Review: Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar

I am a bitter old man. I hate change. Mac OS -- not Mac OS X, which is a different OS -- in its various iterations has been my OS of choice for over 15 years, and I have not looked fondly on the day that streak ends. But that day may very well be at hand. I like Mac OS X v10.2 enough that it may soon become my primary OS. From the day Apple acquired NeXT, and Rhapsody was announced, I was excited about the prospect of a "modern operating system" (read: Unix) that would look and act like my beloved Mac OS. But as Mac OS X started to become a reality, it became clear that this was not going to be Mac OS. It was going to be MacNeXT.

Oh, it wasn't entirely un-Mac-like. But it was different enough that I wasn't comfortable in it. I love Mac OS because of its ease of use and applications and interface and all of the little things. I sit in front of this darned computer for most of my waking hours, and if I am not comfortable with it, then it's no good. Life is too short.

Mac OS X v10.0 was a disappointment to me, and many loyalists to Mac OS. Many things in the interface just didn't work at all, or as well as, they did in Mac OS. Many still don't work right, including cmd+arrow keys to open and close arrows in Finder windows (half works: cmd+opt+arrow should open or close all hierarchical folders) and in dialogs with progress bars, such as file copying (doesn't work). The file dialogs, stuck in a column view, are, in my opinion, a glaring design flaw. In many places in the OS, you can't merely hit "return" in an active dialog to select the default button (if there is a default button at all), or "escape" to cancel.

But these problems were just the beginning. In 10.0, performance was bad, even on G4s. This improved significantly in 10.1, but Mac OS v9.2 still seemed faster. The entire Mac OS X UI -- while eminently "lickable," like no OS before it -- was tiring to look at. Anti-aliasing made things harder to read, especially on LCDs, even with the unnaturally large fonts in the Finder; many of the UI elements, including the aqua ones, often distracted the eye.

But in 10.2 (Jaguar), much has changed. The aqua elements are sharper, crisper ... perhaps shinier. Many of the UI elements, such as the Dock, are more subdued. The Finder has more options for changing the appearance of elements such as font size. Gosh, complaining about font size sounds petty, but darnit, it is so much nicer to look at.

The cursors are improved: the busy cursor has gone from an ugly rainbow pinwheel to a cute rainbow pinwheel (and how long before Steve makes it monochrome?). The arrow cursor has a better outline around it. The I-bar cursor still needs work; I lose it on dark backgrounds. In Mac OS, that cursor would change from dark to light when it passed over something dark.

Similarly, I also now lose my selection box in the Finder; in previous versions of Mac OS X, a selection box in a white space would appear grey. Now it is white, and invisible. Oops.

But while in the Finder, one of my old favorites is finally back: multiple Get Info windows. If you select multiple items at once, you still get the single window with all the items, but you can at least now open many Get Info items for individual items, one at a time. And you can get the old behavior of a single floating window ("Inspector") by holding down Option.

I still can't copy the content of a text clipping in the Finder. That's just insane. Open the clipping. Read it. Cmd-c to copy the contents to the Clipboard. This is a no-brainer.

It's all of these little touches that make a significant difference in whether I can comfortably use the OS on a daily basis. And for the first time ever, despite the problems that still exist, I am mostly comfortable.

And man, is Jaguar fast. Everything is just more responsive. Previously, clicking on UI elements would begin a delay that isn't there anymore. It's noticeably quicker. Even Classic seems quicker, despite the fact that Mac OS is no longer included with Mac OS X.

But I still can't do everything in Mac OS X, even with Classic. My UMAX (*spit*) scanner won't work, and likely never will; I use it seldom enough that it's probably a better use of my time and money to boot into Mac OS to use it, for now. I am having trouble getting reliable fax software to work, so I booted into Mac OS to use FaxSTF last weekend (I was going to install the 10.0 installer I have and then the Jaguar update when it comes out, but 10.0 won't install at all on Jaguar, so I am probably out of luck with that, though I am keeping my eye on Cocoa eFax, too).

But most important to my comfort is that all of the apps I know and love from Mac OS -- BBEdit, Interarchy, DragThing, Mozilla, Eudora -- work natively in Mac OS X. The operating system exists to host applications. They are the reason I use the computer. I want the same apps, and, thankfully, I have them. Further, much of Mac OS is still there, like QuickTime, AirPort, Keychains, AppleScript, and Internet Config (although this works somewhat oddly in some cases, and there's not much of a UI for it).

But the big question is: why should I use Mac OS X? If I am just trying to recreate Mac OS, why not just stick with Mac OS?

There are two answers. The first is a single word: Unix. I don't need to describe in detail why Unix is a Good Thing to Slashdot readers, but I will say that XDarwin and fink are two of the most important features of Mac OS X, and having a stable operating system is a joy. The stability of Mac OS certainly was pretty good -- ignore the hypocrites who used to praise Mac OS but now decry it -- but it can't match Mac OS X. That I can put my laptop to sleep, and wake immediately, and still have many TCP/IP connections open, is incredible to me.

The second answer is that new features are added to Mac OS X to make it too compelling to ignore.

The i* software suite -- iChat, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iCal, iSync, iProbablyForgotSomething -- are in many cases some of the best products to hit personal computing in many years. iMovie and iDVD are leaders in their niches. iTunes was a bit flat in its earlier versions, but gets more compelling in its feature set every year. iChat is actually a nice chat client: unobtrusive, mostly well-integrated into the system and Address Book, and easy on the eyes (it's also a little buggy; expect a few crashes). iPhoto is a nice beginning, but really needs better features for more flexible exporting of image metadata to be well-used. iCal and iSync aren't yet released, but by all accounts look very promising: how long before I ditch my PDA, or at least Palm Desktop's contacts and calendar apps?

Then there's Rendezvous -- the "zero configuration" networking -- which is only beginning to get significant use, but is sure to be a staple of many applications for years to come. Despite having some problems with printer sharing (making a comeback, finally) via Rendezvous -- I mistakenly had some computers on my network with a 255.0.0.0 subnet mask while others were 255.255.255.0, and this was enough to throw it off -- it requires zero configuration once you're configured properly.

Sherlock is now finally its own separate beast, with Find integrated into the Finder (imagine that!) and no longer is it scraping web pages, but it is enabled with web services goodness.

All of these features and more are only available in Mac OS X. If you want them, you need to switch.

Still, some things simply don't work in Mac OS X v10.2. The upgrade went smoothly, but various third-party apps, and even some Apple programs, had trouble. My chosen replacements for the Dock -- DragThing and LiteSwitch X -- both needed updates (Proteron says LiteSwitchX update should be available any day now). WeatherPop needed updating. WirelessDriver -- a serious boon to PowerBook G4 users who need to work more than 20 feet from a wireless base station -- no longer works, and it's not been updated in many months.

Apple Remote Desktop 1.0.x doesn't work; you'll need to run Software Update to get version 1.1. Unfortunately, even the new version only half-worked for me; the client side seems fine, but the Admin app says it is not installed properly. I wanted to just uninstall the whole thing and start over, but there is no uninstall option, that I could find. So I deleted all the files that the Installer installs, and then tried to reinstall, and the Installer says it is already installed. So now I have nothing, and I can't change it.

I thought for awhile that Apple's ScriptMenu didn't work, too; it was still sitting in /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ where I had left it, but it was not launching. I searched for ScriptMenu on the discs and hard drive for information or a replacement, and on Apple's site, but found nothing. I was later informed the name had been changed from "ScriptMenu" to "Script Menu": the replacement was in the /Applications/AppleScript/ directory. Oops.

fink has a few problems, as one might expect with an OS update that sees a move from gcc2.9 to gcc3.1. Most of the things I tried worked fine without recompiling, including XFree86. But xterm and bash broke because of dependencies relating to the change gcc3.1, and manconf (a wrapper for Mac OS X's man) broke, because the Jaguar man doesn't accept the -C option to specify a configuration file. The workaround is to install fink's man, or at least remove /sw/bin/man in the meantime. The fink team is working to resolve the issues, and updates are forthcoming. An update for xterm is available on the XonX page.

SSHAgentServices, which sets an ssh-agent for the entire login session, stopped working; but the author of SSHPassKey, which I use to provide the ssh password to GUI apps, said he would integrate ssh-agent services into the next version of his application. Some of TinkerTool was obsoleted by 10.2, as Apple has added some of those preferences into their UIs, things like Terminal transparency, and what to do with newly mounted CDs and DVDs, so there's a new version available.

Currently, SharePoints doesn't work. This configures NetInfo to allow you to share arbitrary folders with any users via file sharing. So now I don't have a reasonable file server, unless I want to give everyone admin access to see all the volumes on the machine. But the author says he has discovered the problem, and a new version is forthcoming. This makes me quite happy.

There's also the long-standing and unresolved problem of AvantGo not working with Mac OS X. It's amazing that this is still broken.

I'm not making any firm commitments, but I am using Mac OS X as my primary OS right now, and it's the least painful it's ever been. That's more of a compliment than it seems. But there's enough that doesn't work, enough that's raw -- especially with third-party software -- that I'd recommend people who don't like pain to wait at least a few weeks, if not a month or so, to allow all of the issues to be worked out, tech notes to be published, and workarounds to be posted.

Comments

Smile

[gralem]

Some had to start making the hard changes. Apple is STRENGTHENING itself in the long run. I think most people on /. are warming up to Linux. Most "classic" mac users I know finally find Jaguar usable. For every complaint I've heard about OSX, I can list 10 or more features and reasons why we should ALL be using it. Starting at Apple's not-so-crappy Open Source involvement (gcc3 work gets back to the gcc3 people), to it's stability and use of Unix.

---gralem

Re:Smile

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

"I think most people on /. are warming up to Linux".
You might be onto something! :-)

Re:Smile

[stoney27]

What you said is true, but you have not added any software with your system. Which would increase the price.

Also your machine wouldn't look cooler then the imac.

But then not everyone has style :)

-S

Re:Smile

[MoneyT]

The speech is free, it's just a matter of personaly preference. Remembr, no comment get's modified or deleted. MOderation only changes the level of viewability. If you so chose, you could read every single post regardless of it's moderation. However, some people don't like wading through posts like "Billy Gates sucked my balls last night" to get to any sort of significant discussion. If you want complete free speach, surf slashdot with your threshhold set to -1.

Re:Smile

[mosch]

Yes, it's cheaper to build your own than to buy a well-integrated, well-tested PC, that has a guaranteed product support life (mac or PC). If you want a relevant comparison, you'd really need to compare the iMac to something from the Dell Optiplex line.

• 1GB Ram
• 40 Gig HD
• DVD-ROM/CD-RW
• 15" flat screen

Dell's price: $2041.00, or about $300 more than the iMac.

If you want to deal with all the incompatibilities that exist between various pieces of hardware and their drivers, then yes, you can build a system on the cheap. If you want to buy something that will Just Work(tm), and will continue to do so for at least 3 or 4 years, Apples are a good deal.

Re:Smile

[MoneyT]

You've obviously had a bad run with the macs you own, my sincerest apologies. However, I would like to point out 2 facts:

1) You're case seems to be in the extreme, just like the horor stories of windows machines that crash every 15 minutes, or on linux users that can even launch netscape wthout creating kernel panics. And of ocurse there's the other end of the spectrum, winodws users who claim never to have had a crash in their life. Linux users whol claim that it was easier to use that windows and mac users who swear up and down that their machines are 100% perfect and never crash. Each of these cases is on the extreme end of computing, and while some of them may be valid (as in your case) they are not the normal user experience.

2) There is something in the mac that keeps you buying. As you said, your first iMac had problems, but implying you have more than one. You speak of beige G3s and B&W G3s, plus you continue to buy the OSes, so there must be something in the mac which you like. And like alot because any PC user buying computers with those problems from Del of Compaq would have stopped long ago. It is for thise reason that people buy macs. Not for just style, but for whatever it is that they see in the mac that makes it worth ignoring a couple lousy hardware setups.

I agree with you in your stance of not wanting to buy OS X.2 quite yet. However, I offer a suggestion. Go to compUSA and buy yourself a copy of X.2. If I recall correctly CompuUSA has a 14 day return policy on software. Take the software home, and try it out. See if it work son your machines. If it doesn't, take it back to CompUSA for your refund, if it does, you could keep it, or take it back and shop for a better deal. Either way, you get to find out whether the system will work properly, and there is little risk involved.

Re:Smile

[gig]

> People buy PC's because of price, Mac's because of style...

I buy Macs because they just work. I used to build my own PC systems, but now I just buy a new Mac ever 2-3 years and get everything I need in one purchase, along with a great service contract (AppleCare), and an OS feature called Software Update that automatically keeps all the included software (Mac OS X, iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, etc.) current. Now I spend less overall, too, because I don't have to upgrade piecemeal to make up for what the vendor left out. For example, the oldest of the four Macs here is from January, 1999, and it has FireWire, USB, a 15" flat panel display, and 1.5GB RAM. It runs Mac OS X great (especially 10.2) and can edit DV, be a jukebox, play DVD's, burn CD's and all kinds of other stuff that people are doing TODAY with computers. It also has space for four hard drives and three empty PCI slots. That computer has paid for itself again and again and again and it is still trucking. It does have style as well ... translucent blue display, tower, mouse, and keyboard look beautiful ... that's just candy, though ... an extra.

Re:Smile

[Hercynium]

Just out of curiosity... is that system a 350Mhz Blue&White G3? My parents have one running OS 8.6 and they want to upgrade the OS to run some newer software but I don't want to get them OS X if it's gonna be slow as hell. (They said they needed 9.1 or later...) If it does run, does it need a memory or processor upgrade?

Re:Smile

[gig]

> It is also useful to know exactly what parts are in the machine so
> that if something does not work it is very easy to select the correct drivers.

I don't want to know that stuff anymore ... that's why I use Macs now. I just upgraded three Macs to Mac OS X 10.2 in the past few days, and it was the simplest procedure you can possibly imagine. And (read this carefully) every change was for the better ... it just worked. The "family 5-pack" of full versions of Mac OS X that I used is also only 2/3 the cost of one copy of Windows XP Pro, and there is none of the product activation bullshit to go through. I might keep a fourth Mac I was going to sell, since putting Mac OS X on it is free.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I know my PowerBook G4 has ATI graphics hardware (a RADEON with 16MB I think), and my Power Mac has an NVIDIA GeForce something with at least 32MB. I know this because I read it in the specs when I bought the machines. I was interested at the time only to make sure that each machine would display fast graphics with great quality in full color at the highest native resolution of their displays, and that's what they do. It just works all the time and it's one less thing to be responsible for. I use multiple computers now, with all kinds of other hardware ... the fact that a Power Mac or PowerBook is ONE widget really, really simplified things for me. It was more than six months before I opened the Displays system preference on my Power Mac with Cinema Display. I just never had a single moment where that ever seemed necessary. I plugged the single cable from the display into the only place on the back of the computer where it would fit, and switched on the system and it Just Worked. It wasn't just that it lit up, or that I could see a picture ... the picture was perfect, in full color, at the right resolution. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to a PC user's house and see a modern graphics adapter with 21" display running 800x600 with thousands of colors, and the user is scrolling around in little windows all the time. They simply don't know that they can choose to see full color and 2 or 3 times the screen real estate. Their system is using all these "safe" settings that geeks think of as nice starting points for tinkering.

> I have built quite a few PC's that Just Work as soon as I install an OS

Look, you don't understand the "Just Work(TM)" thing. When I got my latest Mac -- a PowerBook G4 -- I took it out of the box, hit the power button (battery already had a 2/3 charge), it asked me what I wanted to name the computer, what I wanted to name my account, what I wanted my password to be, and then I was at my desktop. There's an AirPort (Wi-Fi) menu at the top right of the display, which I used to tell the PowerBook the name and password of my wireless LAN (it would have found the Wi-Fi network automatically and just asked me the password if the base station was set to advertise itself like most do). That's about five minutes, tops, and I'm already on the Internet using IE, Flash, QuickTime, iTunes, Mail, etc. The QuickTime subsystem is already there, with its knowledge of every audio and video and media file format I've ever run into, there is a huge collection of high-quality fonts, Apache is ready to be turned on with a click of a button, Java2 is there, UNIX tools, and on and on.

Here's a good example of Just Works: Mac OS X applications are single icons that can be stored anywhere in the file system that you have permissions to place things. You don't have to "install" them, you can move them, you can rename them, and they still work. You can drag them from your desktop to your notebook and they still work. You can put 3,000 other applications on your system and that first one will still work, because even though there are facilities to share libraries, the app still carries the ones it came with within itself as (at minimum) a backup, if it can't find any newer libraries in the shared spots. Until you have used a Mac day-to-day-to-day, you don't realize how much time and trouble a thing like that can save you. It is also nice to put things where you want them on your own system.

From a non-geek perspective (someone who doesn't know all the excuses that programmers make when things fail), dragging the IE 5 application from a Windows desktop to a Windows notebook that only has IE 4 should be all you have to do to run IE 5 on the notebook. What is it about transporting IE 5 across my own local network that broke it? Yeah, I know that "IE 5 for Windows" is really 1,000 various files all over the place on a Windows machine, but there is no excuse for that. On the Mac, IE 5 is a single icon. Why would I want to manage or even look at more than one icon for "IE 5"? Ugh. That's why there is a "Mac faithful" ... it's not because we admire Steve Jobs or because we're romantics or something (although there's some of that), it's because when you sit down at Windows or a plain-UNIX after using a Mac for a while, things just seem broken on other systems. You don't want to run a bunch of installers and patchers on your notebook before you go on the road just so you can get the same damn apps on there that you were just using on your desktop. The other side of this is that when people go from Windows to Mac, they often spend months or years trying to do things the hard way. You see them in forums complaining that they unplugged this or disabled this or reformatted this or painstakingly typed in certain IP addresses, or rebooted, or whatever, and you have to keep telling them things like "just drag the icon to where you want it" or "just plug it in, you don't need a driver disc" and they're AMAZED. STUNNED.

