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"OS X is really lovely and beautiful. It's just not ready for me yet."

Charles Moore? Nope. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. At least the statement is widely attributed to him. I haven't been successful in documenting it.

Anyway, As I noted in OS X Odyssey 163 on Wednesday, I’ve never received such a tsunami of mail related to anything I’ve ever written on the Mac Web as I got in response to my editorial Tuesday morning about Apple’s announcement at MacWorld Expo Paris that they will be terminating OS 9 dual boot capability on Macs in January, 2003.

I wish I had the time and energy to respond directly to every message I’ve received on the topic, whether in concord or disagreement, but I’ve been overwhelmed by the volume of mail. I have posted all the messages received by the time of this posting (nearly 20,000 words plus a great cat picture!), with direct replies to a few specific points raised, but I am obliged to address the controversy more generally and comprehensively in this column. Further reader comments will likely appear in OS X Odyssey or Moore's MailBag.

I wrote the Tuesday piece in the first twenty minutes after reading Apple’s press release, so it was a stream of conciousness catharsis, and I didn’t spend a whole lot of (like any) time thinking about it before putting hand to keyboard, but upon reviewing the article several times, I’m not moved to revise what I said. However, some further clarification is an order.

First, I want to clarify that my critique of OS X relative to OS 9 is NOT predicated on the problem I personally have with OS X’s non - support of simultaneous inputs from two pointing devices. As I have noted several times in published comments prior to Tuesday, that is an esoteric issue that would likely not be noticed by a high 90s percentile of OS X users, and it would be unfair to argue that OS X is not ready to replace OS 9 on that basis. It’s a major frustration for me, and I was very disappointed that was not fixed in Jaguar, but give me credit for a bit of objectivity, please.

No, my complaints about the termination of dual booting is based on a concatenation of other factors, and not just ones that I’ve encountered personally. I receive a lot of mail about OS x issues, both here on Applelinks and at Low End Mac, and from that I deduce that there are many users out there who are underwhelmed, so to speak, by OS X’s performance. I hear complaints about problems printing (which I have never tried from OS X, since my old printer isn’t supported at all); problems getting applications (OS X native) to work properly; about system upgrades (especially 10.2) breaking third party software; and about sundry other obtuse behavior. Most of these people genuinely want to use and like OS X, but some have given up in frustration and gone back to OS 9. Others, like a guy who teaches Web site design that I corresponded with recently, say they hate OS X, but are obliged to use it anyway for work reasons (and where have we heard that before?).

But mostly, the complaints are about speed. That’s certainly my main beef. Now, relative speed is partly on matter of subjective perception. Some people profess satisfaction with how Jaguar performs on their 300 MHz iBooks, while others claim that is sluggish on their dual processor G4 towers. I suppose it depends in part also on what you’re doing with your computer.

As for me, I’m basing my speed evaluation on a direct comparison of doing the same things, with the same software in native versions on either platform respectively, on the same computer, back to back. And in comparison with OS 9.2.2, OS X 10.1.4, which is the version I have installed currently, is slow.

Some contend that OS X 10.2 is faster than 10.1.x, and so it no doubt is in some instances such as Classic start-up, but many reports I’ve read say there is really little overall speed improvement, and indeed for some things Jaguar is even slower than 10.1.x.

In his latest ten ton review of OS X, Ars Technica’s formidable John Siracusa noted that compared with OS 10.1, “in general, the launch times were a 1-3 seconds faster on Jaguar....The dreaded 'spinning rainbow disc' has an all new look in Jaguar, but it appears just about as often as it did in 10.1 Window resizing remains very slow, [and] sometimes actually seems worse overall in Jaguar.”

Siracusa continues:

Well, IMHO, if it’s giving you “an immediate impression of almost unbelievable speed,” which is exactly the impression I get every time I boot back into OS9 after working in OS X, then it’s getting the stuff I need to do done faster.

I can’t be accused of not having given OS X a fair trial. I used it almost every day from November, 2001, to August, 2002, when my WallStreet PowerBook croaked and I had to press my Pismo, theretofore my dedicated OS X machine, into service for routine production work. I have also made a couple of short-lived attempts to switch to OS X for production, but terminated them after a couple days due to, yes, the multiple mouse support issue, but mainly because OS X was so darned slow. Menus scroll down lacksadaisically. There are diverse Finder hesitations and hiccups. Folders pause stubbornly before opening. And yes, I have the color depth set at thousands of colors. These aggravating slowdowns all add up, and I figure working in OS X for production probably adds one to two hours to my workday compared with OS 9.2.2, which just screams on my 500 MHz Pismo with 640 megabytes of RAM.

