Cool Mac Gear

Gene Steinberg took a pretty broadly-brushed, thinly-veiled, swipe at me in his Mac Night Owl column yesterday. Being a good sport, I linked to it in New & Notable, and while I have no interest in feuding with Gene, whose opinions I (mostly) respect, and those work I admire, I am constrained to answer his insinuations.

The essential thrust of Gene's volley was that since I have not upgraded to the "latest and greatest" version 10.2 of OS X, I am a bounder for commenting on OS X issues at all, and for citing comments by other writers who have posted hands-on critiques of Jaguar.

If I had been asserting or implying firsthand knowledge and experience with 10.2, this would have been fair comment, but in fact, I have been scrupulously emphasizing, whenever relevant to do so, that I haven't used Jaguar yet, and that I'm still using OS 10.1.4 on my PowerBook.

Over the past few weeks I have read dozens of OS 10.2 reviews, and hundreds of letters and forum postings on Jaguar issues and performance, and I have discussed some of the information I've gleaned in doing so in my columns and replies to reader letters. That sort of writing, IMHO, is what much of journalism is about. (Incidentally, I have been a full time freelance writer/journalist for more than 15 years, and have been published, for fee, in some 45 magazines and newspapers on four continents, as well as in the neighborhood of 10 Mac Websites.)

Most journalists are not technical experts on the topics they write about, and are reporting in many cases the experience of others, rather than hands-on experience of their own. I do write many reviews of software, hardware, and books, and I enjoy that sort of journalism too, but not all of journalism is hands-on reviews.

I am as interested in the cultural, political, ideological, a philosophical aspects of the Mac experience as I am in technical issues -- perhaps more so. I think that perhaps this is where an element of cognitive dissonace sets in, sometimes resulting in a dialogue of the deaf. I think that it would be fair to say that Gene Steinberg is more nuts and bolts tech-oriented than I am in his Mac journalism, and in my opinion he is also -- I don't mean this unkindly -- inclined to be rather more of an Apple Computer cheerleader and booster than I am. I consider myself a Mac advocate, but I'm not a cheerleader.

Different strokes, but I think this dissonance in emphases accounts for at least part of the reason Gene, as well as a number of apparently like-minded correspondents to the Odyssey letters forum, get annoyed and frustrated with my ongoing critique of OS X as I'm experiencing it. However, I'm calling things as I see them, chronicling one man's Odyssey to OS X, and attempting to give an honest and forthright, albeit not always politically correct, description of the journey.

Now, as for Jaguar, there are several reasons I haven't upgraded yet. First, the now famous dual mouse non-support issue, which is a show-stopper for me in terms of doing production work in X, although it would go unnoticed by a probable high-90s percentile of users. If that had been fixed in Jaguar, I would be in a lot more of a hurry to upgrade.

Secondly, I am down to one production-capable computer since my WallStreet PowerBook died in August, so I am booted into OS 9 most of the time on my Pismo these days, and am getting a lot less time in OS X that I had been for the previous eight months. I still boot into OS X several times a week, but it's hard to swallow coughing up $129 (or Can$194.95) for an OS that I will be seldom using until I have two production-capable computers again.

Thirdly, I may or may not be purchasing a new Mac in the next few months, but until I make a decision resolving that matter, I don't want to spend the money on Jaguar and then turn around and buy a computer that comes with it anyway. On the other hand, I may opt for a used second computer, in which case I will probably upgrade OS X on my Pismo to 10.2. I haven't decided yet. I may not for several weeks.

However, eventually I will have OS X 10.2, or 10.3, or 10.whatever in hand, and at that point I will post my declarative impressions of it. Until that time, unless a lot of 10.2- using commentators and friends whose evaluations I respect are suddenly and collectively blowing smoke, Jaguar offers some pleasant enhancements to what we've experienced in 10.1.x, but nothing to get up in the night and write home about, particularly if you don't have a machine that supports Quartz Extreme. I don't.

Your Response To Wayne Folta

From Chris Long

Hey Charles:

Re--your response to Wayne Folta today--my 2 cents worth:

1. One biggie, as I intimated in my musings, is the way Apple has done this. I'm not unreasonable. If there is a hardware technical reason (say new chipset) that makes it impractical to support OS 9 booting, I'm OK with that. Sad, but the old order passeth. What riles me is that it appears that Apple will arbitrarily block dual-booting even on machines that carry over the current hardware after the Jan. 2003 line in the sand passes, even though there is no compelling technical reason to do that.

