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ArsTechnica Posts Mac OS X 10.2 Review
hype7 writes "ArsTechnica have posted their review on Mac OS X 10.2. John Siracusa has been writing the reviews of Mac OS X since way back with the developer previews, and in my experience they've been the most thorough, thoughtful and unbiased reviews of Mac OS X on the web. Well worth a read." He does do a fine job; so if you needed one last fix of looks at Jaguar, here you go.
..that's what it's been called here on Lowendmac by some bloke.
10.2 is oh so much nicer than previous releases, but I still wish for:
VT102 emulation (FKeys damnit) in terminal. GlTerm works for now. I guess.
At least an *option* for sloppy focus / click to raise - click-to-focus-and-raise just sucks ass.
Where is the 1400x1050 screen resolution? This res works just fine on my 19" Sony under Linux.
Can I please have a *global* icon size setting and a *global* view style - nav down through a folder heiarchy in 10.2 and the view will automagically switch from list view to icon view. Super annoying.
How about a 0-100% transparency setting for the dock.
An API for a real honest-to-god VWM. Space works for now. I guess.
If Apple are serious about wooing *nix users they really need to fix at least some of these. Most of these are minor issues and should be easily fixed. It's beyond me why they haven't been fixed yet.
(I didn't even bother to mention middle-mouse-button paste).
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
no, I don't think the Mac enthusiast will necessarily disagree with him. I don't. unlike many 'linux users' John comes across as someone who appreciates just how advanced the MacOS was in certain ways, how those advances were picked up on and extended in Be, NewtonOS and NeXT, and how so many of them seem to have been squandered in X. That Apple CAN'T - realistically - implement the advanced features and structures in an OS and hope for it to succeed is a testament to the legacy thinking that's slowly choking the IT industry. Remember, Apple is trying to woo Win users, and that means - unfortunately in many cases - giving them what they know. The OSX Finder shows why this is such a bad idea, Apple's continued prosperity perhaps shows why it's a good one.
That was classic intercourse!
So, when they actually go about reviewing Macintosh products; OS, Apps, Hardware, or otherwise; you can't really take them with much more than a grain of salt. Shortcomings will be exaggerated, and advantages will be understated. It's a guarantee, based on their proudly admitted bias.
It all goes right along with their being wintel drones. Remember a while back when they put a considerable amount of verbage into "debunking" the advantages of RISC, in their efforts to be intel's "CISC rul3z" fan boys?
This article, though very thorough from a geek's p.o.v., almost completely ignores the graphic design/creative market. What about printer support/scanner support/Quark support/XTension support/Acrobat Distiller support/speed improvements for design apps? That's the stuff that's going to sell 10.2 to the already-Mac-user crowd. I need that to convince my boss that it's not just a great OS for home, but also work. I need justification for an OS 9 creative office to upgrade to the goodness that is OS X.
Multiple paragraphs on the Terminal app (though useful) don't help sell it to the installed Mac user base that MS complains hasn't Switched. A little more info for the right demographics would be great.
I was foolish enough to attempt it without Quartz Extreme running "Flurry"... Let's just say I got to know the SPoD (Spinning Pizza of Death) more intimately than I had ever anticipated...
I hate Grammar Nazi's
Filename extensions where invented back in command line days. They made a certain amount of sense when you didn't have a lot of different file types, or a robust file system for keeping track of them. Now you have dozens and dozens of file types.
File extensions are just not adequate to record this level of information. Too many have multiple meanings. (My favorite example is .WMZ, which means "Compressed Skin" to a certain media player and "Compressed graphic metafile" to a certain office suite -- both from the same company!) And how are users supposed to deal with them? If you have to specify an extension every time you copy or rename a file, Captain Murphy will make sure you get it wrong at the worst possible time. (Even worse for non-techies, who often don't know/forget that extensions are important, or can't remember all the ones they need to know.) If you leave it up the system, you're at the mercy of applications that play with extension associations without telling you and that impose "descriptions" that are more advertisements than useful classifications.
If there are problems with the way Classic does metadata, that's an implementation issue, not a flaw in the concept. Anyway, is file-type fascism on the Mac any worse that extension stealing on Windows?
If I have an issue with Siracusa about metadata, it's that his arguments on the subject tend to wander into obscure abstractions and complicated psychophilosophical rants. Computer science has some arcane roots, but computer people are a pragmatic bunch -- you can only convince them with specifics.
I have to comment on your use of the word "bigot". My American Heritage Dictionary defines "bigot" as "One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ." Dismissing other people's opinions by with simplistic stereotypes and scatological insults would seem to fit that definition.