest operating system for the 21st century
Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) has been in the business of building and selling its own brand of computers to run its original classic Macintosh operating system (now known simply as macOS) ever since the first Macintosh computer was sold in 1983. Throughout this time, macOS has evolved from a simple point-n-click with basic Finder commands to one of the most sophisticated multitasking system you can find, together with more colourful fancy interface, better stability and reliability, and a generous smattering of Apple apps as needed to identify and record who uses its products, and later try to sell you more tailored-made products as well as innocently allowing information to be synced across various Apple mobile devices. And all these extras are provided free today for helping you do essentially, well, the same thing as before except with more bells and whistles and more opportunities for Apple to learn about you and what you do.
Sometimes the OS has had no choice but to improve simply because it had to handle new hardware features, such as the PowerPC processor in 1995-96, and the new arm64 chip in 2021, not to mention requests to make the OS able to multitask (essential when copying or saving files so you can switch over to doing something else), starting from the day users received their multifinder capabilities in System 7. At other times, Apple's marketing and accounting arms saw the need to make improvements to the OS mainly because it needed to make a serious profit after 1996 thanks to its decision to become a shareholder company with a large base of shareholders demanding to see improvements in their dividends. So they tried ways to force people to buy the latest technology from Apple and price it as high as possible (yet the materials used in a Mac computer are still not the best and subject to easy wear-and-tear from normal use even on the latest M1/M2 arm64 Mac).
Then came the concerns of software piracy and copying commercial DVD movies to name a few at the turn of last century which saw the need for Apple Inc. (formerly Apple Computer, Inc.) to improve the OS to handle this situation. Now the OS can keep tabs on the apps you use and relay this back to the company, as well as allow apps to call home to the software developers to help see who is using what and whether they have paid.
Another issue for Apple was the way the company was lagging behind in creating a stable OS compared to its major competitor known as Microsoft (through its Windows NT/2000 and latest XP version).
Because of all this, Apple has seen the need to create a new OS capable of handling all these situations, and a little more, in one relatively easy to use, highly bloated, and fancy-looking software known simply as macOS (formerly OS X, System 6 to 9 etc.).
What will I find in macOS?
You will get a fancy interface for organising your files and folders and accessing your applications. That's a given for virtually all versions of the OS since Apple started running its business. To make it fancier, you can add moving or static "photographic-like" screensavers just to make everyone see you are doing something professional with it. Well, why else would the average user spend US$129 (A$229) for getting the OS? However, since 2015, Apple has decided to make free the OS as a way to get more people to buy Apple products and force existing customers to upgrade and accept new software features (and with it new ways for the company to learn about you and what you do).
Probably a good idea.
Below all this fancy superficial stuff, macOS's reliance on the UNIX-based operating system known as Darwin is there to provide the necessary stability and improvements in the fundamental areas of memory protection, pre-emptive multitasking and advanced memory management:
Memory protection
A feature designed to protect the memory allocated to applications such that in the event one application crashes, all the other applications including OS X does not crash as well. Although the classic MacOS8.6 had some ability to do this, OS X is the true OS capable of doing this properly.
Preemptive multitasking
This feature is about allowing a number of applications to run at the same time by allocating processor cycles to each application as they are needed. It is something that was borne out of a desire by business professionals to use their time wisely by achieving more things at once with their computers. For most others, it is a fancy technology.
Advanced memory management
This feature is primarily to protect the operating system's space and keep it separate from a user's space. In this way, the operating system can never be trashed accidentally or deliberately by a user. The user can only work in the space allocated to him/her by the computer's memory management system.
And, of course, you will get to enjoy some animated icons, and heaps of ready-to-use applications made by Apple to fill your storage disk, such as AppleWorks, iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes and QuickTime.
Makes you want to run out to your nearest Apple store to buy a Mac! Good news, the OS is free.
The hidden features of macOS — logs, caches and preference files
Beyond the visible features are extra things you might have second thoughts about having should you go with Apple's own OS brand. Although on the positive side, things like caches are there to help speed up commonly used functions and features for machines that tend to be a bit slow. Nowadays, this isn't too much of an issue as the new arm64 processors can get up to speed more efficiently, and the presence of flash drives helps with the added speed.
For log files, they can be useful to track down issues to see at what point something went wrong. At the same time, these files can be designed to store all sorts of potentially incriminating things you do with your computer inside log, preferences and cache files. The log files are especially important for Apple. They tend to be invisible and held in the private>var>log folder at the root level. Cache files can be held in various visible and invisible folders. For example, the invisible secure.log file stores information about all your successful and unsuccessful attempts at login. One can understand from a security point-of-view why someone would want to know when and who unsuccessfully made a login if you have multiple users. But why successful logins as well? How many people would want to know this unless you work for a clandestine organisation or for the purposes of incriminating people for certain actions (what is Apple trying to figure out)? Consequently, your hard disk will quickly get filled up with logs, caches and other files explaining your exact activities you were performing on your Mac computer.
Other ways to incriminate people if they are not doing the right thing (e.g. software pirates) or people who are doing the right thing by testing some software and then removing them, is how macOS now stores details of all the software you use. For example, when installing new software, information about the software gets stored in a number of files, such as:
.GlobalPreferences.plist
com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.help.plist
com.apple.recentitems.plist
Also check the invisible Private folder at root level for further locations where this information can be stored.
Because of this updating of logs and checking things almost constantly, macOS can be rather unresponsive and potentially a slow operating system between actions. You can select a command in the Finder or try to launch an application and there would be a delay before it finally gets going. Nowadays, this delay is far less noticeable thanks to arm64 processors and flash drives.
You will need a minimum of 1GB and preferable 1.5GB or more of RAM to make OS X 10.0 to 10.9 seem relatively fast again, and have more than 6GB of hard disk space to store the OS plus an additional 10GB of free space. Of course, you will need more space if you want to store applications and other files on the same drive as the OS. For macOS 12 and higher, you will need a minimum of 8GB of RAM is required, but 16GB is better for the extra memory needed by the OS, and at least 14GB of storage space to store the latest OS version, plus an additional 10GB of space for creating caches and storing other data. Again, you will need more space to store applications and any other file on the same drive as the OS.
As storage space is now getting quite large these days, we recommend that you create partitions. Each partition should be able to be wiped clean without affecting the other partitions. Set aside at least two partitions for storing OS, one as you main prime startup disk, and a second as a backup disk in case something should go wrong and you can't boot up on the primary startup drive. After that, you should consider having additional partitions to store your personal and work files, and places where you need plenty of working space for applications to do their work of processing information. It is also up to you to decide whether additional partitions might be useful to store software application installers for only those applications you need to use the most (the rest can be placed on one or more backup external drives to help keep the partitions on the Mac clean and having plenty of space).
By having these partitions established, you can do things like temporarily eject the partition drives as a way to further protect and increase the security of your data.
And consider using the Activity Monitor utility in OS X to inspect hidden processes running in the background and give them the flick with the old magic quit button. But be careful not to quit critical system processes (process names with lower case letters or where the Information Panel does not reveal the "Open Files and Ports" message next to them). Choose only those processes such as PowerPC applications on Intel machines, processes whose names are the same as the parent applications you have installed, diskimages processes, and those taking up very high CPU usage. If you are not sure, you should leave the processes alone.
The security risks of letting Apple decide where to store your files
Whilst macOS in its current version is highly secure against third party hackers, it is not foolproof. And if a vulnerability is exploited in OS by hackers, the way Apple has designed the OS to force people to store files in predefined locations can pose a significant security problem.
For example, macOS is forcing users to accept the existence of a Documents folder at the root level of the Macintosh file directory. This means you can no longer tell the OS where you want to place this Documents folder (or whether it should exist at all). This is actually a dangerous precedence in the IT industry because all it takes nowadays is for an unsuspecting computer user to place important documents inside the Documents folder because it makes sense to do so (well, it is named for that very purpose). Then some smart arse in the world could send the user a special Word document that will attach some of the important files in the Documents folder without the user being aware of it. And when you send the Word document back to the sender, your privacy will be seriously compromised. All because hackers also know where the Documents folder is likely to be located thanks to Apple's idea of how things should be organised on your computer. For further information about this security issue, click here. But it isn't just with Microsoft Word that information can get stolen or grabbed from you without your awareness. There are other ways within the OS to grab information about you and send them to secret locations on the internet.
Many of these vulnerabilities tend to get plugged by Apple, but again nothing is ever perfect. This is why it is up to you to find ways to make things harder for hackers and Apple to grab personal information about you and any files you may have on your computer.
The hidden features of macOS — learning UNIX
To get the most from macOS, you may have to come to grips with UNIX. This is the foundation on which macOS is built. All the features you see on the surface through the OS's fancy interface including its underlying stability rely on UNIX to some extent. But if you want to get around certain Apple restrictions within the Finder and preferences/settings, you will have to know something about UNIX. Nothing like typing a few useful commands on the screen to get your pleasurable hormones racing through your body once more! Really riveting stuff for the average consumer! (We suspect this was included to attract UNIX and Linux users to the OS X platform, and get those MS-DOS users excited with UNIX on a Mac).
You will need to use the Terminal utility of macOS to type UNIX commands.
However, thanks to the UNIX underpinnings, macOS is a very stable operating system. As Boris Yamnitsky, president of Boris FX, said:
"The Unix kernel in OS X has the potential to boost the overall system performance and stability" (1)
In the early days of OS X, one of the biggest disadvantage was the sluggish performance. Now users are finding the speed of OS X increasingly more bearable thanks to the new Intel dual core processors (and throw in enough RAM). Nowadays, macOS running on arm64 is okay. Then again, you have to ask yourself just how fast OS9 could have run on the latest processor if it was recompiled, and without all the bloatedness Apple has added to the OS over the years?
Or better still, can Apple create a streamlined macOS without Apple apps and having all the core features needed by users? Just a simple organising tool for files and folders, access to the internet, and a powerful graphics capabilities to make everything look great on the desktop and in running any applications we like?