The key word here is ARBITRARILY, folks. this is why so many of us are screaming blue murder. Charles is right.

2. The guy with an 800 MHz G4 TiBook who benchmarked 10.2 against 9.2.2 provided a detailed breakdown of how much slower Jaguar is than OS 9 in most categories tested. If I buy a new system in the next 12 months or so, it's likely to be an iBook. Do you think we'll see 800 MHz G4 iBooks or faster by January 2003 (or even July 2003)?

800 MHz iBooks? probably not -- maybe; if we're lucky. but I can tell you this: as you know, i use a 12-inch iBook at home. the form factor is fantastic and the screen is razor sharp. but now my boss has purchased a 14-inch iBook, which i always thought looked like a KLUGE. I still do, actually -- it looks odd to me. BUT: that 14-inch screen is a BIG improvement over the 12-inch, believe me. I'd advise you to go with the larger screen version, in spite of the frankensteinian look of the thing.

3. OS X is progressing, but from what I've gleaned in many reviews and anecdotes, the speed gains with Jaguar over 10.1.x are modest, and it's still slower than OS 9. Consequently, I'm skeptical that we'll see even speed parity with the old OS by four months from now.

It'll NEVER happen in four months -- I'd faint dead away! It's not even close at this point -- OS9 beats OSX hands down in all the speed tests I've subjected them to (admittedly, informally). Some of your readers seem to think that our perception of OSX as 'slow' is based on the hardware we're running it on. Well, i find OSX slow on this brand new G4 dual-processor 867MHz mac with 1.25 gigs of RAM and 40 gigs of h/d. That's my perception. It's DEFINITELY slower than OS9 on the same machine. At home, OSX is nearly unbearable on my G3 iBook, while OS9.2 zips right along. I don't think this is a hardware issue, folks -- this is reality -- in my experience, OSX is slower (overall) -- period.

4. My critique of the boot policy pronouncement is not just in reference to my personal circumstances. I am, I think, articulating the frustrations of a large proportion of Mac users, especially pro users, who object to being dragooned into switching completely to OS x before it's ready, which I (along with Steve Wozniak, David K. Every, John Siracusa, and a cast of thousands maintain that it isn't.

One thing here caught my eye: PRO USERS. I consider myself in this group, if only because i use Macs professionally, all day long. I think it's the pro users who are suffering the most in this transition -- I personally have honed my skills/techniques over the past 14 years of using the Mac OS to the point where I can make these things FLY ... I've got Quickeys macros and system add-ons and procedures in place that will allow me to get A TON of work done in a given time period. Now, I've been using OSX since its debut, and there is absolutely no way you'll convince me that I can get the same results out of it -- OSX just doesn't have the options that OS9 has -- yet -- so I personally remain convinced that for this user, OSX just ain't ready for prime time.

Call me a hard sell,
Chris

From Chris Long

Response To Michael Shelton

Michael Shelton says:

"Based on my past experience, my jaw drops each time I see your use of 'efficiency' to describe OS9. Since I started using a Mac again back in 1997 (a 6500), I could not count the hours and days spent resolving system extension conflicts, crashes, etc."

and your response was:

My personal experience running the classic Mac OS on a succession of machines since 1992 has been the polar opposite of yours.

--

My response is this:

MY experience has run the gamut -- I've used probably 15-18 different Mac computers in the past 14 years and I've experienced everything from 'finely oiled machines' to frustrating/crash-prone boxes. That said, I have INVESTED THE TIME in the legacy Mac OS so that now, today, I can set up a new mac with os9 in very little time and i have to spend very little time maintaining same. My Macs more-or-less JUST WORK as advertised -- certainly to my satisfaction, with very few problems / conflicts / crashes / etcetera. Like you, I can go for days and days without a forced restart.

I feel bad for michael shelton -- contrary to his experiences with OS9, i GET WORK DONE at an amazing rate because my Macs run nearly flawlessly. If this isn't efficiency, I don't know what is.

The fact that you and I (and countless others) have spent a long time learning all the ins and outs of OS9 means that our Macs DO run quickly and efficiently -- Apple's pulling the plug on us and ramming OSX down our throats is ridiculous.

