Apple has done its part to build a robust operating system in record-setting time. Major application vendors are going out on a limb to support this new OS. It's time for Mac users to take care of business at home and support the release of Jaguar.
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• Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix Users
  2002-09-18 02:33:52  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  

  Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.
  
  

  I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need, not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics. The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.
  
  

  Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.
  
  

  Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design. It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.
  
  

  There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges. They are
  horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.
  
  

  Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market. He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 10 years. I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)
  
  

  Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware. I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life, and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.
  
  

• Apple Laptop Keyboards Unsuitable for Unix Users
  2003-11-03 14:10:04  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  [looks at iMac keyboard. Looks at IBM ThinkPad keyboard. Looks at generic PC keyboard on server. Checkes HP keyboard in junk box. Looks closely at picture of PowerMac on Apple site]
  
  Dude, the Ctrl key is in the same place on Apple laptops as it is on normal keyboards, so just WTF are you talking about?
  

• Switch to Jaguar
  2002-09-16 13:25:40  criduchat [Reply | View]
  
  
  Jaguaraggravate:
  
  I don't run Photoshop, don't own a computer company, don't manage a server, don't write computer articles for magazines, no longer run a hospital department, don't see any need to carry 10,000 tunes on my person, don't take part in a LAN, don't own a website, don't do major trouble-shooting on other's computers, don't own a laptop computer, presently have a G-3 B & W 400mHz, 384MB, don't show people my computer to impress them, don't program UNIX (or understand it).
  
  I would like to learn how to use Quicken with my bank etc.; also, would like to further my photographic proclivities somewhat.
  
  I have invested in OS 10.1 and now 10.2; and found the apple Mail program and earthlink.net did not mesh well. For over one month I have had trouble sending, and sometimes receiving email; even though I spent up to 2 hours at a time with Earthlink ISP reps on the phone, and brought my computer to the "Geniuses" at the Apple Store. Now, suddenly, without changing any PPoE settings etc. my mail seems again to be functioning. For this kind of service Earthlink expects top prices, and Apple wants to charge me for the privilege of using their iTools (some of which may be quite useful).
  
  I keep getting messages that my printer doesn't work (have tried to download any and all up-to-date drivers for HP 970Cse; also, Jaz 2 GB doesn't work at all in spite of installing new driver and new stuff in Mac Software that supposedly would cure the problem. Incidentally, the printer works fine almost all of the time, despite the "Printer won't work" type of messages.
  
  I bought a Canon G2 camera recommended by the Apple "Geniuses" and have found it works flawlessly with the Mac (with and without iPhoto).
  
  I am a member of Mensa, taught medicine at Johns Hopkins, Duke University, George Washington University in D.C., University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
  
  Why am I developing an "aggravation rash" and not more happy with Jaguar despite your glowing article?
  
  Yore Frend, Del
  
  

• The Real Issue
  2002-08-27 12:11:19  skerstiens [Reply | View]
  
  
  I know I'm weighing in late on this topic, but here goes...
  
  The sooner Apple's customer base moves to OS X, the better for those users and the company.
  
  Mac lovers everywhere want Apple to succeed. The path that Apple has taken is a bold new direction. I say, its really time. OS X is a step forward. It is stable. It is modern. It has the potential meet and exceed our expectations of OS 9.
  
  I just got my copy of OS X 10.2 and am installing it as I write. I was an early OS X adopter, and frankly the version released in March last year was a disaster that I never got working on my older machines. 10.1 fixed those issues in October, and I've been happy with OS X for the last year or so.
  
  Is it perfect? No. Is it better than OS 9? Yes. I think Apple is going to kick tail with OS X, but not with a 20% installed base.
  
  I understand that there are many of Apple's faithful who have custom applications and hardware running in OS 9.x and before. Maybe its about time to upgrade. I remember the switch to PowerPC back in the early 90's. That was painful too, but it was direction that Apple chose at the time. It was costly for me and millions of Mac loyalsts, but it was the only choice if we wanted continue to own and use Macs.
  
  The mantra of the entire computer industry is change. The industry is based on the fact that new software makes your old hardware obsolete. The industry (not just Apple) wants you to buy new machines every year. That being said, Apple has done a pretty good job of making sure that Classic in OS X and standalone OS 9 still function. In my experience, Classic works well even on older machines. Eventually though, people will have to let go of their old systems and upgrade to OS X if they want to continue to support Apple.
  
  Personally I can't imagine any other choice for my computing needs. Apple is IT.

• New Mac user
  2002-08-22 09:27:51  tbriscoe [Reply | View]
  
  
  I just bought my first Mac (widescreen iMac) and it came with Jaguar so I can't really address the upgrade cost. However, I've been a Linux user for 9 years and it was OS X that convinced me that a Mac was for me. I've had one instance so far where I had to boot into OS 9 and I hope it's the last.
  
  This is my first Mac and if Apple abandons OS X it'll be my last.
  
  BTW.. I wrote code for a little high-tech startup on Mac SE running System 6 many years ago, so this wasn't my first experience with Macs.
  
  -- Tom

• It's the little things
  2002-08-20 22:25:45  latrebor [Reply | View]
  
  
  You ask why doesn't everyone switch to OSX. You're article is very positive and discusses all the big stuff available for OSX. You fail however to more realistically address all the little things that don't work.
  
