Cool Mac Gear

Plus pessimism v optimism, OS X mouse issues, and more

Jag v2.1

From dxtr

Hi Charles,

Just wanted to let you know that the upgrade to version 2.1 of Jaguar went okay on my unsupported Lombard G4. As I have not had any particular problems with Xv2 so I really can't say that this maintenance upgrade solved anything for me. So far nothing has "Broke", knock silicon, so I'm still happy with Steve and Apple.

I had not read Gene Steinberg's "The Jaguar Report: How Can You Dislike It Without Using It?" until today. Gene seems a bit testy about this subject. While I would like to see you on the latest greatest also I understand about the economics involved. Gene says...,

"More to the point, however, this particular commentator has apparently not upgraded to Jaguar, but quotes extensively from folks who have used it and have found it wanting for one reason or another. Rather than give it a fair shake, which would entail going out and buying a copy (or requesting a review copy from Apple's corporate communications department) and actually installing and using it, this person is content to rely on others to cross the river first."

I find Gene's point of view here somewhat skewed. I have written you a few times and support upgrading at the drop of a byte. You have published all of my comments verbatim, including typos. As to the "apparently not upgraded" portion you have made it abundantly clear that you have not, and will not until you are ready. No matter how much anyone teases, cajoles, implores or well I guess no one has threatened you.....yet.....yeah that's it get the OS or we'll take your Pismo for a ride...

I would like to have a new Mac every time one rolls off the assembly line but that's not in the cards for me. Quite frankly the new TiBooks just don't appeal to me. I like having expansion bays and a little heft. The iBook's G3 just is not fast enough to run X for me. Maybe when they get a Sahara chip but for now my souped up Lombard works just fine. As for the desktop models they're just to loud.

I would think the best machine for you would be another Pismo with a G4 upgrade. This would allow you to use all the toys you have and let you boot 9 if you like. It would also eliminate the lack of Finder speed that annoys you so much. The G4 does wonders for X in that department. The multi mouse bug will still be there but that is not going to be fixed any time soon by Apple. I think your only hope there is if some third party programer takes up your cause.

Keep up the good work!

seeya
dxtr

Hi dxtr;

Thanks for the balanced comment. The way some folks are carrying on, it seems like they think that unless you're running OS X 10.2.1 on a Dual Processor 1.25 GHz Power Mac, you have no legitimacy commenting on Mac OS issues.

The back of the axe head is always a lot more substantial than the cutting edge (unless it's a double-bitter ;-) ) I wonder what proportion of Mac OS users are running 10.2 yet? Maybe 1-2 percent, if that? It's only been out less than a month. And I'll bet that there are a lot of folks running 10.1.x who have either decided, like me, to wait a while and see how the dust settles, or perhaps to not upgrade to 10.2 at all. Are they all idiots or "traitors" to the Mac community?

Charles

Re: Why I Haven't Upgraded To Jaguar (Yet)

From James Rae Smith

Hello Charles

I read your reasons for not having tried Jaguar with interest. While your reasons (particularly poverty) are compelling, they do not answer the central point of Gene Steinberg's article. How can you write about OSX when your only experience of it is running an old version of it on hardware that is only marginally suited for it? The speed question is not whether OSX runs as fast as OS 9, you and all your correspondents know it never will, and that nearly all OS upgrades are slower than previous versions, the question is whether it runs at an acceptable speed on newish hardware, and this is a subjective opinion that cannot be derived from the experience of others. Your justification for your columns are that they are personal opinion pieces, and you call it as you see it. How much value do those personal opinions have when they are based on such thin personal experience? I too have read reviews and comments about Jaguar around the web, and unlike you, it appears to to me that most of those opinions have been favourable and that Jaguar is a very significant upgrade. The criticism of Jaguar has mainly centred on Apple's poor treatment of the creators of Watson, and the absence of any reduced price upgrades, neither of which detract from the quality of the OS. Maybe if I dismiss all favourable comments on Jaguar as coming from cheerleaders or paid shills from Cupertino, I might come to the same conclusions as yourself. But would that be fair?

My own view is that Gene is not a cheerleader but an optimistic old hippy who likes to see the best in things, whereas you are a bit of a gloomy Eeyore with a leavening of "We are all dooomed!" Christian pessimism for that added sparkle! You are both completely mad of course, as is everyone who has nothing better to do with their time than contribute to these online debates.