Re:Smile

[neuroticia]

I never buy cutting-edge hardware, rather I wait until something has been out for a few months and some reviews have been released--so I pretty much come into things knowing which way is up. I know the mobo/chipset that goes into my computer, the graphics card, the hard drive, everything. Apple does not seem to like releasing in-depth information about their computers. The biggest problem I've had with a build-your-own was a mislabled front-panel connector on a mobo.

The first thing I do when I install a fresh OS (be it Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris, BSD, or Irix...) is minimize the 'extras' that the system so likes to install. Cut out the extensions, turn off buggy features like Indexing and Sleep, kill off the half-dozen printers that are installed, and allocate the appropriate amounts of memory to my primary apps. (just mentioning the Mac-steps here!) I've had my Macs start crashing with just a basic system install, but naturally I don't so much blame the Mac OS as I blame the *software*-- "professional" software like Photoshop, MSIE, Office, 3d Applications... No Adware allowed. The problem is that the SYSTEM cannot recover from the crash and I have to reboot. Things crash under WinXP, but I only need to reboot perhaps once a month, if that. (This is not an exaggeration.)

I've got my hopes up for Jaguar, too. If it's really worth the money, I'll spend... I've just got my doubts after the past few releases.. So far my favorite release has been Rhapsody.

-Sara

Re:Smile

[Hercynium]

Wonderful, thanks for the advice. The system has 512 meg of ram but other than that it's all default parts. I think I'll see about snagging a copy of 9.1, unless it's not available (as I supect) but at least I'm not afraid to foist X upon them now.
~Steve

Re:Smile

[DavidRavenMoon]

I'm keeping my G3 as a pet, because there's no doubt that Macs get under your skin.

Did you give it a name? You have to give your Mac a name... it's in the rule book! :)

I have 12 Macs... mostly old ones. Only named the newest two however (Ramona and Rachemia)...

Re:Smile

[rnd()]

If you want to deal with all the incompatibilities that exist between various pieces of hardware and their drivers, then yes, you can build a system on the cheap

I don't think you've built an x86 PC from scratch lately. These days it's all plug-n-play, and most mainstream hardware works out of the box in Windows and Linux.

You'd be stupid to pay $2041 or even $1741 for that machine.

Re:Smile

[g4dget]

I don't want to know that stuff anymore ...

The pain doesn't go away--trying to figure out what add-ons are OS X compatible is a lot of work.

Re:Smile

[g4dget]

linux users that can even launch netscape wthout creating kernel panics.

That is both an obnoxious misrepresentation and absurd. Both Linux and OS X are highly reliable. Running the two side-by-side, I'd say that, if anything, Linux is a little more stable than OS X.

Re:Smile

[ealar dlanvuli]

I've seen software driven kernel panics in Linux

I have never seen one in FreeBSD

Therefore, my inclination is to believe OS X is actually more stable than Linux.

Of course we are talking 60+ days uptime before we could even begin to think about a kernel panic, if your hardware is not shit, so it's fairly unimportant for most users.

OS X is a step in teh right direction

[istvandragosani]

I use Linux mainly for my own workstations & server on my home network, byt my wife is a diehard Mac user. After seeing her frustrations with Mac OS 9 constantly locking up and crashing (on a G4 even), I convinced her to upgrade to OS X. It took a little getting used to, but she was impressed by the fact that I can ssh in to her box now and do stuff on it without making her get up from her seat, and overall she likes OS X more than OS 9.

Re:OS X is a step in teh right direction

[Anonymous Coward]

I can ssh in to her box now and do stuff on it without making her get up from her seat

Talk about leaving yourself open to a joke...

This upgrade saved me $500

[Microsift]

I was seriously considering buying Office v.x so that I wouldn't have to switch to classic everytime I wanted to run Excel. Switching to Classic is far less painful now(Launching classic and Excel took 40 seconds). Granted this is not super speedy, but it is a significant improvement.

Re:This upgrade saved me $500

[randomErr]

Save yourself a few more buck and use OpenOffice on OSX.

Re:This upgrade saved me $500

[clifyt]

Am I the only one that has used Open Office and thinks it sucks and is WAY to slow? My main writting machine is an iBook 600 which should be fast enough to use any word processor without worrying about typing latency. Yeah, Linux and Slow Connections have honed my skill of not looking at the screen or the keys and focusing on other things, but when its local, its annoying.

I thought the idea of linux was Software That Doesn't Suck...at least once you remove the religious zealots from the mix. M$ Office is the one package from Microsoft that I would gladly recommend folks have. Open Office is a pale comparison to that...yeah, you can get things done but not as easily.

clif

Re:This upgrade saved me $500

[laserjet]

I don't think it's just OpenOffice. When I use MS Office v.X on my iBook 600, I sometimes have to wait for typing latency as well. annoying, that's for sure.

Haven't used open office on the mac, but on PC it seemed about as fast as it's competition.

Re:This upgrade saved me $500

[clifyt]

I have my iBook with M$ Office right here, and it feels far more responsive than my 2Ghz Dell right beside me.

On my G4, which I seldom use for word processing (I can't take it on the porch with me at home), OO is a LITTLE better, but not much. M$ Office, however, is a LOT nicer...though I think that has more to do with the huge screen :)

clif

Re:This upgrade saved me $500

[MaxVlast]

I sure wish they would have used the available objects, though. Their text widget remains really, really awful. I'm happier using Cocoa applications, not custom-coded almost-right-but-not-quite interfaces that work subtly differently and are frustrating therefore.

Re:This upgrade saved me $500

[perlyking]

Open Office on a 500mhz celeron PC was fast enough, I am surprised the other poster found it slow on a 600mhz mac.
Hmm, think I can justify buying a mac just to test it? ;-)

Re:This upgrade saved me $500

[clifyt]

I LOVE Linux. All my servers save 1 ASP box run it now. Hell, most of the time, I'm SSH'd into one of them from the iBook. I have wireless set up in most of the places I'm working from (and yeah, security ain't the greatest from wireless, BUT thats why I run SSH and others).

After playing with X for a few months, I can safely say that my main unix desktop will be Mac for the time being. When Linux has gotten as far as Apple has done in just a few years, I'll use that. Right now, I use whatever doesn't suck the most.

clif

Nice Review

[HimalayanRoadblock]

Very nice review. Just wanted to put my favorite quote. it requires zero configuration once you're configured properly. That's classic.

Re:Nice Review

[foobar104]

Yeah. And it also makes it pretty clear that Pudge doesn't understand Rendezvous. And the whole "printer sharing with Rendezvous" thing sounds fishy to me. Methinks he's actually talking about AppleTalk, not Rendezvous.

In the interest of clearing things up for the layman-- web resources on Rendezvous and ZeroConf are pretty obtuse-- here's the briefest possible explanation. I don't guarantee it's 100% right, but I think it's pretty close.

Rendezvous comes in two parts: hostname-to-IP mapping and service advertisement and discovery. With Rendezvous, you can make two machine talk to each other by name without host tables or DNS servers. When I'm on one machine-- felix-- I can address the other machine-- oscar-- by name by using the FQDN "oscar.local." For example, I type "FTP oscar.local." All the Rendezvous-equipped machines on my LAN are listening to a special link-local multicast address for DNS-style queries. When oscar receives my machine's query asking about "oscar.local," it replies with its IP address. This works for any combination of IP addresses, but it works best with self-assigned ones. You know, the 169.254 addresses your computer comes up with when no DHCP server responds. This works perfectly now between two Macs with Jaguar. I've been using it every day for months, on developer program pre-release builds. There were some problems with mDNSResponder running amuck, but that has apparently gone away in built 6C125, which is what I'm running now.

The other part of Rendezvous is service advertisement and discovery. That's not implemented in very many apps yet, but one that has it is iChat. When iChat starts up (if Rendezvous chat is enabled) it sends out a query looking for all machines on the local net that support the service "so-n-so." (I don't remember what the iChat service is called.) All the iChatty machines out there respond, and among themselves they set up a sort of ad hoc peer-to-peer network where one machine can message any other machine directly.

iTunes will have this functionality someday, but it doesn't yet. We've all seen the demo where Steve browsed Phil's library over the network. That was a concept demo, not a real feature demo. That's not finished yet.

So Rendezvous is confusing at first.

Partially this is Apple's fault, but in all fairness, how would you market multicast DNS as an operating system feature? It's fucking cool, so you want people to know about it, but exactly how would you describe it?

The end result? Everybody's excited about Rendezvous, but hardly anybody gets it.

Re:Nice Review

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

That's classic.

No, classic is dead. Switch allready, you bearded Unix hippie. Let go off the past and lick those candy buttons!

Re:Nice Review

[Anonymous Coward]

He said that he had some of his machines configured with /8 netmasks and some with /24, which is simply wrong. When they say that Rendezvous requires "zero configuration", that's still greater than "negative configuration", which is what he had...

Re:Nice Review

[pudge]

No, it wasn't AppleTalk. AppleTalk is turned off on all my machines. Heck, it sounds like you don't understand AppleTalk, because changing subnet masks would have nothing to do with AppleTalk, which doesn't rely on TCP/IP. :-)

I don't know why you think what I said is problematic; oh, maybe you thought from my language I meant that there is some special protocol to print over. I guess my language was confusing, but no, I only meant that the shared printer couldn't be seen by a client with the incorrect subnet mask (the discovery part you mentioned).

Re:Nice Review

[arloguthrie]

I agree. This review is very balanced and full of journalistic integrity. How refreshing.

My vote for funniest line: " iChat, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iCal, iSync, iProbablyForgotSomething"

Re:Nice Review

[foobar104]

No, no. It was the part about "requires zero configuration when configured correctly" or whatever. That's just nuts. Rendezvous requires zero configuration, period. If you try to do part of the work (say, assigning IP address) and you foul it up, that has nothing to do with Rendezvous.

Re:Nice Review

[perlyking]

Come on moderators, he is directly discussing the review (I.E this article). While you may find the comment boring, wrong or any other negative thing it is not offtopic.

Re:Nice Review

[Brand X]

I'm not sure if it's rendezvous or something else in the networking... I haven't had the time to track it down... but since I installed 10.2, I've been able to find the printers on our Win2K neighborhood from my mac box, without having to enable a service over TCP on one of my Win2K boxes like I had to, and still do for the linux, solaris, and AIX boxes. Likewise for shared files and directories on the Win2K and WinXP boxes in the local workgroup and domain.
Now, I am, for all intents and purposes, the sysadmin for all of our non-windows machines... not because that's in my job description, but because "cross platform development" is, and I know more, from a decade of cross platform programming experience, than anyone else in the place is likely to. Anything that makes things easier for me is going to make me happy... though I do intend to understand what it is doing, just so I can make sure it continues to work.

Re:Nice Review

[foobar104]

Build 6C125? More info plz?

Bought a new machine on Friday. Updated it with the security update. New build number is 6C125. That's all there is to it.

Re:Nice Review

[miguelitof]

Yes, if you mess up part of the configuration, then zeroconf may not work. That is precisely what I said. Thanks, I guess ...

The problem is, the configuration you are talking about has nothing to do with ZeroConf or Rendezvous. It was configuration of the computer's IP address. So saying "...work great if configured correctly" is like saying "my car works great if I open the garage door."

Re:Nice Review

[foobar104]

I too bought a new machine, received it on Saturday. But even though I ran the Security Update 8-23-2002, my build number remains at 6C115. Why the difference?

No idea. Mine's a dual gigahertz machine, the "speed holes and chrome" model. When I choose "About This Mac" from the Apple menu and then click "More Info," Apple System Profiler pops up showing me the following:

System version: Mac OS X 10.2 (6C125)
Kernel version: Darwin Kernel Version 6.0: Sat Jul 27 13:18:52 PDT 2002; root:xnu/xnu-344.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC

I haven't upgraded any of my other systems to the full Jaguar release yet, so I don't know exactly what the deal is.

Faxing solution

[MouseR]

Try PageSender available from Smile Software.

It provides printer-like setup and fax capabilities. Exactly what e've all been waiting for. it's a shareware, and makes use of OpenSource code like eFax.

It supports faxing my modem and web-based fax services.

THIS is the faxing solution that should have come bundled in the OS.

Re:Faxing solution

[MouseR]

A few typos in there (dang coffee not kicking in yet).

I'm sure you all guessed it doesn't support faxing MY modem, but supports faxing BY modem.

Modern OS?

[diamondc]

Unix has been around for 30 yrs+...

Re:Modern OS?

[Oculus Habent]

Perhaps it should not have been "modern" but more appropriately, "good"

Re:Modern OS?

[Junks Jerzey]

Unix has been around for 30 yrs+...

It's "modern" as in "modern art." More of a period thing than a term meaning "cutting edge."

Re:Modern OS?

[gig]

The global TCP/IP network pretty much makes "UNIX" an essential feature of a "modern operating system", no matter how old UNIX is. Mac OS X is its own operating system, but it is compatible with UNIX wherever it can be because THAT'S WHAT USERS REQUIRE.

Networking

[I_am_Rambi]

it requires zero configuration once you're configured properly.

I work at my university setting up studetn owned computers. I have set up a few Macs, even a 10.2 TiBook the other day. Networking is pretty easy. Select what device (Airport, ethernet) and tell it dhcp. No restarting. Web will then work. The only problem that I have ran acrossed is working with proxies. We have three proxies on campus, and IE 5.x does not like to work with the proxies to go outside of the intranet.

I have found away around this problem. I have to tell the system what proxy to use, and then hard code the sign in proccess screen, as the homepage using the same proxy. When IE starts up, the user is then given the choice to sign in (or if he is sign in to go the internet, it will say). Since IE doesn't like to use connection scripts, this is the only solution I have found.

This small problem is not bad, just wish M$ would fix IE to run connection scripts.

Re:Networking

[asv108]

Select what device (Airport, ethernet) and tell it dhcp. No restarting.

Yeah, Linux and windows 2000/XP does the same thing.

Re:Networking

[hype7]

Yeah, Linux and windows 2000/XP does the same thing.

2000 requires a reboot if you change the network stack in my experience

-- james

An appealing product.

[catwh0re]

Apple have stumbled on wealth the right way: by producing an appealing product. With microsoft still producing bug filled, insecure garbage, that has issues with the software designed to run on it, as they weren't so willing to give proper api to developers, Apple's market share will do nothing other than increase. It's a breath of fresh air.

Re:An appealing product.

[MoneyT]

MS makes cheap operating systems. That's why they got on the PC in the first place -- DOS was the cheapest thing IBM could find.

Actualy, I heard, though not from any sources which I would call 100% reliable, that the day Bill Gates came calling to IBM with DOS, not only did he not actualy have a product, but that earlier that day, IBM was supposed to meet with another developer to possible licence an OS, but the developer was sick, and had to cancel the meeting. Talk about blind luck!

Re:An appealing product.

[MaxVlast]

Aesthetic? It's functional. I love my mac because it's aesthetically pleasing, I continue to buy more because it's functional.

Re:An appealing product.

[gig]

> It's true there aren't many mac virii, but that's just beacause there aren't many macs.

There are over 25 million Macs in use right now, and the platform has been around for 20 years. Mac-bashing is kind of a hobby for some people. Mac OS X has been out for 18 months and has 2-4 million installations. Those are pretty big virus targets.

I think the reason there are no Mac OS X viruses even after 18 months and a very high-profile media presence and some boasting ("World's Most Advanced Operating System") is that it is a proper network operating system, with industry-standard permissions and protocols and time-tested open source technologies at the core. Being on the Internet is NATURAL to Mac OS X. The networking features are ready for it because the Internet is UNIX. Microsoft was quite famously taken completely by surprise by the rise of the World Wide Web and the demise of the "standalone PC'. Bill Gates mentioned the Internet ONCE in his 1995 book "The Road Ahead" ... he said CD-ROMs were going to be the big thing for the late 1990's. There is so much chaos in Windows from every perspective that viruses are just a natural feature. It's so easy to make one for Windows, why bother working hard to MAYBE come up with one that will work on Mac OS X or Linux or another UNIX?

Although there are a few viruses for the older Mac OS, the MS-Office viruses are by far the most common. I read somewhere once that 4 of the top 5 Mac-based viruses of all time ran only in Microsoft software. A Microsoft-free Mac OS machine was said to be 10,000 times less likely to get a virus than a Mac OS machine with MS Office, IE, and Outlook Express on it.

Re:An appealing product.

[ealar dlanvuli]

That or 17 year olds who know trivial scripts in visual basic (at intro to pascal level understanding basically) aern't capable of writing a virus that almost brings down the internet on a mac.

Even if macs had 97% marketshare I would have trouble believing this was the case.

And your point "documented flaws". I'm sorry, but you trust a system with well documented security flaws? It seems to me this would be a major reason to start thinking of switching.

Just to point out MSIE has been publicly vunerable for over 3 weeks now. Lets not even mention how long it's been avadiable to the real black hats. This is the most significant security flaw of the century so far, and it's still not fixed. Quite interesting eh?

My thoughts

[Phroggy]

Aqua has indeed improved. Buttons, in particular, are more... subdued? It looks like they're trying to make things more functional and less flashy.

The arrow pointer looked weird at first, particularly when over a white background, but I've gotten used to it, and it doesn't bug me anymore. Over a darker background it's perfect.

I also have a UMAX scanner, and it may never be supported natively. I did find VueScan which also works on Linux, but I'm not really thrilled with the UI - guess I'll have to play with it some more.

I never really used Sherlock for anything besides searching for files. Thank god they've put that functionality back where it's supposed to be. I may use Sherlock now, but I'm not forced to launch it if all I want is a quick search for a file.

I recently discovered LiteSwitch X, and I miss it. You'd think Apple could make a decent task switcher. Under OS9 I was using the Microsoft Office Manager, which was just about perfect.

"The least painful it's ever been" sums it up quite nicely. It's only getting better, and eventually won't be painful at all. That hope keeps me going. :-)

Why use OSX? First, the OS doesn't crash as often. Second, it's UNIX. I love being able to ssh to my Linux box from work, send a WOL packet to my Mac to wake it from sleep, ssh into it, locate a file, and use scp to send it where I need it.

