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Low End Mac's Jeff Adkins has posted a list of his 10 favorite things about OS X. Check out Jeff's article for details, but in summary, his fave OS X features are:
• Stability
Goes to show you that "different strokes" is implicit. I'm with Jeff on stability, services, and the lack of viruses, but as for the other seven, I'm either ambivilant, indifferent or disagree. Column view is nice and useful in certain instances, but I find that I remain more inclined to stick with icons and lists most of the time. I still dislike the Dock. I use it parked on the extreme right of my screen mostly as a not as satisfactory substitute for the old tear-off Application Switcher menu in OS 9, but use WindowShade X's windowshading and minimize in place functions much more extensively. The only iApp I use frequently is iTunes, and it works fine in OS 9 too. I'm not an iDisk subscriber. I don't much like big icons, and I keep mine adjusted to approximately the same size and proportion that they would appear in OS 9. The Go menu is convenient, but I find it hardly a killer feature. I use it mainly for connecting to my Ethernet network and checking the var/vm folder to see how many swapfiles I'm running. Access to UNIX apps. may prove useful to me in the future, but up to now it's bee a non-issue. So, what would I substitute for the remaining seven of 10 favorite OS X features. 1. Browsers - the fleet of OS X browsers are in thenselves an adequate reason for upgrading from OS 9. Safari, the Mozillas, Camino, iCab, OmniWeb, Netscape, Opera, are all either significantly better in OS X or not available at all in OS 9. 2. Certain other OS X-only apps or app. versions, such as Tex Edit Plus and DEVONThink. 3. Pre-Emptive multitasking. It took me a while to get on to making the best use of this, but now that I am used to it, I wouldn't want to go back 4. Force Quit. A sub-category of stability perhaps, but it's great tobe able to dismiss a misbehaving app. without risking bringing the whole think down. 5. Easy Networking - Once you get the hang of it, OS X networking is a breeze compared with OS 9 6. Folder/File Info and Thumbnail Previews in Ican View - As noted, I still like icon view, and these features enhance it. 7. Built-in device and function drivers -- two-button mouse support; USB 2.0, FireWire, etc., make plug in and play more of a reality than it was in already pretty good OS 9. OK; there's seven substitute fave features off the top of my head bringing the total to ten. These "ten best" lists are always arbitrary. I'm sure I could think of eleventh and twelfth favorite OS X features that even might bump some of this 10, but I'll go with these ones for now. What are your 10 favorite OS X features? Do you agree more with Jeff or me, or maybe have a completely different list? 10.2.8 Mac OS X: Creating Additional Partition and Carbon Copy Cloner saves me! From Alex Mathew Hi Charles: If there was any doubt in my mind that one should have a separate bootable partition aside from the primary OS X one, its gone. Two days ago, my OS X enabled PB G3 pismo froze in Mozilla never to recover after a hard restart. The problem seems to be the sleep function and my IBM Travelstar hard disk which had been repaired under warranty. If the sleep was activated when the hard disk is physically being moved around, it causes severe corruption of the drive (or partition). I plan to return the drive for repair but am waiting until my work load is clear. Anyway, Disk Utility could not fix the problem when booted from the CD (invalid sibling link could not be fixed). Then Norton Utilities (Classic) came to my rescue. Booting from the second OS 9 partition, I could run NU to at least fix the basic issues enough to make the primary partition visible and save some recently edited files. I had previously "cloned" my drive to an external FireWire drive using Carbon Copy Cloner from Bombich. Now I just reversed the cloning so that my User and Documents directory was untouched and I was back at work. Of course one could do the same while booting from a CD- but the time it takes to boot from a CD to run diagnostics is too long. Thanks for your previous advice in this matter. AM
Hi Alex;
Glad to hear of the satisfactory outcome. Yes indeed; I don't boot into OS 9 much anymore, but I'm sure glad that I can if I need to.
See Moore's News Roundup Digest today for another OS 9 to the rescue story.
Charles
From Kevin Larson Hi Charles, <rant> I'm amazed at how many people blindly apply updates and upgrades without making a copy, backup or clone of their hard drives. Time and time again tools such as Carbon Copy Cloner, Clone X, Deja Vu and others have been mentioned by you, your readers and other columnists.
People: wake up and learn how to take responsibility for your lives. Expecting Apple and others to keep up with all possible configurations and setups is plain stupid.
I am happily using 10.2.8 without problems (thank god) but if a problem happens I am just a clone away from reverting back to 10.2.6. Yours Kevin
Hi Kevin;
You've taken a cautious and sensible approach to upgrading. Glad to hear that 10.2.8 is working well for you.
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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