  I have OSX on all my Macs but I boot all of them in OS 9. An example of what I mean is Documents to Go. Until about 1 week ago it didn't work with Palm Desktop 4; the version needed for OSX. There were no network drivers for using HP inkjets over a network. When the driver came out I installed it and found I could no longer sync my Palm. I tried to get adice on fixing this and none was available.
  
  I could go on but won't, in as much as I think the point is clear. I am desperate to go all the way to OSX but there are a number of little but critical things which are needed to make it possible to switch all the way.
  
  For now I just remain vigilant and hopeful.
  Loyal Mac User

• ROI of updating
  2002-08-14 15:23:45  martinb9999 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Here's why 10.x -> 10.2 upgrade is way too expensive.
  
  When I upgraded from 9.x to 10.1, I paid approx 100UKP for an OS which provided:
  1) Orders of magnitude more stability
  2) A real multi-user security model
  3) The capability to run web tools like Apache, Zope, Perl, Python, MySQL, PHP and ImageMagick
  4) The capability to run SAMBA, tying my home network together
  5) The capability to run essential productivity and mail tools like fetchmail, procmail (particularly to filter spam and make the Mail.App upgrade redundant), ssh (and hence pine and BitchX remotely)
  6) iApps (especially iPhoto)
  
  This was a worthwhile deal. It gave me the first opportunity to have the Dreamteam: the power and stability of Unix married with a highly usable and attractive GUI.
  
  Now, the proposal is to charge me the same amount for a much more lightweight upgrade. I don't see how it's worth it for OSX.x users.
• ROI of updating
  2002-08-15 05:53:48  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  Agreed IMO they should have made the jump from OS9 and earlier full price, from 10.0 to 10.2 50UKP and from 10.1 to 10.2 25UKP.

• Jaguar Price Watch
  2002-08-10 18:17:58  dicklacara [Reply | View]
  
  
  The best price I have seen so far is $98.95 after a $21.00 mail in rebate:
  
  http://www.macmall.com/macmall/shop/detail.asp?dpno=551926
  
  Close second is $99.95, without the hassle of a MIR.
  
  http://www.macconnection.com/scripts/productdetail.asp?product_id=303593
• Demand seems high
  2002-08-11 17:51:28  weberik [Reply | View]
  
  
  (or supply is low) ;-)
  
  Just ordered from MacMall, and they've got a backorder list of 2,000+
  
  Of course, 2,000 isn't a huge number in the grand scheme of things, but it does make me wonder how many copies of Jaguar MacMall was allotted by Apple in the first place.
• Demand seems high
  2002-08-16 23:42:36  Derrick Story [Reply | View]
  
  
  All indications are that Apple is going to sell lots of copies of Jaguar. Our first clue was when Amazon had to pull their rebate offer because of high demand.
  
  Hopefully, Apple has produced lots of copies of Jag, because after all this hoopla, the last thing people are going to want to hear is that there are delays and shortages ... ;)

• The issue is not OS 9 to OS X---
  2002-08-09 18:54:29  dicklacara [Reply | View]
  
  
  The issue is upgrading from OS X 10.1 to 10.2.
  
  OS 7-9.x users -- bless 'em (I am one of you).. but technology moves on!
  
  Have I ordered Jaguar? -- no, not yet -- But I will! I am just waiting for the best deal!
  
  Why Jaguar?
  
  Because everything new that comes from Apple will be built on the shoulders of Jaguar.
  
  This is as important to Mac users as the win 3.x to win 95 transition was to Microsoft users.
  
  How do I justify it?
  
  Simple! It lets me take advantage of the newer, cheaper technology.
  
  Steve recently said at the announcement of the [then] new iMac G4, That "here is a new iMac,
  that is 4 times the original iMac, for the same price". My original 1978 Apple ][ cost $1795, 16 KB RAM - no disks, no CD, no GUI. (I need to tell you that $1795 in today's dollars is about $20,000).
  
  I recently bought a 60 Gig hard drive for far less than I paid for a 4 Gig, 4 years ago.
  
  So, for $129 (or whatever deal I can find) I can exploit the latest new technology-- that's a pretty good investment.
  
  Yes, I still have a 7200 (the Mac II finally belied up) with a SCSI scanner, and PhotoShop 3,5 --
  but I can use it and still take advantage of my Blueberry iMac and network them with the TiBook.
  
  I only bought the TiBook so I could work while visiting my Mom in the hospital.
  
  The TiBook opened my eyes -- there is a new world out there that I hadn't seen (with my comfortable, old familiar iMac).
  
  I can get more done in an hour on the TiBook/OS X than I could do in days on my older systems.
  
  It's just better, and better wins -- and it makes me win, too!
  
  I am pretty close with the dollar -- but Jaguar is an investment that I expect will reap great dividends.
  
  Dick

• X - (Worthless) Hockey Puck Operating System
  2002-08-07 15:13:52  macwoman [Reply | View]
  
  
  ...and not worth 2 cents let alone $129.!!!!!!!!! And the faster Apple does away with it, the faster it will GET BACK 80% of its user base, the 80% who are royally unamused by X, the most worthless thing Apple has ever done!
  
