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Of late I've been working in OS X on weekends, when time pressure is not as hectic, which helps keep my familiarity up to speed. I find the transition quite easy. My email files are share between the OS X and OS 9 versions of my email client applications via aliases, and I have either OS X equivalents for most of my key production applications and just run the rest in Classic Mode.

I continue to find OS X slower to work in than OS 9 for a variety of reasons that I have related in this column over the past 11 months, not least the now-famous dual- mouse input issue. However, this past weekend I made what was for me a momentous discovery: using a Wacom Graphire2 graphics tablet mouse partly restores dual mouse support.

To wit, I can click and hold with my foot mouse while dragging with the Graphire2 mouse to highlight text. I even could (more one the use of past tense in a minute) also drag and drop highlighted text in or betwen documents using these methods, at least in some applications, notably Tex Edit Plus, NotePad Deluxe, Eudora, SweetMail, and WannaBee, which, happily, are the ones in which this ability is most important to me.

Unfortunately, I still can't drag and drop by icons on the desktop this way, but I can drag open windows around by their title bars, and resize open windows. Interestingly, the scroll bar "thumb" also responds in SweetMail, but not in Tex Edit Plus or Eudora. I have not exhaustively experimented in other applications.

Still, this partial degree of support makes me optimisitc that multiple pointing device input can work in OS X, and that the non-support is a resolvable driver issue. The Graphire2 tablet has its own mouse driver that is apparently more sophisticated than the built-in OS X mouse driver, but still not quite all the way there yet.

The ability to highlight text to cut, copy, or paste this way makes working in OS X much easier for me, although still well short of OS 9 standards. However, there is progress.

Oh, one more thing... I installed Jaguar over the weekend. I will be saying more about that in the days ahead. Unfortunately, while the Graphire2 mouse will still support highlighting text in OS 10.2, I have lost the two-mouse drag and drop text support I had fleetingly enjoyed in OS 10.1.4, so there is also regression.

Footnote: Speaking of regression, I am actually working in OS 9.1 this morning, since the Jaguar install broke my TCP/IP control panel in OS 9.2.2. What shows up now is a panel labeled "TCP/IP (Classic)" with only text entries, no pull-down menus, and Ethernet configured. Thanks a LOT, fellas! I would be screwed, at least in the short term, if I didn't have multiple operating systems installed on the Pismo. OS 9.1, happily remained untouched by the Jaguar installer and I can get online without resorting to OS X. I shall try to reinstall the proper TCP/IP control panel in OS 9.2.2 when time permits. I also noticed some serious and unprecedented stability problems in OS 9.2.2 this morning -- ie: three hard crashes in one hour.

Re: Canadian Student OS X Rip-Off

From Dana Leighton

Hello Charles,

Here is an update. I have yet to get a response from the UBC bookstore, five days after emailing the computer buyers and the director of the bookstore. Like all good bureaucrats, they will ignore me hoping I will go away. They are wrong. I am getting ready to contact the school paper regarding this issue. I wonder what other software they're gouging us on.

Anyway, it's apparently a UBC problem, not Apple Canada. Here are prices from other university bookstores, listed in order of price:

Memorial University of Newfoundland: $106 University of Victoria: $115
Simon Fraser University: $119
University of Saskatchewan: $119
McGill University (PQ): $120
University of Calgary: $120
University of Manitoba: $124.95
University of Western Ontario: $124.95
McMaster University (ON): $125
University of Toronto: $125
University of Alberta: $129
University of British Columbia: $150.95
Average: $120.72

Wacky pricing! Well, there's a happy ending: I'll be buying at SFU and getting a $31.95 discount off the UBC rip-off price.

Thanks for all your great writing. I always read the Road Warrior. BTW, I just loaded OS X 10.1.5 on my G3 Wallstreet 233 with 192MB ram, and I am really surprised how reasonably fast the system is. I ordered 512MB of RAM so I can get a little more juice out of it. Pleased as punch. But, I just tried my ADB keyboard and mouse. No luck. Next on the shopping list: USB PCMCIA card (got a recommendation?), keyboard, and trackball.

Cheers,
Dana.

Hi Dana;

Thanks for the report. Looks like only Memorial is matching Apple's own price. Good on the Newfoundlanders!