On Wednesday, while I was rough-drafting this column, I decided in the interest of fresh research to boot into OS X and try writing, preparing, and posting my Applelinks news stories of the day from there. I hadn’t done this for a while, and wanted a current take on the matter.

Well, after about two hours of struggling with cold molasses slow scrolling in the OS X version of Tex Edit Plus, battling the sluggish Finder, being hobbled by flaky AppleScript response, the buggy OS X version of TypeIt4Me, groping for partition icons that bounce around like Mexican jumping means, and so forth, I was turning the air around me blue with unprintable invective. Honestly, I can work much faster and more efficiently on my 604e 200 MHz UMAX tower in OS 9.1 than I can on the 500 MHz Pismo in OS X. Finder performance and scrolling in applications with the old UMAX are actually faster.

I gave up about halfway through the session and switched back to speedy, solid, reliable OS 9.2.2. .Zoom! It’s like a turbocharger cutting in. And note well that this is on the same computer with Classic OS versions of the same applications, and even some of the same documents. So please don’t try to convince me that OS X isn’t slow. For what I need to do with my computer, OS 9 is simply a LOT faster. Not all of this is OS X’s fault of course. However, if I need to use a third-party application, and that application is slower and/or buggier in OS X, and works like a charm in OS 9, which is it more sensible the use?

I genuinely want OS X to do well. I want it to be no-excuses better than OS 9. And indeed, I strongly recommend to newcomers to the Mac platform who seek my advice that they not bother with OS 9, and just learn the Mac in OS X context. I am not an anti - OS X bigot. But for my purposes, OS X is not better -- yet, even Jaguar from what I hear in various reports.

As John Siracusa summarizes: “I will stop short of saying that Mac OS X has ‘matured.’ There remain too many ‘unfinished’ corners of the OS. All the little details that used to separate Mac OS from more user-hostile OSes have not yet been added to Mac OS X. There is still much work to be done to match the fit and finish of classic Mac OS.” Not to mention the performance.

Incidentally, several readers suggested that my system upgrade schedule probably means that I won’t be buying another new computer until 2005 for 2006 anyway, so why am I bitching. Well, I wish. Here's where I'm coming from: it's pretty simple. I want to keep reasonably current with OS X, and hopefully switch to it for most of my computing, but I don't want to be locked out of OS 9 -- at least before it's absolutely necessary.

Actually, I’m on the horns of the dilemma right now on what to do about replacing my dead WallStreet. After the latter's precipitous demise, I’m a lot less comfortable than I used to be about taking long-term Mac hardware reliability for granted. I hope my Pismo runs for a good, long time yet, but I can't take that for granted any more

When I bought a WallStreet new in January, 1999, I planned to be using it for about three years. As it happened, I overshot that mark by half a year, but in the meantime, OS X came on the scene, and by early 2001 I decided that I needed an OS X capable system. For some reason the OS X beta refused to install on my WallStreet, but a 233 MHz G3 machine is a very marginal OS X platform anyway.

In May, 2001, I bought the barely-used G4 Cube from Dan Knight of Low End Mac. The OS X beta and installed nicely on it, but for a variety of unrelated reasons, I didn’t use the Cube a whole lot, and I ended up swapping it even for a used Pismo last October. With the demise of the WallStreet in August, the Pismo is now my only satisfactory production computer, and my system upgrade roadmap is in a shambles.

If the WallStreet had survived, I would probably have been content to go at least one more year without upgrading, at which point the Pismo would be about three years old (one year of that prior to my ownership). However, I live in the outer boonies, 150 miles from the nearest Apple dealer, and I depend on my computers for my livelihood, and work on tight deadlines, so I’m feeling a bit vulnerable with only one really production ready computer these days.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about that issue. My tentative plan has been to shop for a cheap WallStreet or to upgrade the processor, HD and RAM in the UMAX, but now I’m wondering if I should consider breaking the piggy bank and buying a new computer before all the dual bootable new Macs are gone. I really don't want a Mac that can’t boot into OS 9, even if I switch to OS X as my main production platform. Someday, of course it’s inevitable, but not in the foreseeable future.

The thing is, there are real, practical advantages -- a lot of value added -- in being able to boot from two different systems that use compatible drive formatting and files. It adds a whole ‘nother dimension to my longtime practice of putting at least two operating systems on separate partitions on all my Macs. Eliminating dual - booting capacity is value removed. I appreciate that it is inevitable once Apple moves to a new chipset, but unless there’s something really big coming that Apple isn’t letting on, today’s announcement implies that they are going to block dual booting before it’s objectively necessary. And new chips coming or not, I really don’t believe that there will be no more G3 or G4’s with the current motherboard architecture being sold after January 2003. Apple is gratuitously removing user choice before it objectively necessary to do so.

