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Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" Reviews Pour In
hype7 writes "The reviews on Apple's new Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" are starting to come through. The New York Times (free reg required) heaps on the praise: 'Mac OS X 10.2 is the best-looking, least-intrusive and most thoughtfully designed operating system walking the earth today.' MacCentral is positive: 'From what I've seen Jaguar is leaps and bounds ahead of Mac OS X 10.1 in both speed and functionality.' MacWorld has also chimed in: 'for most users, there are a lot of important improvements in this upgrade: performance boosts, improved printing, and interface enhancements will be immediate benefits. And over time, Mac OS X 10.2's new technologies (including Quartz Extreme and Rendezvous) will make the update even more valuable.'"
Just FYI, Macworld ownd Maccentral and thus anything coming out of Maccentral will be a parrot of what's coming out of Macworld.
Not to say that's wrong, just saying that you might have well only mentioned one of the other and picked a different 3rd example.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
The article about the "Family" license allowing you to install one copy on up to five machines can be found here...
siri
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
It feels a lot snappier. I've installed it on a blue&white G3/300, and even without the boost from Quartz Extreme (which requires AGP and Radeon/GeForce or better) the GUI has picked up speed. The Finder is MUCH faster at handling windows with a lot of files and no longer feels like it's asleep at the wheel.
Maybe OS X will be usable below the Dual GHz G4 level after all. The next thing to try will be iPhoto, which was ridiculously slow on my 500 MHz iBook.
I once shot a man who posted too many, "Imagine a beowulf cluster of these"
You are not paying $129 for an upgrade. Apple doesn't sell OS upgrades. When you spend $129 for Jaguar you are getting a FULL version of the OS. You don't have to have an earlier version of the OS installed to install Jaguar.
Gotta watch those quotation marks!
You're thinking of Apple's Mac OS X Family Pack, which lets you install it on up to 5 Macs in one household for $199. I think it's great for people who want to be legal and have more than one Mac at home.
I can't figure out how to post a direct URL (the Apple Store doesn't like deep linking) but here's how to get there:
Yup. Samba.
Also NFS.
Also WebDAV.
Also has a PPTP-based VPN client.
Also has "Active Directory" compatibility, whatever that is (some Windows stuff).
And some other stuff you may have heard of, like RPC, FTP, HTTP, OpenSSH, usw.
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
Now, having gotten that out of the way. OS 10.2 is nice. Speed improvement is striking. Not in the way that, "it should have been that fast in the first place", it's more in the way of the first time I installed BeOS on a computer to see it in comparision to WinME.
Networking is definitely faster. I haven't benched anything yet, but I can say if you have a fast line, you will see your web browser of choice speed up considerably.
The "disconnect from Network bug" is still there. Connect to a SMB, AppleTalk, or DAV volume and pull your network cord (or turn off the machine exporting the drive) and you will get the spinning wheel of death.
Video Performance is spooky, even on an origional G4 tower. You really have to see it to understand.
iChat is next to useless, but the auto discovery of other clients is nice.
SMB export was a pain in the ass. You have to enable it on a user by user basis, which wasn't obvious, in the Accounts preference pane. Then after it's enabled for a user, you have change their password. Since the GUI client changes both the Samba password and Unix password for the user, at the same time, the users CANNOT just change their password on the command line. This also raises fears that the Samba passwords are stored in cleartext on the harddrive. I suspect, this is not the case, but haven't look yet. There is no convient way to set the SMB workgroup in the GUI
XDarwin needed to be repaired (which is available at the X on X site and seemingly not part of what Fink compiles) to work. This was annoying.
The firewall has Gnutella as an option to allow.
My SCSI CD Burner stopped working. I suspect the old SCSI bug is back for the time being.
Some other shit I foget....
Burn Hollywood Burn
Here's a link to the info you are looking for: http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/compatibility.h tml
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
here
Apple is trying to kill off native AppleTalk and just using AFP via TCP/IP.
/config/AppleFileServer, and modify the attribute "use_appletalk" from 0 to 1. A full description of the procedure can be found at the bottom of this page, but what I wrote above is enough to get an OS X Mac speaking old AppleTalk.
AFAIK, Jaguar supports mounting Windows shares out of the box. For Mac OS 9.x, you can get DAVE from Thursby.
There is also a means to get OS X machines to speak old-school AppleTalk. Dunno if it'll work in your situation, but you enable it by using the NetInfo Manager application. Go to
~Philly
I ordered the Family licence, but got my hands on the 10.2 upgrade CDs in my 17" iMac.