--C

G.O.M.M.U.G.

From Chris Long

re: James Rae Smith's comment today:

"You have a choice. Either start a Grumpy Old Man's Mac User Group which will be the political front organisation for the more youthful and extreme OS9 Liberation Front, (and you have plenty of correspondents to your column who will join) or quit your moaning and get with the program."

Charles:

Please let me know when all the groundwork has been laid for "G.O.M.M.U.G." -- I want to be the first dues paying member.

:-)

Chris

Steinberg

From David W. Murray

Charles,

Emailed the following to Gene just now;

Gene,

Your swipe at the un-named journalist is, or should be, beneath you. Frankly. Mr. Un-named comes across to me as at least as objective as you, he just has a different view. I see more unsubstantiated bias in your work in favor of X than in his against it.

I further resent the assumption by you and every other Exie who has drunk the Kool Aid, that anyone who does not greet OS X with unqualified Hossannah does so from a closed mind.

"But if you're willing to look at the changes with an open mind, you might learn to love Mac OS X. "

Try to wrap your mind around this fact. I cannot do some mission-critical operations in OS X or in Classic (custom printing), but must re-boot into 9. In other situations, I choose to work in 9 because I perceive it to be better. You and Steve Jobs may not like that perception, but you will get much further in changing it by attraction than by heavy-handed promotion.

X may be great someday, but spare me the "wave of the future" cheerleading until the new OS is by most benchmarks at least as capable and fast as its antecedent.

For the record, OS X user since late Beta on an unsupported 466(Newer) Wallstreet, on which it ran quite well, now running X.2 on a new 800 Snowball, which is subjectively very little faster.

Best,
Dave Murray

Your response

From Wayne Folta

Charles,

1. One biggie, as I intimated in my musings, is the way Apple has done this. I'm not unreasonable. If there is a hardware technical reason (say new chipset) that makes it impractical to support OS 9 booting, I'm OK with that. Sad, but the old order passeth. What riles me is that it appears that Apple will arbitrarily block dual-booting even on machines that carry over the current hardware after the Jan. 2003 line in the sand passes, even though there is no compelling technical reason to do that.

You say "it appears that Apple will arbitrarily block", based on what? January has a MacWorld in it and I believe that Apple has said that 2002 was the year of the OS and 2003 is the year of closing the hardware performance gap. Let's wait until January and then see if your "arbitrarily block" hand-wringing has a basis or not.

2. The guy with an 800 MHz G4 TiBook who benchmarked 10.2 against 9.2.2 provided a detailed breakdown of how much slower Jaguar is than OS 9 in most categories tested. If I buy a new system in the next 12 months or so, it's likely to be an iBook. Do you think we'll see 800 MHz G4 iBooks or faster by January 2003 (or even July 2003)?

Please post a link to "the guy ... benchmark". I've seen benchmarks that are closer than what you seem to be saying this guy found. Plus "most categories" is a nice qualification

3. OS X is progressing, but from what I've gleaned in many reviews and anecdotes, the speed gains with Jaguar over 10.1.x are modest, and it's still slower than OS 9. Consequently, I'm skeptical that we'll see even speed parity with the old OS by four months from now.

Maybe you'll never see total parity on the same hardware. So what? The real question for you is: "On a piece of hardware 6-12 months down the road, will MacOS X be so fast that I don't perceive delays, etc?" If the answer for you looks like "yes" -- and I can't see how you seriously maintain it will be "no" by the time you purchase -- it's all good for you and you shouldn't be borrowing trouble.

Second, "modest" gains are misleading. If you're looking at file copy times, launch times, etc, maybe it is modest. There's only so much you can do. But GUI updates are dramatically accelerated by Quartz Extreme. I mean, you're adding an entire second CPU to accelerate the GUI, plus major AltiVec enhancements for G4 users, so there's nothing "modest" about that.

4. My critique of the boot policy pronouncement is not just in reference to my personal circumstances. I am, I think, articulating the frustrations of a large proportion of Mac users, especialy pro users, who object to being dragooned into switching completely to OS x before it's ready, which I (along with Steve Wozniak, David K. Every, John siracusa, and a cast of thousands maintain that it isn't.