Now if I can just get ghostscript to work, I'll be able to print from Linux to the printer on my Mac. I'm really impressed with cups.

Re:My thoughts

[Phroggy]

I was giving my reasons for using OSX over OS9. I've already got Linux on a couple other boxes. Linux on the desktop sucks ass, and if you disagree, you're probably not a Mac user. It's better than win32, but that's because win32 sucks worse.

Re:My thoughts

[MoneyT]

1) It's not linux. Believe me I've tried over and over to get linux to run nicely on a mac, and while it runs, there are always plenty of flaws and bugs, more so than in OS X.

2) OS X is cleaner. Period. There is no linux distro out there that I have found that installs as easily and painlessly as OS X.

3) Support. If I have a problem, I call apple, apple fixes my problem. If I'm useing YDL and I have a problem, Apple will say ,sorry we don't offer support for YDL

4) Have they gotten rid of the dependency on OS 9? Last time I played with LinuxPPC (about 1 year or so ago) it required a control panel in OS 9 and required you to begin booting in OS 9 so that the boot manager could load and then you chose to boot linux. That to me was a pain.

5) No need to reformat my drive to work under *NIX.

6) Developer tools. Yeah I can download the CD, but having a hard copy and not having to waste my time is much more valuble.

7) After spending 3 days downloading LinuxPPC over a 33.6 modem, with the understanding that it would work on a 5400/180, only to try to install it and have it not work at all, would you want to try again?

Those are my reasons to pay $70 to buy OS X.2 WHat are your reasons for using YDL?

Re:My thoughts

[ealar dlanvuli]

I was giving my reasons for using OSX over OS9. I've already got Linux on a couple other boxes. Linux on the desktop sucks ass, and if you disagree, you're probably not a Mac user. It's better than win32, but that's because win32 sucks worse.

haha so true.. I've recently started wondered why I found 4 hours of compiling/tweaking just to get a functional *BSD box was considered acceptable to me. Not that I'm dissing FreeBSD or anything (in fact I can hardly stand any other x86 OS currently, though I have not tried os/2), it's just that 4 hours just to get a new setup functional is a tad bit extreme. Then I think about what it takes to install windows on a clean box and realize it'd be 4 hours just to get to the equivalent of FreeBSD's first boot (all hardware except sound detected and working correctly, just have programs to install and config left).

I'm seriously considering ebaying my current laptop and getting a mid-level mac laptop that can run osX to replace it. Does anyone think that would be wise? (My current setup is prety much the definition of a perfect kde3 desktop)

anyway enough rambling, time to actually get some work done!

"Linux will not be able to take over the PC deskto

[BoomerSooner]

"Linux will not be able to take over the PC desktop" is the best part of your post.

I have tried to run Linux as a desktop system since 1996 and have never been completely satisfied. The day I bought my G4 with OS X 10.1.5 is the day Linux died on the desktop for me. I can ssh/sftp to my servers (linux/solaris) and use wonderful apps that are unmatched on linux (Photoshop, Acrobat-Full, InDesign, FlashMX, Office-waiting for StarOffice).

Linux is 10 years behind OS X and I cannot wait for my 10.2 upgrade to come in the mail (thank god I waited to get my G4 until the 17th).

You might want to try VueScan for your scans

[teamhasnoi]

This allows me to use my UMAX scanner from OS X. It's updated all the time, and works relly well. YMMV.

What I find ironic, is that my mom is using the most advanced unix ever at home, while I'm still futzing with Windows. I knew there was a reason I go to work.

I ran into the same problem with SharePoints and eventually had to move the entire pile of folders to my public folder to share. BAH!

And I'm still trying to get a VNC server that works on OS X, then I could pretend that I have OS X 10.1 at home.

See, I'd pretend 10.1, cause the connection would be slow.. :P

Re:You might want to try VueScan for your scans

[Anonymous Coward]

AFAIK the only Aqua-displaying VNC server is osxvnc. The official hompage is down (osxvnc.com), however, there's a posting here with a download link. Used it once, worked just fine....

Re:You might want to try VueScan for your scans

[mr100percent]

Versiontracker has a good list of VNC servers and clients for OS X.

Re:You might want to try VueScan for your scans

[myov]

FWIW, VueScan doesn't support low-end scanners (like my Umax Astra 2200, but then again Umax's own software has issues - 3 machines, 2 different versions, and only 1 combination works.).

It does seem to support higher end ones nicely (I'm going to try it on a Nikon film scanner at work. The Nikon software is good, but it's not X-native).

Re:Modern OS? (all inclusive)

[BoomerSooner]

You've got to look at the improvements. So you're saying the UNIX of today is the same as 30 years ago? Right.

It's just like (to use another car analogy) when Ford released the *new* Thunderbird. Yes it has been around for 40+ years and yes it IS NEW!

Amazing how some people cannot seem to catch on that things can be modified into something new.

is the new iMail any good?

[rhetland]

Absent from the review is a discussion of iMail. I have seen that there are quite a few improvements planned, like auto-detecting spam.

Does anyone know: is it really all that good?

It's just that I don't really like Eudora, and I want some alternatives...

Re:is the new iMail any good?

[veddermatic]

IT's quite good... I don't think it's as full of features as Eudora, but if you want "simple" a mail client that can turn off HTML content in recieved messages, do plain or formatted sending, deal with multiple accts, it works well.

The "junk mail" filter is pretty darn good out of the box, and you can "train" it further by hitting the "JUNK" ubtton for messages that are spam.

I siwtched over to it from Eudora, and I'm very happy after a few weeks with it.

Re:is the new iMail any good?

[tbmaddux]

I like the new Mail.app after having to make some adjustments.

The Junk mail filter is apparently a heuristic filter that will learn as you give it feedback. I have it turned on in "training mode" right now; there is a "Junk" icon to flag junk mail; it turns to "Not Junk" if you want to de-flag some mail. When you put it into automatic mode it creates a "Junk" folder that you can then set to automatically empty after a certain period of time.

Other filters (Mail.app calls them "rules") are more capable; you can AND/OR (match "any" or "all") the rules before applying an action.

Unfortunately, the SpamCop mailbundle for MacOS X Mail.app is broken with the new version of Mail. So is GPGMail, but there is a beta version already available for download.

The mailboxes "drawer" on the right has changed its look a little bit, which I had to mentally adjust-for. Most irritatingly, I was only able to see my IMAP folders by enabling my .Mac email (it just forwards to my IMAP account anyway). It was a little clunky/inconsistent with things like "On My Mac" appearing/disappearing, but eventually I got the look of it stabilized.

Re:is the new iMail any good?

[Oculus Habent]

Actually, it's just called "Mail" as it has been in previous versions of MacOS X.

The reviews I have read say the spam/junk detection is quite good at it's job, though it won't ever stop everything.

Re:is the new iMail any good?

[gig]

> Does anyone know: is it really all that good?

Yes. I really like Mail, and in 10.2 spam has stopped being a problem for me. The newest version also deals with attachments better, and can display PDF inline, and lots of little tweaks besides.

Also

[OrangeHairMan]

There are a lot (300+) user comments/reviews on MacSlash: http://www.macslash.org/articles/02/08/24/0410244. shtml

Orange

iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

I know I'm going to get flamed to pieces for this, but isn't the i* software suite just doing what Microsoft did with Windows and Internet Explorer?

If you install your OS and get iChat, iTunes, iMovie, iPhoto, iDVD, iCal, iSync and whatever i* software they put in next:

a) are you going to look for/know of alternatives?
b) are you going to use them, especially if they won't integrate as well with the OS and other apps as well as Apple's i* series will?

Surely the point of taking Microsoft to court for bundling IE and therefore slaying the browser market was not just to get at Microsoft, but to prevent OS vendors from dominating and killing off large sectors of the software market?

Re:iMicrosoft?

[BeeShoo]

"I know I'm going to get flamed to pieces for this, but isn't the i* software suite just doing what Microsoft did with Windows and Internet Explorer?"

Nope. There's big difference between included with the OS" and "part of the OS".
Having said that, I don't believe for a second that IE is truly part of the OS. But, you don't get a choice whether or not to install it (the iApps do not have to be installed), and there is no way (at least, none provided by MS) to uninstall IE. The iApps can all be removed simply by using the delete key. No harm to your system. Install your preferred app, get on with your life.
BIG difference.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

Microsoft does (or has got as close as a company could). But this is a matter of principle, not of bashing the monopolists. What good is it in downsizing a monopoly, and replacing it with a monopoly run by two companies?

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

Big difference to someone like you, yes, but not to the average consumer who will either buy a Mac with it all pre-installed, or will install MacOSX themselves and install it all because it is recommended and probably a very good thing for them. There's a technical difference, but not a very practical one.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Cutriss]

You raise good points, but the fact is that most of the "bonus" software that you don't already have is part of what you're paying for when you buy the OS upgrade, and many people purchasing that upgrade already have solutions for some of those apps.

iChat = AIM
iTunes=MacAmp or XMMS

Outside of those, the rest of the software is functional enough for toying around and playing as a home user. iPhoto isn't taking any business away from Adobe. iMovie and iDVD are low-end versions of high-end software that Apple already dominates the market in.

The big thing is that, mostly because of the way that the OS works, nothing in any of those programs keeps you from using an alternative solution, and they do nothing to hinder the performance or sabotage operation of other apps. If you don't like iMovie, drag its folder to the Trash.

Also, with the sole exception initial-purchase-consumer-attraction, and Internet Explorer, I can't think of any way that Apple uses its installed base for business reasons. They don't take you to their own ISP for a search engine when your DNS lookup fails. They don't advertise partners and services in iChat's windows. They don't put all sorts of other ads and offers on the screen when you use iTunes. Internet Explorer defaults to Apple's Netscape homepage (ironically enough), and it comes with a default set of saved URLs, but all that's easily changed.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

Yes, they're certainly no way near as bad as Microsoft's bundling techniques, but I still worry for the creators of software like XMMS, Winamp, AIM, ICQ, Pixie, MPlayer, and any other software the i* suite replaces, especially those that are commercial enterprises.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Elwood P Dowd]

But this is a matter of principle, not of bashing the monopolists. What good is it in downsizing a monopoly, and replacing it with a monopoly run by two companies?

Uh... That's the dumbest question I've heard in a while. The good is: A monopoly run by two companies is not a monopoly. *All* of the disadvantages of a monopoly are diminished greatly. For example, the two companies must compete for your business.

Of course, if the two companies collude to keep prices high, that's price fixing, and it's got it's own set of problems. It's also illegal, IIRC.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[foobar104]

What good is it in downsizing a monopoly, and replacing it with a monopoly run by two companies?

I don't know where to begin telling you what's wrong with that sentence.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

Ohhh stricly speaking it makes no sense, but the meaning was put across. What more do you want in a Slashdot comment?

Re:iMicrosoft?

[foobar104]

Apple is also a monopoly in PowerPC machines.

We've talked about this before. Every company is the sole provider of its own products. This does not make it a monopoly. I can only buy Beetles from Volkswagen. That doesn't mean Volkswagen has a monopoly on Beetles. "Monopoly" isn't a word you'd use in that situation.

Similarly, Apple makes Macs. Nobody else makes Macs. That's because a Mac is a product, not a class of products. If Apple were the only company that made personal computers, they'd have a monopoly on the personal computer market. But that's not the case. So no, Apple doesn't have any kind of a monopoly, over anything.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

So a market with two competitors a little scope for others is better than a market with one player, but it is not correct according to the holy free market theory. There is no perfect competition there, and though you offer some choice to consumers, you don't offer choice to other software companies, and therefre you offer very little choice in software as compared with what you could.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Elwood P Dowd]

I know I'm going to get flamed to pieces for this, but isn't the i* software suite just doing what Microsoft did with Windows and Internet Explorer?

Um... FYI, MacOS also includes Internet Explorer.

Surely the point of taking Microsoft to court for bundling IE and therefore slaying the browser market was not just to get at Microsoft, but to prevent OS vendors from dominating and killing off large sectors of the software market?

Well... most of the people *testifying* against Microsoft did it because they were competing with Microsoft and felt that it should be easier. But that has nothing to do with the reason the government's reason: It is illegal to use your monopoly in one market to leverage a monopoly in another market. That is the one and *only* "point" of taking MS to court.

I would also submit that Apple has made it clear that they only produce iApps in software markets that do not have sufficient attention from other software makers. iMovie got made because Apple felt that otherwise, new computer users would *never* seek out such software, and they would never get such a valuable use out of their computer. Apple created dead-end user video editing.

Also, if competitor's apps don't integrate as well as the iApps... then those competitors make a lower quality product. Apple isn't using hidden APIs. It's a level playing ground in that regard.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[overunderunderdone]

There is only one difference. Apple is not a monopoly. Everything that Microsoft did is perfectly legal EXCEPT if you are a monopoly. That is a legal distinction you are still free to judge them on the ethics of it.

Perhaps I was wrong and there is one other subtle difference between Apple including free apps with the OS and Microsoft. Appple is not doing it to drive a competitor out of business. Microsoft was threatened by Netscape & by Sun's Java (& the internet in general) with the rumbling of crossplatform compatibility and open standards threatening to make the PC world competitive for other OS's. So they buried Netscape by including a free browser (& making it *part* of the OS) they cut off the cross platform threat of Java by "embracing & extending (& extinguishing) it, so it would no longer be crossplatform.

Apple on the other hand is not threatened by Watson or or Adobe or any of the other developers their iApps compete with. Their motivation is not to create a "good enough" free product to drive a competitor out of business but to create superior products to compete more effectively with that other OS. Inadvertantly it hurts (some) developers they 'compete' with on the mac but that is not their intent - they want as many apps on the mac as possible. And in most cases they are not scaring away developers, for every developer that stays away from the Mac because they dont want to run the risk of competing with a bundled iApp there is probably another developer that come to the mac hoping his little App will be bought by Apple to become that bundled iApp - like SoundJam MP (iTunes) Macromedia FinalCut Pro (iMovie and Apple FinalCut Pro) & all the audio & video developers Apple is buying up right and left.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[tgibbs]

I know I'm going to get flamed to pieces for this, but isn't the i* software suite just doing what Microsoft did with Windows and Internet Explorer?

More like what Apple did with MacWrite and MacDraw. Now if Apple set it up so that the system would not function if you deleted them, that would be like what Microsoft tried to do with Explorer.

Re: iMicrosoft?

[Saint Fnordius]

Your questions are valid, but I don't think Apple is doing the same thing that Microsoft did.

a) most of these programs are stand-alone apps that can be removed without fuss. If you own Photoshop, you can delete iPhoto without breaking anything.

b) integration between the iApps is no more than what Apple allows other programs to do. In fact, I think Apple uses these programs as technology showcases/examples to inspire developers.

Apple's philosophy behind including programs is markedly different than Microsoft's. MS adds programs to the OS in an effort to squeeze out competition, but Apple wants to make its hardware more attractive-sell more units. That's why they include these iApps without integrating them into the OS. You really can take them or leave them.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

Yes, but GNU/Linux distributions offer miltuple choices wherever possible from different developers and companies, and so there is always scope for a new company or developer to spring up and produce an alternative that will, within a year if its good, be shipped with many distributions.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[jcoleman]

iTunes actually will manage your .aiff and .wav files, you just have to add them to the library manually.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Fizzlewhiff]

Although they perform different functions, IE is to Windows what bash is to Linux. Both can be removed but the consequences will be pretty severe. The best option is to install whatever it is you like better and just use it. Let IE sit there and let the system utilize it when needed or let bash sit there and let the system utilize it when needed. Besides in the Windows world there are more annoyances other than the difficulty of removing IE. The constant struggle between RealAudio and Quicktime for example. But back to the subject...

The Apple iPrograms are nice. iMovie may not replace Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier for the professional or advanced video editor but what is the alternative for the novice? Its not like I order a Mac and add a firewire option and then select the vendors choice of editing software. Sony, Dell, Gateway, etc aren't in the picture and their customized licensed video software isn't competing with iMovie or anything else. Its different when you control the hardware. Microsoft's problem stemmed from the resellers. If you were a PC company and you spent money licensing video editing, audio editing, web browsing, and other software to gain edge over the competition and then suddenly Microsoft included all of that into Windows you might feel that Microsoft just leveled the playing field. Honestly I don't think Microsoft did this to hurt the resellers as much as they did it to compete with Apple. In many cases, the software that is bundled by some of the resellers beats what Microsoft includes.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[bmajik]

You don't beleive IE is a part of the OS because you clearly dont understand how windows and COM work.

IE hosts the HTML rendering COM component that essentially everything in windows uses. Think of it as a shared library.

How functional would your linux install be if you started removing shared librares. Say you removed libpng ? Sure, the system would boot, many many things would work, but suddenly apps compiled to render pngs wouldn't - at all. Depending on how they were written, they might not even start, because ld would not resolve the symbol at load time. Or, more analagous to the situation with COM, they'd load and start executing, and when they tried a dlopen() (or LoadLibrary or CoCreate or similar on windows) the app would be unable to continue properly.

So, given the huge number of apps that rely on the IE-supplied HTML rendering library (HTML help, the Add/Remove programs control panel iirc, just to name two big ones), blindly yanking all traces of IE seems like a monumentally stupid idea, no ?

Linux will run into the same thing in a few years, if app developers ever get smart and start using moz_embed instead of writing their own crappy broken HTML parsers/renderers. Suddenly browser choice will go away because effectively every app requires the mozilla rendering engine to be included.

Incidentally the way this could be avoided would be to write a shared library HTML renderer specification (something like a COM Interface in windows) that could be implemented by a stub .so library that mapped the incoming library calls to a run-time bindable implementation library of moz_embed, konquerer_whatever, or anything else you might like. The same could be done on windows, but there was never any collaboration to come up with a COM Interface for a "System html rendering component".

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Smitty825]

can't think of any way that Apple uses its installed base for business reasons

You could make that argument that they are promoting .Mac for business reasons (formerly iTools), now that they are charging $100 for those services.

Re: iMicrosoft?