So I installed on the older hardware around the house.
Beige G3 with Radeon/466MHz G3/Firewire
iMac DV 400 MHz
Powerbook G3 400MHz
The Beige G3 is really snappy. Bootup is down to about 25 seconds from when the chime starts to when the Dock shows up. Everything about it is fast, fast and stable.
iMac and Powerbook are also very snappy. Finder draws when a large folder on a remote drive open are as fast as they are in 9.2.2.
My Beige G3 would hang about one every two days when I monkeyed with Firewire, no longer.
10.2 on my PowerBook G4 550 is really fast. Only problem is that I can't get Dave to uninstall.
Worth the $200 for 5 or $129 for a single.
command line apps seem very much slower
Believe it or not, it's a graphics thing. Try turning off antialiasing in Terminal.app. The option is found under the application menu, in Window Settings, on the Display pane.
You must not be using Quartz Extreme. With QE, there's no difference between AA and non-AA in Terminal.app.
Just go to apple.com, look for authorized bookstores that are online, and pick a college campus.
ha, yeah, I've used that one a lot too...
Mac OS X v10.2 Family Pack
But I'm thinking you've already made up your mind.
...now that they got rid of their OS which was awful (for what I needed), and are now OpenBSD, I'm more likely to switch.
Ummm, it's FreeBSD. There's a difference.
I have seen it, and it is really just window dressing as far as I'm concerned. I have heard that the command line stuff is slower now...
Hmmm. Well, it's just window dressing wrapped around a Mach kernel. It has native (I said NATIVE) open technologies, like Java, OpenGL, and the Cocoa API. And for what it's worth, I will stack Apple's API's, written in Objective-C, against Win32 or MFC any day of the week. But then, you've already made up your mind. I'm sure you think that Objective-C is a complete waste of time, but I see the best of C++, Smalltalk, Lisp, and Java in Objective-C. It's beautiful to use. If you have to look up the word "erudite" in the dictionary, you probably don't know what I mean. As far as the command utils being slower, I have been running a developer seed of Jaguar for over a month, and it compares very nicely to earlier versions of OS X. I haven't noticed a slowdown.
Things I care about are price to performance ratio. Ease of programming (tools available - need mySQL, php, Perl, Java, C/C++, etc). Cost of maintenance (software and hardware upgrades), etc etc.
Apple's stuff is hard to steal. So, you're gonna have to pay $129 for an OS. You will need a machine to run it on. You can get an iMac for $800. So, for around $1000, you get a list of features longer than your arm. You get a development tools CD that comes with everything you need for serious development. Java 1.3.1 is pre-installed. The gcc compiler is pre-installed. OS X loves perl. Apache 1.3.1 is pre-installed. Tomcat is a simple download. I develop cross-platform applications for x86, Moto, and SPARC. And I'll even agree with you that programming for the "classic" MacOS was pretty painful. I love OS X, because it is the most efficient development platform that I own, and I'm pretty sure I've tried them all. (I must admit, I do love many things about Visual Studio).
As far as upgrades go, on a G3/G4 tower, just pop the hatch and install your RAID. I did a toolless install of a 512GB RAID two weeks ago. It took ten minutes, literally. The most recent machines use DDR ram, Ultra-ATA drives, AGP4x, PCI. What upgrades do you want?? It comes with gigabit ethernet. It comes with a very nice video card, and many of the towers come "dual-head-ready."
Oh, one more thing. The reason that sliced bread is great is because it's convenient. Someone did the annoying cutting for me. The result is a product that contains less waste and saves me time. Speaking of time, I'm so convinced that you don't care, that I'm not going to waste any more.
In terms of development, OS X is a very attractive deal. You don't have to work in C++ unless you want to (which is a good thing, C++ is a shitty language). The OPENSTEP library is one of the most famous in developer history, and it's only gotten better. Developing in Objective-C and the openstep environment is interesting. There is excellent object-archival and object-graph archival (like a more advanced form of java's serialization) that the librarys use to actually story GUI's. They have an elegant visual system for creating GUI's and object networks visually which is quite usefull for getting the View and Controller part of the MVC paradigm done.
Apple has excellent Java support, all the bells and whistles, and a Cocoa-Java bridge. Meaning Objective-C, Java, and Applescript code and interact and use the same object library. Very cool. However, they have not gone to 1.4 just yet. Apple says they'll switch in November/December with the iCal and iSync update (something I am looking forward to).