Whoops gotta dash, the bell has just rung. My copy of Jaguar has just arrived in the post, I'll tell you what I think in a week or two. If you are interested.

All the best

James

Hi James;

Please see my reply to dxtr above.

There's commentary and then there's commentary. If I had to pick two of the sagest voices in Mac Web discourse, John Siracusa (Ars Technica) and Dave Every (iGeek - nee Mackido) would be on my very short list, and I'm always interested to hear what they have to say about anything new in the Mac orbit. Both had some complimentary things to say about Jag, but also offered detailed critiques that sound very familiar based on my experience with 10.1.4 (which was released only about 5 months ago).

BTW, I'm an old hippie too. You should'a see me in the late sixties/early seventies. However, I am constrained to reveal here as well that a future friend remarked upon meeting me for the first time circa 1971: "Now I've seen everything, a fascist hippie,"

It was almost unheard of to hear someone looking like me: shoulder-length hair, a full beard, clothed in army surplus duds and work boots, expressing opposition to the boilerplate cafeteria leftist orthodoxy of that era -- political correctness in its infancy. That grew into REAL fascism, but I digress. Suffice to say that I was a conservative, when being a conservative was even less cool than it is nowadays.

In any case, my "fascist hippie" remark friend didn't hold it against me; we were subsequently apartment mates, and I was best man at his wedding. In our most recent telephone conversation, I was amused to hear that he, as he approaches the big five-oh, is morphing into an old fogey like me, has taken up reading the National Post, and developed an appreciation for the musings of insightful post-boomer young fogey NP columnist Mark Steyn.

As for optimism v. pessimism, I'll defer to the inimitable Ambrose Bierce (an agnostic re: religion, BTW):

OPTIMISM, n. The doctrine, or belief, that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly, everything good, especially the bad, and everything right that is wrong. It is held with greatest tenacity by those most accustomed to the mischance of falling into adversity, and is most acceptably expounded with the grin that apes a smile. Being a blind faith, it is inaccessible to the light of disproof -- an intellectual disorder, yielding to no treatment but death. It is hereditary, but fortunately not contagious.

OPTIMIST, n. A proponent of the doctrine that black is white.
A pessimist applied to God for relief.
"Ah, you wish me to restore your hope and cheerfulness," said God.
"No," replied the petitioner, "I wish you to create something that would justify them."
"The world is all created," said God, "but you have overlooked something -- the mortality of the optimist."

PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile.

And yes, I eagerly await your comments on Jaguar. ;-)

Charles

Feature on current Macs vs. future Mac OS X-only Macs?

From Joe Cabrera

Charles:

I've begun thinking about when to buy my next Mac. I've been wanting to hold out to see a few more features hit the iMac before I buy (USB 2, Firewire 800, 19" screen, and maybe even this new Sony disk drive that can read and write just about any DVD format). But with Mac OS 9 going bye-bye as of January, do I want to get the last computer to support dual systems? Or do I want to wait for something completely legacy-free and just use my 1999 WallStreet for Mac OS 9 for as long as I can? I mainly use it for email, web browsing, programming (RealBasic), HTML (GoLive and Dreamweaver), and DTP (Quark and all the big Adobe apps), and those are almost all already OS X ready.

With quite a number of us Mac veterans in the same boat, I'd love to see an Applelinks feature addressing the pros and cons on this. (Something tells me we'll be seeing quite a lot of them before year's end.)

regards,
Joe

Hi Joe;

Good column idea, although some folks don't think it's a legitimate issue at all.

You are on the horns of a dilemma, because if you wait for USB 2, FW 800, etc., they aren't likely to be on a Mac than can boot into OS 9.

Personally, I think that the flexibility of being able to boot into two different OSes is a compelling feature, for a variety of reasons that I won't detail right now.

I'll see what I can do.

Charles

OS X Terminal / iBooks

From Robb Neumann

Charles,

I've been following your OS X Odyssey for quite some time now, and since I purchased one of the new iBooks back in May, have been using OS X for several months now.

This isn't a criticism of your not using OS X. I have several programs which I use (and cannot replace) that won't even work in Classic mode, so too an extent, I share your view that OS X is not quite ready for "prime time." I'm happy that this machine will allow me to boot into OS 9.2.2 and that I haven't made the mistake of getting rid of my old iMac.