[TWR]

There is the occasional exception to the iApps "just" being stand-alone and models for developers. For instance, iPhoto ignores the email client setting in OS X, only offering to use Apple's Mail. (There are hacks to change this, but that's not the point.) This perhaps is an example of Microsoft-like, or at least dumb, behavior.

The problem is scripting, not monopoly behavior; iPhoto works with Mail by using AppleEvents. There is no standard suite of AppleEvents for mail programs, and even if there was, Apple has no way to know if a given mail program does support this hypothetical scripting suite.

The patcher was written by a guy who figured out the scripting commands for a bunch of third-party mail programs, and from what I can tell, it's not a 100% emulation of what iPhoto can do with Apple's own Mail program.

-jon

Re:iMicrosoft?

[TWR]

So a market with two competitors a little scope for others is better than a market with one player, but it is not correct according to the holy free market theory.

Well, yes.

You don't seem to understand that the focus of antitrust law isn't helping other COMPANIES, it's helping CONSUMERS.

If you have two large companies in a market competing with each other, the consumers are going to win. If you have two (or more) companies in a market who are working as a cartel, or if you have one company in a market, you have a monopoly situation, and consumers aren't going to benefit.

If you are stupid enough to go into an established market and try to compete, the government isn't going to bail you out if you are unable to compete. For example, if you start a soft drink company and fail, you have no recourse if you feel cheated by the fact that Coke and Pepsi combined own over 90% of the market.

-jon

Re:iMicrosoft?

[StarFace]

I'm not sure about all the software you listed, but XMMS and mplayer in particular will live on as long as they need to. They are both open source, and in my opinion offer many more features and things that I prefer than the i.* stuff. For instance, being able to skip directly to the movie from the command line and bypass the menu/FBI warning/Adverts/and so on. XMMS only taking up eight or so pixels of height instead of the Vast Tracks of Land that iTunes requires, even in MiniMode.

They aren't for everyone, but they are not in danger.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[tshak]

So, if you are a monopoly you have to decrease the value of your product by including LESS software? This doesn't make any sense. What MS can't do as a Monopoly is force people to use IE, which they don't. Recently, to appease the DOJ, MS has included a more user friendly interface to allow the user to switch the defaults to their own Browse/Media Player/etc. Still, to say that MS can't include a browser (one the most used "OS feature" of new Windows PC's) is not only against american principles of business it takes value away from consumers. Remember, the only reason their are restrictions on Monopolies is to truely better the consumers, not hurt the monopoly.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Lars T.]

Well, are they that equal? Karelia says:

Unfortunately for Apple, Sherlock 3 is not quite up to par with Watson in terms of speed or functionality, so we're not that worried. And soon, we will release some more tools for Watson that will continue to make it the market leader in Web services.

OTOH, with Sherlock 3 there is at least the possibility that some of the features will work outside the US.

Last but not least: If Apple wants to crush Karelia, why do they link to Watson in their Mac OS X - Downloads section?

Re:iMicrosoft?

[stux]

And in other news, HP holds a monopoly on Hewlett-Packard hardware...

whoop-di-doo, its not a monopoly by the legal definition

Re:iMicrosoft?

[gig]

You don't even have to stop the iApps from being installed when you run the Mac OS X installer. On the Mac, the concept of "installed" (sitting on available storage) is not the same as on Windows (where apps are mixed into one big soup). "Uninstalling" iApps is just Trashing (deleting) them. iTunes is ONE ICON. iPhoto is ONE ICON. iMovie is ONE ICON.

A child raised by monkeys can "uninstall" apps on a Mac.

With all these "Switchers" around now, there are actually two ways to do everything on the Mac now: the easy way, and the hard way that former Windows users always choose. For example, it is very hard to convince a Windows user that they don't need to wipe their hard drive in order to install a new version of the OS. When I installed 10.2, I checked the option for "clean install", so that the whole /System folder is completely replaced. My apps are still there in /Applications, and the users are all still there in /Users, so I have a fresh system.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

The world of soft drinks and the world of computing and the Internet are very different though. And I don't care what your country's antitrust law says or is about, I'm talking about my views here.

New soft drinks are launched fairly regularly, often from companies new to the scene. How can they do this? Well, they produce them, then sell them to the shops, and they appear on shelves and in adverts, and consumers see them, get the chance to try them, and reject or accept them based on their merit, and their image.

With software, if you've (or not you, but a normal old computer user) bought your new computer, and it has all this lovely stuff on it to do everything you need, you're not going to go out of your way to look for stuff you don't even know exists. And there is no shelf on which you will see competing products. When it comes to you, your computer and iWhatever, there is no perfect information about the marketplace. So competitors rely on consumers being motivated enough to look elsewhere.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[Telex4]

Funny, when I installed SuSE 7.2 and 7.3, and Mandrake 8.2, and Slackware 7.1 and 8.0, they all installed more than one of almost everything I wanted to use, and during the installation process, if I wanted, there was ample opportunity to choose many more. I'm not sure what distribution you're talking about here.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[gig]

> Yes, but you can happily replace the (IMHO) awful bash with zsh. And Linux will still
> carry on working just fine.

Just as you can replace IE with Mozilla on Mac OS X and everything is still fine (or the shells for that matter, too). Mac OS X has a built-in HTML renderer as well ... it's just not combined with the browser applications. OmniWeb uses it, Mail uses it, but you can still Trash OmniWeb and Mail and not affect the system's HTML renderer. Mozilla and IE don't use the built-in renderer ... it's up to the developers of the applications.

Internet Explorer 5.x for Mac OS X is just a single icon sitting in /Applications. The first thing I do after an OS update is convert it into a virtual disk image. That way, it is unavailable (as if it were not on the computer at all), but I can still just double-click it and it mounts like a CD and now I can run IE from there to test Web sites in it (I test as I work in a Mozilla-based browser and in OmniWeb, then check IE at the last minute and it's usually fine since IE/Mac has a standards-compliant rendering engine, unlike the Windows version).

Re:iMicrosoft?

[TWR]

Clearly you know nothing about retail. Large supermarket chains SELL shelf space to companies. They sell floor display space to companies. Big companies will buy excess shelf space just to keep smaller competitors out of the stores. Most of these "new" soft drinks are actually produced by one of the already-existing big companies. It's nearly impossible to break in with a new drink without a big company behind you.

Learn something about business and then I'll give your views a smidgen of respect.

-jon

Re:iMicrosoft?

[gig]

Yes, they're certainly no way near as bad as Microsoft's bundling techniques, but I still worry for the creators of software like XMMS, Winamp, AIM, ICQ, Pixie, MPlayer, and any other software the i* suite replaces, especially those that are commercial enterprises.

Apple's iApps don't replace anything. THIRD-PARTY SOFTWARE HAS TO BE GOOD ENOUGH TO REPLACE THE iAPPS, not the other way around. If it is not, then the developer either has to work harder or move on to something else.

The iApps are so popular because they are "unfeaturist" ... the features are the least important thing about them, and that's opposite to everyone else right now ("Think Different"). Compare:

Microsoft's apps are bloated, complicated UI, low-quality, have tons of useless features, and are commingled and blended into Windows so you can't replace them with an alternative
Apple's apps are lightweight, simple UI, high-quality, have only the basic features that EVERYBODY needs, and are standalone applications that appear as ONE ICON you can delete if you want to replace it with an alternative.

In fact, you're SUPPOSED to replace one or two of the iApps with alternatives. For example, a video editing person will use iPhoto and iTunes, but replace iMovie and iDVD with Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro. A dedicated music lover might replace iTunes with Audion, but continue to happily make the occasional home movie in iMovie. It's software ... it doesn't cost anything to put it in the hands of people who WERE NOT GOING TO BUY SOFTWARE IN THAT NICHE ANYWAY. My wife was NEVER going to go out onto the Web and discover what file-based digital music was and compare the various players and then start a music library. She learned about this whole niche of software from iTunes, simply because it came with her Mac. Then she bought a Creative Nomad portable MP3 player (since replaced by an iPod).

Also, I have to mention that the iApps got popular BEFORE they came with the operating system or with Mac purchases. iMovie 1.0 debuted at $59 or free with an iMac DV (and only an iMac DV), and people bought it and downloaded it in DROVES. iTunes was just a download long before it ever shipped included for the first time in Mac OS X. People were buying new Macs with SuperDrives just to get to iDVD, not buying Macs and getting iDVD along for the ride. This speaks to QUALITY.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[gig]

> What features exactly are so integrated that a 3rd party developer could not mimmick?
> The address book is accessable by any program. That is all I can think of.

Address Book uses vCards and communicates with other apps in all the same ways that any Mac app does. Developers who already make similarly functioning software can make their app a replacement for Address Book quite easily.

The core of the OS is open source. Some users get in there and replace UNIX components with different ones and they're fine. THIS IS NOT WINDOWS.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[gig]

The funny thing with the Watson debate is that Watson is obviously named "Watson" because Sherlock is named "Sherlock". Get it? Watson is a "Sherlock add-on", or "Sherlock enhancement". "You've seen Sherlock ... now go further with Watson."

Three years ago, Web services meant scraping Web pages, and that's what Sherlock did then. Now, it means the XML/Soap stuff, and that's what Sherlock does now. Duh. Is Apple supposed to just drop Sherlock entirely and recommend Watson to people? The name would be even weirder then.

I bought Watson. I like it. I look forward to it growing along with Sherlock. There are plenty of things that the Watson developers can do to grow it. Has the whole fucking future been invented yet? NO.

The only reason I can think of that I wouldn't buy a future version of Watson is all the whining that Karelia did about this. It's infantile. SHOW ME THE CODE! SHOW ME THE PRODUCT! ENTICE ME TO PART WITH MY HARD-EARNED CASH!

Just like all the included apps in Mac OS X, Sherlock does what it does "for everybody", and a certain subset of everybody are going to like that so much that they want Sherlock Plus, which, elementarily, is named "Watson".

It's also worth noting that Apple gave Watson lots of publicity, including a design award, featured the developer in a huge Webcast, promoted Watson in articles on Apple.com, and then offered the guy a job at Apple working on the future of Sherlock. He turned it down to keep making Watson and now he is complaining about the fact that ANYBODY CAN MAKE A WEB SERVICES CLIENT. That's the fucking idea with the Internet in the first place. Why use XML/Soap for Web services ... why don't we just use Watson Markup Language and we'll all do Web services in Watson from here to eternity.

I remember that Karelia also said that the reason Watson was Mac OS X -only, not for Mac OS 9 or for Windows was that with Cocoa and other built-in features of Mac OS X, they just had to build the app, not make the plumbing, so they got it done in 1/3 the time with 1/10 the developers. Well, that's why you were there first. Don't expect to own the market forever.

It's sad to see this kind of thing being debated in public. The time spent on this should have been spent on Watson 2. How about 20 new channels, some only good for lawyers, some only good for doctors, some only good for coders? Then lawyers, doctors, and coders will be happy to pay $15 for Watson 2, even if they already have Sherlock 3. You know what I mean? Get it together.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[gig]

What you're saying is that circa 1990, the makers of a really crappy DOS text editor had every right to complain about the inclusion of Notepad in Windows 3. I would say that if there is no compelling reason to upgrade from an iApp to your product, then your product is NOT COMPELLING. There are plenty of text editors for Windows, and even some that simply advertise as "Notepad replacements", where the app is even named "notepad.exe" (to get around how hard it is to tell Windows to link documents to apps).

It's hard for non-Mac users to judge this stuff. On the Mac, iMovie is a great starter editor, or everything that the hobbyist needs if they add a few plug-ins (filters, transitions, etc). On Windows, though, iMovie kicks ass completely, so a Windows user can't imagine ditching iMovie for something better. There is nothing better on Windows at any price for working with DV. Even with Premiere, you will run into Windows again and again and again, even when just trying to reliably capture DV from a camcorder.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[larkost]

PPC hardware maker... umm... IBM? Several of their workstations run on PPC processors. Or what about Cisco, a lot of their routers are PPC hardware. Ohh.. you mean PPC hardware that runs MacOS X...

And then you have to start bringing IBM in as a "monopoly" on AIX computers, Sun in on Sparc computers... etc...

And if you compare Apple's prices to a similar vendor (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc..) on the Wintell side you will find that the prices are pretty close. There is a lot of room for interpretation about what is comparable, but there is no way you could argue "monopolistic prices".

Re: iMicrosoft?

[gig]

There is the occasional exception to the iApps "just" being stand-alone and models for developers. For instance, iPhoto ignores the email client setting in OS X, only offering to use Apple's Mail. (There are hacks to change this, but that's not the point.) This perhaps is an example of Microsoft-like, or at least dumb, behavior.

I think this is most likely due to the fact that iPhoto is still in version 1. There are more glaring omissions in iPhoto than the fact that it has a button for "(Apple)Mail" not "e-mail". iMovie is in 2, iTunes in 3, iDVD in 2, and these apps all got a lot better after their first versions.

Still ... the workaround is that you just drag a photo from iPhoto into an email message in Eudora or whatever and you get the same effect. Or drag to Finder and then drag the file into your email message (you get the picture).

With Microsoft, we're talking about things they do again and again and again and again, increasing as version numbers go up.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[overunderunderdone]

Ah, so if by some miracle Apple achieved the market share that Microsoft now have then they would be a monopoly?

Umm... Yes. If you have 100% (or real close) you are a monopoly. That is after all what the word means.

So a big company doing this kind of thing is wrong, but a company with small market share is allowed. Is that what Slashdotters really hate? Success?

It's not the /.ers whose opinions count on this. Anti-trust laws are designed to stop monopolies from using the power that comes from being a monopoly to perpetuate that monopoly and extending it into other areas. The effect is that many business deals or practices that are perfectly legal for someone with 5% market share become illegal when you have 95% market share.

As I said that is just the legal side of things, legality is not the final arbiter of ethics. Lots of unethical behaviour is legal.

Re:iMicrosoft?

[overunderunderdone]

I will undoubtedly be flamed for it, but I fail to see how Apple isn't a monopoly on Apple hardware.

As others have already pointed out everybody has a "monopoly" on their own product but that is not what the word "monopoly" means. Micro$oft is not a monopoly because they are the only company that produces Windows, they are a monopoly because their product (windows) has 95% of the desktop OS market.

If a 3rd party developer writes exclusively for Mac platform, and Apple comes out with a bundled, "free" version of the same app, how would that not put the competitor out of business?

Well they can pursue the obvious option of developing the same product for that other OS with 95% of the market. A windows developer in the same situation is obviously a little more stuck, even if they successfully dominate the alternative OS they are still looking at bankruptcy.

Re: iMicrosoft?

[TWR]

But there was no need for Apple to add this itself. Instead it created an open API for iPhoto, to let anyone write their own tools. Several people have done so (for example, the Toast guys have a tool to burn a CD of images with the click of a button, and another tool generates better and more flexible web pages than the built-in HTML export).

If some email client wants to add support for mailing images via iPhoto, let it do so. It's not up to Apple to write hacks that might break in the future in order to support third parties, especially when there's a clean API to allow third parties to integrate properly.

-jon

Re:iMicrosoft?

[ealar dlanvuli]

Whats really interesting, you can actually delete all the files associated with IE, clean up the registry slightly, and Win98 works perfectly fine.

It just hard crashes every time it tries to make a call to MSIE, which happens as far as I can tell only when one tries to view a webpage. Neither file explorer is broken, and the desktop works just fine. All programs in the control pannel work great, and all of MS's other apps are able to function fine.

I always found it odd that the only thing making it "integrated" to the OS was the fact that they don't check to see if MSIE exists before they try to call into it.

Therefore thier claim to the fact it's "integrated" to the os soley lies on the fact that "It's always been there, therefore third party developers might have taken it for granted". This is a prety weak argument if you ask me, and I have trouble believing that third party developers can't easily interface a gecko object if it's set to the default/MSIE fails to be in existance.

Re:huh?

[Oculus Habent]

Some people like and are much more comfortable with their Linux software, and want to run it, no matter where. MacOS X offers you the ability to run XFree on it if you choose, giving you access to all the games you played on your Linux box. :) It's just another choice that Apple can offer people with MacOS X. -- Not everybody wants MacOS X. Not everyone wants Linux. Thankfully, not everyone wants Windows.

Re:huh?

[blakespot]

So you can compile and run, say, Linux apps that havea GUI. Linux uses X-Windows System and Apple's GUI is (superior and) proprietary. GIMP is an example.

blakespot

Use Mozilla

[stego]

Just recently had my first proxy experience setting up my gf's iMac for UVA. Mozilla worked just fine from off campus using the proxy.

Re:Use Mozilla

[laserjet]

Just as another data point, I have also found that Mozilla seems to work better with proxies than IE 5 on OS X. Not sure why.

Now if only they could be more stable. IE and Mozilla seem to crash more on OS X than on a PC - Anyone else notice the same?

Re:OS 10.2 and Audio Apps

[clifyt]

No...Classic will NEVER run these things. Too much low level access that X isn't going to give up.

Expect a fall release for Logic X. ProTools??? No clue.

Take a gander at sonikmatter.com and check out our Logic forums for more info.

clif
sonikmatter

What a bunch of whining!

[BitGeek]

Sheesh. You want Unix but you want it to work just like an operating system designed in 1984? This is silly, these absurd expectations.

OS X, 10.1 runs fine, if a bit sluggish on my 9500. To hear people complaining about its performance on G4s makes me laugh. I don't buy it-- I think this is just an excuse from people who are too grumpy to switch from OS 9.

I made the transition from OS 9 really easily. The UI? Much better in 10. The cruft? Gone in 10.

Umax doesn't support OS X? Bitch at Umax, not Apple. Some software breaks? Well, those are the breaks-- probably the person who made it will fix it. But Apple hasn't done anything wrong (Except provide some nice features in 10.2 tempting us software makers to make our products 10.2 only.)

To completely gloss over the fact that OS X is a new OS (not a warmed over version of NeXT) with a lot of new fiatures, and complain (and complain and complain) about the fact that its different than 9 is absurd.