  
• The *best* thing Apple has ever done!
  2002-08-08 19:18:13  weberik [Reply | View]
  
  
  Did you honestly expect Apple to stick with OS 9 forever? It was a great OS, but it is definitely long in the tooth. I've been using Macs since 1987, and I've been forced to use my fair share of Windows along the way. I've also installed, used, and developed on Linux.
  
  To me, OS X is a godsend. Beyond the marketing messages Apple is putting out, here's why I prefer OS X to OS 9:
  
  1) NO EXTENSION CONFLICTS: Let's face it, we all became used to dealing with extension conflicts in the Mac OS. It used to make me cringe every time I'd have to explain to one of my less-technically-inclined relatives that even though the Mac is a great OS, from time to time some apps conflicted with other apps, causing the whole machine to crash. With OS X, this doesn't happen. No Conflict Catcher, no Extension Manager, no arcane knowledge of extension conflicts needed to run your Mac comfortably.
  
  2) TRUE MULTITASKING: I can, without any concerns whatsoever, burn a CD while looking for something on Google to assist me in a document I'm writing in Word. Toggling between apps doesn't cause hangs or freezes. Everything just works, and you don't ever have to hold your breath.
  
  3) INTERFACE: A lot of people have problems with the OS X interface, but whatever interface Apple came up with for X, they would have received complaints. Stay too close to the OS 9 look and feel, and some would have said it was antiquated. Go to far towards the Nextstep interface, and people would have howled that it was too unfamiliar. I happen to love the Next-style finder view. I like the Dock. I really love Quartz, and saving files is much more flexible and easier in X.
  
  4) UNIX COMPATIBILITY: For some reason, this freaks out a lot of long time Mac users, who seem to feel that the introduction of a BSD core to the Mac OS is akin to Satan being named to the board of directors. As a multimedia and web developer, I can use all of my favorite UNIX/Linux tools on the same machine I use for graphic design, audio, and video. For the first time, the Mac provides a truly capable vertical solution for developing content and backend systems, and then deploying them on the same OS (or, conveniently, on BSD or Linux with only minimal tweaks). This is *huge* and it not only stopped the exodus of web/multimedia developers who were defecting to Windows, it also is bringing new converts in the door. Furthermore, the same "alpha geeks" who eschewed the Mac as a toy are now snapping up TiBooks, learning Cocoa, and marvelling at how well OS X plays with Open Source tools. This is an example of not only taking care of Apple's core user base, but actually expanding it.
  
  5) THE MAC IS NO LONGER AN ISLAND: As I alluded to in #4, Apple has learned that Macs have to work in mixed environments. And do they ever! OS X runs Windows networks better than Windows, in many cases. It uses widely-accepted protocols, it has become a great Java development platform, and it behaves nicely as a client on any kind of network.
  
  I can understand that you might not like OS X's UI, but that's a subjective comparison. Take that out of the equation, and OS X has OS 9 beat hands down.
  
  Finally, OS 9 was not bringing in converts from the Windows world. OS X is doing that, because it's *so much better* than Windows in so many ways, that even long-time Mac-haters like David Coursey are coming around.
  
  There's no way Apple is going to get rid of OS X, and I for one am glad.

• HAH you have no clue..
  2002-08-07 15:05:31  macwoman [Reply | View]
  
  
  Apple declared itself dead when it declared its beloved operating system dead. Get over it. X is a flop because practically NO ONE except a geek, even former Mac experts, even CARE about most of the stuff you listed that X supposedly can do. They have no clue what they are so they don't miss them or want them. Get a grip, X just plain sucks from a user standpoint. Apple has made the fatal mistake of turning its users upon each other with I HATE OS X fights.
  I am plain sick of it, and sick of Apple for abandoning us.
  Sure you have some geeks who are thrilled with the candy coated UNIX, but the "rest of us" are not amused and are awaiting the resurrections and for JOBS to eat humble pie. His company's life depends on it.
  Otherwise, 20% of all Mac users is all he's going to get and that just isn't enough.
  I'm fed up and have gone with PCs.....if I'm going to have the aggravation of the BSOD it may as well be on a computer that someone knows something about.............BAH!
  X just sucks so bad, it makes my stomach turn to look at it.
  BSD and all your other alphabet soup ramblings my butt...who the heck cares?
  Most of us want an OS with the easy fix, and it's NOT X.
  
• HAH you have no clue..
  2003-11-03 11:47:07  anonymous2 [Reply | View]
  
  
  Macomwna, you don't like OS X, you say you prefer OS 9, so you're switching to Windows? Why not just stick with OS 9?? I mean, if OS X had NEVER come out, would you switch to Windows? Not from the sound of it. So why switch to Windows now? What is it in OS 9 that has changed? Honestly, you don't make much sense.
  
