System 7.0

Major upgrade to the Apple Computer system software from the earlier System 6.

Apple's System 7 was a new release of the System Software and the first major overhaul of the Mac's operating system since System 6 was introduced in 1988. System 7 was a giant step forward for the Macintosh operating system, and it included a variety of important technologies and features, including:

• A redesigned System Folder that included system subfolders to help organize the system. In System 6, all items in the System Folder floated freely. In System 7, they are segregated into separate folders to make working with the System much easier. In System 7, control panels are stored in the Control Panels folder, extensions are stored in the Extensions folder, Preferences are stored in the Preferences folder, and so on.

• In System 6, fonts and desk accessories (DAs) were manually loaded into the System file using the Font/DA Mover utility. System 7.0 makes the Font/DA Mover virtually obsolete because you can store fonts in the System folder, and DAs (which appear on the Apple menu) can be installed by dragging the DA (or almost any application) into the Apple Menu Items folder.

• System 7 also introduced aliases: a copy of an icon that looks and works like the real document or application but is actually a pointer to the real application. The advantage is you can have these alias pointers anywhere you want and as many as you want because they take up so little room. You can put aliases of applications in your Apple menu, out on your desktop; virtually anywhere you'd like.

• System 7 introduced an enhanced look for icons and enabled full color icons for documents and applications, and most notably it enabled you to copy and paste icons between the Get Info boxes of files and folders without the use of Apple's ResEdit resource editing utility. Other Finder enhancements enable you to choose the font you want your names displayed in and to have your fonts snap to a staggered grid.

• Some of the Apple Menu Items were updated, including the Scrapbook, the Chooser, and a more advanced Find File function was added that can be accessed through a standard key command (Command-F).

• File sharing and networking capabilities were added as standard features in System 7.

• A label menu was added enabling you to color-code items for visual organization. The folder icons are now a solid color and are easily colorized using this feature. You can use the standard colors or create custom label colors, and you can give the labels a name. The new Find Function of System 7 is capable of finding similarly labeled items.

• System 7 introduced Balloon Help, an interactive type of help feature designed for beginners that enables you to point at an object and have a cartoon-like balloon appear with simple explanation of what the selected item does. Balloon Help is accessed from the Help menu in the menu bar.

• In System 7 you have the ability to see icons in list views , and determine in which of the three available sizes you want to view these icons. You can also jump to any file in a list view (or icon view, for that matter) by pressing the first letter of the filename. If, for example, you're looking at a window with files named after the calendar months, the name at the top of the list would be April. To jump to September, you press the letter S, and the window jumps to the first alphabetical file that starts with S.

• In System 6, you could have only one application open at a time. If you wanted multiple applications open, you had to turn on MultiFinder. System 7 made the MultiFinder environment permanent, enabling you to have multiple applications open and be able to return to the Finder at any time without quitting an application.

• In System 7, Apple added the capability to use Apple's new font technology called TrueType, which enables you to resize fonts to any size on-screen and to printers that supported True Type with smooth clean output. TrueType fonts include both the printer font and the screen font in one suitcase.

• A new printing architecture was introduced with System 7 that enable faster printing and printing of documents in the background while you worked. This print spooling was already available through third-party utilities, but Apple built it in as part of System 7.

• System 7 introduced Publish and Subscribe which enables you to link certain items in documents together, so if you updated the information in one document, the other document would be updated for you. If, for example, you create a graphic and place it in 15 other documents using Publish and Subscribe, any edits or changes to the graphic would also be made in the 15 documents in which the graphic was placed.

• System 7 added 32-bit addressing, which enables you to use more than the 8MB limit for system RAM imposed by System 6. System 7 also introduced virtual memory, which enables you to use the available hard disk as if it were RAM.

• There are dozens of other small enhancements (such as a new gray trash can icon) and other speed and productivity features, plus updated control panels, extensions, and system add-ons that make up System 7.

What's New in System 7

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Notes

• If you're running System 7 on a slow machine (a Plus, SE, or Classic), there's a way you _might_ be able to get things to run just a bit faster. Many System file and Finder resources are stored in compressed form to save disk space, but of course the tradeoff is that it takes time to decompress them before they can be used. With ResEdit, carefully copy all the resources in the System file or the Finder and paste the resources back in on top of themselves (use the same ID's), and save your work; this effectively decompresses all the resources for good (because ResEdit can't save compressed resources). DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK -- you'll certainly want to have clean copies of your System and Finder around for a while after you do this, just in case.

Other Information

• System 7 Goodies
• System 7.0.1 vs 7.1 Speed Tests

Gallery

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Downloads

• ftp://ftp.atlas.altexxa.net/software/mac/os/MacOS%207.0.1.smi.bin (or http://ftp.atlas.altexxa.net/software/mac/os/MacOS%207.0.1.smi.bin)
• ftp://ftp.atlas.altexxa.net/software/mac/os/System.7.0.1.all.1.44mb.install.images.zip (or http://ftp.atlas.altexxa.net/software/mac/os/System.7.0.1.all.1.44mb.install.images.zip)

See Also

• System 7.1
• System 7.5
• Mac OS 7.6