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One of the things I miss in OS X is my homemade launcher that I've been using in the Classic OS since popup folders were introduced. I never liked the "At Ease" derived Mac OS Launcher much -- too big and cumbersome, but a popup folder filled with aliases of my most-used apps. and utilities displayed as one-click buttons has suited me perfectly for years. Unfortunately, popup folders went missing in OS X, and the closest facsimile I could cobble up is a folder full of aliases in the Dock. However, since Button View is no longer with us in OS X either, one has to resort to Control-clicking (or hold and wait) the folder icon and then scrolling through a contextual menu, which is much slower and clumsier than my old popup launcher in OS 9. And of course, with the number of apps. and utilities I usually have open, the icons in the dock get so small that one needs a magnifying glass to pick them out. I'm not a fan of the Dock. However, there's a new little BSD Cocoa launcher hack that works so well that I won't be obliged to root around in that Dock folder much anymore. 
Ranchero Software's admirably compact TigerLaunch 1.0 (about 130K). is a slick and easy-to-configure application launcher for OS X. It displays an Apps menu at the top of your screen listing all your applications in alphabetical order -- no matter what folder they appear in. 
You can easily configure TigerLaunch to exclude applications you rarely or never launch. This allows you to be more selective about what apps are Dock-worthy, so your Dock doesn’t get so cluttered. It also makes it easier to launch apps that are buried in sub-folders, such as in the Utilities folder of your Applications folder. It works great. 
To install TigerLaunch, after decompressing the download, just open the disk image folder and copy TigerLaunch to your Applications folder. When you launch TigerLaunch, an apps. menu will appear in the menubar. Choose the Configure command to open a window that allows you to exclude apps from being listed in the Apps menu, so you can easily configure it to exclude applications you rarely or never launch. You can also choose from a selection of icons for the TigerLaunch menu. There is also an Easter egg feature for developers. If you have a Projects folder in your home folder, a Projects menu will appear next to the Apps menu. It will list Project Builder, CodeWarrior, and REALbasic project files, making them easy to find and launch. TigerLaunch doesn't list Classic apps on my other partitions, but that's probably a blessing from a configuration point of view. I can quite easily just park the three or four Classic apps I still use routinely in the Dock, which is much less crowded since I have been able to remove some stuff that I now access with TigerLaunch. I find Tigerlaunch pretty much as convenient as my old popup launcher. A single click>scroll>highlight motion will launch the desired application. And did I mention that it's only 130k and Freeware? Great stuff!
System Requirements
For more information, visit:
OS9 vs. OSX efficiency Re: Odyssey 191 - Where is VIREX 7? Virex 7 Where is VIREX 7 Virex 7 Virex for Howard Re: the OS for those who don't like computers commentary From Kim Peacock Charles, I want to thank all the people who took the time to respond to my query about the use of my Pismo's hard drive as an external disk for housing 10.1.5 while I put Jaguar on my main drive, a new 40 gB Travelstar. The points provided were very informative and encouraging. One thing I like about using a Mac is the community -- so many people ready to help. In that vein, may I also point you and your many readers to http://www.allexperts.com where they can consult a range of experts (on all sorts of subjects including Macs) who volunteer their services for free. Great advice and quick response. I use them frequently. My Pismo is now at my local Mac shop having the Travelstar and 512 more Mb of RAM ( Total 1 Gb) installed. I never do it as I am afraid what havoc static electricity and ignorance can cause! BTW, people should look at buying more RAM now as the prices are so good. I paid US$55.00 for 512Mb; the price was over double a couple of months ago. It came from Other World Computing so it should be top quality. I will be putting off the Jaguar install for a bit as I need to travel in my work but hope to do it next weekend.I'll let you know how I fare. But one thread ( 100+ comments) I read this AM on this very subject (Jaguar on a Pismo) was encouraging. I would say that 90% (ballpark) were very satisfied (especially if they had lots of RAM and free disk space) and maybe 5% were disappointed.
Apple's getting there!
Hi Kim;
Great price on that RAM. I (Sob!) paid something like US$110 for a 512MB Pismo RAM upgrade (also from OWC) last fall.
