Apple offers free work-in-progress versions of new Internet applications
Jason Snell
Net.Cetera
IT TOOK A WHILE, but the folks at Apple have finally learned what some Internet-savvy companies have known all along: Net surfers are willing to test new applications for free in return for the privilege of test-driving tomorrow's software today. In return, they'll track down bugs and provide important feedback -- before version 1.0 is ever released. Although several of its latest Internet-savvy apps aren't quite ready for prime time, Apple has decided to make them available for downloading, free, from its Web site.
APPLE E.G. This CGI (Common Gateway Interface) for WebSTAR and other Mac Web servers lets surfers perform full-text searches of files on your site. It uses the high-performance V-Twin search engine that will be integrated into Mac OS 8's Find function. Most intriguing is its "find by example" feature, which finds files similar to those requested. http://cybertech.apple.com/Appleeg.html.
NETFINDER. Another Web-server CGI, NetFinder lets you serve files on the Web via an interface that looks like the Finder, complete with icons, size information, and even modification dates. http://cybertech.apple.com/AppleNetFinder.html.
PROJECT X. A product from Apple's Advanced Technology Group, this navigation utility displays Web pages as icons floating in a three-dimensional space. You can zoom in and out and pan around within the space until you find a page you're interested in. Double-clicking on that page's icon causes it to be loaded into Netscape Navigator. http://www.atg.apple.com/go/projectx/default.html.
MKLINUX. A project from Apple and the Open Software Foundation to bring Linux, a free version of UNIX, to the Power Mac has also been turned loose on the world in an early form. Currently MkLinux runs only on NuBus-based Power Macs, although it will run on other Power Mac models in the future. If you have MkLinux installed, a dialog box appears when you boot your Mac, allowing you to choose whether to load the Mac OS or MkLinux. http://mklinux.apple.com/.
Project X lets you fly through a 3-D representation of 100,000 Web sites.