If apple had shipped something that looked like OS 9, the OS would have been a complete failure. Instead they shipped something good and made a break with the past-- its about time. 15 years with the same UI is too long... and now they can migrate and update the UI much faster so it doesn't get stale, crufty, and pointless like OS 9 was getting. (Note the changes in 10.2, every button is different, etc.)

ITs time for a moratorium on OS 9 whining. IF you don't like 10, don't switch. But don't complain that you can't have your cake and eat it to. Its absurd.

Re:What a bunch of whining!

[Pfhreakaz0id]

geez. You need more ram. I've a 1.2 ghz celeron with shitty video and 256MB ram and XP runs great.

Re:What a bunch of whining!

[be-fan]

That's my point. I bought my laptop with only 128MB because Dell charges a ridiculous amount for RAM. After I upgraded the machine to 640MB, it ran fine. But my point is that if a 2GHz machine with 128MB of RAM won't run XP well, a K6 with 128MB of RAM certainly won't run XP well. Yet, some people still think XP on that config runs fine.

Re:What a bunch of whining!

[be-fan]

I was running with 256MB of RAM, with every tweek commonly known (and some not so commonly known). The problem is that you have a different definition of usable than I do. "Truely usable" for me means instant. Things should pop up the nanosecond I click my mouse. There should be *no* visible delay. There should never be any flicker, even when resizing complex windows. BeOS was like that for me on my old 300MHz P300. Take, for example, windows with large bitmaps in them (like the initial screen in the KDE control panel). There is visible rubber-banding when you resize that panel quickly, even on my 2GHz machine. In comparison, I never saw rubber-banding in any native BeOS apps, and that was with only 300Mhz. Or take the example of starting up complex dialog boxes like the Konqueror preferences menu. In BeOS, you clicked the menu item and it appeared. In Konqueror, there is a noticible delay (maybe 1/2 a second) before the menu appears. In all, I lose maybe a whole 30 seconds over the course of a day to UI lag. Not a big deal overall, but it bugs the hell out of me while I'm using the machine.

PS> And yes, I notice flicker (faintly) even at 85Hz and encode my MP3s at 256kbps and they still don't sound right. Funny, though, I can play games at 20fps (Quake III on a P2-300) and not notice the difference...

Re:What a bunch of whining!

[MoneyT]

By OS designed in 1984, we was referring to the Mac OS of old, not UNIX

Re:What a bunch of whining!

[BitGeek]

Yeah, you were too quick with the cluebat there.

Given that the Mac project invented the GUI (yes, I know about the work at Xerox, I've used those machines. They were a step in the right direction, but they were not GUIs.) and this occurred in 1984 or so, and that the complaints that the original article were making were about the GUI, saying "You want a modern operating system but you want it to work like 1984" is totally valid.

"UNIX" does not sum up the totality of OS X. OS X does many things in a modern (IE: NON "unix" way) such as using XML to store configuration information. XML was not in use in 1984.

The cluebat belongs on your head-- thers is more to OSX than "Unix". To my knowledge the NeXT was the first (and apparently only so far) object oriented operating system, and this came much after 1984, yet OS X is based on it. That also is part of what makes it modern.

And even there it isn't just a copy of the bits that existed in 1990-- those frameworks went thru changes between 1996 and 2002 as well.

The idea that OS X is "just unix" is what lets people foolishly compare it to Linux with a straight face. Yeah, they both are based on Unix, but OSX has a lot more there.... but since its behind the scenes its either discarded out of ignorance, or dismissed as "Eye candy" by people who apparently don't know the purpose of a GUI.

Re:What a bunch of whining!

[BitGeek]

Oh, I thought you were talking about Plan 9, the operating system! (It did/does exist and was named after the movie, and is about as common, though its open source.)

I'm so happy every day that goes by and I don't have to run classic for anything. My last regular app was replaced about 2 months ago, and its nice to be 9 free.

Re:What a bunch of whining!

[BitGeek]

IF you don't have anything to say, don't say it.

I started this thread. I read the original post. Apparently you didn't pay too much attention, or your reading comprehension is low.

Being vague and not taking a stand are not strengths in a position, they are weaknesses. Yet you snidely act as if that fact makes you superior.

Sigh. When can we go back to the way the net was before AOL, and people had a clue.

These are a few of my favorite things...

[frankie]

1. SMB server browsing. It's not quite perfect yet; it should be integrated into Finder --> Network, and it doesn't show me admin shares (C$). But unlike Sharity, I can mount as many SMBs as I want.
2. Subpixel Antialiasing. I'm really surprised more people haven't mentioned this yet. Font smoothing on my Pismo is much nicer than in 10.1.
3. Integrated Finder Search, and Watson too. Much better than Sherlock 3. 'nuff said.
4. Faster, faster Pussycat! In 10.1 I would cringe in horror every time I accidentally opened a folder with 30+ items, because arranging the icons seemed to be an O(n^2) algorithm.

There are still a few kinks though. Many of my favorite Haxies stopped working. Several apps with kernel extensions need to be reinstalled. And a warning: Jaguar Printer Sharing is completely incompatible with OS 9 Printer Sharing, in both directions. I was hoping this would be the update to let my home network finally work, but it's not going to happen.

Re:These are a few of my favorite things...

[pudge]

Jaguar Printer Sharing is completely incompatible with OS 9 Printer Sharing, in both directions.

Not quite true. A shared printer on Jaguar can, theoretically, be accessed as an lpr printer, and then printed to using the generic printer description and the LaserWriter printer driver on Mac OS 9. Yeah, it sucks, but it is better than nothing. Maybe.

Re:These are a few of my favorite things...

[GroovBird]

SMB server browsing. It's not quite perfect yet; it should be integrated into Finder --> Network, and it doesn't show me admin shares (C$). But unlike Sharity, I can mount as many SMBs as I want.

It shouldn't show you admin shares, because the dollar ($) sign in the name implies that it's a hidden share! Well, maybe it shows on Linux (I don't even know if hidden shares are announced) but it shouldn't.

Dave

Re:These are a few of my favorite things...

[benwb]

You can pick up an HP Jetdirect on ebay for $70, which I assume will work with both classic and X...

I, Too, am Impressed...

[superdan2k]

So I waited in line at the Mall of America to get Jaguar on Friday night (the whole tirade about that is in a recent posting in my livejournal). Prior to this, I upgraded my 500MHz dual-USB iBook from 256MB of RAM to 640MB. It seemed a bit snappier, and things definitely went more smoothly while running with tons o' apps.

Enter Jaguar. Faster, snappier, crisper. This was worth the wait and worth the money. The integration between the basic iApps (iChat, Mail and Address book) is <cartman>sweeeeeet</cartman>. None of my major apps required updating. I haven't spent that much of a weekend futzing around with an OS (and enjoying it) since 10.1 came out.

Minor tidbits: the firewall GUI is nice. PHP is now part of the standard install (however you may want to visit Mark Liyange's page to see how to re-enable a lot of the functionality that Apple dumbed-down. (This page also has package installers for MySQL, Ruby, and tons of other cool stuff.) The Mail app seems to be pretty adept at identifying spam...and getting better and better over the last couple of days...and the bounce-to-sender feature makes it look like you don't exist anymore...it's not perfect but it seems to have reduced the incoming flow by about 10-15%. iChat, a little buggy, but nice...I thought I was going to hate the voice-balloon interface, but I discovered that, strangely enough, it's easier on the eyes than multiple lines of text.

All in all, I'd say that they've outdone themselves again.

Re:I, Too, am Impressed...

[bpbond]

Also in the minor tidbit department: lots of people bitched about the command-tab in 10.1.x would shift between running apps linearly (i.e., order in the Dock) as opposed to a stack (i.e., in order of last use). This has changed in Jaguar, and makes app switching MUCH better.

Re:I, Too, am Impressed...

[NoData]

Hmm....my little sis has the 2-usb 500MHz G3 iBook...I have beeen very reluctant to recommend to her to upgrade (she's still a OS 9 user) to OS X for 2 reasons:

1) It's SLOW
2) She's completely UNIX illiterate and doesn't need/want any of Darwin's BSD functionality.

Compared to OS 9 on a year-old consumer machine like the 500MHz iBook, has Jaguar sufficiently eliminated reason 1?

Re:I, Too, am Impressed...

[VValdo]

the bounce-to-sender feature makes it look like you don't exist anymore

This is available in 10.1, btw. It's under View->Customize Toolbar. Just drag the "Bounce to Sender" icon onto the toolbar and off you go.

W

Re:"Linux will not be able to take over the PC des

[axxackall]

The day I bought my G4 with OS X 10.1.5 is the day Linux died on the desktop for me.

The day I've installed Linux/PPC is the day Mac OS died on the Mac for me.

Dude, check out my OSX 10.2 Desktop

[ryanw]

Dude, gotta check out this Desktop picture! It's completely OpenGL with the fish swimming around and stuff ....

Since it's a complete OpenGL Environment it takes 2 seconds to launch any OpenGL screensaver to be your wallpaper ... Here's the script I used to do it.

I originally was using the Desktop Effects program.

Re:Dude, check out my OSX 10.2 Desktop

[MouseR]

All I get is a white desktop? My iChat is open: "mouser".

Re:Dude, check out my OSX 10.2 Desktop

[MouseR]

Yeah. I didn't realize this because I had a window covering up the single "message" word centered on the desktop.

Re:Dude, check out my OSX 10.2 Desktop

[ryanw]

Yeah, if you get the word 'message' then you aren't running the registered version of the aquarium ....

Speed and new features

[shaper]

10.2 is much faster than 10.1 on my DP533. So far, almost every program launch that I have seen takes 1 Dock bounce. I think I saw 2 bounces once, but I don't remember now which app it might have been. Everything just zaps across the screen, even with my puny GeForce2 MX.

Love the new Get Info, especially the integrated ownership/permission view and change options. Love the file find integrated into the Finder and it's fast, too.

One feature I haven't heard mentioned much, is the better user account management. I have 3 kids and now I can set up their accounts restricted to do only the things I give them access to, and they can't wander around the filesystem accidently trashing stuff that I forgot to restrict the file permissions on. Really nice.

New Internet sharing and built-in firewall "just work". I'm planning on buying a new phone just to get the new contact and calendar sync features with iSync and iCal. It will be great having Apple write the sync software, not having to wait forever for Palm or Microsoft to remember Mac users.

I was an early adopter of Mac OS X 10.0, mainly for Unix features and stability. Now Mac OS X 10.2 rocks in a lot of other ways.

Thank you!

[sootman]

The stability of Mac OS certainly was pretty good -- ignore the hypocrites who used to praise Mac OS but now decry it -- but it can't match Mac OS X.

Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou. I can't stand people like that, and they come with every OS. I've heard it plenty from Mac people (all along telling me how infinitely superior to Windows it is, then once Mac OS X comes out, all they have to say is that 9 was an unstable bag of shit but OS X is really it) and Linux people as well, as we went from 2.0 to 2.2 to 2.4 kernels. Also cars, video game consoles, etc etc etc. I hate those people.

Also, the rest of the article was good. I'm not a fan of OS X, but we just got out Jaguar discs in today, and I'm about to head upstairs to get mine and try it out.

GCC 3.1?

[beswicks]

If Mac OS X.2 features GCC 3.1, with GCC 3.2 having just been released to 'stabilize the C++ ABI' are Apple setting developers up for a bunch of problems by shipping a buggy compiler?

Also is there likly to be any fallout with 3.1 ABI not being compatable with the 3.2 one? I would guess not until apple release next mac os toolkit?

Re:GCC 3.1?

[be-fan]

Its not so much the 3.1 compiler is buggy, its just that there was a problem in the ABI so they had to change it. Stuff compiled with 3.1 (like KDE 3.0, for example) ran fine on my Gentoo box until I upgraded to 3.2.

BTW> 3.2 is a worthwhile upgrade for all those teetering between upgrading or not to the new GCC 3.2 based distros (RedHat 8.0, Mandrake 9.0). Especially with custom compiled software (optimized for P4 or Athlon) it makes a visible performance difference in the GUI.

Quibble, and Regret

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

That's not "An Ugly, Rainbow Pinwheel."

It's an OPTICAL DISK - a legacy NeXT UI element, which had, until now, been left in OS X as a little 'tip of the hat' to NeXTStep 3.x.

It's understandable the Mac folks want all the niceties of post 7.2 MacOS restored to the new system. After all, these are Macintosh computers. Still, there are sentimental attachments for old NeXT users -all twelve of 'em. It's a pity to se the last of this Grey Lady slowly subsume into the Aquatic realm...

Re:Quibble, and Regret

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Somewhere I have the Rhapsody for i386 beta 2.

Hot Damn! It uses the installer/loader for NeXTStep Intel, with a couple of cosmetic changes on logos, etc.

Think the original release of OS X Server, with a transparent NeXT-dock..., and most of the old UI cues for application launch, etc...

You like what you are familiar with

[Junks Jerzey]

I am a bitter old man. I hate change. Mac OS -- not Mac OS X, which is a different OS -- in its various iterations has been my OS of choice for over 15 years

Quotes like this remind me of the crazy people who pine for the days of MS-DOS, because they're convinced that OS is cleaner and faster than Windows.

Re:You like what you are familiar with

[Junks Jerzey]

Well, DOS is cleaner and faster.

Nonsense. It was only faster if you used a DOS extender, but I have memories of a dozen smart programmers gathered around one computer trying to figure out how to get a CD-ROM driver working with enough free memory in order to run a Large And Important Application. Oh, those days were horrible.

Having to exit one application in order to run a different application is not cleaner by any means. It is easy to forget just how ugly that was. At the time, Mac users were appalled, and rightfully so.

Re:Software

[foobar104]

God forbid this conversation on apple.slashdot.org should actually be about Apple's operating system. No, no, can't have that. Have to co-opt this conversation for the Linux crowd.

Only on Slashdot would four people have found this comment "insightful" while no one modded it "off-topic." Bah. Complain, complain.

Re:Modern OS? (all inclusive)

[laserjet]

Good point. I've often thought it would be fun to go back in time with maybe a new Linux box and a new Mac with OS X and show them what became of "their" Unix. I think it would suprise the heck out of them.

It really shows the flexibility of such systems, while retaining the good parts.

Wireless PCMCIA drivers coming soon.

[colaboy]

Regarding the mention of drivers for wireless pcmcia cards not being available for 10.2 and http://wirelessdriver.sourceforge.net not having been updated in months;

An announcement was sent to the wirelessdriver announce list over the weekend stating;

=-=-=
Hi all,

I've (finally) posted a build of the driver built for OS X 10.2 to my iDisk. The can be reached via the following URL: <http://homepage.mac.com/robm>

This installer is a preliminary release. I will post to SourceForge in the usual place and make an announcement to VerstionTracker once I've had a few feedback reports.

This build is, essentially, a top-of-tree build from the CVS archives. I have made several changes to it to support compilation under Jaguar and have added a few lines of code towards trying to solve the AppleTalk issue, although I haven't had any opportunity to test that yet.

Let me know how you make out with it and I'll get whatever changes done that need to be made and make a final announcement.

-Rob McKeever
robm@mac.com
=-=-=

uh....

[eyez]

it requires zero configuration once you're configured properly

.... Um. I may have missed something, but isn't this the way all software works? I know that, once I've configured something properly on my LFS system, it requires zero configuration after that...

Re:uh....

[be-fan]

.... Um. I may have missed something, but isn't this the way all software works?
>>>>>>
Nope. Windows XP doesn't work like that. I had everything setup for my network at one point. I don't remember the details, but I ran some wizard to change my computer's identification name, and it changed my IP and DNS addresses behind my back! Took me an hour to figure out why my networking wasn't working anymore.

Another Paxil moment from /.

[gelfling]

Sheesh - A guy writes a long thoughtful piece on why 10.2 is better; simply put because it is and it is more usable and half you people criticize him for liking what he likes because he likes it. Because it serves his purposes and does not require him to worship at the altar of that which is kewl.

My God - I hope you people don't run Homeowners Associations. Your neighbors would probably have to paint all their houses your favorite color because 'it's the right one'.

Re:Another Paxil moment from /.

[Cheetahfeathers]

I've never seen an HOA that wasn't evil in that way. The right to do stuff that you want to do with your own stuff? Nah... you only pretend to own it. You pay your yearly rent in terms of land tax, and your HOA tax either yearly or otherwise (depends on the HOA), and your get to pay for what other people decide to do with 'your' property.

Ownership is a dead concept... welcome to the age of renting the experience of ownership. Don't mind the EULA.

Re:Color me Crazy

[Aquaman616]

Apparently you haven't *used* a Mac. I've been trying literally for *years* to move to Linux as my primary desktop OS and it just is not there. Period. Apps don't work together - it's aweful.

I still use Linux and other *nices as my server OSs (that's not changing - ever) but on my desktop OSX is soon going to rule to roost. I've bought my last PC.

Seriously, *try* a mac. Try to do everyday things - it just works - not all the time granted, but most of the time - which is a huge improvement over every other OS out there.

article I'm looking forward to

[hype7]

ArsTechnica's John Siracusa, he's had the best reviews of OS X throughout it's life (from the Developer Previews right through to 10.1). I'm not going digging for URLs, but IMO he's the journalist who's had the single largest impact on OS X's development, and his reviews are always worth reading.

-- james

Are you joking?

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

You make it sound like it's bad for the "average comsumer" to get software pre-installed. Let go of the "I'm a hard core geek and I compile my own stuff and the rest of the world shoud respect that fact and do the same" attitude.

Besides that point, can you really compare the crap M$ included with it's OS and the quality apps that appear in Max OS X? Compare MovieMaker to iMovie. Compare the crappy picture viewer and it's little green arrows in M$ to iPhoto. WMP to iTunes? No comparison. Don't like it? Get gentoo and compile from A to Z. Otherwise, there are a few million of us that just want to USE our boxen to enjoy our music and pr0n, and don't want to read through a bunch of man pages or crappy O'Rielly books just to get something to work.

Re:Are you joking?

