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In a letter below, frequent OS X Odyssey correspondent James Rae Smith implies that I ought to work a bit harder at liking OS X. This raises some interesting philosophical questions. Should one have to work at liking a piece of software, or any other tool, and if so, why? I suppose that the short answer to be "why" is that on the Mac, OS X is our future whether we like it or not, and no other alternative -- Windows, Linux, or Lindows is nearly as Mac-like as OS X. In point of fact, there are many things about OS X that I do like without any deliberate effort. I like the appearance. I like the protected memory. I like the preemptive multitasking. I like a whole gaggle of little features and innovations that I won't inventory here. What I don't like he is the slow, balky performance, the frequently ragged Finder response to keyboard and mouse input, and the general lack of flexibility, user friendliness and dependable behavior that I have in OS 9. Other things I don't like for the fact that stuff doesn't necessarily stay where you put it on the Desktop like it does in OS 9. I also don't like it that a lot of the Finder features I've come to depend on in OS 9 are gone, with no adequate substitutes. To wit: • Window shading, which I miss more than any other OS 9 finder feature • No "Buttons" option in the View menu. I liked being able to launch things with a single click from any window. • No Application menu (No, the jack of all trades and master of none Dock is not a satisfactory substitute) • No Control Strip (again, neither the Dock nor Menu Bar Icons are as good) • No customizable Apple menu • No Put Away command • No Labels Some, like James, assert that I am just set in my ways, and perhaps even prejudiced or bigoted against OS X. I'm not. If I'm offered something better, I'll happily switch from the old ways, and I really have been trying to like OS X for over a year now, with some success, but those missing features are fact, not fancy. A bit of history. It's just a week or two past my ten-year anniversary on the Mac. When I switched from a menu/CL driven interface to Mac System 6.0.1 in December, 1992, I didn't have to try to like it. It blew me way. The mouse took a bit of getting used to, but after a week or so, it was second nature. There was a learning curve but it was a pleasure. I also liked System 7.1 when I bought a new Mac a little over the year later. I missed a few things about System 6 (still do), but the increased functionality and convenience were well worth it, and 7.1 was a very solid, reliable system. I didn't like system 7.5 or 7.5.3, which had more features, but at a stiff price in speed and stability. I actually downgraded to 7.1 for a while. And I really didn't like System 7.5.2, which shipped with my PowerBook 5300, and which was one buggy dog of an OS. On the other hand, System 7.5.5 cured most of the shortcomings of the early 7.5 builds, and I was quite happy with it. OS 8 brought a lot of cool new features and functionality, but definitely ran slower on my PowerBook 5300 than 7.5.5 did. However, I deemed the performance hit a worthwhile trade - off, and OS 8.1 improved things even more. On the other hand, OS 8.5 was even slower and very buggy. I reverted to 8.1 By the time OS 8.6 came along, I had my G3 WallStreet, and was alternating between our OS 8.1 and OS 8.5.1, which I still wasn't thrilled with. OS 8.6 was a definite improvement, but still had stability problems on the WallStreet. However, it took no effort at all to embrace of OS 9.0, which was a complete breath of fresh air. It was stable, had more features, and just worked. Not so OS 9.0.4, at least on the WallStreet and my son's Lombard. It was a crash - o - rama on both PowerBooks, and we soon downgraded to OS 9.0 (I should note here that 9.0.4 worked great on my G4 Cube). OS 9.1 is probably my all - time favorite Mac OS build so far - - like OS 9.0, only better. OS 9.2.2 is a good system as well. My point is, I'm results-oriented, not prejudiced. If a system version I'll embrace it enthusiastically. Unfortunately, OS X had been a definite mixed blessing on both counts so far. If I had a faster Mac with more video RAM, no doubt I would like OS X better, but those missing Finder features would still be missing, and there would still be the other angularities I referred to above, all of which would still make it real work to like OS X as much as I like OS 9 without a lot of qualification. I'm hopeful that eventually there will be a slam-dunk OS X version upgrade analogically equivalent to what OS 9.0 was to the Classic OS, of which I can say "yes, this is really better)" without excuses or equivocation. Merry Christmas! Jaguar and partitions Good article on how fast certain computers handle OS X
