First of all, the Mac's implementation of TCP/IP, the Internet's communications protocol, is integrated into the operating system to a degree not present on the Windows box. Prior to Windows 95, whose performance still remains to be seen, integration of TCP/IP into Windows was cranky and unstable in the extreme. Open Transport, Apple's imminent replacement for MacTCP, will make the distinction even more evident.
Second, the Macintosh paradigm of usable, very high-quality free- and shareware has been extended to Internet software. Macintosh Internet software takes a good deal of the rough edge off Internet services such as FTP which, in their UNIX incarnations, genuinely deserve the mantle "cryptic" once one gets beyond the basics; Peter Lewis' Anarchie software is a beautiful case in point. To the Internet service "archie," which allows you to find software in archives around the world, he's added an entirely new level of functionality; Lewis has not only integrated FTP with archie, so that you can get the software after you've found it, but added AppleGuide context-sensitive help and training. Many of the preeminent Apple Internet shareware authors, such as Lewis, John Norstad, and Steve Dorner, have made or are in the process of making their software interoperable, so that URLs-- location pointers to Internet resources--can be passed among different kinds of software via a special system call. The effect is to allow each sort of program to do what it does best--Eudora handles mail; NewsWatcher handles news; and Netscape, MacWeb, or Mosaic handles Web. You can click on a Web URL in a news message and be taken directly to your Web browser to view it.
In the area of Web browsers, all of the most popular browsers--Netscape, MacWeb, and Mosaic--are cross-platform development efforts. Consequently, the user interface on each of them is not altogether specific to the Macintosh. Nonetheless, each has its advantages. Netscape, in addition to incorporating a wide variety of standards-busting extensions which allow you to view pages as visually violent as anything to come out of art school, integrates its own newsreader and provides brilliant foreign language support to mesh with Apple's. (You haven't been stunned until you've seen a Web page come up on your Mac in perfect Kanji.) MacWeb is far less of a memory and disk hog than Netscape-- it takes up about one- third the space Netscape does in both media--and it's extremely fast, even though it doesn't use Netscape's rapacious bandwidth-grabbing techniques. It only parses standard HTML 2.0, so all those "Netscape-enhanced" pages will look more or less like stuffed derma. Mosaic, at one time the trailblazer of Web browsers, now languishes somewhat; new versions come out, but they're idiosyncratic and bug- ridden. Once again, the shareware mentality means first-class "helper" applications--applications that help the Web browser display the various kinds of multimedia that come its way. Sound players such as Rod Kennedy's SoundMachine, graphics viewers such as Aaron Giles' unequaled JPEGView, and video players such as Maynard Handley's Sparkle are tops in their class for functionality.
Serving Web pages off a Macintosh is even more exciting than viewing them. Macintoshes, as a platform for Web servers, eliminate many of the problems of administration and security that presently bedevil UNIX and PC servers--especially PC servers running NetBSD or Linux. (As Mac zealots like to say, "On the Mac, there's no login prompt to hack!") UNIX and PC servers have applications where they fit well, for example, for extremely high-capacity sites that need extensive tuning of network services, or where the operator already has a strong background in UNIX and languages rooted in UNIX. The Macintosh, by contrast, is quite literally plug and play. Assuming that you have your Internet connection in place, just run the program and put the files you want to serve in the same folder. At that point you're live on the Web.
The best (and only) Web server for the Macintosh, WebStar, is the brainchild of one man: Chuck Shotton. An employee of the University of Houston, Texas, while his server software was gestating, he let MacHTTP loose on an unsuspecting world some two years ago. The earliest versions of MacHTTP were slow and took over your machine, but the freedom to put up a site without a UNIX box was exhilarating. MacHTTP's popularity drove Shotton to radically improve the software, and eventually to make it a full- scale commercial product. WebStar, as it's now known, is Web server software that in some respects is more sophisticated than its UNIX counterparts, and allows you to do with a $3,000 Mac what you could previously do only with a $7-10K UNIX box. If you put the same money into several Macs that you would into an individual Sun, you can come up with a RAIC (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Computers) that will, dollar for dollar, outperform a Sparc 20 in serving Web pages. WebStar is PowerPC native, and there are a number of verified cases where individual PowerMacs running WebStar have successfully fielded more than 70,000 requests a day without missing a beat. That's major-league performance.