I’m not at all sure that but it will be possible to install to separate copies of OS X on separate partitions of the same hard drive successfully. And speaking of alternate booting, Apple’s insistence that Macs only be allowed to support booting into OS X from Apple CDs, raises the question of how one will use emergency disk maintenance and repair software once OS 9 booting is no more. Personally, my comfort level is greatly enhanced by being able to get back into OS 9 to diagnose and fix things. I anticipate that single booting will be a bonanza for the tech support community.

Classic Mode is not a completely adequate workaround for running Classic OS applications. Norton Disk Doctor version 5.something won’t run in Classic mode for me, and I’m not interested in replacing it since it does everything I need it to do, and subsequent versions have proved problematical for some folks. I also have a whole passel of other utilities and small applications, most of which I may only used once in a blue moon, but which it’s nice to be able to tap into.

My observation about the single boot policy being a turnaround on the long-standing Mac tradition of backward compatibility was jumped on by several readers. It was pointed out that you couldn’t run System 6 on a Quadra, or System 7 on G3, etc. That’s entirely true, but they missed my point. It’s not the same thing at all as what’s going on with OS X. With all previous system version and fractional upgrades, you could count on most or all of your software and peripherals continuing to work just fine. That even held true through the 68k to Power PC transition, which I found basically transparent. For the most part, I just kept on using my 68k applications and gradually replaced them with PPC version or substitutes. My peripherals all still worked. It was painless.

For example, in early 1993 I bought a copy of MS Word 5.1. I had to upgrade the system software on my Mac Plus from System 6.0.1 to 6.0.3 in order to run it, but that same copy of Word has worked on every Mac I’ve owned since, including OS 9.2.2 on this Pismo. Now THAT’s backward compatibility!

My copy of Color It! 4.1, which remains my standby graphics application -- I’ve never found anything I like better - - runs fine on my old 25 MHz ‘030 LC 520 in System 7.5.5, and as well on the Pismo in 9.2.2 or even Classic Mode. Etc.

Most of my favorite applications work better in OS 9 (or Classic mode) than their OS X native equivalents do. I find that Classic Mode works very well, but if one is going to use OS 9 applications anyway, why not use them OS 9, and enjoy the extra system speed?

What about crashes in OS 9, some might be asking? Well, I just don’t have a lot. Earlier this year I went nearly two weeks of day-in, day-out production work on my WallStreet under OS 9.1 without restarting the computer. The Pismo is wonderfully stable in OS 9.2.2 as well, and I could cut the relatively rare incidence of crashes that I do have by another 50 percent or so if I stopped using one particular application which I like, but which has a bad habit of getting it’s memory constipated from time to time and taking the system down with it. I appreciate that for users who were experiencing frequent or routine crashes in all OS 9, OS X must seem like a wonderful liberation, but crashing just isn’t a big issue for me.

I find that switching from OS x to OS 9 for me is like taking off heavy, steel-toed work boots, and putting on a pair of light running shoes. You’re not as well protected, but it certainly makes you lighter on your feet and faster.

So I have to ask myself the question: What is the objective here? I use my computer to make my living. It seems logical to use the tool that gets the job done more quickly and efficiently, and for me, that’s still OS 9 by a wide margin. I expect it is for many other users as well, if they’re honest with themselves. Several letter writers expressed their disagreement with my complaint about the loss of dual booting, but conceded that in their office or home fleets of Macs, most were still booting into OS 9. That’s why I contend that OS X is not yet ready to replace OS 9 completely. It’s not prejudice; it’s not reactionary Ludditeism; it’s not because I’m “more used to” OS 9. After ten months of daily encounters with OS X, I’m quite intuitively accommodated to it, and find the transition no more challenging in operative terms than switching from a car with an automatic transmission to one with a stick shift, or vice versa. It’s not knee-jerk resistance to change. I have no problem with change for the better. I do resist change for the sake of change, particularly if it’s for the worse. And OS 9 still just objectively does the job better for me. Not because I like it better. But because it works better.

Now, I do appreciate and acknowledge that as nice as it works, the legacy Mac OS had reached the end of its practical development potential -- I’m not arguing that Apple didn’t need a new operating system, and I don’t gainsay that at some point it won’t be time to pull plug on OS 9. But surely that time is logically when OS X reaches the point of development where it offers superior performance compared with the old OS. At this stage of the game, it doesn’t, at least for me, and I’m certain for a lot of other users. Even Apple concedes that out of an installed base of roughly 25 million Mac users, only about three million have switched to OS X, and they are projecting just 5 million by year-end. Moreover, I suspect that among that 15-20 percent of those OS X users, many are, like me, part-time OS X users.