  
  
• HAH you have no clue..
  2002-08-23 11:16:00  zeroaxs [Reply | View]
  
  
  As much as you may love OS9, it's kind of like trying to live on a ship that has a 10-foot hole in the bottom of it. It's going to sink no matter how much you love it, or hate the alternative (OSX). It's time to stop raging against the light and embrace it. Development for 9 is going to dry up eventually (hopefully sooner rather than later), and you will be stuck with an OS that doesn't have the functionality you want or the compatibility you need, and all because you are unwilling to let go of some antiquated belief that it is better simply because it is not UNIX-based. I have a saying for that, build a bridge.... and get over it.
• HAH you have no clue..
  2002-08-08 01:28:08  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  From this users standpoint OS X is great, a MASSIVE improvement on OS9, frankly from a user perspective OS 9 is a pretty poor UI. OS 9 is creaking at the seams it's old, primitive in it's internal structure and abilities, it's reached the end of the road and Apple knew it would never cope with the future requirements of an OS, tried to rewrite it (remember the Copeland project?) and failed. OSX was the ONLY way that Apple was going to survive and Jobs knew it.
  
  One thing you are right about is that apart from the application toolbar appearing at the top of the screen there is very little traditionally 'mac like' about OSX and I guess that's hard for some people.
  
  Your 'ressurections' aren't going to happen, the installed user base will upgrade to OSX either as the software and or the hardware demands it and OS9 will become just a memory. In the end the OS9 users will be the 20%....or less.
  

• Quark upgrade
  2002-08-07 02:24:27  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  Looks like the next version of Quark will be incompatible with most if not all current 3rd party xtensions. Now there's a kick in the teeth for those of you hoping to move to OSX when Quark comes out. Now you'll have to wait until the xtension is carbonized too, AND you'll probably have to pay for it again...

• New constituency
  2002-08-07 01:48:33  jthwaites [Reply | View]
  
  
  I am one of the new "open systems" constituency of Apple customers, adding to the home and media constituencies.
  
  I am using Mac OS X with NetBeans on a completely equal footing with my PC-using colleagues to create Java enterprise web apps.
  
  This was impossible with OS 9.
  
  Don't be scared, you 80%, jump in - the water's lovely!

• Pro Change Camp is Missing The Point
  2002-08-06 13:06:36  digitaldoc [Reply | View]
  
  
  At least for me the issue is not that I'm technology phobic, but rather that the technology provided by Apple and by the 3rd party vendors whose products I use either prevents useful work in OS X and Classic (e.g., incomplete driver support for printers and scanners)*, or fails to work as well as the OS 9 equivalent (e.g., Filemaker Pro and Virtual PC)*, or is an expensive upgrade for no real benefit (e.g., Photoshop)*.
  
  That's plenty of reason not to upgrade based solely on the merits, not phobias.
  
  Steve
  
  * In my humble opinion.
• Pro Change Camp is Missing The Point
  2002-08-07 02:49:42  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  I can see your point (and I'm strongly pro change). 10.2 should address several of the issues with scanning and print that have held some people back. As for FMPro and VPC that's down to them and not Apple to sort out their application issues but they ARE doing it because they recognise they have little if any future in the OS9 versions of their products. At some point most if not all of the new apps and the updates to existing ones will be OSX only and the hardware will only support OS9 with the Classic layer (no booting into OS9). I still think that at least installing OSX on your machines even as a dual boot and getting you and your users familiar with it will pay dividends in the end. You WILL have to switch at some point, Apple will give you no choice and when that happens you may as well hit the ground running rather than trip and fall.
• Pro Change Camp is Missing The Point
  2002-08-07 06:28:41  digitaldoc [Reply | View]
  
  
  Good points, all. I have both installed and use OS X, am an "old hand" at various flavors of Unix and I'm running as hard as I can...
  
  Thanks for the comments,
  
  Steve

• What Apple should do
  2002-08-06 11:47:11  pontussorlin [Reply | View]
  
  
  I understand your frustration Derrick, and I suppose Apple is feeling it too.
  
  The main point that people aren't switching I think is that they are scared of change.
  
  Apple should do something like this: take a demo and put it on a downloadable disc (you double-click it to download). You double-click on the installation which instals a demo. On the demo you get a real live version of macosx/jaguar, much like an emulator (for example VirtualPC). Let people play around in real-time on their own computer, to explore the things that are only showed on the quicktime movies on the apple site. those quicktime movies won't show the goodness of macosx.
  
  This could show the benefits, which only comes if you are installing or partitioning your HD, which many average users just don't do, simply because that was why they didn't buy a pc.
  
  /Pontus Sörlin
  

• Easier to switch from Windows
  2002-08-06 11:26:53  clvrmnky [Reply | View]
  
  
  It seems to me that it is far easier to make the leap from Windows, Linux, UNIX, or BeOS (bless it's little heart) than from "classic" Mac OS to OS X.
  
  I personally can't see the attraction of OS 9, and find it confusing and disorienting when I do have to boot to OS 9 for some reason. That seems to be the rub: "when I have to". Fortunately, I have little reason to leave OS X and, once Emagic Logic Audio is released for OS X, I may never have to again (well, Alpha Centauri plays better in OS 9...).
  
  I understand that a lot of people need OS 9 to get their work done. Either some app isn't OS X ready, or their workflow depends on a long history of OS 9 usage, and can't be (easily) moved to X. I'm guessign this last kind of user will be the hardest to convince.
  
  I agree that Apple needs to do more to encourage this migration away from OS 9. Either with strategic moves like aquiring technology (to make sure that the key app families are covered and supported under OS X), to working with hardware vendors to get drivers out, to making it easy to get OS X into their hands.
  