Around WebStar, a number of auxiliary products have sprung up that give Macintosh-based Web sites the extra features and functionality they need to stand out. MapServe allows for the processing of imagemaps (clickable graphical menus), a sine qua non for any site. Most interesting is NetCloak from Maxum Development, an add-on preprocessor for WebStar that allows you to put text generated "on the fly" into your site, and change it at random, according to the time of day, or according to who's accessing your pages. ServerStat, a shareware package now in development, generates meaningful statistics out of your server's logfiles, to tell you who's actually looking at your pages.
Right now, if there's a downside to Macintosh-based Web servers, it's scripting. There are many prewritten scripts which allow you to process forms, send email, and interact with databases. (There are a number of databases that support external scripting, and so allow you to add or search for records via the Web; the most popular of these is FileMaker Pro, although 4D is the most rewarding for those with experience.) Most scripts, however, are written in AppleScript, which is slow, switches tasks in and out of the foreground, and is difficult to debug. An alternative is Frontier, formerly a commercial product, that has been put back into shareware by its author, Dave Winer. A PowerPC-native version is nigh; it's multi-threaded and it treats data structures in a decidedly more efficient way than AppleScript. A second alternative to the Macintosh is MacPerl, a port of Perl, the popular UNIX scripting language. MacPerl's got great text pattern-matching abilities, and it's intuitive to write and debug, although it hasn't yet quite gotten its sea legs in its new operating system. In short, if you want to do the basics, the prewritten scripts will stand you in good stead; if you want to roll your own, you've got a learning curve ahead of you. Putting your databases on separate servers from the one serving your pages is a good way of maximizing performance and minimizing disruption.
The Macintosh's prospects as a machine for the Internet look good. CyberDog is an upcoming Web browser from Apple Computer, long noised-about in Cupertino, that will take the concept of "helper" applications to a new level, making it impossible to distinguish the "helper" from the browser. Later this summer, StarNine, Shotton's new company, will release the program. A security toolkit that will give WebStar the same security features as Netscape's Netsite commerce server for UNIXNT--at one-sixth the price. MacDNS, also a summer release, is the last piece in the puzzle for giving the Mac a full complement of Internet services. Windows 95, the Web servers coming out for Windows/NT, and wider acceptance of OS/2 may enable the PC platform to play catch-up. Nonetheless, for now, the Macintosh is still in the lead.
Jonathan K. Cohen, Internet Projects, UCI Bookstore, Irvine, CA 91717
email: jkcohen@uci.edu; book orders: books@uci.edu; tel: (714) 824-3164
Your second step is to decide which Internet service provider will be the most beneficial for the type of work (or play) you plan to do on the Net. At this point it pays to check your place of work, or school, for Internet access. Many large companies and schools will allow SLIP or PPP access into their Internet server. If you have access to this kind of institutional service, you will most likely save money (although you may not have access to all the services you want, e.g., Usenet).
The next best option is to approach one of the many commercial Internet services. There are several commercial I.S.P.s (Internet Service Providers) in the Southern California area (see list below). When shopping for an Internet access service you want to look for three things. First, make sure they have a local access number. Without a local number you will be paying long distance, or toll charges on top of your normal I.S.P. charges. This can get quite expensive. Second, the I.S.P. should be able to provide you with a suite of software for use with your Macintosh. This should include Netscape 1.1, Anarchie, Mac PPP, Eudora, Fetch and a news-reader application at the very least. Third, your account with the I.S.P. should include an email box and access to the Usenet. With a little shopping around, you will find a service provider that offers all of these items.
We use, and have been happy with, DeltaNet Internet Services in Anaheim. DeltaNet offers everything from a $20-per-month service to establishing your own T1 Line onto the Internet backbone. To log on to any of these services, you will need to decide whether to use a PPP of SLIP connection. We recommend that you select Mac PPP as your communications protocol.
America On-Line and CompuServe offer limited access to the World Wide Web with your Macintosh. While these services are an inexpensive option for getting started, this is the least effective way to get on the Net. We recommend you try the I.S.P. approach. While a little bit more involved, we feel the extra effort is worth it. Good luck. We'll see you on the Web!
Rick Becker-Leckrone
President, Business Edge, Inc.
Business Edge specializes in helping retailers generate sales on the Web.
Business Edge's WebBase™ technology allows for integration of inventory and sales
management systems with W3.
(800) 386-EDGE (3343)