Rendezvous

In the beginning, there was AppleTalk—devices found each other and talked, but slowly. Then came Ethernet, which was fast but required tedious configuration. In Mac OS X 10.2, Apple introduces Rendezvous, automatic IP-based device discovery and configuration. When Rendezvous-enabled devices are attached to the same IP subnet, they automatically discover each other and enumerate the resources they can make available to network users and other devices.

Quartz Extreme

Quartz, Apple’s 2- and 3-D visual rendering engine, brings unprecedented visual beauty to Mac OS X' user interface while supporting smoothed fonts and powerful graphical compositing. The problem with Quartz, unfortunately, is that it takes a fair amount of horsepower. Mac OS X 10.2 introduces Quartz Extreme to solve the problem. Quartz Extreme offloads the graphical compositing tasks to the powerful new video cards found in recent G4-based PowerMacs. Additionally, the user interface is now handled fully in OpenGL, opening up whole new worlds of graphical possibilities.

Network Image Utility

Mac OS X Server 10.1 brought with it the amazing ability to NetBoot Mac OS 9 onto other Macs. This was a fantastic tool for organizations that needed the ability to quickly return their labs or groups of Macs to a safe, sane, standard setup at every system startup. The only problem? You couldn’t NetBoot into Mac OS X!

With Mac OS X 10.2, this deficiency has been addressed—with panache. Not only can you NetBoot into Mac OS X, but Mac OS X Server will permit up to twenty-five separate, unique “images” that can be customized to fulfil whatever setup requirements you can design! The potential impact of this advance is enormous.

Directory Setup

Mac OS X introduced the concept of the “NetInfo Hierarchy,” a way of sharing user home directories and authentication among Mac OS X and Server computers. For all its power, NetInfo Hierarchies were difficult to assemble, hard to manage, and often didn’t work. They were also proprietary, a “feature” more common to That Other Operating System.

Mac OS X 10.2 introduces Open Directory, an open authentication and networking technology that lets Macs and Windows and UNIX machines seamlessly share file and other resources, and even authenticate user logins! Open Directory includes OpenLDAP 3 user authentication for powerful enterprise networking. Users and Administrators from the UNIX universe, who are used to managing their systems by editing text configuration files will find that BSD configuration files are now also supported.

Workgroup Manager

Mac OS X Server 10.2 adds so many new features that Server Admin is no longer viable for use. Apple has split its functions into two applications: Workgroup Manager and Server Settings. Workgroup Manager now controls Users and Groups, and a new category: Computers. Computers settings control how computers that are part of or join your local network can access services offered by Mac OS X Server.

Workgroup manager provides significantly greater control over users. Users' short names can now be up to 255 characters long; users can have up to sixteen short names associated with their account; new administration rules can require periodic password changes; and much more. Groups also gain many new controls, and the addition of Computer-level control gives Workgroup Manager unprecedented control over access.

Server Monitor

Server Monitor is software to remotely monitor all of the physical aspects of an Xserve from any machine running Mac OS X. Server Monitor can tell you the internal temperature of your 1 U rack-mount server and how fast the fans are blowing, turn on the remote identifier light, and more. While this application originally came installed on Xserves only, it is now part of the standard Mac OS X Server installation and can be installed on Mac OS X client machines as well.

Server Settings

Server Admin is dead; long live Server Admin! Although many areas of Server Settings are more robust than in Server Admin, the look and feel of this application will be familiar to Mac OS X Server 10.1 administrators. Server Settings manages File, Print, Internet and Networking services for Mac OS X 10.2. Here is where you will find a lot of the new features of Mac OS X Server 10.2, including the new mail server settings, NetBoot and NetInstall configurations. Just like before you can control multiple servers at the same time remotely.

Unfortunately, some services (like NFS, Web service and DNS) are still underpowered and Apple needs to do significant work in those areas to bring Server Settings up to the level of power and flexibility that Workgroup Manager shows.

Server Status

Everything Server Monitor is for hardware, Server Status is for software. It can display the logs of a multitude of local and remote servers. Some of this functionality used to be in the Server Admin application in Mac OS X Server 10.1. Apple has added a lot of additional features like monitoring the network usage and available drive space of your servers. You can even see real-time graphs of these functions.

BSD 4.4 UNIX

One of the most significant improvements in Mac OS X 10.2 is one that will be nearly invisible to 99% of its users. Mac OS X has FreeBSD at its core; UNIX gives Mac OS X Server the stability that makes it the envy of users familiar with the dreaded “blue screen of death” from Windows. Apple has upped the ante even more with Mac OS X Server 10.2, bringing numerous updated tools and libraries that make the operating system faster, more capable, and more stable. In addition to advances like adaptive virtual memory, Mac OS X Server 10.2 also includes gcc 3.1—a boon to developers with its improved code generation and swifter compilation times.

Common UNIX Printing System

If you’ve ever used a computer running UNIX before, you know how tedious and irritating setting up printing can be. Apple made printing in Mac OS X 10.1 fairly convenient and useful, but with Mac OS X 10.2 they upped the ante again by licensing CUPS—the Common UNIX Printing System—for their printing engine. CUPS is used by several varieties of popular Linux operating systems, and has support for a wide range of printers built-in. Engage CUPS by enabling printer sharing the Sharing Preference Pane. Without any configuration, it will share out your local printers to the rest of your network. With a bit of configuration (through its Web interface) it will group printers together and can be made to rip postscript files to PCL and other languages on the fly.

Apache 2.0 Web Server

Apache is the world’s most popular Web server—some 63% of all Web sites run on it, according to the August 2002 Netcraft Web Server Survey—and Apple includes the latest build of Apache 1.3 with Mac OS X Server 10.2. Apple goes a step farther, though, and also includes build 2.0.39 of Apache 2.0, the Apache Project’s new version of their server. (Note: Apache 2.0 is not turned on by default.) Apache 2.0 brings a host of new features and improvements that will surely make it even more attractive to high-volume Web sites. Multithreading, a new and improved module API, and support for IPv6 (one of the other new technologies in Mac OS X 10.2) are just a few of the reasons Apache 2.0 is a cool new addition to Mac OS X Server 10.2.