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• Does OS X Seal Apple's Doom?
Does OS X Seal Apple's Doom? "OS X Dooms Apple," ominously intones Low End Mac's Scott Atkinson, who says he has reached a painful conclusion: "the transition [to OS X] will not work, at least not well enough to sustain the Apple we know." "What's worse," says Scott, "Apple is willfully walking down this path to self-destruction, ignoring both the lessons of its biggest competitor and its own experience in the early 90s." Specifically, Atkinson complains that the fact that OS X will not run [at least supported] on even relatively recent legacy Macs like 604s, is a major blunder. He compares the situation to the Windows 95 launch, in which Microsoft established during its beta phase that Win 95 would run "reasonably well on midlevel hardware, and you didn't need to do anything special to run your existing applications." "Microsoft accomplished something really smart," says Scott, "the company made Win 95 run on what most people owned. With one stroke, Microsoft kept millions of folks in the game. And when they could, those millions of folks went on to buy newer machines (and newer versions of Windows)... You could run Win 3.x versions of software, and the experience was pretty much the same as it had been under the Windows 3.x. In fact, it was a little better.. Most important: you didn't have to launch a special 'environment' to run the 3.x apps. It was all Win 95. On the other hand, he notes OS X's classic environment more resembles the Win 3.x environment used by IBM in its abortive OS/2 operating system in the early '90s. "Ultimately, it didn't work because it was odd and too much trouble," he says. Apple avoided that when it made the switch to PowerPC. There was no "classic environment" to be launched and 68k emulation worked invisibly and transparently; it was all Macintosh. Atkinson then proposes a thought that has occurred to me more than once: "It is beyond me why Apple could not have extended the 9.x OS, adding in more preemptive multitasking and other "modern" features. Much of the Mac press takes it as an article of faith that the existing OS could not sustain much more, but I have never seen this claim backed up." He suggests that the OS X push is more about Steve Jobs staking out his own turf than necessity, and notes that since UNIX runs fine on his Power Mac 6100, he remains to be convinced that the G3 233 MHz cutoff is necessary. "Ultimately," he says, "I see little or no compelling reason why most people will want OS X, other than they may have to use it if they want to continue to run Macs.... Apple is throwing away an interface that has been battle-tested, refined by the experience of a couple of generations of users, and worn smooth in the rough spots... Whatever you may think of the stability of the OS itself, the interface is the hardiest on the market. Apple should not sacrifice this in the name of elegance!" I would have said "style" rather than "elegance." IMHO, the Classic Mac GUI is vastly more elegant, albeit less stylish than OS X Aqua. Having tried OS X (briefly), I agree with Scott that I find no compelling reason to be in a rush to adopt it, and I'm more looking forward to the OS 9.1 (or 9.5) update of the Classic OS due to roll out at MacWorld Expo. Is the OS X Problem Really Us? The Observer's Michael Munger also weighs in on OS X this week in a column entitled: "The Big Problem With Mac OS X" "Some of us loathe Aqua, the next generation Mac OS interface." says Munger. "Some are afraid that the new Unix-based operating system will be too complex to understand. Some fear that the learning curve will be acute for neophyte users who may not have highly developed computer skills." However, Michael opines that the biggest problem with OS X is us-- the Mac user base. He notes that "we begged and yapped for something to happen. When Apple could not deliver it, we grumbled, criticized and protested." Then when Apple delivered we got scared. Munger argues that "You will learn how to use Mac OS X and one day, you will wonder why you put up with the old Mac OS for so many years, anyway." Maybe. I don't concede the fear thing. If it can be demonstrated that OS X will make my work day slicker, faster, easier, and more efficient, I'll gladly switch regardless of my disdain for Aqua's aesthetics. Thus far, I am well short of convinced. The Classic Mac OS is so integrated into my work habits and works so well for me, that OS X hardly constitutes a siren-like attraction. You can read Michael Munger's comments here:
OS X - Are You Really Using It? http://www.zerologic.com/neologic/article.html?ID=4 ZeroLogic's Michael Sitarzewski says that the operative question about OS X beta is "Are you using it for your day to day work?" Sitarzewski's answer to that question is a resounding "yes... for the most part." He is a Mac consultant, so he says that it should come as no surprise that he's found a way to survive in Mac OS X. His graphics customers on the other hand are a different story, and he's written an article dealing with that dilemma: http://www.zerologic.com/neologic/article.html?ID=3 On the bright side, Sitarzewski says he's been able to find a Mac OS X native version of just about everything he needs -- some NeXT applications rewritten for OS X; some Carbon applications and some regular old Classic applications: The applications Sitarzewski uses daily include:
However, Sitarzewski notes that OS X AirPort support from Apple, it is nonexistent, and there is no built in way to allow Classic to access your Internet connection when you're dialed in to the Internet. Does Multi-User Support Make OS X Compelling? - Not To me ZeroLogic's Blake Harris takes a slaghtly less sunny view of OS X in his column, "Mac OS X: The Morning After." Things he notes are missing in Aqua are :Control Panels, the Apple Menu, and the Process menu. "The System Folder as we know it is history, replaced by a lot of folders named 'Library' and 'Public.' However, for Harris, "the most perplexing aspect of X is the new hierarchy of folders we are forced to navigate. The familiar 'Macintosh HD' has disappeared from the desktop, and it seems locating files has become an Easter egg hunt on acid." He asks the existential question: "Why?" One answer: "OS X is a multi-user system. If you used the Multiple Users feature of OS 9, this should not be an entirely new concept." I've heard this argument before, but my question is: "how many Mac users do you know that actually use the multi-user environment in OS 9? In my case, precious few. Harris argues that if you have been using the "Favorites" and "Documents" folders in the Classic Mac OS. OS X won't seem so foreign to you. But how many Mac users do you know that actually use those folders? In my case even fewer than use the multi-user environment. I remain highly skeptical that OS X's multi-user capabilities will be a strong selling point for the vast majority of users. You can check Haris's article out at:
OS X Makes The Mac More PC-Like; And This is Supposed To Be A Good Thing? Finally Rodney O. Lain discusses the concept that with the advent of OS X, Macs won't be too much different from the PC. He hopes this is not so, since he has recently taken employment at a firm that obliges him to use Windows PCs. Oh well, Rodney figured that immersing himself in the world of the C-prompt, the Windows registry, and Redmond's shoddy interface design would prepare him for the less-than-Mac-like experience known as OS X. "After months of working 10 hours a day with my PC, contrasted with many a night in front of my Mac, I can honestly say that Apple has nothing to fear except Wintel marketshare and that Megahertz thingee. I've learned that even if OS X is half as user friendly as OS 9, Windows still will dominate the Bad-OS-of-the-Year awards for some time to come." However, he notes that you don't have to be a geek to know how to troubleshoot, maintain and tweak the Classic Mac OS. "But when OS X takes over," he predicts, "I fear that we will become just like the PC camp, a wall of division between us (who know little to nothing about how our Macs work) and the geeks (to whom we will have to take our Macs in order to cure whatever ails them whenever something ails them)." Arrrgh. You can read Rodney's article at:
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Cool Mac Gear• iPod 1G-2G • iPod 3G • iPod 4G • iPod Mini • PowerBook-iBook • Keyboard Skins • Garageband
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