[Telex4]

I wasn't suggesting consumers should have to compile their software, far from it. I like to sometimes, but when there is an RPM available I usually use it - so much simpler and quicker. It would be fairly easy for Apple to start a database much like freshmeat which would serve as an easy starting point for OSX users to find the software they want. An icon on the desktop/dock, a bookmark in all the browsers, perhapos a helpful start page, a mention in the manuals, there are many ways of making it easy to people to find alternatives.

Re:Are you joking?

[ckd]

It would be fairly easy for Apple to start a database much like freshmeat which would serve as an easy starting point for OSX users to find the software they want.

You mean like the second item in the Apple menu, called "Get Mac OS X Software..." that sends your browser to http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/?

Re:Are you joking?

[gig]

It would be fairly easy for Apple to start a database much like freshmeat which would serve as an easy starting point for OSX users to find the software they want.

Macintosh Product Guide
A catalog of over 20,000 products made for Mac.

OR ...

Mac OS X Downloads

OR ...

Sit down in front of a Mac OS X box and go Apple Menu > Get Mac OS X Software. This option is available no matter what application you are using.

Unlike Microsoft, Apple has ABSOLUTELY NO REASON to discourage you from finding, discovering, and using third-party Mac products. The Mac I happen to be typing this on right now was purchased to run Digidesign Pro Tools. Apple wants me to know about Pro Tools so I keep buying Macs (Pro Tools users are like 98% on Macs). Apple wants me to surround myself with a gajillion little peripherals so that later on I demand a CD-RW be inside the computer not hanging off it by a wire and that's a good reason to get a new Mac, too.

The thing that non-Mac users keep missing is that Microsoft is not happy unless they get it ALL. They are not thankful enough that they screwed you on Windows to let you keep using WordPerfect. Their whole business model is about having it ALL. Apple simply makes computers. They want you to buy their computer because it is a better computer than any of their competitors makes. Go ahead and run whatever fucking software or hardware add-ons you like ... go wild. You can "un-bundle" all of the bundled apps on a Mac in less than a minute (select them all in the Applications folder just like you'd select any set of icons, and then drag them to the ever-present Trash). Apple is fine because they still sold you the computer, and that's ENOUGH. Sure, they'd love it if you also run Mac OS X and Final Cut Pro and whatever other Apple software, but if you buy an iBook, wipe it, install Yellow Dog Linux, and that completes you, Apple is still happy to have had your business.

NeXTSTEP scrollbars?

[nicestepauthor]

I saw Mac OSX demonstrated when someone from Apple demonstrated their Web Objects product. As a NeXTSTEP fan and Window Maker and GNUstep user I was impressed, but I missed the NeXTSTEP scrollbars. These scrollbars have both arrows at the same end of the scrollbar, the scrollbar is at the LEFT of the thing being scrolled, and the thumb never gets too small to grab with the mouse.

In OSX you can optionally move both arrows to the same side of the scrollbar, but there is apparently no way to move scrollbars to the left side of a list box, for example. Having scrollbars on the left works a lot better. Try it once and you'll never want to go back.

The Apple guy, who used to be a NeXT guy, seemed to agree with me.

Re:NeXTSTEP scrollbars?

[Cheetahfeathers]

I miss the scroll bars on the left from NeXT, as well as the wonderful copy and paste function of Solaris (left mouse, select text... autocopy), right click, paste. Beautiful. I also like the copy/paste/cut buttons, but the mouse keys are better.

I also miss buttons that're on opposite sides of the top bar for close/minimize. And having multiple desktops, like almost every UNIX window manager does is a big loss in OSX...

All in all, OSX has serious lacks still. Does Jaguar correct any of the above problems? Those are the only things that really bug me... if it fixes them, it'd be worth upgrading.

Re:No sushi or mac & cheese

[Seehund]

> uh, does anyone know what rich vegans eat?

Meat. :)

Nice to see!

[farrellj]

It is nice to have Innovation at Apple again in the field of GUIs. Remember Mac 84 = Windows 95? Windows is a very bad GUI compared to the Mac Finder (what they used to call the Mac OS). And XP just doesn't compare to Mac OS-X. The difference between OS-X and Windows is the difference between a product/customer oriented company and a product/sales oriented company. Sure, Apple isn't as big as Microsoft, but whose computer karma would you want; Steve Jobs's, or Bill Gates's?

ttyl
Farrell

sshAgentServices alternatives (while U wait)

[graffitiboy]

Like the gui? Try the very nice SSH Agent built in apple's project builder with source (yay).

If you want to see the shell script that's ultimately under this, Apple made it in csh.

A decent csh (or tcsh) script for running ssh-agent at login is described by apple Here. I have the "terminal.app" on my dock, and the script described goes into my login. I just have to run ssh-add, and from then on my applications do fine.

I rewrote it for my .bash_login and pulled a lot out of it, and dropped it here:

# for ssh-agent (magic!)
# first check the ssh_agent_state temp file
export SSH_AGENT_STATE="/tmp/.ssh-agent-state.$USER"
if
[ -f "$SSH_AGENT_STATE" ]; # tempfile exists?
then
source "$SSH_AGENT_STATE";
if
[ ! -S "$SSH_AUTH_SOCK" ]; # socket writeable?
then
echo INFO: ssh-agent needs to be restarted
rm -f "$SSH_AGENT_STATE";
echo INFO: starting ssh-agent
ssh-agent -s | grep -v '^echo ' > "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
source "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
echo INFO: ssh-agent started [ $SSH_AGENT_PID ]
else
echo INFO: ssh-agent already running [ $SSH_AGENT_PID ]
ssh-add -l
fi
else # no tempfile, start the agent clean
echo INFO: starting ssh-agent
ssh-agent -s | grep -v '^echo ' > "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
source "${SSH_AGENT_STATE}";
echo INFO: ssh-agent started [ $SSH_AGENT_PID ]
ssh-add -l
fi

Re:sshAgentServices alternatives (while U wait)

[pudge]

What I did was modify the AppleScript application that does this (assuming there has been an ssh-agent started, and that its info was available in the environment):

try
do shell script "/usr/bin/ssh-add"
end try

to this:

try
do shell script "/usr/bin/ssh-agent -s | grep -v echo > ~/.bashenv; source .bashenv; /usr/bin/ssh-add"
end try

Then I added "source .bashenv" to my .bash_profile. It doesn't provide ssh-agent to GUI apps, but I rarely need that, I primarily want it for the Terminal. :-)

Re:Color me Crazy

[be-fan]

Apps don't work together - it's aweful.
>>>>>>
I hear vague stuff like this all the time. I think its just Mac users who can't get used to something different. I know, personally, using WinXP on the occasions I have to is painful, since I simply don't like the Windows ways of doing things. Yet, I wonder how much of it is real and how much is perceived. Exactly *what* don't you like about Linux (probably with KDE 3.0, given that its the most advanced Linux DE out right now). Like as in list form, referring to specific applications.

Wow, now that's an interface!

[AntiGenX]

I have never in my life heard an interface referrered to as 'eminently "lickable,"'. I mean lickable, WOW! That's the interface of the future, taste! Imagine browsing your files by running your tongue all over them. (Warning: Windows may REALLY leave a sour taste in your mouth)

Other reviews can be found

[Tsk]

• Osnews
  
• MacIntouch
  
• Zdnet
  
• Macworld
  
• MacCentral

Re:iMicrosoft? No, the iTools can be deleted

[d3xt3r]

If I don't like iTunes, iPhoto, or iProductX, I can open up the finder, pick up the application, and drop it in the trash. Done. That's it, no more iApplication.

On Windows, I cannot delete IE. End of discussion. Microsoft says the OS will break. The Mac OS won't break if you remove iTunes.

The iApps are more or less "value-added" applications. If you buy a Dell, it will come with some Dell-sponsored camera software, possibly a media player, etc. Here is where the iApps fit into the picture. They are value-added features, and they can be easily removed.

Rendezvous doesn't fix problems with peer-peer SMB

[MCRocker]

Unfortunately, Rendezvous doesn't fix many of my pressing networking problems. Apple should definitely be bitch-slapped for their claims of networking interoperabiltiy when SMB works if you have a newtwork server, but not if you're using peer to peer networking! I think that far more home users have peer to peer networking rather than have some network server sitting in a closet. Consequently, I can't connect to any of the other machines on my network that use SMB.

My other machines also can't connect to my Mac because the 'Windows Sharing' insists that you add a user name for each Windows user who you want to allow connections from. However, most of my other systems run such things under the user name 'nobody', which you can't add to the 'Accounts' preferences. Even if I come up with other user names, each one has to be manually added one at a time, which is a real pain. Even then, my OS/2 and eComStation boxes refuse to connect with my mac.

The DNS-less stuff doesn't work either. It doesn't find any of my other machines. All I want is a nice simple host table . On Linux or OS/2 I could easily add all of my host table entries in under a minute. Unfortunately, Mac OS X doesn't support the host table except in console mode. Instead there's NetInfo and a 98 page document that that you need to read to understand the intricacies of NetInfo, but doesn't actually mention how to map hosts to IP addresses! I'm really tired of typing in IP addresses that start with 192.168.0! Please, someone, tell me I'm an idiot and have missed the obious solution, I'd love to see a solution to this. While you're at it, have a look at my MacOSXQuestions page and tell me that I'm all wrong and that there are simple solutions to my Mac OS X problems... please.

Jaguar is a nice addition ...

[nother_nix_hacker]

... to the Apple OS family but I think I'll stick to Maco OS 9 because...

Error: This message is too long, would you like to allocate some more memory?

OS X OpenOffice

[dmaxwell]

This is a very new port that depends of XFree86 to work. The speed of OO is just fine on Linux and Windows. Give OS X OO a few more months and try it then. A native Quartz version that has no XFree dependency is in the works but that will take some time. There are good reasons why they called it a "Developer Prerelease".

Re:OS X OpenOffice

[clifyt]

Well, yeah. As its required, I consider it part of the package :)

Right now, I fully intend to try out the Quartz version when it gets here. BUT until XFree / XDarwin get up to speed, I gotta use whats usable. Hell, I'd even use Gimp over Photoshop if it wasn't so annoying (having to reposition windows every time one opens...would installing KDE fix that???) and slow, I'd not spent the $$$ I just did on the X version.

Good point about Developers Prerelease :)

Re:OS X OpenOffice

[clifyt]

Yup...its in full screen. I tried Rootless all of 10 minutes before I decided if I want to be using 'Linux Style' Applications, I was going to go all the way with it. I've been hesatant to install KDE or something like that as I don't want to slow anything else down more, so for the most part, no windows managers other than the base X...and have to pull things up with the command line.

clif

Re:Color me Crazy

[Aquaman616]

Sounds like a really old powerbook - not exactly a great comparison. Besides, I hate OS9 with a passion (I wan't a mac user until OSX)

As for the apps not working together, I've had issue with the damn clipboard in Linux not working between apps (no, I can't remember exactly what apps they were - it's been over a year since I ditched Linux back to just being a server OS)

As for the hardware being expensive - that's really *not* the case. Yes the initial cost is higher, but Macs are cheaper to own. This is fact - I don't have the URL of the study about this handy, but do a google search and I'm sure you will pull it up.

Uninstall

[red_dragon]

Pudge said,

I wanted to just uninstall the whole thing and start over, but there is no uninstall option, that I could find. So I deleted all the files that the Installer installs, and then tried to reinstall, and the Installer says it is already installed. So now I have nothing, and I can't change it.

There *is* an uninstall option for all apps that get installed via the Apple Installer. Every time Installer installs an app, it generates a Receipt file in /System/Library/Receipts (if I'm not mistaken) which you can use to uninstall that app; just double-click on the file, and Installer will launch and ask if you want to uninstall the application.

Admittedly, this is very cumbersome. An "Uninstall Apps" applet in the System Preferences would be a very welcome addition.

Re:Uninstall

[pudge]

I tried that. It didn't work. And the Receipt only existed for the Remote Desktop 10.2 update (1.1), not the others (1.0 and 1.0.1), so I couldn't uninstall them.

I finally got ARD to run after deleting a pref file.

Apple Remote Desktop

[artfulbodger]

Apple Remote Desktop 1.0.x doesn't work; you'll need to run Software Update to get version 1.1. Unfortunately, even the new version only half-worked for me; the client side seems fine, but the Admin app says it is not installed properly. I wanted to just uninstall the whole thing and start over, but there is no uninstall option, that I could find. So I deleted all the files that the Installer installs, and then tried to reinstall, and the Installer says it is already installed. So now I have nothing, and I can't change it.

I noticed this "not installed properly" stuff on OS X 10.1 actually, and it took a few tries to get it to work. ( I think I ended up having to delete coresponding files in /Library/Receipts, to get OS X to think it hadn't installed it in the first place.)

In general Remote Desktop is really not a very good program, and needs some serious updating. It's buggy, slow, and the UI really blows. The thing that really gets me is that it uses the "Computer Name" (AppleShare) as unique IDs for clients, I would much prefer hostname/IP address for my enviroment.

Re:Rendezvous doesn't fix problems with peer-peer

[foobar104]

The DNS-less stuff doesn't work either. It doesn't find any of my other machines.

Rendezvous can only find other machines on the LAN that also support Rendezvous. It won't help you find your OS/2 machine or your eComStation (wtf?) machine.

All I want is a nice simple host table . On Linux or OS/2 I could easily add all of my host table entries in under a minute.

You can do it on your Mac, too. Starting in 10.2, your host table works just like you'd expect. In 10.0 and 10.1, lookupd was configured to ignore /etc/hosts, but in 10.2 it's set up differently by default. You can confirm this by looking at the output of lookupd -configuration.

LookupOrder: Cache FF DNS NI DS
_config_name: Host Configuration

(Among other stuff)

That means that lookupd will try to resolve host names by looking first in its own cache, then in the flat files (/etc/hosts, in this case), then in the DNS system, then in NetInfo. All this is documented in the man page.

All the other items in your list of complaints have similarly simple fixes. Except, of course, for that shit about OS/2 compatibility. What's that about?

Re:OS 10.2 and Audio Apps

[mr100percent]

From what the Mac news sites have been saying, 10.2 has much much better audio and MIDI APIs systemwide, which may explain why so many audio companies have been going slow in porting an OS X version. Expect more announcements now.

Re:Color me Crazy

[Archeopteryx]

Dude, I'm getting out the "crazy"-colored crayons now.

I am running Mac OSX 10.1 on a refurbished 600 MHz G3 iMac, which cost me $895, and it is wonderfully fast. Prior to this I ran OSX 10.0->10.1 on an original bondi blue iMac (233 MHz G3) and it performed acceptably. If 10.2 is the sort of improvement I expect, then there should be no cause for anybody to complain!

Mind you, it is possible that my expectations of GUI speed are a bit low; I used a SPARCStation 5 for many years! :-)

Don't Chase Windows, Be Better

[reallocate]

Agree that Linux has along way to go before becoming commercially viable on the desktop, but chasing Win32 API's and apps is a dead end. Why play in a game in which you allow the other side to set the standards and write the rules? E.g., you see many reviews comparing KDE/Gnome to Windows. How many people in the Windows world ever compare Windows to KDE or Gnome? While many here and elsewhere enthusiastically compare (and advocate using) the barely-born OpenOffice to the well-seasoned MS Office, how many non-open source advocates think OpenOffice is important enough to reverse the comparison?

The way to increase use of Linux on the desktop is to develop innovative applications that leapfrog Windows. Stop trying to convince people that traditional Unix apps are all they'll ever need, if only they'd buckle down and study. Forget about the virtues of the underlying OS as a selling point. Just make it reliable enough that people can forget it's there.

Don't harp so much on the "it's free" aspect. A lot of people can afford to buy commercial software. For them, their time is more valuable than the money.

And for God's sake, please finish things before you release them. Tossing umpteen versions 0.0XX out to the open source community is a proven development model. Outside that community, however, many people will walk away from a disfunctional early release and never come back.

Re:yeah but....

[MoneyT]

So go out and earn the money. Stop wasting your money upgrading your PC, stop buying the latest office and windows updates, don't buy that new PC you've been looking at, and get a job. Within about 2 years, you should have more than enough money to buy a mac. The honest reason why PC users (IMHO anyways) do not have enough money to buy a mac is because they keep sinking more and more money into their PC.

Re:Color me Crazy

[Aquaman616]

A bit problem is that the number of apps really doesn't make a huge difference to me. The quality of the apps that I have does. Most open source apps have some really rough edges that make working with them a real pain. This brings up another point actually - usability - something that Apple has really done right in OSX. I had never used it before and was immediately able to start working with it. Literally in minutes I had found the app I needed and was comfortably working in it (OmniGraffle - a really nice chart drawing app)

One of my best friends just got his degree in HCI from UMich and he and I have spent a lot of time discussing the usability of OSs and both of us agree that until open source OSs start to really look at usability - real world usability not geek usability - their OSs will only grace the desktops of geeks. Even as a geek who *wanted* to like Linux as a desktop though I couldn't - it was just simply too unpolished.

When it gets down it, to be honest, I don't mind paying more for exactly what I want - a stable OS that lets me run my required business apps hand in hand with my loved unix apps. Apple will have my business for some time to come.

Re:AvantGo..and Alternatives

[Spencerian]

I simply refused to go without my beloved web sites downloaded to my Palm when I made the switch a year ago. This link at Mac OS X Hints gave me that alternative--Plucker.

While a bit more hands-on than AvantGo, you get very similar, if not identical results with Plucker. (This is open source, so Linux guys who switched from Windows can get it too.) Be mindful that these instructions were based on 10.1 and not 10.2: the needed Python parts may have an issue from the binaries, so I'd compile it if I were you.

I'll bite

[MoneyT]

Cause I have nothing better to do.

1) If it takes overclocking my processor and 1.5 gigs of RAM to get a word processor to run "fine" on my computer, I'd rather use notepad ( or MS office, Apple Works, Simple Text etc etc etc). I should not have to superchardge a machine to get something as simple as a wordprocessor working.

2) Open Office is nice (I use it primary on my Athlon machine) but it is slower than other word processors that I've used. It hase some great features (auto word complete is great)and lot's of potential. But it truely is not up to commercial program standards yet, it still feels like a hacker developed program, un polished, not quite finished.

