Apple announces MacOS X beta

Apple has promised it will release a public beta version of its delayed MacOS X operating system (OS) on 13 September.

Speaking to a packed auditorium at the Seybold electronic publishing show in San Francisco yesterday, Apple chief executive Steve Jobs said the public beta version will be released at the Apple Expo show in Paris.

Apple had originally planned to sell the redesigned Macintosh OS as a shrink-wrapped product this summer, but the company revised its plans and said it would ship a public beta by that time instead. Yesterday, Jobs joked that 13 September is still technically within the summer season.

MacOS X features the Aqua user interface which offers bundles of luminous and semi-transparent elements such buttons, scroll bars and windows, and includes a 'dock' where users can organise their applications, websites and documents. Also included is the Quartz graphics system which allows for PDF rendering.

But Jobs came unstuck during a demonstration on stage as he failed to awaken a MacOS X Powerbook from sleep mode. It usually takes between nine and 22 seconds to restart a MacOS 9 computer but Jobs could only verbally promise that it takes one second using the new OS.

The OS will also ship with an MP3 player on the desktop and Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 pre-installed.

Jobs used his keynote speech to review Apple's new hardware systems which were announced at Macworld in New York last month. These include the G4 PowerMac Cube, and Jobs claimed that Apple has already shipped "hundreds of thousands" of the systems.

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