In terms of maintinence, it's kind of ridiculous. Macs never really need any work. I live in a dusty environment so I blow mine out every now and then. In software, the core system components are kept up-to-date with a nice automated software update package. You can easily use apt-get to get and update new BSD softwate (a project called "fink" at sourceforge).
Apple release security fixes for its core system components (which include OpenSSL and apache) very quickly. The LONGEST that it's ever taken is about three and a half days.
Hardware upgrades are just like a PC. Software upgrades are not really established. Some have been free (10.1). This most recent one cost money ($129 standard/family, $60 student).
In general, Apple has bent over backwards trying to make developers like macs.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
He's right, the free dev tools and the Cocoa framework are hot shit. The advantage of NSTask over system() and popen() is that its an object and it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the framework. With almost no code you can have it post notifications when there's data available and call other methods. Its just one example of what the framework is all about. It lets you build no-brainer Java like applications that run like normal applications and can actually do usefull stuff. It's got all of the advantages of Java (minus cross-platform, of course) and it compiles into native machine code. And you can work with whatever existing c/c++ libraries you've got. AND THE WHOLE THING COMES WITH THE OS. Not on a separate cd you have to send away for or anything, but right on the retail cd. Any developer with a Mac owes it to himself to check it out.
If you actually used OS X, you'd notice that your dogma borrows heavily from Microsoft and couldn't be further from the truth.
It would be enlightening to others following this thread if you could cite some specific examples of where OS X borrows heavily from Windows. Given that it's essentially BSD on a Mach kernel, it certainly doesn't borrow from the OS level. And since Quartz was based on the NeXT Display Postscript engine and the Finder inherited most of its functionality from previous MacOS UIs, I don't suppose you're referring to elements borrowed from Microsoft's GUI. So what is left? What have they borrowed from Microsoft for OS X?
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
If so, you'll like the networking, power and sleep management in OS X. Location management is excellent. You can have arbitrarily many sets of networking environments, and switching between them takes two mouse clicks, no reboot required.
My 500 MHz iBook's wake from sleep time is two seconds, counting from the time I unlatch the lid. I reboot it only after major OS updates - the last one was July 8th. I have never lost work due to a faliure to wake from sleep.
My battery life in the field is about three hours, mostly running emacs and developing code. I can stop in the middle of anything, close the lid, and walk away confident that I won't lose work. The machine will sleep for about two weeks on a full charge (I lose ~7% battery power per 24 hours).
You can even safely run the battery completely dead - OS X's last gasp is to write the complete state of the machine to the hard drive, and when you find an outlet, plug in and reboot, you come back to exactly where you left off. My kids do this with full-screen games.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
While it's not a long term solution, nor do I suggest that it is to be expected from the average user, there IS one way that those of you comfortable with the CLI can often "resolve" the spinning wheel of death. Usually, this "wheel of death" only affects the finder itself. Sometimes other apps will be slowed as well, but 9/10 times they'll respond eventually. With that in mind, the below solution often gets me out of jam with this issue.
/Volumes hierarchy. Depending on which one (ones?) you are dealing with do the following:
/Volumes/
All mounted network volumes (at least appletalk and samba, dunno about DAV) are mounted in the
1. open terminal.app
2. in terminal.app run:
% sudo umount
3. Force Quit / Relaunch the Finder using the interface that pops up when you press cmd-option-esc.
This usually works for me to remove the spinning wheel of death that is mentioned without forcing me to forceably reboot the machine.
-fp
Windows GDI has been hardware accelerated since like '95. Try booting Windows in VGA safe mode and see how much slower it is than 1024x768 32-bit color. The GDI architecture has a lot of features that take advantage of hardware acceleration, including stuff like bitmap scaling and alpha blending, transparent compositing, and raster shapes. Some apps can tell you exactly what 2D features your card accelerates.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
Actually, OS's 8 and 9 did that too.
Also, just to beat anyone to the punch who wants to compair the Dock to Windows' Task bar, Look at NeXT Operating System....the Dock preceded Windows.
Comparing Apple prices to Dell (the number 1 PC maker in the world) it becomes immediately clear that except for two configurations of the "Dimensions" line, Macs are significantly cheaper (by $496 to $2085) than comparably configured Dells. If anyone is doing the raping, it's Dell, and it made them the largest computer maker in the world!
Synchronizing the systems:
Comparably priced speakers were added to the Mac, Precision 530 and Precision 340 systems so that all would have the same configuration as the Dell Dimension systems. ( which automatically come with speakers )
Optical Logitech mice were added to all Dell systems to match the Mac which ships with an optical mouse.