3) It's ironic to see someone call another person a troll and then go on to bash them, bash their OS and call names. Might I suggest you get off the computer, pay attention to your teacher and finish your work, recess is starting soon, you don't want to be left behind.

Flurry - on your desktop (a cute trick)

[PatJensen]

For a good time, set your screensaver to the OpenGL Flurry saver in OS 10.2. Then, go into a Terminal window and paste the following:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/R esources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/Scre enSaverEngine -background &

Make sure you do this on a machine that supports Quartz Extreme. Drag a translucent Terminal window over it for added fun. Watch how little it effects performance, trying playing some MP3s at the same time. Cool, huh?

(fix the spaces in the path above because slashdot eats them)

-Pat

Re:Flurry - on your desktop (a cute trick)

[foniksonik]

Go to Versiontracker and get the preference pane for setting the screensaver to either background or foreground and at login, etc... it's called FackBore Effects... I guess thats like BackFore effects or something.

i like running AbstractMotion as my desktop... so clean yet interesting but subtle and non-distracting.

Re:Steve Job's Quote about OS X 10.2

[MoneyT]

And it was freely given in the hopes that it could be used to develop something better, and it did. You're just sore because you're not selling a succesful computer line and OS. Well sucks to be you. Believe me, if the original developers thought their code was not being used properly, they would have already begun suing apple.

Re:Color me Crazy

[Jakob Eriksson]

I'm an avid PC user since 13 years back, have tried numerous times to switch to Linux, only to give up a few months later because using Windows was just so much easier. Now don't get me wrong, I know how to get around in unices, but in Windows stuff just worked. On the other hand, there was a lot you couldn't do, etc. etc.

I just recently got a $3000 PowerBook with MacOS 10.1 and I've never had such a good time with a computer. The hardware is beautiful, the OS is great and the applications are amazing. I have everything I want except a videoconferencing program, and I mean everything. For some reason, MacOS applications seem to be much _better_ than Linux/Windows equivalents. Has anybody seen Proteus for example? Best IM clone I ever saw. I'm not going back, and you can't make me!

Look, I'm sorry for all you poor bastards who can't afford a Mac. If you can't afford a proper meal, you'll have to make do with instant noodles. I'm sure linux is great for third world/low income people, but for the rest of us, Mac rocks!

Re:"Linux will not be able to take over the PC des

[MaxVlast]

"The other guy did it already, so he has an advantage." Well, yea. That's why he has the advantage. :)

Re:"haunted" software

[MaxVlast]

He probably means windows. The genie effect.

Be sure to upgrade locate

[alfredo]

run your sudo /usr/libexec/locate.update.db script so you can use locate.

yer welcomed

Re:Rendezvous doesn't fix problems with peer-peer

[bnenning]

have a look at my MacOSXQuestions [markcrocker.com] page and tell me that I'm all wrong and that there are simple solutions to my Mac OS X problems... please.

What the heck, I'm waiting on a big compile.

start up a second copy of an already running application, but as root?

sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit . The key is to directly launch the executable rather than using open.

add to the effective host table?

man niload

# set the monitor power/sleep button to put just the display to sleep and not my machine?

I'm pretty sure my G4 at home has an option for that in the Displays preferences pane. It has an Apple 15" LCD, maybe it only shows up for certain monitors.

add root to the login window?

You mean as a choice from the list of users? Showing that list is horrible from a security perspective, just have it display username and password fields.

set an image's icon to a thumbnail of the image?

Open image, copy contents, bring up "Get Info" window in the Finder, select icon, paste. Just did this in Jaguar, it may not work in 10.1.

Hope this helps...

The problem with this analogy...

[Wakko Warner]

...is that it's wrong.

The UNIX of today still shares a lot of the same codebase and even more of the same design philosophy with the UNIX of 30 years ago. There are plenty of de-facto UNIX standards and utilities that have been around for decades, most of which haven't been significantly enhanced since their creation. There's an awful lot that hasn't changed in 30 years. (Note, for all you automatic minus-one slashbot moderators: this does not mean UNIX is bad.)

The "New Ford Thunderbird", on the other hand, is just a car Ford happened to give the same name as an older, completely different vehicle.

- A.P.

Re:The problem with this analogy...

[stripes]

The UNIX of today still shares a lot of the same codebase and even more of the same design philosophy with the UNIX of 30 years ago.

I have read through the source code of the Unix kernel from somewhat less then 30 years ago (V6 I think, the one from the Lyon's book). I doubt you will find any code that is identical excapt by random dumb luck, or syntactic requirments (lots of lines that are merely closing braces will still match up).

Machine specific code in V6 is largely not seporated out. C was very weakly typed then (you could use an int like a pointer, without doing a cast since casts were not part of the C language at the time!).

All the data structres are simple tables or linked lists, no hashes, no complicated O(1) clock call out stuff, nothing. All dirt stupid simple.

There are plenty of de-facto UNIX standards and utilities that have been around for decades, most of which haven't been significantly enhanced since their creation.

The only one I can think of is maybe wc, I think wc had -l, -w, and -c when it was invented. On the other hand cat had zero supported options: "cat -n" was "cat a file with the name dash n", not "use line numbers and cat stdin".

There's an awful lot that hasn't changed in 30 years.

Not much. Even the original "all the world is a file" was shattered with BSD networking, never really brought back until Plan 9. About all that is really really the same is "a OS written in C"...except today's C is amazingly diffrent from the C of 30 years ago.

That isn't to say that each new generation of Unix didn't borrow hevally from the last generation (not always in code...but always in ideas). It's not to say that Unix is mostly better off for having done that (and in some ways worse off as it has sometimes been prevented from getting new solutions that are just utterly unlike the existing Unix phliophisy).

MOD: +1 Interesting

[Bishop]

Although they perform different functions, IE is to Windows what bash is to Linux.

That is an interesting comment. I don't have a problem with IE installed by default, and I don't like IE. However I don't like the sledge hammer approach to integration. I think this is the vendor's main complaint.

My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[NoData]

Here's a few things that bug the hell out of me in OS X 10.1.x. If somebody knows if they have/have not been addressed, I'd appreciate it.

Long file name display. Aqua shows the first handful of characters of a filename, followed by ellipsis (...) and then THE COMPLETELY UNINFORMATIVE last few characters. It should, of course, show AS MUCH of the leading the part of the filename as possible, then perhaps ellipsis and the extension. Perhaps.

File Dialogs. These stink. First, they're stuck in NeXT style columnar view. That in and of itself is not the worst. The worst is that as you expand the dialog (to see your filenames which are riddled w/ %@&!ing ellipses), the individual columns get wider...up to a point. They get nominally wider, but then further expansion ADDS ANOTHER COLUMN to the view, all columns being re-squished to their minimal width!! GRRR. AND, of course, there's no option to sort the file dialog by anything but name...a feature in Win. since 95.

Incomplete UNIX-length file support. Speaking of long filenames: Darwin allows standard UNIX-length filenames (what is it? 64? 128 chars? Plenty). Just about every OS X app still limits you to Mac's 31. GRRR. Is this just a limit for "carbonized" apps?

Finder won't show .hidden files. THIS is UNIX?

Line termination character woes. This is a long standing problem, but I feel Apple just kinda ignored it. Standard Mac line term. char: CR (ASCII 0x0d). Standard UNIX (and, ergo, Darwin's) line term. char: LF (ASCII 0x0a). Mix programs that by default generate one or the other in one system...try grepping or awking (or your favorite report management) anything useful...hilarity ensues. THIS is UNIX??

Is it possible to get lpd running, in light of all the built-in OS X printing overhead? OK, this last one just thrown in from a position of admitted ignorance.

Otherwise, I love it.

Re:My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[tgibbs]

# Long file name display. Aqua shows the first handful of characters of a filename, followed by ellipsis (...) and then THE COMPLETELY UNINFORMATIVE last few characters. It should, of course, show AS MUCH of the leading the part of the filename as possible, then perhaps ellipsis and the extension. Perhaps.

Oddly enough, this is one aspect that I regard as a major improvement in Aqua. It is very common for me to have a bunch of files that are named similarly except for the last word or so. With the ellipses, I can readily tell which is which.

Re:My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[NoData]

I very often have files that are only distinguished by earlyish middle chars.

e.g.

Manuscript_First_Draft_JNeuroSci02.doc
Manuscri pt_Final_Draft_JNeuroSci02.doc

become:

Manuscript_F...i02.doc
Mansucript_F...i02.doc

or something like that.

of course these examples are hypothetical, b/c both filenames are LONGER THAN 31 CHARS so Word v.X wouldn't allow them ANYWAY.

Well, anyway..the amount and point of truncation should be user adjustable.

AT LEAST if it showed a "tool tip" or "hint" or whatever it's called in the UI world when you select the file that brings up the entire filename, as Windows does. Maybe Jaguar now does this?

-Mark

Re:My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[tgibbs]

AT LEAST if it showed a "tool tip" or "hint" or whatever it's called in the UI world when you select the file that brings up the entire filename, as Windows does. Maybe Jaguar now does this?

You don't need Jaguar for that, at least in the Finder. Just leave the mouse pointer on the title for a moment, and it will go to edit mode, showing the entire title. However, that doesn't work in a file dialog.

Re:My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[Apotsy]

Just about every OS X app still limits you to Mac's 31. GRRR. Is this just a limit for "carbonized" apps?

It's got nothing to do with a limitation on Carbon, it's just those straggling developers who have not updated to the latest file dialog APIs. Newer NavServices dialogs give full 255 char Unicode-aware filenames. It's just a matter of getting developers to use them (they've been around since 10.0, you'd think they would get on the ball at some point).

Finder won't show .hidden files. THIS is UNIX?

Try this:

> defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles True

Then logout/log back in.

Re:My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can be sure it's UNIX if the backspace key does something other than backspace.

Re:My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[NoData]

Thanks so much for the point by point reply. (Thanks to everyone who replied, in general).

The bad news about lpd is indeed bad news. I have quite a number of ported UNIX apps whose only means of printing is through lpd. I suppose I can have them print to file, and then use some Aqua app to send the resulting postscript to the printer. But that's a serious hassle. Hmm..and are there OS X native apps that read and print postscript anyway? The only one I can find is MacGSXby Bernd Heller, and it's very beta...no printing implemented yet. Looks like I may be S.O.L.

Re:My 10.1 beefs..Resolved? Anyone?

[JamieF]

TinkerTool will let you show system and hidden files.

Re:Developers are back - thanks OS X

[Animats]

Yes. Mac developers used to refer to later versions of the MacOS as the Mess Inside. The original MacOS was a clean, single-application system, a lot like DOS. But it didn't scale well. Running multiple apps was a horrible hack internally.

The MacOS never really had multitasking. The "cooperative multitasking" wasn't even that; you couldn't block a thread and give up control. There was no real CPU dispatcher. Instead, over time, more and more types of special purpose "tasks" were added. By the last days of the MacOS, there were timer tasks, deferred tasks, vertical interval tasks, system tasks (run every 1/60th sec or so), multiprocessor tasks (slave CPUs only), and Open Transport tasks (a hack to cram the Unix System V protocol stack into the MacOS). All of these preeempted regular processes, each could make some system calls, but not others, and most of them couldn't block. This mess was far more complicated than a straightforward CPU dispatcher would have been. Yech.

Reinstalling Apple Remote Desktop

[adjusting]

Did you delete all the receipts before trying to reinstall?

You can find them in /Library/Receipts/
I believe the ones related to remote desktop are:
RDAdmin.pkg
RDClient.pkg
RDClientUpdateFor 10_2.pkg
RDDocs.pkg
RemoteDesktopUpdateFor10_2.p kg

The only reason not to use X

[Aqua OS X]

10.2 is a fairly nice OS. It's one of those things you install and end up saying "woh... this is cool"

Nevertheless, even though OS X is a native 32bit audio OS with a system Midi / audio Manager and system level support for Steinberg and ProTools plugins (which is just -too- damn cool), is does not have a lot of pro audio apps ported to it.

Steinberg and DigiDesign really need to get their a**es together. These guys are camped out on OS 9 Island all by themselfs and it's holding a lot of people back.

Re:Color me Crazy

[Aquaman616]

I agree - I loved IRIX - too bad it was swiss cheese security wise.

As for Windows, yes with 2000 things got a lot better - but it's still not there. You are right about the garbage-in, garbage-out argument, but I also don't know what magical world you live in eitehr. I am typing this on a Dell laptop which was, a few years back top of the line (Inspiron 7500). Other than weighting way too much it's a good, solid machine - but I've had to wipe win2k twice now because of growing instabilities. I don't install junk hardware or software for that matter - I mainly use Outlook, Editplus, Flash, PuTTy and Word. However after a few months the whole system starts to feel slow and explorer starts dying and locking up left and right. I have never had eitehr happen on my Mac at home, not once.

Re:Actually it is Rendezvous...

[rworne]

Yes, it was so foolproof that I actually noticed this behavior and thought it was busted. The shared printer simply appeared in the print dialog and I ignored it and started fiddling with the print settings because things NEVER work that easy.

Funny thing was the printer could not be deleted from Print Center, and before I got in a full-blown panic, I decided to do a test print. Lo and behold it "just worked".

Re:linux is dead

[MoneyT]

1)BSD is UNIX.

2)http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

read up before you post

Re:How many copies of OS X 10.2 can you use at onc

[phillymjs]

This is nothing new, Apple has just never offered people the option of a discount on multiple licenses before-- but you should be buying one copy of the Mac OS for each Mac you have, if you want to stick to the letter of the EULA. I would assume this is the case for all versions of the Mac OS not freely available for download from Apple.

However, should you not want to comply with that, there's no product-activation type crapola going on. Feel free to install one licensed copy of Jaguar on all the machines you want, there is no built-in, technical means to prevent you from running it simultaneously on multiple Macs. You'll just be violating the terms of the license.

~Philly

Re:Jaguar Not Quite Ready Yet

[MoneyT]

If it was just the display, wouldn't it have made sense to power off and on the display instead of restarting the system?

Mail.app feature loss!

[Soong]

It won't read /var/mail anymore! This is for unix-clued MacOS X users out there who turned on Sendmail that's included with every MacOS X.

If you haven't upgraded yet, tar up a copy of /Applications/Mail.app/ to save for later use.

Or at least download and compile pine. (I needed to tweak the makefiles & os-specific sources a tad, dunno if their distro patches that yet.)

Re:Mail.app feature loss!

[stripes]

It won't read /var/mail anymore! This is for unix-clued MacOS X users out there who turned on Sendmail that's included with every MacOS X.

Another workaround is to make a local pop server (listening to 127.0.0.1:80 so it can't really be snooped or attacked). Point Mail.app at it (or at it plus others)

Re:cups

[Phroggy]

From what I understand, when I print from Linux the application outputs PostScript data, which gets sent to cups on the Mac. Cups then has to use Ghostscript to decode the Postscript data into something it can actually print. Since the Mac doesn't have Ghostscript installed, it fails - it shows up under "completed jobs" as "cancelled".

If I were printing from OSX, on the other hand, the data would be sent in PDF format, not PostScript, and Apple's version of cups includes a PDF rendering thingie, so that works fine.

I've tried to compile ghostscript on OSX, and I get errors. I'm not really a programmer, so I don't know how to fix them.

Is there a way to make the client applications send PDF data instead of PostScript? Or to have cups on the client side convert it?

Still no SMB printing

[actappan]

Well - at least as far as I can tell - there's still no SMB printing - after having enabled all the other samba goodness, why didn't apple add SMB printing capability. (I mean having an OS X 10.2 system print to a SMB shared printer)

I know there are products like Dave availble - but really?

I've been strugling for the last couple weeks to get my wife's little Ibook to print properly to our little home wireless network.

Re:Color me Crazy

[Aquaman616]

If you want specifics - I've had the machine 2 years. I've had to wipe it a total of 5 times. So thats once every 4-6 months. I've been running OS X for well over 8 months now and I haven't run into any issues. I'm running Apache, PostreSQL, NFS, SSHD, Tomcat, etc. (so I'm sure the services add up well beyond 30) and yes, I'm running the entire MX suite (Flash, Dreamweaver, Firewords) the Office X suite. It's real code and it's real stable - I just can't say that for the PC.

beta testing LiteSwitch X

[ubiquitin]

We're currently beta testing LiteSwitch X on Jaguar. Email Mat at Proteron to ask for a copy. This is expected to ship in about a week.

iWebBrowser

[MenTaLguY]

Actually, such a facility exists in Windows. The MSHTML stuff is just one possible implementation. There's actually a project that bundles mozembed to provide an implementation of the same interfaces.

(incomplete, though, but only because they aren't adequately documented)

Re: Oh, I get it now.

[pudge]

Why doesn't pudge review Yellow Dog Linux, or Mandrake for PPC?

Two big reasons. 1. Fewer people care. 2. I don't use those OSes, and to use them enough to write a reaonable review would take an unstifiable amount of my time (see reason 1).

Why I Hate iTunes

[Herbmaster]

Sorry, iTunes is not compelling or any kind of best product to hit anything. There are basically three features that really matter for mp3 players:

• Quality of playback
• Quality of UI
• Speed

I'm ignoring features like iPod integration because that's really a seperate tool that Apple decided to put in the same application as their mp3 player. I'm also ignoring visualization because I think most people don't need it.

Quality of playback was made irrelevant after the first couple years of mp3 technology - everything is at the same level of quality now: "good enough"

Now, the last critical feature was made rather irrelevant too, through the last few years as computers got stupid fast. I'm talking about playing mp3s using 5% CPU time or less on even a ~300MHz system. Apple has managed to resurrect this hobgoblin with iTunes (on OSX) by making their mp3 player use a significant chunk of CPU time on any reasonably powered Mac - even when not playing mp3-encoded audio! (I'm not talking about dual CPU machines here - that really ought to be rediculous overkill to play mp3s and use a web browser at the same time)

iTunes GUI really gets me. It blows. I like to have a little control/display window and a little playlist (4 songs with name/artist/album/time) in the corner of my screen at all times. That's a playlist - not a playlist browser, or a list of online radio stations, or some other crap that doesn't apply to my current task. iTunes makes this impossible. Apple decided to kill the skinability of SoundJam, which was sacrificed to make iTunes, in favor of a consistent aqua user experience - which would be great, except it's bloated and useless.