Glad 10.1.5 is working well on your WallStreet. I'm puzzled about the ADB keyboard and mouse not working, however. I never installed OS X on my WallStreet, and was not aware that this was an issue. OS X supports beige G3s, which had ADB input peripherals, and I assume they work.

I actually have a bunch of ADB stuff hooked up to my Pismo through Griffin's cool little iMate adapter. Works great.

Best,
Charles

Search with Finder

From Darren Varner

No indexing involved in Jaguar. It is instantaneous. That feature alone was enough for me to feel satisfied with the price. :-)

Darren Varner

Hi Darren;

It works (I now have Jaguar installed), but it's sloooooooow and way too general for content searches. SpeedSearch is much faster and more configurable. It's fine for searching for file names.

And it *does* index the drive. After I experimented with a content word search and quit the Find utility, there was that indexing racket from my hard drive ongoing. I finally had to open the Process Viewer and force kill it. I'm not interested in indexing my drive. The Shareware solutions are better.

Charles

Re: The Worm In The Apple site

From Martin A. Totusek

Re: The Worm In The Apple site <http://www.wormintheapple.gr/> (Re: OS X Odyssey - On killing the Classic Mac OS or How to Blow Ones Own Horn? From dxtr)

I was asked to write an article
<http://www.wormintheapple.gr/articles/music_in_x.html> by the The Worm In The Apple site <http://www.wormintheapple.gr/> on the OS X music issues well over a year ago (and I am not a part of the ownership of the site, etc.). The information was accurate (I got direct confirmation from APPLE on OMS and FreeMIDI being blocked from being able to function at all by the kernel in OS X, etc.), and KEYBOARD magazine, Ted Landu at MacFixIt.com, Francois 'Soif' Dechery at MacMusic.org, and/or others either documented or confirmed many of the same issues I raised. "dxtr" failed to mention that at all. The reason for pointing it out at that time was quite literally to put pressure on APPLE to begin deal with the many problems, after some of the OS X development team publicly admitted that they had developed nothing in that area (the later "Core Audio" API wasn't even around then). I also live a couple blocks from Iron Wood recording studios here in Seattle, and none of the professional Mac OS music softwares and related hardwares they use can function under any version of Mac OS X (they run Mac OS 8.1, 8.6 & 9.2.2 as a result) to this day (they own a battery of 604e through G4 machines).

Mary Grimsley (author of "The Little Red Cyberdog Book") <http://www.marygrimsley.org/> later asked for an update on the music issues, which she posted on her site:

Go to:

More Computer Stuff: Mac topics (January, 2002) <http://www.marygrimsley.org/computerstuff/computercontinue9.php>

and then scroll down to (or use your web browser's "Find" function):

Update regarding Mac OS X, and Live Musicians and/or Sound Engineers

Many Mac users are also quite familiar with The Worm In The Apple site (originally a .mac.com site) because of their patch for iTunes for Mac OS 8.6 (patches earlier versions of iTunes for Mac OS 8.6 compatibility) via <http://www.wormintheapple.gr/downloads/index.html>.

"dxtr" fails to understand that Mac users (including The Worm In The Apple site's ownership) have LOVE (not hate) and have loved the Mac and the Classic Mac OS, but they and many other Mac users certainly can legitimately raise issues about a number of APPLE's current management's behaviors and orders. Mac users may like OS X, but do not love OS X like they have the regular Mac OS.

My point
<http://www.applelinks.com/articles/2002/10/20021010114828.shtml> was also simply that the nasty attacks I read aimed at Charles W. Moore were not warranted (I can also find sites that are far harsher that anything The Worm In The Apple has put online), and I stand by that.

"dxtr" also completely fails to understand the deliberate use of humor and satire in some of the site's ownership's own statements about the hard disk problems they had happen.

Sincerely,
Martin A. Totusek -Musician

P.S. Mary Grimsley also wrote: "Directions for OS X: Classic support?" <http://www.marygrimsley.org/computerstuff/classiccontinue.php>

P.P.S. I own four Macs (three 68xxx machines and one PPC machine), and I'm not likely to "hop on over to that new GateWay Store" like "dxtr" suggests...; IF I ever switch Platforms in the future, it's also to Linus Torvalds' Linux Platform that I would switch to.

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

CM

Charles W. Moore

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