Anyway, my point is this... for those of us who are tinkering with OS X, I would imagine that the command line prompt is quite intriguing. I might be in the minority, but it just screams of something to tinker with. I think you could really provide some of your readers a great service if you could point out resources for those of us who do want to play with OS X's terminal and who are not old hands at UNIX. Perhaps you could do a brief "Mac Basics" article, pointing people in the direction of web sites and books that touch on the subject.

In general, keep up the great work. Applelinks continues to be one of the first and one of the last sites I visit every day.

And, if you can swing the cost, I would recommend looking at the iBook as a replacement for your Wallstreet. Although I don't think anything will replace that well loved computer of yours, I'm absolutely smitten with my new iBook. I use it primarily for word processing, e-mail, web surfing, and some audio sequencing, and it performs admirably in all areas. It's G3 processor might still seem a bit pokey for you under OS X, but so far, I haven't been disappointed with its performance. If there are any specific questions you might have about the iBook, please let me know, and I can do my best to give you a "man in the street" answer.

Thank you,
Robb Neumann

Hi Robb;

Thanks for sharing your measured and admirably balanced perspective.

As for command lines, I need a Command Line Basics tutorial myself. However, the most encyclopedic and comprehensive resource on working with CL in OS X I've encountered is John Ray and William C. Ray's Mac OS X Unleashed, which I reviewed here back in March, a very big book -- 46 pages short of the 1500 page mark -- A hefty tome that feels like about 3 lbs. in soft cover.

This book is intended to bridge the gap between the user interface and the BSD subsystem in a way that is accessible to users who are unfamiliar with UNIX and other multi-user systems. It takes the approach of demonstrating familiar actions and tools in the Mac OS interface, and then providing the equivalent information within the BSD environment.

http://www.applelinks.com/mooresviews/unleashed.shtml

As for the iBook, yes, I agree that it is probably the most logical replacement for my poor old WallStreet.

Charles

Re: Alsoft Disk Warrior For OS X

From Steve Johgart

>I expect that Alsoft must be working on an OS X native version of >Disk Warrior.

Well, I definitely hope so, but I'm not entirely confident. Remember their terrific DiskExpress Pro? Their Web site still has a link for the "Update for Mac OS 8.1 - Mac OS 8.6", which was the last update. For perhaps 3 or 4 years they had posted that they were working on an OS 9 version. Never released. I never even heard of a beta version. Now they say they're "rewriting the program from the ground up for OS X". I'll believe it when I see it. Disk Warrior, on the other hand, doesn't say a word about an upcoming OS X version, or even a version which will work in Classic. Not encouraging.

Steve Johgart

Hi Steve;

I read somewhere on the Web last night -- forget where -- that AlSoft has an OS X native version of Disk Warrior under development, and that we should see it in about 4-5 months.

Charles

Yet another dual booting Mac letter...

From Kelly Miller

Dear Charles,

I think you are significantly misreading Apple's intentions about the phase out of dual booting Macs. To quote you from OS X Odyssey 166,

"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. '

I think the key phrase is "all new Mac models," which you read as "all new Macs." "All new Macs" does indeed imply an arbitrary block. "All new Mac models," however, implies that only new hardware designs and revisions will lack the dual boot capability. The first bunch of these will probably be introduced at MacWorld in January, and the rest over the course of the spring. This also does not imply an arbitrary block -- instead, Apple just won't do the work needed to get the new hardware to dual boot. This is a big difference, and not nearly as sinister as your reading implies.

Best regards,

Kelly Miller

Hi Kelly;

I hope you're right. The semantics are sufficiently vague that they could be interpreted either way. Perhaps that was Apple's purpose in sending the announcement up as a trial balloon to see how it played with the public.

If indeed the dual boot termination pertains only to new chipsets and motherboard architecture for which it would be uneconomic to engineer OS 9 boot support, I have, as I've stated several times before, no quarrel with that.

However, if Apple really doesn't intend to make it a clean break across the board, why did they not make that clear?

Charles

Only somewhat wizened

From Mike

Dear Charles,

I am, myself, a tiny, opinionated and vocal minority if only somewhat wizened, and resent the implication that my "old" brain is not cleaned out and rearranged periodically. As a 9 user, i would like to apply for membership in the G.O.M.M.U.G.

Wait a minute! Dues? What is this, Dot.Mac.Nine?