Charles From Eric Daniels Charles, In today's Mailbag you write:
Now, I know nothing of your workday, but these numbers do not really make much sense to me. You claim OS9 is 20-30% more efficient than OSX, and doing what you normally do in a day on OSX takes you 1-2 hours longer. Are you really only working 4.5 hours a day? If so, more power to you. What I mean is this: assume 9 vs. X is 25% faster and using X takes 1.5 hours longer, doesn't that necessitate that you are either working 4.5 (9) or 6 (X) hours per workday? If not, then your estimation of "20-30%" is over-exaggerated (not by much, but still not accurate). As someone who works in OSX every day--writing, editing, doing lots of scrolling and jumping between documents, cutting and pasting a lot of text (i.e., not dissimilar from what you do)--and I cannot believe for a second that OS9 really saves you 1-2 hours. In today's Odyssey you write:
Ok, now we get to the meat of the issue. This is where you see the most usability slow-downs. Fine, let's say I grant that 9.1 or 9.2.2 is faster than Jag at these tasks -- my concession would be based on the fact that it would be a matter of seconds in each case (scrolling maybe 10s of seconds for a 1MB text file). So, your claim that OSX adds 1-2 hours means that you are doing the aforementioned things way too much. Consider, 2 hours is 7200 seconds. If each task in Jag was 3 seconds slower (We both know that a menu appearing or opening a window does not take 3 seconds in Jag, it is more like a difference of 10ths of a second, but I'll concede the 3 seconds for argument's sake), that means that you are doing these tasks 2400 times day!! Do you really scroll, open windows, pull-down menus, save documents, and "so on" upwards of 2400-3000 times a day?!? If so, I would seriously suggest that you reconsider what is slowing you down--your computer and software, or your own work and mental habits. I think you are exaggerating, frankly. I do not wish to impugn your character or honesty. I simply wish that you refrain from making claims like in today's Odyssey: "Booting back into OS 9.1 after working for a while in Jaguar is like cutting in the afterburners on a jet fighter." Nonsense. This is hyperbole of the finest order. Sure, it is a colorful metaphor, and you seem to like it (it has appeared before), but it does not represent the real difference. Your subjective perception? Yes, it is that, but it in no way is an accurate reflection of the difference (by the way, real jet afterburners add 50-60% more thrust to the engine's capacity). So, I guess my question is this: do you really spend 1-2 more hours because of the difference in "scrolling, menu pull-downs, opening windows, and so on"? Or is there some other cause? I do not doubt that familiarity and other things might slow one down, but objectively, 20-30% based on only the small difference in the time it takes to do these things seems overly high.
Regards,
Hi Eric;
To clarify, the area where OS X really slows me down is in preparing and marking up my daily slate of Applelinks news stories and daily columns, on which I usually spend 4 - 5 hours per day (not counting work I do off the computer, like longhand drafting most commentary and review content). I find that I consistently get to my lunch an hour or more later when I'm working in OS X than in OS 9. Add various slowdowns to the rest of my workday (which usualy runs in total more like 10-12 hours, alas), and you get my ballbark estimate of 20 - 30% slower, which I don't flinch from. Those extra seconds add up. I find it like working in slow motion compared with OS 9. In 9, I rarely find myself waiting for anything. In X, almost everything happens slower, and I'm constantly waiting. It's not just the extras seconds -- the stop-start hesitations bog down the workflow rythem as well.
I don't recall using the "afterburners" metaphor before, but you may have better recollection than I do. Thanks for the correction on the real world percentage boost point. I was just expressing what it *feels* like to me going back into OS 9 after a session in OS X. Zooooooooom! Another metaphor I've employed is taking off a pair of heavy, steel-toed workboots and putting on a pair of light running shoes. Whatever, almost everthing happens faster and more effortlessly.
Incidentally, Tom Bender, developer of Tex-Edit Plus, which is the app. I use most for production, ran some actual speed comparisons between OS 9 and Jaguar, which appeared in OS X Odyssey 175. Tom was using a QuickSilver DP, which is a lot faster than my 500 MHz G3 Pismo PowerBook, on a 1 MB text document. Times in seconds.
1. Launch and open in ClarisWorks
That scroll time tells the tale for me -- more than 3.5x as long. I scroll a lot. I also use a lot of AppleScripts in TE+, and they run slower too, not to mention the lag in getting the Scripts menu open and scrolled. Scrolling in browsers is excruciatingly slow, as are the menus (and pretty much everything else) in Eudora for OS X. Just a few (of many) speed issues that bog me down for production in X.
