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As I noted here yesterday, I installed OS 10.2 Jaguar on the weekend. I've always did plan to get to it eventually. I'm not an early adopter by nature. ;-)

The install went smoothly enough, except for a bit of a tussle at first getting the Pismo to boot from the install CD. It kept spitting the disk on the restart. Holding the C key down finally did the trick. After that, things proceeded without drama, and the whole process took about 50 minutes.

I had about 1.3 MB free on my OS X partition, but that was only barely enough, and indeed I had to deselect a few unwanted things, like certain Asian font packages and such, in order to give the installer breathing room . I expect that there is plenty more that I could happily do without in this install, as I now have only about 650 MB free on the partition. A far cry from the days when I used to be able to get a stripped-down version of System 7.2 plus a minimal installation of Microsoft Word and a bunch of other stuff onto an 18 MB RAM disk on my old PowerBook 5300!

So how do I like Jaguar so far? Well, it seems nice enough. I hadn't really explored it very extensively yet, and no doubt there are plenty of new things to discover, but I was surprised at how little different it seems from OS 10.1.4.

In terms of speed, my expectations were not high based on many reports of others over the past couple months, which is good, because anyone buying Jaguar in hope of a significant speed/performance boost would be disappointed, and at this juncture, I am having difficulty seeing $129 dollars worth of improvement in this release over what I had in OS 10.1.4. Perhaps more advantages will manifest themselves as I use Jaguar more.

In the meantime, the GUI speed problem is still very much apparent. Scrolling is still annoyingly slow, Windows and menus take their sweet time opening. If there is any speed improvement in these areas relative to 10.1.4, it is very subtle. My real benchmark here of course is OS 9.2.2, which just rocks on my 500 MHz Pismo. Moving back into OS 9 after working in Jaguar is like having a turbocharger cut in.

This is not just my impression. For some reason, there seems to be a lot of discussion on the Mac Web lately about OS X sluggishness. For a couple of examples, see: Apple's dirty little secret: sluggish Mac OS X still annoyingly slow
and
Mac OS 10.2 Has No Clothes

and Peter Pederson's letter below.

As Peter notes, some of the slowness problems are likely attributable to shortcomings of third-party applications and not OS X per se, however in my experience the equivalent OS 9 versions of these applications do not have sluggishness issues, so in practical terms it is an OS X problem when it comes to getting your work done quickly and efficiently.

Another area where OS 9 shines and jaguar lags is in general polish and elegance of function. I find myself double-pumping an awful lot in OS X, to wit: you too often have to click on button or icon more than once to get it to respond. This almost never happens in OS 9. Maybe OS X just requires more positive clicks and precise cursor placement, but whatever, it's another element that slows you down.

On the positive side, I was gratified that installing Jaguar didn't seem to break too much of by third-party stuff. I downloaded the latest versions of WindowShade X (which I simply can't do without) and FruitMenu, but the old ones seemed to still work. The version of TinkerTool I have installed refuses to respond, but I will download the latest version.

I'm not thrilled with PDF now being the default screenshot format, which makes graphics file compatibility with OS 9 more of a hassle, but there may be a simple workaround for that. The new Find dialog is slicker than Sherlock for file searches, but I still detest the necessity of indexing the hard drive for the Find by Content function.

However, it's early days yet for me with Jaguar. More to come.

ADB keyboards on WallStreet/10.2

From Peter J. Pedersen

Dear Sir,

I have worked with 10.2 on my WallStreet (233/14.1"/512MB/30GB(5400 rpm) for several weeks. There is full support for ADB keyboards/mice.

I was surprised at the increase in speed of most Desktop/Finder operations (window resizing/scrolling being a notable exception), but most OSX programs have functions that are unbearably slow in action, these functions changing from program to program. Furthermore, while the OS itself is quite stable (about one crash per week), the OSX programs or versions available are notably less so, making me lose considerably more work than I usually do in 9.2.2. This is an aspect that is often ignored in pro/con discussions: program code bases are far more immature, whether Carbonized or Cocoa-based.

WallStreet, supposedly the lowest-common-denominator for OSX, is definitely not up to the task. Fairly brief explorations in Apple shops running the newest G4s, however, seem to indicate that at least the slowness-aspects of OSX are still there, if less severe.

Microsoft has been ridiculed for saying that its operating system "is designed to run on machines that are not designed yet." I believe that is the case for OSX as well, and while it is regrettable for low-end users at this point in time, it is also a necessary part of introducing a new OS with a long-life expectancy.

