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"Rather than argue back and forth as to why only 25% of all Mac users have moved to OS X, I really wanted to know the ‘real’ reasons. So began my research into why OS 9 users refuse to join the rest of us in OS X-land. My non-scientific answers are very disappointing, but are worth discussing."
Actually, I am highly skeptical that even 25% of the Mac user base has switched. Out of an estimated 30 million, that would work out to 7.5 million, and the most recent estimate I saw from Apple was 5 million, and I expect that's optimistic. Five million also about the number of new Macs Apple has shipped with OS X pre-installed, whatever you want to make of that. The key to getting more people to switch is in making OS X more likeable and usable. "OS X is slow, but not 'that' slow.," says Manzione. That's easy for you to say, John -- you have a 1 GHz G4 PowerBook with Level 3 cache. For the vast majority of Mac users who are running G3 machines or older, OS X is "that" slow, or won't work at all. It's barely tolerable on this 500 MHz Pismo, which was the top of the line fastest PowerBook when it was sold, is only 2 1/2 years old, and by my lights, a machine that cost as much as this one did should have at least a five year usable service life with decent performance. John also notes that "Printer support lacks, but most printers work with it." Yeah, but if you do a lot of production printing and OS 9 is doing the job well, who needs the hassle?" There's also Apple's stubborn intransigence about still wanting to ram NeXT Finder conventions down the throats of unwilling Mac users via the clumsy artifice of simply removing much-loved Classic Mac OS features from OS X. There is no technical reason for windowshading, or pop-up folders, or a customizable Apple Menu, etc. and so on to not be in OS X -- the haxie and shareware folks have amply proved that. A lot of Mac veterans are just not interested in buying the NeXT brand of dog food. Want more people to switch? Give them back the features they need and like and depend on. Then there's the crappy and flaky input device support in X; the buggy OS 10.2 version upgrades; the labour-intensive user-unfriendliness involved with the care and feeding of OS X. I persevere partly for journalistic research reasons, and partly because I really like some of the software that's only available for OS X, but it's hard to make a compelling advocacy case for switching to those who are presently satisfied with the performance they are getting from the Classic Mac OS, in which I am myself still at least 15% to 20% faster at production work than I am in OS X.
I am inclined to agree with John's observation that:
"People were once confident that when Jaguar shipped it would cause the massive transition to OS X and it didn’t happen. Today, these same people are saying that when Panther ships, this time people will move to it. But will they? Why then and not now? And if that is true, why isn’t Apple offering every new Jaguar user a free upgrade to Panther is they move now?"
"
"Giving Jaguar away, an OS that will become obsolete in a few months, would allow every Mac user that doesn’t want to spend the $129 to get it and try it. Announce it to every .Mac account, on every news outlet, and in Full Page ads in the major cities. Make a News event out of it.
"Take away every reason why OS 9 users have not to switch. Make it free for the asking, and open up a line of communication between these users and Apple. Tell them to tell Apple what’s good about OS X and what’s not so good. Get involved!" Makes sense to me, but the real issue is to get OS X fixed so that people will want to use it and enjoy the experience in they way that OS 9 was enjoyable. To paraphrase a famous line from one of my favorite movies, "If you build it *right,* they will come." This answers my question From Steve Epstein Mr. Moore -- It's possible that at least part of the 10.2.6 memory leak can be traced to Eudora. Liked you and others reporting the problem, I find free memory disappearing as I work, until the pageouts and their attending slowdowns begin. When I check RAM usage (using top or PTHCPUmonitor, or any of the other system monitors), _by far_ the largest memory hog turns out to be Eudora (I'm running 5.2). When I quit Eudora, a good bit of free memory is recovered, and using the "sudo du -sx /" hack I can squeeze out some more. I have no idea why Eudora leaks so badly under 10.2.6, even when inactive, nor why it releases some but not all of its allocated memory when it quits. Know anybody you could ask?
Best regards,
Hi Steve;
I hadn't noticed that Eudora is using an inordinate amount of memory on my setup. I'm using the Eudora 6 beta, but I don't think it has changed in this regard from 5.2.
This screenshot from Memory Usage Getter shows memory usage after about eight days of uptime and heavy usage of Eudora. Safari is a far worse memory hog in this case.
I find that quitting any program that uses a substantial amount of memory does free memory up, but it doesn't stay free for long. Charles From John Dennis Well I was looking at MacSurfer and I came across this. Who would have thought just as I ask the question to you it gets answered elsewhere. http://www.osxfaq.com/dailytips/03-2003/03-03.ws
I'm just happy that you found the info you needed, John. I checked out the article. Learned some stuff myself. :-)
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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