There you go again talking about "pro users" again. As far as I can tell, your definition of "pro user" has all along been "web pundit" (i.e. you, Every, Siracusa, etc) and you really need to understand that they are highly visible and you relate to them, but they're not typical Mac users. They're a tiny, opinionated, and vocal minority of users, and I'm at the point where I believe their whining is really a cover for losing their "Mac guru" status and having to start all over with MacOS X and UNIX.

If nothing else, MacOS X will dethrone the "wizened" Mac gurus and make room for new blood. (Not that I'm not a Mac old-timer, having owned a Mac SE, a Mac IIci, and a Mac 9500 before the current G4's. But I'm a lifetime learner and the "pro users" had better jump on that bandwagon or they won't be "pro" very long. That's not a Mac phenomenon, it's a Real Life phenomenon in the Western World.)

As far as I can tell in the Real World, there are four groups of people that Jaguar isn't good enough for:

1. Quark users.

2. Musicians. (Mainly due to apps being ported. By the end of the year, MacOS X music apps will be there and they'll outperform MacOS 9 music apps because of OS X's totally new audio and MIDI core.)

3. Some people with old G3 hardware. (Buying new hardware eliminates this issue.)

4. People with old brains.

Other than that, all of my PROFESSIONAL friends are either switched to OS X or dying to switch as soon as Quark or Digital Performer (or ProTools) is ported. (Or as soon as they can afford a G4.)

As far as Woz, he's the Woz. I respect him and his opinion, but let's be real: I doubt that MacOS 1.0 was totally ready when it shipped back in his day. I imagine the Apple II gurus were ragging on its shortcomings and slow speed at the time. Life repeats itself.

MacOS X just plain old works for the vast majority of those with new machines who try it. It has features that OS 9 never had and never would've had. It's evolving fast -- way faster than MacOS pre-X ever did -- and there really isn't a show-stopping problem with it. --Apple-Mail-20-308930277

Hi Wayne

Here's what Apple said:

Apple today announced that starting in January 2003, all new Mac models will only boot into Mac OS X as the start-up operating system, though they will retain the ability to run most Mac OS 9 applications through Apple’s bundled “Classic” software. There are nearly 4,000 native applications now available for Mac OS X.

That implies that all new Macs, including ones with holdover chips and motherboard architecture, will be unable to boot into OS 9, whic would in turn imply some sort of arbitrary block.

As for closing the hardware perfoirmance gap, I'll believe it when I see it. Someday, no doubt. In 2003, much doubt.

Here's the link to the 800 MHz Ti benchmark report:
http://www.macintouch.com/mosxreader10.2pt10.html

"Most categories" wasn't an evasive qualification. OS 9.2.2 whupped Jag's ass speed-wise. Check it out for yourself.

If QE improves GUI/Finder performance by as much as you say, great. I'm delighted. However, my machine does not support QE. :-(

By "Pro Users," I am primarily referring to all the folks who write to me (viz Chris Long's letter above), or whose comments I encounter on forums who work with Macs or administer fleets of Macs doing professional graphics or prepress or other high end stuff, who say they prefer OS 9 to OS X. And, as you noted, there are a lot of Quark users and musicians out there in the pro user ranks.

Charles

Overall Speed

From Jon R. Smith

Charles,

I just read the letter from Gene Steinberg and wanted to comment on your question:

"In your experience, can you affirm that Jaguar offers significant improvements in speed over 10.1.5 overall?"

The short answer, yes! It is much faster than any previous version of OSX. I have been using OSX as my main system since Filemaker released v5.5. I will admit that there have been some adjustments and quirks here and there. I see this as normal in the development of any system, product or life in general. (I digress)

With the first release (beta) I was really in 9 for most of the time or running Classic. Booting into 9 seemed the only way to deal with some issues or problems. With each release I found myself in Classic or 9 less often. Currently I will launch Classic for 3 main applications I have not upgraded. They are QuickBooks Pro 4, Illustrator 8.1, Pagemaker 6.5. I have a Word Find Puzzle maker I also use in Classic. Money, or lack of it right now, is the main reason for not having Illustrator or InDesign. I was happy to see Intuit bringing QuickBooks to X. I have used it for years even without support. I tried MYOB software and just couldn't get it to work for me. I gave up and launched Classic.

