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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.
I'm currently supporting (indirectly now) the very class of professionals you wonder about.
I agree with your initial comment, but first note that the article can't possibly contain every viewpoint for every profession that uses Macs. For that, look elsewhere (maybe even my website--see my sig).
Don't blame Apple for Quark dragging their feet in their QuarkXPress/OS X support. Quark is historically notorious for very slow development and very buggy software in its initial run. QuarkXPress would be one of LAST apps I would use on its OS X release because of how buggy it tends to be, and how it has even rendered whole projects damaged beyond resurrection.
Scanner support is still weak, but better than 10.1. Plug-ins for applications is a concept that may phase-out in the way you describe to maintain system stability, but that functionality should still be available. Printer support is already there as well--the problem is that most users are used to maintain this themselves thanks to the ease of the Chooser and AppleTalk. Rendezvous and a good Mac technician should clear this up for most.
I've already made my recommendations to make the move to OS X 10.2 for the graphic crowd. There's very little to stop the move now, unless you're really stuck on Quark. I would say to unstick yourself if your business allows it and take a serious look at InDesign 2.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
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.