However, the statistic I think is most significant is that one quarter of the folks who have bought Macs that were factory configured to default boot into OS X took the trouble to switch to booting in OS 9.

Several of the writers below have brought up the issue of OS 9 allegedly holding back Apple’s hardware development. But is there any concrete evidence of that? If so, let’s hear it. In my humble opinion, what’s holding back Apple’s hardware development mostly is Motorola’s lackadaisical Power PC Development, that has seen the G4 chip zoom from 500 MHz to 1.2 GHz in three years, while the Pentium went from about 900 MHz to 2.8 GHz over the same period.

No one would be more delighted than me to see Apple resolve their CPU dilemma, and if it were a matter of OS 9 support holding up the works, then OK. Time to say goodbye, and thanks for the memories. But I don’t think that is the issue between now and next January. I would be happy to be wrong about this, and have Apple announce some sort of new CPU strategy in San Francisco, but I’m not optimistic. And if they’re going to stick with the G3 and G4 at all, I don’t perceive that there is any major difficulty in keeping it bootable under OS 9 for the present. What Apple did say in the press release was that they want to persuade third-party software developers to concentrate solely on OS X development, with a special nod to Quark XPress one assumes.

I didn’t find that explanation any more convincing than the postulate that OS 9 support is holding up hardware development at this time. I think the probable real story is that Steverino and company have been increasingly piqued, not to mention goaded by the Greek Chorus emanating from Redmond, over the sluggish pace of OS X adoption by the Mac community. Sort of a “we worked hard to offer this great operating system, so why are you ungrateful peasants so reluctant to embrace it?)” dynamic.

In the absence of any immediate compelling object reason to terminate dual booting, the only plausible explanation I can deduce is that Apple has decided to speed up the transition by limiting users’ choice in the matter.

My outburst Tuesday morning was of course not simply a reaction to the end of dual booting announcement. One might say that that bombshell was the second shoe dropping after the .mac edict issued in New York in July, but it even goes further back than that. After recovering from its near - death experience in the mid 90s, thanks largely to the loyalty and evangelism efforts of the core community of Mac users and enthusiasts, Apple, in the Jobs II era, has been treating that loyal customer base with increasing contempt.

For example, there was the firmware update for the blue and white G3 towers that Apple neglected to inform users would disable processor upgrades. There was the downgrading of the original G4 towers’ originally announced clock speeds, with no reduction in price for machines already ordered, until the howling was to loud for even Apple to ignore. There were the firmware upgrades that disabled many third-party RAM modules. And of course there is the termination of free email with the .mac establishment.

So, some will be saying, Apple is a business. It doesn’t owe you anything. And they’re right. Apple never asked me to expend thousands of hours of unpaid time doing Mac advocacy and free tech support for their products. (I mean in addition to writing for the Mac Web, which I do get paid for). However, that door swings both ways. If Apple owes me, and all the others who have supported and advocated the platform over the years, nothing, then that’s what we owe Apple.

Apple is a unique in having a dramatically loyal customer clientele. No other personal computer platform (save for perhaps Amiga), has ever come close, but a number of other consumer products, -- several automobile brands for instance -- do. The distinction is that usually, the makers of those other products cultivate and nurture the relationship with their customers, while Apple stands superciliously aloof in Olympian isolation, barely acknowledging the lesser beings that keep them in business.

Nevertheless, perhaps I did overreact a wee bit on Tuesday morning. But my tirade was an accurate articulation of how I felt upon hearing the news. It was like a kick in the stomach, not just the fact of the termination of dual booting, but also the way it was done, as a Mac Web colleagues remarked -- “with all the grace of dropping pigs in slop from the roof of the barn.”

There’s been a lot of pig-dropping from Apple lately, and I’m greatly concerned that the, how shall I say? -- "Mac mystique" is in danger of evaporating. I’m hearing too many people affirm that if they have to learn a new operating system anyway, they might as well switch to Windows and save some money. I happen to think they’re mistaken about this. They probably won’t save money anyway in the total cost of ownership, and OS X isn’t so different from the Classic Mac OS at the user interface level that it is anything like learning a whole new system. There are things that I find annoying about the OS X Finder, but there’s no steep learning curve to climb when moving from the Classic OS. I can live with Aqua. I just want it to work faster, and stuff to stay parked where I put it.

And despite my “Linux anyone?” parting shot in the editorial, I imagine I’ll be still on a Mac in five years time. I’ve used Linux. Philosophically, it appeals to me, but it’s a lot less Mac-like than OS X is. However, the possibility of migrating to another platform is no longer as unthinkable for me as it used to be.

The Mac OS Is Dead Letters

Charles W. Moore

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