Slashdot Mirror
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
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:
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
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.
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.
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!!!
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