Re: OS X Frag and VMFrom Joel Siegel Wow, Anon is a real arrogant SOB isn't s/he? You might also point out in your response that the MacAttorney tutorial you cite specifically recommends *against* such things as dedicated swapfile partitions, Users partitions, etc. -- on the theory that when you start slicing a HD into smaller volumes, the system actually has *less* HD space, rather than more, to play with -- and that OS X is good enough at the latter to be able to use a single large partition more efficiently than several small ones. FWIW, I *do* have a dedicated Users partition *and* a dedicated swap partition, as well as a separate partition for my OS 9 boot volume. But eventually I may do a reformat and significantly reduce the number of partitions. I'm not expert enough to evaluate the MacAttorney assertions vs. the other (pro-partitioning) opinions out there, but anyway, the debate is out there. Joel From James Rae Smith Hello Charles I apologise for this Charles, you are a decent and honourable• fellow, but occasionally us who actually like OSX must be allowed our occasional moment of triumph in your constant litany of complaint. The moment I made my peace with OSX, and then started to enjoy it, was when I stopped trying to change it into OS 9. You have never done this, and that is the root cause of your dissatisfactions. Your current problems with the UnSanity Haxies (and please do note the name they give to their apps) is possibly one of the clearest examples of the problems that someone with your attitude will inevitably run into. Folks who ran Kaleidoscope (though this is just a cosmetic rather than utilitarian hack) under OS 9 likewise could hardly complain if their systems behaved erratically, and how would one of these switchers that Apple is trying to encourage fare, if they too constantly tried to make OSX behave exactly like Windows XP? If you seriously want to get inside OSX, you have to really try to make it work on its own terms, as unencumbered by 3rd party tweeks as possible for at least a month or so. At that point try a few OSX modifications, and with any luck you might be interested in forward looking ones like LaunchBar rather than ones which ape OS 9. If you do this your column might actually really chronicle a journey rather than your constant reluctance to back yourself out of the corner you have found yourself in. Lastly if you were designing a whole new operating system that clearly would take years rather than months to realise, would you not take into account the likely speed increases that would probably happen in the intervening time? So why don't you cut Apple a little slack over the undeniable speed problem, that will also be undeniably solved as CPU speeds increase and/or Apple transfers to a different CPU.
All the best
• PS One thing I really do respect about you is that you publish critical emails from "fanatics"(!) such as myself, when others might just feel battered hubris. Happy Christmas! That's all the slack I'm going to cut you now.
Hi James;
Battered hubris?! Never thought of it that way. ;-) I really don't have my installation of OS X encumbered with a lot of third-party hacks, and my general philosophy is to keep things a sclose to stock (in OS 9 as well as OS X) as is consistant with efficiency in getting my work done. I do use TigerLaunch and Prefling, which seem to be trouble free, and make things nicer.
OTOH, I do test a lot of software for reviews and reports, so my preferences folder does tend to get cluttered up in both systems. It never seemed to cause much trouble in OS 9....
However, there is no even close to adequate substitute for windowshading in stock OS X -- Apple's bad. For the past five days, i've been living without it, but I'm not warming to rooting around in a bunch of lookalike, microscopic icons in the Dock or pulling down a menu to find my documents, or having to hid all my open applications in order to see the Desktop. Windowshading rocks. I can live without FruitMenu and the other Unsanity haxies, but now WindowShade X. Happily, I don't think it was the culprit in my slowdown problems anyway.
I don't insist that OS X be the same as OS 9, but I want it to be as GOOD (ie: fast, convenient, efficient, etc. net overall) as OS 9. It's coming. I've actually been booted into OS X for nearly a week without returning to OS 9 (fixing the system slowdown helped a lot with that) -- the longest I've ever gone on my production machine.
Merry Christmas to you too.
Charles From Chris Foote Charles: I've been following your series of articles. You have a slower machine than I do, so a performance hit would be expected, but I've seen none of the problems you report. In the latest article, you say you are trying to fit the 10.2.3 update into your OS X partition. That implies that you are squeezed for space. How big is your partition? Why did you partition anyway, when every machine Apple ships is unpartitioned? I know the question of partitioning has become quasi-religious, but I strongly suspect that your performance problems are caused by squeezing X into a partition that doesn't give room for swapfiles to fit comfortably. My advice would be to back up and reformat without partitioning. Use a firewire drive to boot off for emergencies. Hope you will be able to get comfortable with X as I am. Chris
Hi Chris;
I've partitioned the hard drive on every Mac I've ever owned, including the little 20 MB HD on my old Mac Plus. The reason has alway sbeen to be able to boot from separate systems. For example, on the old Plus I had System 7 for Internet (basically email) support, and System 6 for speed (an analogically similar situation I find myself in with OS X and OS 9 these days).
Another reason is organization. I prefer to have a partition for applications; one for documents; one for storage of installers, etc.
Partitioning is controversial. See Joel's letter above.
I was getting convinced that swapfile space (My OS X partition is 4 GB, and I have about 900 - 1000 MB free) was the problem, but I'm less convinced now. See Odyssey 228.
I'm hoping to get a second, faster computer soon, but I will definitely be partitioning the HD. ;-)
Charles
From John Dennis http://macspeedzone.com/html/hardware/machine/comparison/all/index.htm
Hi John;
Helpful in my iBook deliberations.
Merry Christmas!
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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