Mac OS X for Web Developers by Wincent Colaiuta 17 Apr 2001

Wincent Colaiuta [an error occurred while processing this directive]is webmaster of Macintosh news and criticism site wincent.org. He has worked with computers since 1984, and his interests in the area include Macs, PHP programming, and security.

Page 1 When Apple released Mac OS X 10.0 to the world on March 24, 2001, it ushered in an operating system that marked the most significant break with Apple's past since the introduction of the first Macintosh in 1984. The biggest change, at least as far as Web developers are concerned, was to the Web serving side of things, which is a whole different ballgame under Mac OS X. Unlike all incarnations of the Mac OS before it, Mac OS X is based on Unix. In late 1996, Apple acquired NeXT and the Unix-based NeXT operating system and has been working on rebuilding the Mac OS upon that foundation ever since. Now that Apple has finally accomplished this goal, Mac OS X is poised to chalk up a larger installed base of users than any other single Unix distribution -- all Mac users have to do is purchase a copy of Mac OS X and they can run, out of the box, the Apache webserver software, the same software that powers more websites around the world than all others combined. But that's not really all that radical. There are already over 16,000,000 servers on the Web using Apache to power their sites. So what makes the changes to the Mac OS so exciting and exceptional? Perhaps the words of Steve Jobs, Apple's co-founder and CEO, give us a clue. At Macworld in January he said, "Mac plus Unix is nirvana." The posters around the expo boasted, "The simplicity of the Mac. The power of Unix." How much truth is there to Jobs' claim, particularly for those who wish to use their Mac as a webserver or Web development platform? To find out, I'm going to take you through the process of getting an Apache webserver up and running. We'll use not only the tools Apple provides, but the alternatives: those available to seasoned Unix command-line veterans as well as third party commercial solutions. I'll also show you how to get the most out of Mac OS X by setting up or taking advantage of the freely available Perl, PHP and MySQL software. Let's start by taking a look at where webserving on Mac OS started, where it is now and where it's likely to be going. next page»