Getting back to the speed issue. I am using a G4 500 DP/AGP Graphics with a Mac Radeon card w/32MB Ram/640 MB main memory is installed. (2.2.2 version) I have 2 internal 7200 rpm drives of 40GB and 80GB, each with 2 partitions. (OSX is still in 8GB) and 9 is on it's own. Works great. This set-up by computing standards old. (who sets this standards?) It has been rock solid for me. I have had 3 kernal panics with 10.1 but not since 10.1.4. 10.2 has yet to crash. I do consulting and repairs on Macs and IBM compatibles. I was always upgrading, trying the new software, hardware, third party software and extensions. Knowing how and what to repair always paid for new equipment. I got the G4DP just for OSX. Actually before it came out. This is long winded!

Anyway!

Jaguar is worth the upgrade! It is stable and fast on my machine. I also have it on a Original Bondi 233 iMac and it is very usable. Faster than 7.5.1 on my 5300 lap top. I have used the Mac OS since 6.0.5 and with each release there have always been learning curves, updates, improvements, removed items, dropped support, new features as well as some lost friends. Change, as always, is with the Mac OS. I remember the fevered discussions about Systems and software compatibility when the first 6100, 7100 and 8100 models were released. Non-PPC software would slow the system down because of emulation the processor had to perform to run the "old" stuff. It became a non-issue in a very short period. People adapted. I have put OS9 on a 6100 loaded with memory, talk about slow! It's a slug! So, OS9 as well as OSX, will be slow on some systems faster on others. It is all relative. I see the boot only in X as the same non-issue. It has been coming for a long time and we all knew it. Many posts I have read sound like the entire universe will end because a "new computer" sold by Apple will only boot into the "new" operating system. Remember the dropped floppy in the iMac? Wow! The boards were aflame with that one.

Charles, this has certainly been a long read and I appreciate your reading and maybe posting it. For me, OSX is the natural progression of the Mac OS. It is different and new. It is beautiful to look at with the Quartz engine. The iMac works excellent without it. It is stable, fast and I feel I am just as if not more productive than I ever was in 6, 7, 8 or 9 and I have used them all. It is fun to boot up an old SE with 6.0.5 on it and play around. Yet, for all the nostalgia I wouldn't go back. I know in time you will make the move and I understand why you haven't. In ending 10.2 is faster and a vast improvement over 10.1.5. Thanks for the "ear" and the wonderful columns you share everyday.

Jon R Smith

Hi Jon;

Thanks for the pep talk -- quite encouraging. I will of course be upgrading to Jaguar, once I solve my second computer dilemma, or perhaps even before. I'm looking forward to it, but I still expect to be working mainly in OS 9.2.2 for the foreseeable future.

Charles

Mac OS freedom and choice

From Steve Johgart

David W. Murray wrote:

>The Mac OS used to be about freedom and choice. There were hundreds >of ways to configure and use a Mac, and we all did. Now, in the same >manner that Political Correctness reduces freedom to the right to do >anything that Hillary approves of, you are free to configure and use >your Mac in the manner approved by Steve, AND NO OTHER!

The Mac OS being about freedom and choice actually began after Steve was drummed out of Apple. You ever try to configure your Mac Plus hundreds of ways? Good luck! Steve's whole vision, as I recall, of the Mac was a single-unit closed box that worked the way it was designed and no other way. So, the move to control the Mac OS (and the lack of customizability of the X interface compared to Classic Mac OS is a big downside, in my view, even though I'm a X fan in general) is simply in keeping with the way Steve has always viewed the Mac.

And incidentally, the quote at the beginning of the letter about liberals not caring what anyone does as long as it's compulsory doesn't fit the liberals I know (except of course the political correctness fanatics, but like fanatics of any ilk, they're not representative of the genre, just a lot easier to make fun of). Generally the liberal attitude as I understand it is not caring what anyone does as long as it doesn't stomp somebody else's freedoms. Which makes Steve's dictating the Macintosh Dogma rather conservative, not in keeping with his political leanings.

Steve

Hi Steve;

I think you have the other Steve's proclivities nailed, but you slander conservatives by implication, and what you describe as the liberal attitude sounds to me more like libertarianism. In my experience, liberalism is a lot more widely tainted with P.C. than you suggest; but the P.C. crowd are easy to make fun of. As a friend of mine noted last evening:

"I heard a radio announcer say this--an exact quote: 'John Rocker is a bigot and a jerk for calling people names.'"