  The last item suggests that there should have been a more attractive "upgrade" pricing approach to 10.2. Jaguar looks and sounds wonderful, but Apple needs to know that this is the first real release of OS X for many people.
  
  OS X is more of a leap for OS 9 users than us "switchers", it seems. Apple needs to ensure that the pros outweigh the cons. Otherwise, people will stick with what they know works and resist moving to what is (in my not-so-humble opinion) a much superior operating system. Certainly superior to Windows, and (dare I say it) even superior to OS 9.
• Easier to switch from Windows
  2002-08-07 02:53:26  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  Absolutely! I have been able to 'switch' my parents and 3 of my friends and get more Macs into my workplace (I'm the IT manager) because of OSX and the ease that people can pick up the user interface. When I used to show OS9 to Win users they hated it and/or found it hard to navigate. Not so with OSX.

• Where are the Updates?
  2002-08-06 02:39:24  kyl [Reply | View]
  
  
  I have a Mac OS X partition and definitely prefer it. OS X is amazing! Unfortunately I have to boot into OS 9 too often because some manufacturers are lazy to switch, as Coda and Digidesign in the music/audio market (Finale, ProTools). Do we have to wait until... when, then?
• Where are the Updates?
  2002-08-06 11:29:42  clvrmnky [Reply | View]
  
  
  The hard-core music apps have been slow to move to OS X. Not as slow as the publishing apps, but slow enough.
  
  I'm really hoping Apple's aquisition of Emagic will bootstrap the music production into this century. With Reason 2.0 and Logic Audio running natively on OS X, the other vendors will have to reconsider their schedules.
  
  It seemed to work for the video production crowd, anyway.

• Adoption rate is not slow
  2002-08-05 17:12:06  tychay [Reply | View]
  
  
  I admit that to me, OS X adoption of 10% seems slow at first.
  
  But when I stopped and think about the life cycle of a typical Macintosh, it is not unusual. My mother used her Macintosh II for 10 years and that is not unusual. She typically bought two (or more) PCs in the same time frame as her mac purchases. I know more people whose latest Mac is a Revision A or Revision B iMac than I know who have a G4. And the questions I've seen people ask at the MicroCenter store within a store stump me: Can they use this archaeic Epson printer with OS X, or what SCSI (!) scanners do they carry. Glad I don't work there. All indicators that the Mac world repleat with people who haven't upgraded their peripherals to USB and Firewire, let alone their OS to OS 9 or OS X.
  
  Everyone talks about the amazing Return On Investment and mean time between upgrades of the Macintosh. The 10% just shows that this hasn't changed. It also shows what an amazing OS OSX is that it can get such a large percentage in only a year. Those of us who remember the switch the PowerPC know what I mean.

• Switch already!
  2002-08-05 16:40:30  derryck [Reply | View]
  
  
  I started slowing transitioning during the beta, trashed my linux partitions and installed X, I now have 3 of my 5 machines totally X. The other 2, 7200 and a pb170 can't quite handle it. I've got my copy of X.2 reserved and can't wait to get it. X just gets better and better!!!!

• Apple has out-MS'ed MS.
  2002-08-05 13:39:26  techx [Reply | View]
  
  
  I am the technician at a library. Given our limited funds, adopting 10.2 is simply not an option. I can understand paying the full price for a full OS upgrade, as we did from ASIP to OSXS 1.x (which was highway robbery, a very poor OS), and from that to OSXS 10.x. Those were full OS upgrades.
  
  Jaguar is a point upgrade. Yes, it has some nice features, but I don't give a damn about 90% of them, LDAP is about the only thing I like beyond /bug fixes/ for my current OS. And to implement many of those fixes, I will not only have to pay full price for a server OS, but buy a full price desktop OS for every public and staff machine in the library, and we were just getting up to speed upgrading to OSX for the staff.
  
  It may be easy for you to say stop complaining about pricing, and missing features, and poor marketing, but that's reality, pal. I love OSX, and I am dying to run an all-Jaguar network, but it will never happen, short of Apple doing some price cuts or donations (like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which donated 4 p4 1.4's and an NT server box to almost every library in the country).
  
  I am aware Apple is moving into the enterprise field (I won't get into that debate), but are they forgetting their academic roots? We have limited budgets, and the folks who actually SUPPORT Apple by buying into their new technology are getting reamed, first by OSXS 1.x, now by Jaguar. I've been burned once, I won't be again.
  
  Our plan for now is to make as many things work as we can under 10.1.5 and then sit it out until 11.x. But we can't forecast very well with Apple's habit of placing NDAs over anything they work on.
  
  And mac fanatics say M$ is bad? Wow.
• Apple has out-MS'ed MS.
  2002-08-06 11:37:49  clvrmnky [Reply | View]
  
  
  Doesn't Apple offer multi-user licenses for precisely this kind of situation? My understanding was that you can get 5 or more licenses for academic or enterprise use, and that these licenses often have a special upgrade discount for later releases.
  
  Note that I actually haven't researched this. I just ran across a mention on apple.com.
  
  Of course, it is common practice for larger install bases to hold back from upgrading to the latest/greatest. This is often a wise decision. The main point (in relation to the original article) is that you already have the majority of your machines at OS X.
  
  Upgrade to 10.2 once the kinks have been worked out.
• Apple has out-MS'ed MS.
  2002-08-05 16:53:09  tychay [Reply | View]
  
  
  There is an educational price for the OSX upgrade at around $70 which a library might qualify for. For multiple machines I think there are maintenance agreements that will keep your machines up-to-date for years (check Apple for the pricing which I think is based on the number of users: I'm guessin a Library has only one user account for the public).
  
  As for the server OS, if you are using an Apple rack mounted server, I heard the OS X Server upgrade was insanely cheap ($10 or so). I imagine that there is/was some maintenance policy in effect for this software also if you are running it on some other computer.
  
  For the record, I'm not enthusiastic about the pricing. If we are comparing Apple to Microsoft using something like Red Hat as the baseline, we see that in pricing of hardware+OS and upgrade pricing, Apple is closer to the latter than the former. As for the donation of Pentium boxes... well Microsoft makes more in profit that Apple makes, and the connection between Bill and Melinda Gates and Microsoft is no secret: sounds more like a charity being co-opted to further a business end of increased market penetration, than it does out of any good will on the foundation's part. Sad.

• No Airport Software Base Station
  2002-08-05 11:02:39  smaxey [Reply | View]
  
  
  That's the deal-stopper for me. I recently installed OS X on a partition on my Powerbook, and I like what I see. but I won't install it on my workhorse desktop machine or anywhere else until Airport for OS X includes the Airport Software Base Station functionality I rely on.
• Some alternatives.
  2002-08-05 16:34:59  tychay [Reply | View]
  
  
  If you need to just communicate locally computer to computer, you can by creating a network from the Airport menu.
  
  An Open Source project http://airportswbsx.sourceforge.net/ offers more functionality for OS X 10.1+
  
  Finally, a little blurb in http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ seems to imply that OS X 10.2 Jaguar returns the OS 9 Software Base Station functionality. Hmm, I guess that means you'll be ponying the money up for the upgrade. ;-)
  
  terry
  

• Chicken and egg...
  2002-08-05 10:57:32  digitaldoc [Reply | View]
  
  
  As others have said here, OS X is not sufficiently well-supported by outside vendors to make the switch. My specific issues include poor driver support for large format photo-quality printers (Canon S9000 in specific, but also Epson), and high resolution film scanners (Canon and Nikon as well as some SCSI cards). These issues remain, even in Classic mode.
  
  In addition, the cost of upgrades to a marginally improved OS X compatible applications such as Photoshop 7 and a buggy Filemaker Pro are a drawback.
  
  Finally, up 'till now, OS 10 performance in several necessary (and, in some cases, hated) Mac applications has been reported as poor - e.g., Virtual PC. It is not clear that OS 10.2 will provide a solution for these issues as the areas in which speed improvements have been made do not seem to attack the fundamental problems with some of these applications.
  
  In summary, while I applaud the technology and recognize the need to move to a modern OS, the reasons to move have not outweighed the reasons to stay with OS 9.2.2., so far.
  
  Steve

• Low adoption of OSX
  2002-08-05 09:27:25  roland3 [Reply | View]
  
  
  
  Hi. There are two main reasons for this slow adoption and I suffer under both. First not everyone is ready to run out and buy a new machine and I for one will not buy a new Mac until the G-5s arrive. I have an 8600 that is infinitely upgradable now that Sonnet is back in the upgrade business after a 3 year hiatus.
  Second reason is tha all of the Hardware makers turned their back on OSX. I'm still waiting for Canon to release a driver for my 1220 Cano Scan Scanner, ( 2 years so far) I sill can't use "the best of the MacWorld 2000" my 3DFX video card, nor can I use anything else that predates OSX. This is the real reason. I for one didn't have the time or the Hard Drive space to load OS 9 and besides I wanted the features of OSX. Thank God for the OWC Unsupported Hardware site or I would not even be using OSX. As it was it took me 4 months to accept Sonnets solution as unworkable and to find X-Facto. Now that I'm up and running I'm worried about Jaguar. The fact that I 'm using only 4 Mb of video ram while my 64 MB video card sits on the shelf collecting dust, and don't say buy a new one for there are no decent ones out there with PCI and OSX drivers. Other wise I'll be set to go with 1 Gig of ram and a 800 Mhz. CPU.

• Get XPress there
  2002-08-05 09:23:00  bradrice [Reply | View]
  
  
  I know there are a lot of XPress haters and for good reason. But we really need to get it on OSX for a number of reasons. I utilize a number of Xtensions for variable data publishing. One, DesignMerge is a $2,500 extension. We use it and Xdata, Xtags in our company. I would love to move us to OS X, but unfortunately these software titles are slowed by XPress not moving to it.
  
  I am running OS X at home, and I love it. It is an awesome system. I do, however, think Apple has punished early users. I have submitted a number of bug reports, have brought the system into my place of employment in part, and have led others to it. Now Apple wants me to pony up another $129 for the upgrade. Is this like a full version number jump? Even that usually would cost in the $89 range in the past.
  
  Brad Rice

• It's simple; Change or Die
  2002-08-05 07:45:44  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  Why should you change? Because OS9 is a blind alley, a dead end, the end of the evolution of that code base.
  
  Sure you can stick with it but you're going nowhere, there will be no more OS9 upgrades, the rest of the Mac world will leave you dead in the dust in a few months as OSX becomes the only bootable OS that new Mac hardware will support.
  
  OSX is the future and the future is now, you need to get up to speed with it and you need to do it asap before the learning curve gets steeper. When OSX came out I downloaded all those little utils that make it more like OS9, today I'm not using a single one and having to use a machine with OS9 is so alien it's as bad as using Windows. Hell I don't even have OS9 on my PowerBook anymore.
  
  It's Quark and their ilk that need a solid kick up the backside for dragging their feet over carbonizing Xpress and breaking the Apple programming guidelines so their stuff runs poorly in Classic.
  
  I'm an IT manager for a design and manufacturing company, we have 15 G4 towers. I have OSX loaded on every single Mac that will support it and I have my users getting used to running it 24/7 and only booting back into OS9 to run Quark, and soon that will be over as we move to InDesign because Quark won't get it's act together fast enough. We DO have bureaus that will take InDesign files and they will be getting our business.
  
  Evolution? It's a tough thing for some to accept but for those who do the future is bright, very bright indeed.
• It's simple; Change or Die
  2002-08-07 15:10:44  macwoman [Reply | View]
  
  
  YOU WISH. Apple will be dead because of this nonsense faster than 9 will become unusable. What you should have said was, Change or Apple will die....and most of us won't because X is the hockey puck of operating systems and we all wish it would wither on the vine and die die DIE!!!!!!!!!!!
• It's simple; Change or Die
  2002-08-08 04:39:48  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  I doubt it. OS 9 will be dead and burried long before Apple bites the dust and no I don't beleive that most people wish OS X would die, quite the opposite, most of us have been hoping for a stable modern OS from Apple for quite some time and now they are delivering it. It's apparent that YOU don't like it, well there are alternative platforms out there, perhaps one of them would suit you better. Change can be hard to accept and it's clear that OS X isn't for everyone but it will suit the vast majority of Mac users just fine.
• It's simple; Change or Die
  2002-08-06 11:40:38  clvrmnky [Reply | View]
  
  
  Don't forget semi-pro music production. There are very few real choices for the post-hardware musician. Here's to hoping that Apple's aquisition of Emagic get's _that_ sorted out.
• It's simple; Change or Die
  2002-08-07 02:38:49  timmyers [Reply | View]
  
  
  I'm in full agreement here. Shame that ProTools isn't further along the route to OSX compatibility though. Apple saw a hole in the fabric and patched it by buying Logic. That should help spur Steinberg along to get Cubase SX out the door 1st quarter 2002 and get those audio/midi apps flowing ;-)

• Mail.app not grown up yet.
  2002-08-05 06:10:48  seiz [Reply | View]
  
  
  > Mail.app: This is probably the real reason that Microsoft is ticked off;
  > Mail.app in Jaguar is better than Entourage. It's more stable, has much better
  > junk mail filters, and it integrates with Apple's online services.
  
  Hi Derrick,
  
  enjoyed reading your comments about jaguar, but what you said about mail.app doesn't seem correct (depending on what you want from a mail-client).
  
  First let me assure you, I'd be the first to switch from Entourage to Mail.app if it really would be better. Heck I'd even have switched to Mulberry (surely the best imap client arround) if it had a decent GUI.
  
  What I think keeps me from switching to mail.app are some bare-bones features which it is lacking (already filed to bugreporter long ago) which I can't understand how apple could overlook them.
  
  1) Everybody has multiple Email Accounts nowadays. Mail.app supports multiple Accounts, but is *can't tie a ddefault signature to an account*, so I end up having to manually select a signature depending on the account I use for sendin. Quite a showstopper for me!
  
  2) In days of IMAP (which even .Mac supports), the *INBOX* isn't anymore the only pplace to look for new emails. Mails often get filtered on the Mail-Server already and are already filed into various IMAP-Folders on the Server. Mail.app doesn't account for it. When you setup a Schedule to check for new mail Every XX Minutes, all it's doing is checking your INBOX. So you end up having to click on other FOLDERS manually to get Maik.app to check for new messages in these folders as well. Quite timeconsuming.
  This LACK has even gor worse with the Jaguar Release of Mail.app since they implemented the GREAT (ooohhh) Idea of grouping ALL INBOXES of ALL your Accounts together. Again, most of my new mail doesn't arrive in my INBOX (I might be a special case here) and I am sure lot's of other people use email in a similar way nowadays.
  
  These are my biggest show stoppers (I also got Jaguar already during WWDC).
  
  Then there are minor issues lot's of people have difficulties with - as for instance when looking at your Mail in Listview, not to be able to identify if a message has an attachment or not. With mail.app, you can only guess if an email has an attachment (in listview) by guessing it by filesize.
  Viewing attachemts (as PDF or Quicktime) inline is nice, but some people are not clever enough to realize, that to extract such an attachment is a matter of DRAG-AND-DROP. This is a nice example of how a FEATURE can be implemented *too easy for the masses*...
  