Charles Re: Odyssey 191 - Where is VIREX 7? From Jonathan Tyzack Hi Charles, in response to Howard Weir, the Epson Stylus Colour 600 is supported in Jaguar if you install Gimp-print (http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=15970&db=mac). He can get Virex 7 if he subscribes to .Mac, although now the $49 deal has ended, I'm not sure it is worth the $99. Other than that, I haven't the foggiest. Cheers, Jonathan From Jon R. Smith Charles, In reply to: However I cannot find the download and purchase site for VIREX 7. and more annoyingly from what I can see Virex 7 is still not available on disk. Can someone tell me when Virex 7 will be available on disk. I don't know that it will be available on disk but... it was available for $49.95 as a disk image when you joined .mac... the slight humor being the $49.95 as this was the price for .mac. Several other member perks have been given with the account. For me, it was worth the money. I will have to see how it progresses and if I renew. (not to open any old war stories about .mac)
Thanks Charles,
From James Rae Smith Hello Charles Howard was asking how to get hold of Virex 7. Unless you take out a .Mac subscription when it is a free download, Virex 7 seems to be very hard for individuals (as opposed to businesses) to buy. And with good reason, although under OS 9 I used and liked Virex 6, Virex 7 for OSX is a big step backwards into beta territory - avoid. Norton Antivirus, which I rather disliked under OS 9, seems better bet now under OSX at any rate it runs quietly in the background without disturbing me. Versiontracker however seems to reveal a pretty low rating for that too. Since we haven't yet suffered any significant OSX virii, it is hard to commit the effort into running a badly behaved virus checker, let alone real money for it. Lets hope that happy situation does not change for a long time.
All the best
From David Doran-Marshall Virex 7 is available for download if you are a .mac member. Actually it's 7.1. Also from deep within the mcafee website, this link: I couldn't get there by going to mcafee.com, i only got there by opening virex help and it sent me to a similar site, then I clicked around a bit. Strange that the only people able to get virex are those that already have it, or are .mac members... From Vanessa Bateman Charles, maybe the following will help Howard out. Virex 7 can be obtained dirctly from McAffee at the following web link: http://estore.nai.com/asp_set/ShowProducts_set.asp?BU=TVD&Categ=B2B
The other place that you can get Virex is from Apple (by signing up for the .Mac thing, of course).
Vanessa Re: the OS for those who don't like computers commentary From Nicholas Sorensen Charles: As always, I've enjoyed reading the Odyssey. I thought your commentary on Mac OS 9 as the OS for those who don't like computers did a better job of explaining your preference for 9 than other previous attempts. I have three brief comments: 1) Mac OS X, despite its complexity, is an excellent OS for new users. This might be a revelation for many who are resistant to X. I don't believe it is a coicidence that Apple is focusing the Switch campaign now. It appears that the users most resistant to Mac OS X remain those who have used the traditional OS for many years and see no need to change the way they've done things. My parents are technophobes and bought a G3 running 9 but never did much with it, finding it confusing, no matter how much time I spent explaining things. One weekend spent with my iMac running OS X completely changed their feelings about Macs. They purchased a new iBook and love it. Separate user accounts and the Dock were the two things they liked best. And they love the iApps. (I have helped a half dozen new users (i.e., no prior Mac OS 9 experience) over the past year with new Macs˜all of them have found X easy to use.) Conclusion: Mac OS X remains an excellent system for those who don't like computers today. 2) Mac OS X will *ALWAYS* be slower than Mac OS 9 on the same hardware. That is the price for true preemptive multitasking, memory protection, and a full multiuser system. I believe the difference in speed between the two OSes will diminish over time but X will never surpass 9. (However, I still contend that one can be as productive in X as in 9: the speed difference is obviated by the true multitasking in X and Finder enhancements such as column view.) Perhaps for the way you use your Macs, Mac OS 9 will remain the better choice until you upgrade your hardware. 3) Mac OS X is still in its infancy. When you compare the user interface of 9 to X, you are comparing a GUI that has had over a dozen years of spit and polish, to one still quite immature. I still am flabbergasted by the extent of the overall improvement that Apple has managed over the last year-and-a-half. I would encourage you to revisit this topic in another year or two, after you have purchased new hardware, and with another major release or two of the OS, just to see if your opinions have changed. Keep up the excellent work! PS: After some Finder weirdness and other bizarre behavior after installing some beta drivers, I erased my hard drive and installed 9.2.2 and 10.2.1 into separate partitions. I immediately felt a noticeable difference in speed. From my personal experience it is true that installing Jaguar from scratch is the best solution in terms of speed. Whether this would solve your Inkwell problems I don't know, but I think you'd see (as you surmise) an increase in system responsiveness. (And having a good GB of free disk space ought to help too!) Nicholas
Hi Nicholas;
For the record, over the past year I have been advising newbies to the Mac platform (or to computing) to learn OS x and not bother with OS 9 except for emergencies (where it can still come in very handy).
I expect that some folks indeed can be as productive, or even more productive in OS X than OS 9. However, for the stuff I do mostly, I can't see how one can transcend the hobbling effect than the slow scrolling, slow window opening, sundry response hesitations, and certain other angularities in OS X have on the workflow. Multitasking just doesn't loom very large in my sort of use.
I've had OS X and Classic on separate partitions from day 1, and I now have one GB free space on my OS X partition. Still slow.
Thanks for your comments.
Charles
The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here: Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context. Opinions expressed in postings to Moore's MailBag are those of the respective correspondents and not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Editor and/or Applelinks management. If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published. CM
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