Fiend 2.0b4 was compiled for Rhapsody 5.3 and later... and like a lot of apps developed at the time, it needs the latest version of OmniFrameWorks installed.
I don't have a copy of 2.0b4 handy, mainly because I make extensive use of the Apple menu for my apps and the switcher menu (like all menus) can be torn off and left on the desktop.
The 256 color issue is a bug very much like the one that keeps Lombards from displaying more than 256 colors at all (even though the display hardware is essentially the same). When the desktop icons render (which are all 256 colors), it snaps everything in the Workspace Manager to 256 colors (including the background).
This is not an issue with regular supported display cards on desktop systems... my backgrounds stay at thousands of colors even after the desktop icons load. I recall reading about this issue... though at the time it was low priority (mostly because NeXT engineers thought desktop images were a waste of resources... which was why it wasn't a built in feature in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP).
A little off topic... but you guys might find this interesting.
After Rhapsody 5.1 had been released, and Apple had started down the road to making Carbon (which they had up and running on a Rhapsody 5.1 system at WWDC 98), the cost of old licenses from the NeXT days started weighing heavily on the development team.
The core OS was Mach with 4.4BSD (and legacy 4.3BSD) elements. After the System V vs. BSD trial was settled, the Regents of the University of California wanted out of the software business and decided to make BSD open source. Like many pieces of software, UC didn't own everything in BSD and had to pay a license fee for every copy distributed. UC put out one last version of the original version (called 4.4BSD Encumbered) for their clients and then release 4.4BSD Lite for free along with the source code.
The problem is that 4.4BSD Lite is not complete, and it was up to the open source community to fill in the holes (which is where NetBSD, OpenBSD and FreeBSD came from).
By the time Apple released Rhapsody 5.1, 4.4BSD Encumbered was showing it's age. Apple attempted to upgrade some aspects using open source solutions (mostly from OpenBSD). The dilemma was Apple was getting code replacements from the open source community while still paying for every copy of their OS because it technically was still 4.4BSD Encumbered.
Add to this the large amount of money Adobe wanted for Display Postscript (even though NeXT had helped in the development of it) and other expensive extras like Pantone Colors, and every copy of this OS was massively expensive. And when Adobe balked at early conversion of their software to Carbon, Apple couldn't see how an expensive OS with few apps (and none of the major commercial Mac apps) could hope to work as a product.
This is why Rhapsody's first public release (Rhapsody 5.2) was cancelled.
But 5.2 had another calling... it became Darwin.
Apple stripped off the interface layer, and then started replacing all 4.4BSD Encumbered elements with 4.4BSD Lite and FreeBSD code. Apple released that source code to the public as Darwin... and sure enough, people picking it apart found signs that it started out life as Rhapsody 5.2.
Because everything in the interface was tied to Display Postscript, and Apple didn't want to pay Adobe a major fee for every copy of the OS distributed, Apple looked to the open source community again... and found Adobe! Adobe charges a ton for Postscript, but they give away PDF for free. These technologies aren't that different, so Apple reworked Display Postscript to use PDF code instead.
None of these changes were just plug-n-play, which is why Mac OS X went through 4 (5 if you count the Public Beta) developer releases to work out the bugs. And it was the top engineers from Rhapsody that were now working on Mac OS X.
Rhapsody 5.3-5.6 had to rest on a strong foundation because few people at Apple were going to fix any issues. Sure, Rhapsody 5.3-5.6 was released as Mac OS X Server, so many people point out that it wasn't intended to be a workstation OS. The thing is, like later versions of Mac OS X Server, the Rhapsody versions were just a workstation OS with a bundle of server apps installed.
And Apple seemed to forget that WebObjects development could only be done on two operating systems... Mac OS X Server 1.x and Windows NT 4.0. Was Apple telling developers to use Windows? The short answer is no, Mac OS X Server 1.x works nicely on desktop systems as a workstation... but was obviously spotty on laptops like the Wallstreet, Kanga and 3400c.
Anyways... yes, Rhapsody has some issues with PowerBooks.