Regards,
Peter J. Pedersen

RE: Sluggish Mac OS X Taxes The Patience Of Even Enthusiasts

From Marc Reed

Steve Jack wrote:

"As I sit here today banging this out, running Mac OS X 10.2.1, with 1GB of RAM, on an 800MHz PowerBook, switching between three open browser windows and TextEdit, waiting for each one come to the front after a brief, but psychologically unbearable delay, I want to run screaming to the Startup Disk pane and switch back to Mac OS 9.2.2. I would, but my mental state wouldn't be able to take the delay I'd have to endure to do so.... Mac OS X 10.2.1 Jaguar is indeed, 'snappy,' but only when compared to Mac OS X 10.1. And, before you write, I've tried it on over 10 different Macs of all shapes, sizes, and speeds and Jag has the same nasty stickiness on every machine to varying degrees.

Charles, you wrote:

"Uhhhh, that's what I've been saying all along here, and of course running on a 500 MHz Pismo PowerBook with only (?!) 640 MB of RAM, my performance in OS X is even worse than SteveJack's. I just installed OS 10.2 Jaguar last weekend, and it's still slow."

You should both know that I'm running 10.2.1 on a B/W G3/400 with 448 RAM and I'm extremely happy with the speed of X. Yes, some apps. take their time, but no more than OS 9. I've even found that the performance of the browser I use has improved considerably. Downloads are consistently faster than any I've ever seen. (Sorry, I've got cable.) Most of the problems I've encountered have been with the Classic layer and sooner or later I won't need it at all.

I mean really, you both have more raw firepower than I can hope to have for the foreseeable future and I'm having a LOT of FUN with this.

Marc Reed

Hi Marc;

I guess tolerance for, and perhaps even perception of speed is a subjective thing. I'm basing my observations on back-to-back comparisons of OS X and OS 9.x running on the same computer using in most cases native versions respectively of the same applications. I can't think of a single thing that OS X does faster than OS 9 that pertains significanlty to my work routines except waking up from sleep. My ballpark estimate is that I take a 20% - 30% practical performance hit working in OS X as opposed to OS 9.2.2.

I agree with you that OS X is fun. I love the effortless multitasking and rock-solid stability. I've come to almost prefer the appearance of Aqua over OS 9 Platinum. At least its a change. For casual use when I'm not under deadline pressure, I quite enjoy working in OS X and don't really mind the sluggish Finder performance that much. However, when I need to get the lead out and work fast and efficiently, OS 9 is still the express ticket.

Charles

Broken TCP/IP Easily Fixed

From Bill Walsh

Mr. Moore-

Try throwing away the preference file for TCP/IP in OS 9.2.2 and I think you'll be happier... I've had this problem before when installing different upgrades, although not an upgrade to OS X.

--Bill Walsh

Hi Bill;

Thanks for the tip. Worked like a charm. :-)

Charles

End of OS9 but the beginning of 64-bit OSX?

From Gurminder

This link may provide some of the answers to the switch to OSX only:

http://www.forbes.com/technology/newswire/2002/10/13/rtr749520.html

If OSX (10.3 or 10.4) is optimized for the new 64-bit chips then speed issue will be forgotten real quick. It may also explain the drop of OS9 booting since the new 64-bit chip wouldn't support the old OS9 code. It seems reasonable to get the user base to switch before the new hardware comes out, and it'll probably arrive around Jan 2004, so one years warning isn't too bad. The article does mention 32-bit compatibility though so maybe someone has a better answer.

On the flip side, if these systems are going to come out in 2004 I can see Apple's sales plummeting for the Power Mac line in the next year. Time to save those pennies

Gurminder

Hi Gurminder;

With all the smoke this week about IBM's new PPC chips and Apple, there's gotta be some fire there.

However, if the 64 bit chipos aren't coming till 2004, why kill OS 9 booting in January, 2003? It's going to be very interesting to see what emerges hardware-wise in San Francisco.

Charles

Sherlock

From John Dennis

I found this and thought that you may like to look it over. Below I have posted the article I found on macsurfer and below that the link you will need.

Mac OS X: How to Use Sherlock to Find Files With Specific Text" AppleCare Knowledge Base 1:48 PM

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61177

--Apple-Mail-2-498180209
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/enriched;
charset=US-ASCII

I found this and thought that you may like to look it over. Below I have posted the article I found on macsurfer and below that the link you will need.

"Mac OS X: How to Use Sherlock to Find Files With Specific Text"
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61177

Hi John;

That article provides an overview, however, my beefs with Sherlock Find by Content remain that the HD has to be indexed and even then Sherlock searches only the forst 2000 words of a document. Lame.

The Find function in Jaguar also requires drive indexing. I don;t know whether the 2,000 word limitation has been fixed or not.

Charles

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

CM

Charles W. Moore

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