Charles

A possible fix for the mouse issue?

From Gurminder

Hello Charles,

I enjoyed reading your "rant" on OSX only on new Macs. I've suggested to a fellow colleague that he buys a Mac before Jan1 to overcome any problems in his transition. At least Jobs et. al. have given enough of a warning so people could do this. Recently I had to boot back into OS9 to work with some old Clarisdraw files (convert them to PDF), it just wouldn't work in Classic mode with "distiller".

Anyway, I know you say that you want to be objective, regarding the two mouse issue, but I think this hold up is the rate limiting step for a smooth transition (the speed issue will improve with incremental upgrades of the OS, look at the difference between 10.1 and 10.2, and hardware will improve by the end of 2003).

Lets cut the Gordian knot. I suggest you contact some third party developers, like the guy who does the USB overdrive app. If you can find a collaborator who's willing to try and write drivers, to allow your dual mouse function, this would be great PR for him/her and a blessing for you and many other dual mouse users. RSI is on the increase, even I might consider this a worthy investment, shareware price of $50 is worth it. Good luck and keep up the pressure, more columns like yours remind apple that we aren't herd followers.

Gurminder

Hi Gurminder;

Good suggestion, and I've been hoping that some shareware developer might pick up on this issue.

I suppose that the fact it's an esoteric problem, and the possibility that Apple will eventually get around to addressing it, are disincentives for expending the effort.

I haven't enough programming knowledge to even have a hazy idea of how much difficulty there would be in fixing the mouse driver to support simultaneous click/drag inputs from two devices.

Charles

Re: The Day The Mac OS Died

From James Rae Smith

Hello Charles

Yes I have read the letters, and because of your views, I believe that your correspondents are to an extent self selecting and not particularly representative of Mac users as a whole. It would be unproductive to argue about our different experiences of OSX but mine is the polar opposite of yours in that I find it a huge improvement over OS 9, which I really hate to go back to now. I snagged a flat panel iMac on eBay earlier this month, but before that I was running OSX on a 400mhz CRT iMac with 256 megs RAM. On that machine the Finder was treacly, but the utility LaunchBar let me bypass the majority of my calls to it, so it was no problem. You should try it out, as I and many others have recommended to you. On my new Mac the Finder is quite acceptable so I find myself using LaunchBar less. But clearly for every Mac there is an optimum OS, and for the one you use now that may be OS 9, but if you want to stick with that hardware you must not be surprised if you cannot use the latest software, and that is not a new situation, many OS 9 apps cannot run on anything earlier than OS 8.6 and in my wife's office there is a Mac that we cannot run on OS 9, though we have managed to get it up to 8.6.

More importantly I do not like the way you and your correspondents wilfully confuse OSX 10.1 with OSX 10.2. While I admit that Apple should have adopted a less ambiguous naming convention for Jaguar (perhaps they should have called it OSX v2) you should be careful about talking about something of which you have no experience even in an opinion piece, particularly as Jaguar has a new Finder, which is your main beef with OSX 10.1. Incidentally that Woz quote that you and your correspondents are waving about so happily also comes from an interview about six months ago, and he too was talking about OSX 10.1.3. Things have moved on quite a bit since then.

All the best
James

PS I too still really like System 6. Perhaps it was the purest and most satisfying iteration of the first Mac OS. Sometimes when deep in the dark teatime of the soul I think colour screens ruined the Mac OS. Then I wake up!

Hi James;

See my reply to Gene Steinberg in today's commentary.

System 6 really liiked great on those razor-sharp little 9" 1-bit screens on the old compact Macs. If it weren't for the Internet (humongous "if"), I think I could still be quite happy most of the time working on a B&W or grayscale monitor. Text, which is my main focus, is usually B&W anyway.

Charles

Re: Would you care to share your machine specs?

From Michael Koren

Chas

Looks like your free space on the OSX partition is similar to my computer's free space. I can't help but wonder if you didn't install something along the way that is slowing your computer. Your Pismo runs about 25% faster than mine, which is a 400. So you should definitely be having a more appealing experience of X than I!

I've had two different periods when my operating system was unacceptably slow. One was when I got the original System X. And then again last April, believe it or not, during that seminar when everyone was using the machine and there were no crashes at all. And it WAS doggedly slow. I don't recall the timeline exactly on system changes, but it would have been the most current system as of this past April. It could have been 10.1.5. It was SLOW and remained slow until a few weeks ago (but I travelled without any computer for 2 months - late June through August - so it feels like the slowness was only for a little over a month.

It seemed to happen after I made the error of getting greedy and loading all sorts of goodies I saw on Version Tracker. I suspected that the latest Mouseworks was the culprit because it started immediately with that one. Like it took a bite out of something!

And yes, I began to think of buying Jaguar just to start over again and be delighted without the slowness. I was frustrated. And willing to spend MORE money based on some of what I read - after all, I did recall that the system was much faster before I got greedy!

A few weeks ago I dumped all my 'thing's' including those that showed up in the 'Other' part of my preferences. But that made no difference. A new version of Fruitmenu and Windowshade came out and I uploaded them. AND SUDDENLY - VOILA! The slowness vanished and it is fast again!!!!!!! What on earth could have happened??? I emailed unsanity and they haven't replied. Either they are mystified or know something they'd rather not admit. (Or forgot my note.) Anyhow I'm tickled pink with the change. The spinning wheels are suddenly gone. The slowness as you might have it with menu selection and so on has virtually gone and so on. I think it was the System X equivalent of an init conflict. That maybe damaged Fruit Menu's stuff?

Michael

Hi Michael;

Maybe, but I don't have a lot of stuff added on, and I haven't noticed much change since the early days of a virgin installation.

Speed perception is highly subjective, and also relates to the specific things you do. Concrete example -- my most-used app. is Tex-Edit Plus, which I love, and the OS X version has some cool new features that aren't available on the Classic version, but the scrolling and menu-opening are soooo sloooow in TE+ X on my machine compared with the Classic TE+, and AppleScript performance (I use AppleScripts intensively in TE+) is raggedy compared with the Classic version, etc. It adds up over the run of a day, and when you factor in similarly clunky performance in some of the other utilities and apps I use compared with their OS 9 version, and you accumulate a real time and efficiency deficit. I hope Jag will help with some of this, but I'm not optimistic about a dramatic transformation.

I think the Unsanity haxies have been fixed now.

Charles

Dual boot

From Bob Emery

Charles,

I followed your dual boot thread with interest, as I often find, I concur with your position, just not always for the same reasons.

It's time to cut to the chase. Until Alsoft comes up with a OS X booting DiskWarrior I'm not buying any machine that can't boot in OS 9. Been pulled out from jaws of disaster one to many times to give it up and nothing else equals it.

All the rest is pure rhetoric.

Bob Emery

Hi Bob;

I expect that Alsoft must be working on an OS X native version of Disk Warrior. In my column last week I said:

"Apple's insistence that Macs only be allowed to support booting into OS X from Apple CDs, raises the question of how one will use emergency disk maintenance and repair software once OS 9 booting is no more. Personally, my comfort level is greatly enhanced by being able to get back into OS 9 to diagnose and fix things. I anticipate that single booting will be a bonanza for the tech support community."

I have subsequently heard that Apple may release a "slim" version of OS x suitable for things like emergency boot dosks.

Charles

Jaguar's Performance

From Gene Steinberg

You wrote:

In your experience, can you affirm that Jaguar offers significant improvements in speed over 10.1.5 overall?

Very noticeable on a current iBook, and somewhat noticeable on dual-gigahertz Macs, on which Mac OS X was pretty snappy anyway.

I have not given it a full workout on the really slow Macs, so we have to see how much they are improved. That will come.

As to the rest: Some folks love Jaguar, some are neutral, some hate it. Folks who are accustomed to Mac OS 9 and specific features that haven't been brought over might have to do some relearning, but that's how it is. It took 15 years of improvement to go from Mac OS 1 to Mac OS 9. Mac OS X has been in release form for just 18 months and it has made huge strides. There are still some fit and finish issues that need work, and it's easy to focus on these. But overall, Jaguar is in pretty good shape as it is.

Peace,
Gene Steinberg
Author of the upcoming "Mac OS X Little Black Book: Jaguar Edition" http://www.macnightowl.com

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear