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created 25 July 2000

Well, as a network administrator at Macworld Expo, there are times when I can feel like the proverbial fish lacking water. but there are always products that catch my eye, and some that even make me feel like someone out there is listening to us. This year, if I had to pick the one announcement that received almost no press, and yet is of critical importance to OSX, it would have to be Tenon Intersystems' announcement of an X Windows package for OSX.

Even though it's not available now, (then again, neither is OSX), this was an announcement of major importance to OSX.

Being based on Unix, there is a natural synchronicity between OSX and other flavors of Unix, such as Solaris, Linux, AIX, and Irix. But until this announcement, OSX was isolated from its Unix brethren due to the lack, (some say shocking) of a commercial quality X Windows package. (Yes, John Carmack from Id has done a good job of creating a Darwin - based X project for the Open Source community, but Darwin is not OSX, only a part of it.)

But why X Windows? Why is this so important?

In simple terms, X Windows is one of the things that make Unix, well, Unix. X allows Unix users to easily share graphical applications and other resources with other X Windows users on the network, regardless of platform.

As an example, at my company, we use iPlanet's email server. If I need to perform some administrative task on that server, I can use an X Windows package on my PowerBook to access the Solaris box running the server, and run the server administration program natively on the server, but with all the display and mouse information displayed on my Mac. This means I don't ever need to worry about having a Mac version of that program, as long as it runs under X , I can use it just as well as if I was sitting at that machine.

In other words, X allows the remote access and execution of graphical applications across a network by any computer, regardless of OS or hardware, as long as that remote computer has a compliant X Windows application. For those of you using Citrix's Metaframe product with Windows Terminal Server, they are quite similar. Citrix has done some serious refinements to the X protocol, trimming bandwidth, allowing for non-TCP/IP networks, and making security an inherent part of the system, but at its heart, Citrix is basically X Windows for NT/Windows 2000.

By having an X package available for OSX, Tenon ensures that OSX will not be left on the sidelines of the Unix world, but will be able to play on an equal basis with all the other Unix variants. By further allowing OSX to be an X Windows server as well as a client, Tenon is ensuring that any Unix user will be able to make use of the power of Apple's OS and hardware, not just other OSX users. So this way, if a company had a number of multiprocessor G4 boxes, by installing Tenon's package, and BSD-X applications on those boxes, someone using Linux or even Windows would be able to run those X applications, and leverage the power of Apple's hardware.

So far, the ability of Tenon's product to remotely serve native OSX or Carbon applications, (i.e. non-native X WIndows applications) is not known, although I would be surprised if the first release did this. This is not to say it would be impossible, but there are some technical issues with getting Aqua to accurately display on platforms that don't have the Quartz system as part of the OS, and translating Aqua to X is not a minor issue. Going the other way, it looks as though Tenon is able to make X applications being run on an OSX box conform to the Aqua behaviors, i.e. window controls, the Dock, etc.

Tenon is also including X development libraries, to make it easier for OSX developers to create their own applications that can be run via X Windows.

A full X implementation for OSX is an important step for this OS. It is a primary, and critical way to really show the world, especially in those areas where X is of crucial importance, such as upper education, and science/technology computing, that Apple is really coming out with an OS that is a real Unix - based OS, and that it will play nicely with other Unix platforms, while losing none of what makes the Mac so special.

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