Will all my emails contain a JPEG of Steve? Woz?

Will I be apprehended by the Internet Police if I don't upgrade to 9.2.2? Oh, I already did. Time to clean out the "old" brain.

Maybe I should just join the OS9 Liberation Front.

Didn't DOS used to have a "Terminal"? Is this progress?

When a Beta OS is touted as the next answer to the world's most important question, I understand. But when a Beta is promoted as the absolute end of the rainbow I have to think,"Maybe, when they finish it".

Keep up the good work.

Mike Nute

Thanks Mike, from one "old brain" to another.

:-))

Charles

Newer is better

From Alvin Chan

Good morning. It has been said in the Good Book, "do you put new wine in old wine skin, if you do the old wineskin will burst." We just have to adjust for the better and it is for laws and principles. Though I guess three will always be a crowd just like Linux is having no direction and no point to divide things up even more.

I guess OS X/OS 10.2 is unity, newer and better. I'll switch everything and get rid of OS 9 once it can be had (where is the most affordable site you can buy it from) to have this unity. Things cannot divide themselves if they find the present ones not good (just like protestantism in religion) for them but the best reallly is to improve an already existing product. Surely after 10 more years we don't want to choose from 10 different OSes, we only need the best. Since Apple started good and it's leader and philosophy focuses more on innovation with profits as second priority then Apple is truly the best and should just be improved.

I believe to make it even better it really must get rid of OS 9 in a way to make the new Mac more affordable by exchanging/donating (donating gives the user their space which also has a price, no need for discounts from Apple with donations because

Apple is like paying the one donating real estate in their homes/offices), if Macs and PCs (for raw materials) were exchanged/donated (with exceptions to very recent macs that can still handle the latest Apple offerings).

God bless,
Alvin

If anyone knows of a cheap source of OS 10.2, let us know.

CM

Cheap X upgrade

From Lee Lamb

Charles,

I suppose you and others are aware that the Apple Store for Education has OS 10.2 for about $69.00 us. So if your a Teacher, student, or parent of a student this is a way to save some money.

Warmest Regards,
Lee

Hi Lee;

Good point. Hmmmm. My daughter just started university (albeit at a school that doesn't support Macs). I don't know whether there's a Mac education outlet there.

Charles

Steinberg swipe

From Darren Varner

Sorry Charles, but I'm with Gene on this one.

Jag is a vast improvement over any version of X. Most of the problems people have with it are as follows
1. Know Mac OS 9 too well. It isn't exactly like os 9! 2. Jag killed mail (or fill in the blank). Oops, I moved mail to a subdirectory and it wasn't recognized in the update! Apple sucks. 3. Jag is just too slow! OS 9 is fast!
4. And on and on.

Certainly it has made some things inoperable. Your mouse thing for instance. But most of these things are getting fixed faster and faster as OS X picks up steam.

Stay in 9 if you want. It is a free world. But waiting to change until everything is perfect and criticizing it without really trying it is very old to me. (I never thought 9 was perfect.) I've used X for well over a year now and can't believe how hard I used to argue for 9.

This site is like a soap opera. Read it for a few days, skip it for a month. Come back for a few days and not miss a beat. (Microsoft free, OS X can wait, iListen kicks ass, blah, blah, blah) ;-)

Really, overall you provide a good read and forum. But honestly, Gene was probably talking about quite a few other writers on the net as well. Move on or try it on for size, and for a change.....

Darren Varner

Hi Darren;

I used OS X almost every day for at least an hour or two from November, 2001 to August, 2002, when my WallStreet broke and I had to switch my OS X machine to OS 9 in order to get my production work done. I find X perfectly familiar, and can use it intuitively. I'm still in it several times a week. I have more than tried it, and I shall persevere, but OS 9 really is a lot faster than 10.1.x, and it's been widely reported that it's faster than Jag too.

Vast improvement? Not what I hear from a wide spectrum of sources, but I'm not passing judgement until I use Jag. However I am not unfamiliar with OS X.

Charles

Re: Dual Mouse Issue

Thomas Weisbach

Charles,

I haven't heard about the 2 button mouse problem w/ Mac OS X. Are there some web pages about this? I have a Microsoft mouse and the second button works fine for me.

-Thomas

Hi Thomas;

Sorry for the cryptic reference. I wasn't referring to any two button mouse issue. My three-button Logitech Cordless MouseMan test unit works fine too.

The problem, which is, as I noted, esoteric, is that OS X does not support clicking with one mouse while dragging simultaneously with another. Because of a physical disability, this is a necessary mode for me for serious proiduction work -- ie: clicking with a foot mouse while dragging, highlighting, etc., with one of the two hand mice I keep connected.

This works great in OS 9; not at all in OS X.

Charles

Dual mouse in X

From Graeme Bennett

Hello from the West coast of Canada!

I've been following your OS X Odyssey and I feel compelled to point out that I have dual mouse support working just fine in Jaguar. I installed a Wacom Graphire tablet, which comes with a mouse, and the other mouse works right alongside it. I can even switch mouse buttons on the Graphire -- a nice touch, as I'm left handed.

As for the speed of Jaguar, here are my thoughts. 1) As has been the case with all other OS X releases, Jaguar is, for my taste, a little too slow on a G3 processor, even with Quartz Extreme acceleration. It's still worth running, for a variety of reasons, in my environment (and, yes, I have audio and MIDI gear connected!).

On a G4, however, OS X is much more responsive. Even on a 450 MHz G4 running with "only" 192MB of RAM and NO Quartz Extreme acceleration, the difference between Jaguar running on the G4 versus my 400 MHz G3 Mac with 208 MB of RAM (*with* Quartz Extreme enabled) is like night and day. iCal -- characterized as slow by many reviewers -- opens in 2 - 3 bounces on my G4. It takes 12 bounces to open on my G3. Honestly, I get such smooth performance in the <serenescreen.com> Marine Aquarium and Flurry screensavers and the iTunes visualizations, I can't really see much point in upgrading my G4's Rage 128 Pro video card. Waggling a transparent terminal window around in front of my QuickTime movies (as demonstrated in Phil Schiller's Seybold keynote) just isn't a priority for me. The dramatically improved SMB connectivity feature, on the other hand, most definitely is. I'm overstating the point about Quartz Extreme a bit, as there are, of course, certain other situations in which hardware accelerated compositing may be beneficial -- but I'll leave that topic for another time.

I did not notice a significant speed difference in overall system performance between OS X 10.1.5 and 10.2. Several specific operations increased in speed, though: WebDAV disk mounting, SMB sharing, Classic launching, iTunes visualizations and app launching speeds all improved. And iTune 3.01 finally defaults to "outline" drag mode when resizing the main window, making David Pogue's "command key" trick unnecessary. On the above-mentioned G4, resizing was perfectly smooth even without this update -- again, it is apparently there primarily for the benefit of G3 users.

The point is: Jaguar is still a worthwhile upgrade, even without QE acceleration. But OS X really takes a G4 to fly.

Regards,
Graeme Bennett,
Editor,
http://www.macbuyersguide.com

Hi Graeme;

Hello back at you from Eastern Nova Scotia!

I have two mice and a trackpad hooked up right now, and they all work fine -- individually. The problem for me is that I can't hold the button down on one while dragging with another simultaneously. This works fine in OS 9 with either ADB or USB devices or combinations thereof, but not in OS X.

Will that work with your Graphire and another mouse in tandem?

I agree with you about G4s being optimum for OS X. My G4 Cube (450 MHz) seemed faster running the public beta than my Pismo (500 MHZ, with more RAM) does runing 10.1.4.

Charles

The 800 MHz Ti benchmark report

From Wayne Folta

> 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.

I did:

Startup time (Finder menus active): Jaguar "somewhat" (25%) faster Open 50MB Photoshop file (color image A): OS X 3x faster (unless you allocate 150MB to Photoshop)

Restart computer (after running benchmark trials): dead heat Relaunch AppleWorks (first relaunch, followed immediately by second): dead heat
Open Help Viewer with AppleWorks News document: dead heat Open Photoshop v7.0.1: dead heat
Relaunch Photoshop (first relaunch, followed immediately by second): dead heat
In Finder, duplicate a single 50MB file: dead heat

Shutdown computer (after running benchmark trials): OS 9 10x faster Launch AppleWorks v6.2.4 (first user action after boot): OS 9 2x faster Scroll thru multipage AppleWorks document: OS 9 2x faster Scroll thru Help Viewer document: OS 9 2x faster Scroll thru 87MB Photoshop file (color image B): OS 9 3x faster In Finder, Copy (__not__ duplicate) 500 small files (5.6MB total): OS 9 10x faster
In Finder and in icon view, scroll thru above 500 file folder: OS 9 4x faster
In Finder and in list view, scroll thru above 500 file folder: OS 9 3x faster
Launch Internet Explorer (IE) by double-clicking on an 880KB HTML archive file: OS 9 50% faster
Scroll thru the above HTML document, approximately 56 pages (screens) of combined graphics and text: OS 9 3x faster In Finder, copy 9.1MB file from Lexar 8X CompactFlash card to an external FireWire HD. This benchmark tests the transfer rate on a USB card reader: OS 9 50% faster

So about half the tests are basically even or favor OS X. The other approximately half of the tests ("most tests") favor OS 9. But let's question the tests for a moment, shall we?

1. The tests obviously leave out examples where OS X is much faster. For example, waking up from sleep -- something that happens many times a day with a Powerbook. MacOS X is dramatically faster than MacOS 9 was. Other tests would include multi-tasking type tests and network tests.

Meanwhile, the tests emphasize things that don't happen multiple times a day, such as system shutdown, which definitely won't accumulate to the hours you claim you'll lose every single day. Heck, with OS X's superior VM, you can leave many apps running all the time, avoiding launch times altogether.

2. How meaningful are the tests that were included? The Finder scroll test is one example of a meaningless test. I assume he held the mouse down on the scrollbar arrow in list view. Since you have at least three choices of scroll methods (scroll arrow click, scrollbar area click, drag scrollbar) and the scroll arrow click should be the slowest, what's the big deal?

On my creaky old Pismo, I scroll through 500 files in approx 15 seconds, suspiciously close to the 13 seconds his twice-as-fast TiBook took. Maybe it's designed to be slow enough to actually read? (What a radical idea.) Maybe not, but I know if I click in the scrollbar area, it takes only 4 seconds, and if I drag the scrollbar it takes less than 1 second. Each method faster as it should be and each method appropriately fast enough for the Real World task at hand.

You're not going to waste 2 hours a day scrolling with the scroll arrow through Finder windows.

3. Where there are odd results in the testing, he doesn't investigate. For example, the 10x faster file copy. He admits that it acts oddly, but there's no investigation into why. Is it his machine? Or is it a general problem? Does it happen on certain document types, say, or not? I tried copying 505 small files from one disk to another on my dual 500MHz and it took 15 seconds. Why so different from an 800 MHz TiBook?

He claims he left networking off in MacOS 9 to match OS X's default configuration. What he meant was he didn't turn on filesharing, I guess. Networking itself is on by default in MacOS X. And so on.

4. Even if you ignore items #1, #2, and #3 and say that OS 9 won in "most" cases and "whupped" OS X, it still does not justify your argument that because OS X is "unuseably" slow on your Pismo that it will be unuseably slow in a future OS revision on future hardware. Your evidence still has no bearing on your MacOS-X-only-boot arguments.

Remember, you're comparing your experience with a 10.1 on a 400 MHz (?) Pismo with no graphics acceleration versus, say, an 800 MHz iBook with 10.2 (or later) and graphics acceleration that would replace it. In that case, 2:1 or 3:1 victories by OS 9 are a wash for you.

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

The machine you will buy to replace your current one does support QE, so how does this matter?

> 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.

Really? You mean "all the folks" who write to you? Seems to me that your mailbags full of comments -- at least those you publish -- are running about 50/50, or better in favor of OS X. As far as musicians, they'll be moved by the end of the year as Digital Performer, ProTools, etc, are ported to a new Audio/MIDI core. End of argument on the musician front.

I'd guess that those people who administer fleets of Macs and don't like OS X do so because they are also running fleets of old Macs on a shoestring budget (e.g. schools). This is a legitimate concern, but it's not one that affects new Macs running a new OS. I might add that in a previous life, I administered boatloads of UNIX systems from the comfort of my desk, taking advantage of UNIX's incredible networkability and I can tell you that MacOS X is a huge step upwards in terms of being able to administer fleets of machines. Argument on the ease-of-maintaining-fleets-remotely front is nonsensical.

As far as negativity towards OS X in the forums you frequent, let's be honest: the squeaky wheel garners the most attention and people for whom something works are generally not squeaky. (I'm an exception because you're so over the top on this issue that I'm compelled to try to counter-balance.)

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore