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New Zealander Chris White of ComputerWorld comments on the termination of dual-booting in "No more Mr Nine Guy." Chris notes:
"Part of the problem is the fact that migrating to Mac OS X really requires the upgrade of all your applications to take full advantage of it... Although most prepress users generally budget in the cost of software upgrades on at least a bi-annual basis, the fact remains that most of them will find themselves having to pay to upgrade some, if not all, of their software when they purchase a new machine."
Over at MacNet2.com, editor John Manzione, whose comments are always worth a read, observes that:
"Anyway, even if Larry’s departure is on the up and up, it’s still bad timing. This is not something a good friend does to another good friend. If Larry couldn’t devote the time to Apple that he needed to, why resign? What’s the rush? No, sorry, this is not about ‘time’ it’s about being pissed. Plain and simple.
"Steve has staked the future of Apple on OS X, and come hell or high water, Steve intends to move every Mac user to OS X, even it kills the company. I believe Larry thinks it will kill the company, and as such, as chosen to bail out now instead of going head to head with Jobs....
"There are only two possible reasons that Steve would kill off OS 9 booting in new Macs in just 4 months; One, he’s totally lost his objectivity and will risk Apple’s short-term profits by killing sales of new Macs, or Two, Apple is going to be making even bolder moves, moves we know nothing about and can only make educated guesses." John goes on to detail why dumping OS 9 poses some ticklish support problems, then continues:
"Even overcoming these problems will not make the decision to kill OS 9 easier to swallow for some people, Larry included. Even the great and mighty ‘Woz’ states OS X’s not quite ready for his use. Then again Woz thinks in ‘binary’ so for him it’s not about ‘aqua’.As for the .mac issue:
"I get the feeling that Jobs has a chip on his shoulders toward Mac users. Like we somehow let him down by not adopting OS X as fast as he hoped. Perhaps charging $99 for .mac was a smart move and will pay off in the end, but by kicking the 2.4 million users off the Apple servers next week is just mean, done as retribution, as punishment for not adopting OS X. Why else would Apple NOT at least offer a mail forwarding service for mac.com email addresses?" Good question; one that I've asked myself. I'm letting my mac.com email addresses lapse. You can read John's self-described rant here: http://www.macnet2.com/more.php?id=182_0_1_0_M Also, check out "10.2.1 Woes" by my MacOpinion colleague Philip Mechanick, who writes:
"But 10.2.1 is another story." iCab and 10.2.1 Re: OSX Blues RE: Graphire 2 in OS 10.2.1.... Re: Dispute your findings regarding drag scrolling Apple has addressed disability issues to some extent Re: The Day that OS 9 died... System 6 John Martellaro's Question in Odyssey 170 To Gene From dxtr Hi Charles, Thanks for the honor of helping the Odyssey along. I must confess that it is the highlight of my web day. I find that the day just drags along if you skip an installment. While I'm on this topic who said you could have weekends off anyway?? To forestall the deluge of mail you will undoubtedly receive iCab works fine in Xv2.1. I hope I have not started a rumor that spins out of control..... I have become addicted to tabbed browsing in Chimera .5. What do I care if a page takes forever to load when it does so in the background, while I am reading something else! On another topic I would like to thank the people involved with the Gimp-Print project at http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/. For the first time in a long time I am able to use my Epson Stylus Color 1520 for something other than a rather ugly sculpture. It works better than I ever remember. Like you, I do not print hardcopy all that often but it's nice to have the option. If your readers have an inkjet printer that is not supported in X they might want to check it out. Now Charles, I know that inkjet technology has not made it to the Moore household so you can disregard the last paragraph. I installed another 256mb RAM chip yesterday. Now I am maxed at 512MB on the Lombard G4. Xv2.1 rocks even more. I would recommend the PowerLogix LS upgrade for anyone suffering from the G3 blues in X. Tex-Edit scoots right along.... hint hint...... Just gave it a try so I could understand your speed frustrations a little better. Kind of a limited test as I do not use it now and never did in 9. Anything more complicated than SimpleText/TextEdit and I use AppleWorks. Yes I am another satisfied Micro$oft free computer user. Amazing how well my Macs have worked since I deleted ALL their garbage!! Keep up the great work!!
seeya
Hi dxtr;
Glad you're enjoying the ride. As I said yesterday, this thread has been fun.
Actually my daughter has a StyleWriter II inkjet, and my son has a Laserwriter, both of which have been on the premises, although they have departed again, leaving me with my antique ImageWriter II. It's been months since I printed anything out anyway. I use the old LC 520 (System 7.5.5 with the OpenTransport stuff from 7.6.1) with the ImageWriter. Getting my money's worth out of the old hardware. :-)
Re: your hotrodded Lombard, you'll be interested in my The Road Warrior column on MacOpinion this week.
Charles From Mike Vicente Charles, I'm typing this from my Mac-email webmail account using iCab 2.8.2. Seems to be working fine. Regards, Mike
Hi Mike;
See dxtr's letter above.
Charles From Marc Kouyoumdjian Mr Moore:
You may find Jeffrey Zeldman's (famed web publisher/commentator) efforts on trying to upgrade to OS X 10.2 amusing: Marc Kouyoumdjian
Hi Marc;
Most entertaining. I admire his perseverence.
Charles RE: Graphire 2 in OS 10.2.1.... From Nathan Margason Hello Charles: After reading Jason Swan's response to using a Graphire 2 in conjunction with another mouse/trackball, I played around with my Graphire 2 and Wheel Mouse Optical for a bit. As it turns out, click and drag behaves differently in several instances: Windows can be move via the Graphire 2 / mouse combination. However, neither live dragging nor marquee dragging is enabled. The window simply pops to the new location when the mouse button is released. Folders and files can also be moved around with the two devices with one caveat. The selecting device needs to nudge the selected item slightly so that OS X realizes that it is being moved. After the item is "lifted" to the translucent state, it can then be moved around with the second pointing device. The Dock items behave much like the folder/files in the finder. However, a larger "nudge" is needed to get the icon into a move state. This complicated by the contextual menus that pop up when the mouse button is held down for a few moments. If you want any more info I'd be glad to investigate further. Nathan Margason
Thanks for the report, Nathan. Sounds like there's hope, anthough the necessity to "nudge" with the selecting device pretty much defeats it for my purposes. I usually select with my foot mouse, in which the ball is disabled (I'm not coordinated enough to click and drag with my foot).
Charles Re: Dispute your findings regarding drag scrolling From Chas Redmond Charles, I used to be the webmaster for NASA HQ up until April of this year when I retired after nearly 33 years working for Uncle Sam (nearly 29 of them at NASA) and am fairly familiar with a range of limitations and disabilities. You've never mentioned specifically what the issues are, I'm suspecting severe arthritis and if that's so, it is a severe strain to do the kinds of editing you do and I probably shouldn't have dunned on about the scrolling speed but rather taken a "step back" holistic look at what you've been saying and see if there isn't some additional technology (software or hardware) which might make your daily editing chores even more facile. My experience, though, is mostly based on individuals with severe sight or hearing limitations and fewer of the physical limitations. If it's MS, then I have some painfully close familiarity (both close friends and close family) and further applaud what you do. If it's none of these but some muscle injury or broken bone/ligament which never healed correctly I still applaud you. And, in that regard, without your commiting yourself to one or another detailed review of the limitations themselves, you have been trying to get the rest of us readers to realize that individual perspectives and individual, localized skill-sets with regard to IT, personal computing or simple everyday tasks are just that - individualized, localized, and personal. Lord knows you couldn't have remided us more times that yours was a personal review. I guess what many of us are trying to say is that - without your limitations and requirements but with our own limitations and requirements and from our own perspective - many of us believe that BOTH OS's are good - it's just that OS 9 is clearly for the present and past and OS X is for the present and future. I'm fortunate enough to have the wherewithall to be able to purchase an additional computer, the iBook I mentioned, so I can have the best of both worlds and perform that which each seems better suited for with the better machine. I also admit that I'm not going to upgrade my G3/300 to OS X because I know it doesn't like it. I tried the beta, I tried 10.,0 and the G3/300 (rev B motherboard) simply did NOT appreciate the new file structure imposed by OS X - there are too many files and the ownership aspect was driving the system mad. Mind you I've added the Rage video card, a Sonnet USB/Firewire card, and have one SCSI CDR machine hooked up, have a 3 gig internal SCSI drive, have an internal ATA 20 gig drive and have an outboard Firewire CDR and two outboard Firewire 80 gig drives, not to mention the built-in CD and Zip. So, the point being, that certain machines seem better suited to certain OS's - the G3/300 is stable with 9.2.2 and as mentioned, the suite of apps which I use regularly (forgot to mention Office, but have 98 and 2001 running on 9.2.2 happy as a lark and have Office X running on the iBook - also happy as a lark). But, on the right system, I must admit that I truly do love OS X more than I love 9.2.2 - I started, btw, with a 128k Mac and Finder 1.0 so I'm no neophyte to the OS evolution. As an example, I have eschewed using Dragthing and all sorts of other system add-ons and still use Malph (written - as it turns out - by an Apple Finder engineer - no wonder it works so well )- I'm running v 3.0 and it too is solid as a rock. On the iBook I've come to like the Dock as much as I've become dependant on Malph in OS 9. just some more rambling thoughts - overall I believe AppleLinks is one of the best sites on the net for Mac and computing in general AND for the philosophy and sociology behind the computer. And, you're one of the more inspired and informed editors whose work I follow - I have equal regard for Rick Ford's site but for different reasons. A fan, a follower and one of the faithful - NASA is about 35 percent agency-wide Mac, btw. I had a G4 last and began with a 512K Mac at work, prior to that it was any number of specific word processors last one being an NBI system <-- they, of course, are a defunct company now. Chas
Hi Chas;
Thanks for the thoughtful letter. As to my health problems, they are unfortunately ill-defined diagnosos-wise. The symptoms include migratory soft tissue pain affecting just about everywhere by times, neuritis, paresthesia (ie: severe "pins and needles" all over at times), numbness in the estremities; chronic nausea (or pseudo-nausea -- I don't have trouble keeping food down), and a whole raft of other things I'll not go into. My doctor thinks it's not MS, although there are some symptomatic similarities, but a diagnosis has been elusive. Fibromyalgia is a provisional possibility, as is severe environmental allergies, Most unpleasant.
Back to the OS dialectic, I have never said or meant to imply that OS X is "bad." It's a great system. Just not quite ready for some of us yet, but there is progress.
Charles Apple has addressed disability issues to some extent From anonymous Charles, Apple has some really cool disability supporting features that are new in Jaguar: Spoken word when you move the cursor over text. Great for legally blind people. They have black on white and white on black inverting on screen, great for people who have trouble seeing specific colors. Quartz Extreme offers zero blurring when you magnify the screen up to 8 times, and extrapolates how curves would appear when you magnify. And Macspeech and Viavoice do work in Jaguar, given you have a good microphone. There is even a program called Voicecommander that is shareware http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=14256&db=mac There is a new dictation product by IBM called Simply Dictation. And I think I may have found your drag scolling solution. If anyone can implement it it would be USB Overdrive http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=13443&db=mac
Sincerely,
Hi A.
Thanks for the update on disability workarounds in Jaguar.
I have the latest beta of USB Overdrive, but regrettably I found no way for it to address my dual-mouse support issue, although it does indeed do many interesting things.
Charles Re: The Day that OS 9 died... System 6 From Andreas Weik Hi Charles, you're right. It IS uncluttered and simple. No Quicktime, no Open Transport, no Truetype (well, almost), no hi-capacity drives, no date and time on the menubar, no OpenGL (no 3D at all!), no iTunes(! I'm listening to the Well-Tempered Clavier from Bach as I type this.) and so on and on and on...AND it is very crude to program. No really, I don't want System 6 back. But for that matter, I like the look of System 7 (from all classic OSes) the most. I think it is more refined than the clunky look from OS 8 and up. And if you look more closely, I think Aqua is the modern version of System 7. Think about it. :-) Anyway, I don't think that losing the capability to boot OS 9 is such a big thing. Anyone in need for a new mac should buy one now, run OS 9 on it for two or three years, after which OS X shouldn't be an issue any longer. Greetings, Andreas.
Hi Andreas;
I never meant to say or imply that I wanted System 6 functionality ( or lack of ) back. However, I did like the look.
Charles John Martellaro's Question in Odyssey 170 From Michael Snider John Martellaro asked just how I scrolled in OS X -- http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2002/09/20020924115540.shtml -- and the answer is that I use the thumb when I want to go quickly to a relative location in a document (this would be difficult if you have trouble with click and drag using a single mouse), I click in the scrollbar away from the thumb when I want to move one or a few screensfull, and I click on the scroll arrows when I want to be able to skim the document as it scrolls past. Note that, for me, it's best if the last method is relatively slow. Wayne Folta said the same thing in Odyssey 168 -- http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2002/09/20020920134501.shtml I don't use mutibutton or scrollwheel mice except at work on NT4, where it causes problems such as the abortive email I think I sent you a few minutes ago. Ain't Windows wonderful?
Peace,
Re: Two statements From Wayne Folta Charles, Please reread the cited passages. The Day OS Died passage is saying the MacOS X will be too slow on future Macs. (The ones that would only be able to boot MacOS X, which is the whole point of the column.) It's not about your current Macs, because they obviously aren't affected by the MacOS-X-only boot policy. But the Odyssey 168 talks about MacOS X being too slow on your current Mac ("hardware I have"). It has nothing to do with future Macs. Thus, you are addressing two entirely different things: future Macs and older Macs. You may see them as one, but only because of the flaw in your logic, which I've pointed out. I'll state your error again... You say that MacOS X is too slow on your current hardware. True enough. You say that MacOS X is apparently slower than MacOS 9 on the latest and greatest Macs. Arguable, but let's assume it's true. BUT you then make the logical error of supposing that these two statements mean that MacOS X is still too slow for you, even on the latest and greatest Macs. TILT! TILT! TILT! ERROR! WARNING! Let me try explaining it another way, and if it doesn't make sense to you, I'll just take my marbles and go home... You've said that MacOS X would literally waste 2 or more hours a day for you compared to MacOS 9. OK, that's not even a challenge, so let's say MacOS X wastes 8 hours a day for you because it's so slow on your current machine. That's 100% overhead. That means 16-hour workdays to accomplish the same thing as you previously did in 8 hours. And it means you need a computer that's twice as fast to make up for it. Is that hard to come by? Let's see... Let's assume you're going to step down from a Professional laptop (Powerbook) and replace it with a Consumer laptop (iBook). Not exactly a fair comparison, but the web pundit business isn't very profitable these days, so let's keep going with it. Current iBooks are 700MHz. By the time you buy a replacement, let's say they are up to 900 MHz, which is probably conservative. That's almost 2x faster than your current 500MHz G3. But the iBook also comes with a 50% faster bus, a tremendously-faster graphics card that's QE-capable, a faster Ultra-ATA drive, etc. Combine that with the gains that MacOS X has made since 10.1.4 and will make before you get it, and we've bridged the 2x gap. You're back to 8 hours a day. It's as fast as what you have -- and are pleased with -- today. That's a forwards comparison, and it suggests that the MacOS-X-only boot policy will not affect you performance-wise. Your Day the OS Died column uses a backwards, illogical comparison. (Not to mention that many of us get plenty-fast performance on older Macs, just not as old as yours. I have great luck with a dual 500MHz G4, which is so, last-year considering Apple's up to dual 1.25GHz now.) If your original article had said what Odyssey 168 had said, you'd have gotten no email about it. Who knows, maybe you're being stubborn to stir up controversy? Regardless, if you still can't agree to my concerns, well, it's just time for me to take my marbles and go home. If it's obvious to me why the two columns are saying different things, and obvious to you that they're saying the same thing, we're having a failure to communicate, and life's too short to spend it in mutual monologues.
Hi Wayne;
If I had said what you apparently infer that I said, then you would have a point. However, in the passages you cited from "OS Died" I never said that Jaguar would be too slow on as yet unreleased faster Macs. The only machine I referred to specifically was the 800 MHz TiBook used in the speed bakeoff by the MacInTouch correspondent who did find Jaguar slower than OS 9 for many tasks.
Even Gene Steinberg says Jaguar is slower on less than cutting edge Macs: http://www.macnightowl.com/index.htm#slow
In any case, my objection to not being able to boot into OS 9 is not entirely about speed (meaning a whole concatenation of issues, some of which are largely esoteric to my personal situation, current hardware and work habits, and others that are objective). Backwards software and hardware compatibility that is not addressed by Classic Mode are important issues to me too.
Charles From David W. Murray Gene, When I received your email of 9/23, I deleted it, as I have better things to do than argue with someone who seems to feel that he can compel agreement by bombast and repetition. As you posted the email to Charles's Mailbag, so I will this. I read your book. I am aware that it contains a "troubleshooting" section. I found both less than helpful. This is evidenced by the fact that I subsequently bought Pogue's book, which I would not have done had yours filled my needs. You are free to feel as you wish about it, as am I. Get over it. As to an apology, I would advise you against holding your breath. I do not apologise for views honestly held simply because they are at variance with those of the self-annointed. "I consider him (Charles) a friend." Gene, how do you treat an enemy? Can you be saying that you handle an issue which touches upon a friend's integrity by writing a public article, hiding behind the miniscule fig leaf of not quite naming him? I will defer to your knowledge of computers, but I know something of friendship. I have fewer than a dozen, formed 35 years ago in combat. I have formed few or none since, as I have found those forged in lesser heat to be ephemeral. The level of duty and loyalty in friendship to which I am accustomed does not admit of actions such as yours. In my circle, an issue touching upon a friend's honor and integrity would be handled in private conversation or correspondence. If the rules in your circle of friends are less stringent, and can countenance such an action in pursuit of a few points in some journalistic pecking order, you have my sympathy. We agree upon one point, an apology is owed.
Sincerely,
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