V.90 modem cards were added to all Dell systems to match the Mac which automatically ships with an internal modem.
3 Year AppleCare Protection Plan was added to Mac configurations to match the standard 3 year Dell protection plan.
All other user configurable hardware ( except processors ) were selected to match point for point between the Macs and the Dells.
Where possible, optional add-on software ( such as virus protection, Office Suites etc... ) has been excluded to acheive a more accurate comparison.
None of the systems were priced with monitors.
Apple Power Mac G4 ( tower, dual Processor )
Mac OS 10.2 ( Juaguar ) 2 GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
120 GB Ultra ATA drive
SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium
56K internal modem
Standard keyboard
Apple 1 button optical mouse
Apple Pro Speakers ( $59 )
3 Year AppleCare Protection Plan
$3,757 ( Dual 867 MHz PowerPC G4 )
$5,057 ( Dual 1.25 GHz PowerPC G4 )
Dell Precision 530 series ( tower, dual Processor )
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2 GB PC800 ECC RDRAM
120 GB 7200RPM IDE Drive
DVD+RW+R Combo Drive
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, VGA/DVI
V.90 PCI Data/Fax Controllerless Modem
Standard Keyboard
Logitech 2 Button optical mouse
Harman Kardon HK-395 Speakers ( $49 )
3 Year Parts + Onsite Labor
$5,593 ( Dual 1.8 GHz Xeon ) - $1,836 more than low end dual Mac
$7,142 ( Dual 2.4 GHz Xeon ) - $2,085 more than high end dual Mac
Dell Precision 340 series ( tower, single Processor )
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2 GB PC800 ECC RDRAM
120 GB 7200RPM IDE Drive
DVD+RW+R Combo Drive
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, VGA/DVI
V.90 PCI Data/Fax Controllerless Modem
Standard Keyboard
Logitech 2 Button optical mouse
Harman Kardon HK-395 Speakers ( $49 )
3 Year Parts + Onsite Labor
$4,754 ( 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 ) - $997 more than low end dual Mac
$5,553 ( 2.53 GHz Pentium 4 ) - $496 more than high end dual Mac
Dell Dimension 8200 series ( mini-tower, single processor )
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
2 GB PC800 ECC RDRAM
120 GB 7200RPM IDE Drive
DVD+RW+R Combo Drive
nVidia, Quadro4 900XGL, 128MB, VGA/DVI
V.90 PCI Data/Fax Controllerless Modem
Standard Keyboard
Logitech 2 Button optical mouse
Harman Kardon HK-395 Speakers ( included )
3 Year Parts + Onsite Labor
$3,526 ( Single 2.0 GHz Pentium 4 ) - $231 less than low end dual Mac
$3,886 ( Single 2.53 GHz Pentium 4 ) - $1,171 less than high end dual Mac
popen() is icky because it uses system(). Use pipe(), dup2(), and execlp(). This gives you control at the argv level. No annoying shell escapes to think about. (Comes in handy if you need spaces, quotes, backslashes, #s, etc., in your command line.) Others in the exec family let you change the environment too.
/* we can now read our gzipped data from fd[0] */
int fd[2];
pid_t child;
pipe( fd );
switch( (child=fork()) ) {
case 0:
dup( fd[1], 1 );
execlp( "gzip", "gzip", "-c9", "foo.tar", NULL );
exit(1);
default:
waitpid( child, NULL, 0 );
}
close( fd[1] );
If you have problems with working with file descriptors for some odd reason, you can fdopen() fd[0] from there.
I scored a Pine GeForce2MX specifically for Quartz Extreme (for my Sawtooth 500 AGP)... Flashing the ROM is apparently a breeze (though I've yet to attack mine)
Instructions can be found here
Though I love this comment off the site: "If you have any problems, it sux 2 B U." hehe
I hate Grammar Nazi's
I agree. Programming on Carbon (a mac os 9-x bridge thing) is hideous. Programming in windows is like running through a sewer. Programming in java is fine but you have to debug everywhere. Cocoa (objective C with the foundation and appkit frameworks, among others) is the simplest most powerful way to get programs done.
Interface Builder.
Try and and then respond.
OpenStep and NextStep which are actually is where most of Cocoa's source comes from, PREDATES and PRECEDES GNUStep, so you are not wrong, but need to get you facts straight at what Cocoa and GNUStep are.
Also OpenStep was cross-platform, it run under Windows, Solaris, HPUX, and natively on the processors of ia32, HPPA, Sparc, and mk68K and there was usually only one binary to download for all four.