Re:Why I Hate iTunes

[Herbmaster]

I think the problem here is that Macintoshes do not have sound cards... at all... it all goes through the CPU. Kind of a dumb idea, I admit.

Lack of a dedicated sound card is apparently not the problem, since the same Macs running a different mp3 player on a different OS handle it just fine.

Why is nobody pointing out the obvious...?

[Sanity]

...why are people migrating away from Linux towards a closed platform in the form of OSX, and what can be done to stop it?

Does the fact that OSX isn't produced by Microsoft, or that it looks pretty, mean that we can overlook the fact that it is closed source? Does Apple have some innate quality that makes them more trustworthy than Microsoft?

It makes me sad when I see users of Open Source software switch to closed source, whether it is Windows or OSX, and it makes me concerned when few here seem to question this.

Re:Why is nobody pointing out the obvious...?

[Sanity]

It's that apple as a developer is more trustworthy than Microsoft.

Why? The whole point of OS-X is to force people to purchase Apple's pretty but over-priced hardware.

At least Microsoft allows people to decide what hardware they will use Windows with, in many ways, this is what started the PC revolution, however Apple would have return to the bad-old-days when user-communities were fragmented into Atari users, Amiga users, Apple users, etc etc, by operating systems which were tied to a specific manufacturer's hardware.

Re:Why is nobody pointing out the obvious...?

[Sanity]

But forces all the hardware vendors to only sell Windows anyway... through restrictive liscensing agreements... nice.

That is beside the point, I am criticizing Apple, not defending every aspect of Microsoft's business practices.

What started the P.C. revolution was cheap P.C.'s. Emphasis on cheap. Both in quality and price...

Exactly, and why were they cheap? Because people had a choice as to who they purchase their hardware from - exactly what Apple seek to prevent.

Both in quality and price... just like the early software like DOS and Windows 3.X/9X.

Ah, so more expensive=better? So by your reasoning Windows is clearly better than Linux, and I'll bet you have a fine collection of Gap clothing too.

The great thing about everyone being on proprietary hardware is the emphasis is then on open standards and formats... like the web for instance.

Wow! That is like saying "The best thing about the Gulf War was that US soldiers got to have some effective training". What a dumb comment.

Re:Why is nobody pointing out the obvious...?

[Sanity]

Nevertheless, selling proprietary SW on proprietary HW is a lot more ethical than monopolizing a supposedly "open" standard.

Again, you are trying to defend Apple by criticizing Microsoft - no matter how bad Microsoft is, it doesn't make Apple any better.
Why not argue against Linux (the subject of my original comment), rather than arguing against a strawman in the form of Microsoft?

Wrong. They were cheap because that's the way IBM designed them. If you knew any computer history, you would know IBM was very late to the microcomputer market, and when it finally showed up with it's IBM P.C., it had to make sure it could reach market quickly with the cheapest and most plentiful parts and architectures -- not the best. It's been one kludge after another since then.

Actually, they are cheap because third-parties reverse engineered those machines and were then able to provide competitive products (which ran the same operating system) which drove down prices. Rather than forcing people to reverse-engineer Apple's hardware (and then still being stuck with a proprietary OS), why not devote energy towards Linux?

So while hammerheads like you are kicking up dust about Apple owning their HW platform, Microsoft can quietly check-off some more "open" standards in their bid to own everything!

Heh. Hammerheads like you are supporting a closed platform, even if Apple does take large amounts of market-share away from Microsoft, we will then be stuck with an even worse situation where not only are we stuck with a closed OS, but we are stuck with closed hardware too, leaving us in an even worse situation.

Wouldn't it be better to support an open OS like Linux, on open hardware, so that if Microsoft does fall, its place isn't taken by Apple, which could be every bit as monopolistic?

Filename tool-tips tip

[Slur]

If you press the "option" key while hovering over a truncated filename in the Finder the tooltip appears right away. This feature has existed since 10.0.

Mac Audio: Expect an exciting year

[Slur]

Word on the street has it that all the major mixers, sequencers, and synths are being ported to Mac OS X. I expect the next 12 months to be a very exciting time for Mac audio. Expect a lot of these products to move up to 48-bit and 96-bit audio.

Holy cow

[deblau]

Did anyone else do a double-take when they read this:

it requires zero configuration once you're configured properly.

Honestly!

Re:Rendezvous doesn't fix problems with peer-peer

[stux]

NetInfo, but doesn't actually mention how to map hosts to IP addresses! I'm really tired of typing in IP addresses that start with 192.168.0!

I'll take this one ;)

Now, warning, this works in 10.0 and 10.1, and I haven't yet verified it works in 10.2 :)

And I didn't read this anywhere, or anything, it was one of those experiments which worked back when 10.0 came out ;)

Gah, 10.2 has eaten my netinfo db :(

I'll have to restore or something :-\

Anywho, in /machines (in netinfo space) you'll find entries for localhost and broadcast host, copy localhost, change it to "blahblah" and set its IP up, that should give you a local domain name blahblah

You will probably need to restart the netinfo service

I wouldn't call your sources %10 reliable...

[cqnn]

1. Bill Gates did not call on IBM, they were
already in negotiation with MS to have a
version of (MS)-Basic built for that project.

2. BG did not "own" the program to be known as
PC-DOS; but he knew the programmer/company to
get it from.

3. It was not "earlier that day" it was a separate
appointment that Gates helped to set up.
The circumstances surrounding the IBM DOS deal took
at least several weeks to work out.

4. The developer was Gary Kildall, then head of
DRI (not to be mistaken for Digital Research
Corp.) who was away on another appointment.
His wife (and co-owner of the company) and DRI's
lawyer(s) were on hand to meet with IBM. But they thought
the NDA that IBM wanted them to sign was too restrictive
to agree to without Gary's
cooroboration. So that initial meeting fell through, and
while later negotiations did work out, the original
opportunity was lost; and Microsoft gained a foothold
into the OS market.

Side note: People also like to say that Kildall
was "out flying" on the day of the IBM appointment,
to imply that he preferred leisure
over business. But the truth is that he was a
licensed private pilot, and found commuting along
the west coast in his plane a faster way to get
business done than driving.

What does this have to do with the latest rev of
MacOS? Only a reflection onto catwh0re's comment:

There is no such thing as "stumbling on to wealth the
right way". Success is driven by
those who try to make the most of the opportunities
they are given.

One can attribute many more failures to Apple's
stumbling than successes. It is only to perpetuate the
Mac culture that Apple works so hard to make it
"look easy" to come up with their products.

Apple does appear to be on a good track with their latest
developments (iPod, iMac, and now Jaguar).
While I am not a Mac user, I hope they can
keep up this trend as it serves to benefit the PC industry
as a whole.

Re:AvantGo..works in Classic

[Spencerian]

But if you're using Palm Desktop 4 (the subject of this thread is OS X, of course) then AvantGo doesn't function. Native support is what's needed. I don't mind Classic--when Palm works. This is one of those hardware abstractions in Classic (the USB cradle interface) that is bound to break sooner or later...and Apple or Palm won't be fixing it.

I think that AvantGo is going to DoDo land along with many other dot-coms, but that doesn't mean that I want to rely on them or OS 9 for it. In this case, I cheer the OSS community for stepping up and presenting a solution.

OSX lost Apple a sale

[Andy Smith]

Last month I bought a new computer. I'd gone through a phase of *hating* PCs so I decided to get an iMac. I had 100% made up my mind.

So I trecked the 40 miles to the nearest store that had a display model, and spent half an hour or so playing with it. Went home, convinced. Yep, that's the system for me.

Went back a week later to buy it. Decided to have another look and spent about 3 hours just fiddling with stuff, finding out how to do things, and seeing how quickly I could do the tasks that I have to do hundreds of times every day.

I went home without an iMac. Three days later I bought a new PC, a Dell, and I love it. The PC rocks. WinXP rocks. I'm happy.

I've never used such an awkward OS as OSX. It seemed to me that for every little thing about the interface, someone had sat down and thought "how can we do this to make it as illogical as possible?" and then they'd done it. I don't think I need to go further than this one example: Select a folder in the finder and press enter. Should open the folder, right? Bzz! Renames it!?!

Apple had a guaranteed sale. But they want people to "think different" so they created an operating system that I, personally, would find impossible to use on a daily basis. All that praise? All the awards? Bleugh. I found OSX to be unintuitive, silly and downright annoying.

I'm even getting a bit angry thinking about it as I'm writing this! :-)

Just my 2 cents. I hope this doesn't come across as a rant/flamebait/troll.

Re:OSX lost Apple a sale

[Tokerat]

Um... or for the Mac user who actually *knows* what HTML is (read: Grandma says "HTM what?", it's a simple matter of Preferences->"Ignore Rich Text commands in HTML files". TextEdit is like Wordpad and NotePad combined. I use TextEdit for quickly touching up HTML on my OS X webserver.

A little configuration goes a long way. It isnt' that hard to find this stuff people. You say you "explore" a system... I think you just play around with it and if you're unhappy with the default settings you decide this is "not for you".

RED ALERT! All computers need to be configured the way YOU like them when you get them home. Mac does. Windows does. Linux/*BSD/other UNIXs most certianly do.

Get used to it. No one can EVER hand YOU the perfect interface/default options. They are as varied as personalitites.

Re:Rendezvous doesn't fix problems with peer-peer

[gig]

> set an image's icon to a thumbnail of the image?

In 10.2, one of the View Options for Icon view is "Show icon preview", but this is disabled by default. Open a Finder window, choose View > as Icons, choose View > Show View Options, and then check the box "Show icon preview". Note the setting of "This window only" or "All windows" at the top of the View Options panel before you make changes. Once Finder is showing icon previews, if you open a folder of images, their icons will appear as their contents. Set the icon size to 128x128 and you probably won't ever have to open an image just to get a look at it.

The confusion on this is because in previous Mac OS up to 10.1, if an image file had an icon that showed its contents, it was actually a custom icon that was added to the file itself at some point during its life (Photoshop has done this for years, Fireworks does it, and you can just copy and paste an image in Finder's Get Info to do this yourself, too). With a plain custom icon, you could open the image, edit it (say, rotate it) and close it and the icon would still be the same as it ever was. With 10.2, Finder is basically making these content icons for you as you go, so they will be current. If you have images that already have custom icons on them, cut the icon out by using Get Info (select the file or folder, choose File > Get Info, click in the icon field, and go Edit > Cut).

Re:Actually it is Rendezvous...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it was so foolproof that I actually noticed this behavior and thought it was busted. The shared printer simply appeared in the print dialog and I ignored it and started fiddling with the print settings because things NEVER work that easy.

Funny thing was the printer could not be deleted from Print Center, and before I got in a full-blown panic, I decided to do a test print. Lo and behold it "just worked".

This syndrome needs a name. I see new Mac users all over the place trying to fix stuff that isn't broken when something seems too easy, day after day after day. Maybe "Sisyphus
Syndrome". You're so used to a computer being like pushing a boulder up a hill all day only to have it roll down again that you just start pushing uphill by reflex even when there's no boulder.

Sisyphus: A cruel king of Corinth condemned forever to roll a huge stone up a hill in Hades only to have it roll down again on nearing the top.

Re:OS 10.2 and Audio Apps

[gig]

Check out Ableton Live for audio right now on Mac OS X. It's a great app on any OS, but I've been using it on Mac OS X for months, all day long, and the combination of the two has NEVER LET ME DOWN. Just runs. No crashes, no skips, no problems. The CPU meter stays around 50% on a PowerBook G4 with a 667 in it. There are only a handful of VST plug-ins for Mac OS X right now (although they've doubled in the past couple of months and there should be 10x that easy once Cubase SX comes out in September 2002), but Live has a decent set of built-in effects, FANTASTIC looping and editing and beat-matching that's very musical, and you can work with as many tracks as you like.

Re:linux is dead

[MoneyT]

Anywhere I read says BSD is Unix, it's merely an alternative version of it.

In simple terms:

BSD UNIX : AT&T UNIX

as

RedHAT : SuSE

Re:Hardware Monopoly

[reallocate]

Apple does not have a monopoly on making and selling computers. If they did, you'd be using one. Apple does not have a monopoly on operation systems. Again, if they did, you'd be using their OS.

What Apple does have is a very tightly integrated hardware and software platform that they have managed and protected for years. Part of that entails copyrights, trademarks, and a helluva lot of very good brand marketing. Apple has every right to aggressively market their products and take legal action against anyone they believe is violating their copyrights or trademarks, in the intersts of protecting the value of the Apple brand.. They are under no legal or ethical obligation to share or "open" anything at all.

There's a direct parallel with the auto industry, where each manufacturer markets what is, in reality, a product that does pretty much the same thing as all it's competitors. In order to differentiate their products in the minds of consumers, each manufacturer goes to great lenghts to convince consumers that their brand delivers something unobtainable elsewhere.

So, if you wanna buy a new Volkswagen, you
have to buy it from Vokswagen. It's obvious, though, that they don't have a monopoly on car sales.

Same with Apple. All general-purpose computers do almost exactly the same thing. All OS's do pretty much the same thing.

Sometimes it pays to remember that before Microsoft established its stranglehold, the personal computer market was a pretty competitive place: Apple, Commodore, Sinclair, Acorn, Coleco, etc. Each sold a combined hardware/software platform. Plus, a whole gaggle of vendors marketed their own versions of DOS on the PC platform, version that you could not buy from MS.

Re:My experience with Windows.

[Andy Smith]

Just goes to show, horses for courses :-)

I mean my opinion of OSX is about as low as it could possibly be, but I won't say outright "it sucks" or "it's stupid" because I know there are people who swear by it, just as I swear by Windows. Some people work well with one set of tools, other people with another set, and of course a big part of it is which OS you work with first.

My problem with OSX, though, is that I believe a lot of it is due to Apple's arrogance. Remember they based an entire advertising campaign around the slogan "think different"? Well I don't necessarily want different, but I do want good, and for me that means ease of use. OSX is designed to (a) look pretty and (b) be easy to pick up for first-time users and people who were raised on MacOS. That's not how an OS should be, in my opinion.

Got it! I knew there was one word that could sum up what I felt about OSX -- inflexible. What could be worse about an OS than forcing you to work one way and forbidding all others? (I'd say that's a fair comment about OSX, but obviously my experience is limited.)

Incidentally I've never had any such complaints about the Linux GUIs I've tried. I'll show my Linux ignorance by admitting that I can't remember what most of them were, but I did work with KDE for a few months and I had no problems at all with it. Fitted me like a glove straight away and allowed me to get on with what I wanted to do. (And I'm by no means an expert, or even very proficient in Linux, so that's saying something.)

Re:Modern OS? - correction

[blakespot]

Technically, the Unix that's 30 yrs old is not the Unix on which Mac OS X is based. Remember that Mac OS X is based on NeXT's OS, which is in turn based on Mach. Darwin borrows very heavily from xxxBSD however.

Actually NeXT is based on Mach + BSD just as OS X is based on Mach + FreeBSD. BSD was there from day one on the NeXT.

blakespot

Re:Jaguar Not Quite Ready Yet

[Tokerat]

No, his display was in sleep mode, i.e. the computer turns off the signal from the video card until wakeup. Turning the monitor on/off would do nohting unless there is a VGA source for it.

That bring up another thought: Possibly it's the video card giving display sleep problems?

blah blah blah

[Shanep]

I am a bitter old man. I hate change.

So stick with Mac OS 9.2 then. The OS with the Worlds most bandaids! And I say that affectionately, since I think it's fairly more stable than the Win9x's, considering they're both sans memory protection.

For Apple to advance, they had to make major changes, and if they're going to do that, they may as well improve everything along with the kernel changes. OSX is my main OS now, it's not perfect sure, but what is? It certainly appears to have the most incredible potential. I'm finding OSX to be as stable as any of the most stable Linux or *BSD systems and by far the most capable GUI I've ever used.

Don't like it? Then stick with what works for you now and move over to OSX when you need to.

Scanner

[DavidRavenMoon]

What model UMAX? I have an old 1220S and it works fine in OS X, via an OrangeMicro 930U SCSI card and VueScan (like we really think UMAX can write OS X drivers! Ha!). I have a G4/466 Digital Audio.

Re:No sushi or mac & cheese

[DavidRavenMoon]

Besides, if he eats sushi, then he's not vegan.

Sushi is not just fish. There is vegan sushi. Then again some vegetarians eat fish.

Go figure.

Re:Color me Crazy

[DavidRavenMoon]

Have you had Aqua a "few years"? Has Aqua been OUT a "few years"? How many apps are you running on Aqua? Im not talking little 5 lines of code freeware proof of concept apps. Im talking big apps like Outlook and Flash.

I have a few friends that run W2K. One is an architect, another does 3D StudioMax work. Both of them have to reformat and reinstall Windows every six months. They say if they don't things start running slow, etc.

I've been running OS X since April 2001. Never had to reinstall. I do run "big apps" like FlashMX, Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, GoLive, MS Office, LightWave, Maya... nothing breaks. Very often I have half of those apps open at the same time, all day, all week.

In the 16 months I've been running OS X I have had about 6 "crashes" where I had to reboot. Four of those were kernel panics while running OS X 10.1.3, which was prone to kernel panics.

Re:Tired of being told to switch

[defile]

I'm sorry, who's telling you to switch now? I felt that the article was more "Mac OS 9 vs. Mac OS 10" than it was "Linux vs. Mac OS 10," but hey, that's just me.

The first and subsequent posters in this story. Apple's ad campaign. Many people when a discussion about Linux and Apple come up. Just giving my reasons.

Re:Tired of being told to switch

[defile]

Don't assume that just because it's not in your face and it's not identical to the Unix hacker culture you're used to that it doesn't exist.

You are correct. I should clarify that the Freenix hacker culture that I find so accomodating is not available to me on MacOS X.