  I'll stop now, as you're really not responsible for mail.app after all, I just had to comment on your statement that Mail.app is a Killer Feature of Jaguar because in my Opinion, Mail.app isn't yet a grown up email client to be used in day to day heavy email-usage.
  
  Oh, and I would have really appreciated if apple spent more time with "Speed Issues" insead of deveoping yet another instant messenger client or alike gimmicks (allthough I understand they needed something to demo randezvous) ;-)
  
  Cheers
  Stefan
• Mail.app not grown up yet. -- But getting close
  2002-08-05 08:11:57  Derrick Story [Reply | View]
  
  
  Hi Stefan, yes, yes, good points from a man who knows what he wants in his email client :)
  
  I think Mail.app will continue to evolve in the directions you mentioned. But I do like the current version more that you do. I think some of it is personal taste. For instance, I like being able to choose from my set of signatures regardless of which account I'm using.
  
  You didn't mention the new junk mail filter, which is outstanding, especially during the current spam invasion we're enduring. And unlike Entourage, I haven't heard of a case where Mail.app mysteriously crashed and vaporized all the mail. Beware of the Entourage database.
  
  As for speed, it was one of my three "must have" requests from Apple in my open letter.
  
  Thanks for your comments!

• Apple not supporting OS X
  2002-08-05 05:23:19  edwin_van_spronsen [Reply | View]
  
  
  I'd love to upgrade to OS X but one of the applications I'm critically dependent on is still not native.
  
  Which application that is? It's Apple's Quicktime VR Authoring Studio.
  
  So apparently Apple itself considers the number of OS X users too small to do a port.
  
  Edwin van Spronsen

• Quark is a delaying factor
  2002-08-05 05:20:20  dennishenley [Reply | View]
  
  
  Until QuarkXPress goes native I don't see the majority of Mac design users making the switch to OS X.
  
  Sure, they can switch to InDesign. InDesign does everything better than Quark. And you can find a service bureau that will take your InDesign files instead of Quark, even if that means switching a relationship you've have for several years.
  
  But, if you've got a decades worth of work in Quark, it's going to take a pretty big push to get you to switch.
  
  I work in the prepress department of a big midwestern printer and we don't get a lot of InDesign files. The ones we have received often give us problems (font and color issues mostly). InDesign 2 is a vast improvement over version 1, but there are still some kinks to work out. And the bigggest problem is that our imagesetter company, Creo/Scitex, hasn't really updated its ripping software to deal with InDesign.
  
  That's a major consideration. When a company spends the megabucks it takes to bring Creo into a shop and Creo has built their equipment around support for Quark, it's had to be motivated to change even if a lot of customers are demanding that change. Creo blames Adobe for not giving them the technical information soon enough to be able to incorporate changes into their equipment. In any case it leaves service providers in the middle with customers interested in changing to a new program and not being able to because the service providers have equipment that isn't fully compliant with the new software. A case in point: the transparency features in Illustrator which will choke a rip.
  
  Until all players are on the same field, it's going to take time to change.
  
  Dennis E. Henley
  Chicago, IL

• Good Comments, Keep it Going
  2002-08-04 23:15:45  Derrick Story [Reply | View]
  
  
  Gee, I feel so much closer to many of you after this article ...
  
  I just posted a weblog titled An Open Letter to Apple about Jaguar where I listed three of the primary suggestions culled from these talkbacks, MacSlash comments, and mail I've received directly.
  
  You can augment my weblog by adding a talkback if there's something you want to add, or if you think I've missed the point all together.
  
  In the meantime, let's keep this discussion going until we've covered all the relevant points.
  
  Thanks,
  
  -- Derrick

• Hardware, Hardware, and then Hardware...
  2002-08-04 20:43:44  jriskin [Reply | View]
  
  
  I think we are we forgetting a few things
  
  1. Millions of users cannot run OS X on their current hardware.
  2. For millions of users it would be so painfully slow if they even tried.
  3. For millions of people there is no benifit.
  
  OS X on a 266Mhz iMac is painful. OS X will NOT run on pre-G3 hardware. There are probably millions of 604e and 603e based machines out there running various verson of os7-9 who are happily running there checkbook balancing software, email software and some light browsing just fine.
  
  I run OS X on my desktop and OS9 on my G4 laptop. I like them both, but innovation is not necessarily everyones primary goal, advocation of an OS isn't for everyone, some people just want to USE there computers and not worry about it. Many Mac users bought there machines for just that reason, they didn't want to get caught up in the upgrade crazy PC world where if you don't upgrade ever year none of your hardware is supported.
  
  So I for one am not surprised at the adoption rate of OS X, nor do I think it should happen at any other rate! I think that during the natural course of its development that at each stage users will get on board as they finally find that they would like to have new features and they will probably buy new hardware. This way they wouldn't even need to pay to upgrade, it comes with the new computers.
  
  I think pussyfooting around is the right thing to do for most users.
  
  Apple can go ahead and try and force innovation, it makes more sense for the bottom line, but it doesn't make sense for the users.
  
  Too bad it doesn't make economic sense to ever finish a piece of software.

• We're not pussyfooting--we'd like coherent documentation!
  2002-08-04 19:19:21  dfedoruk [Reply | View]
  
  
  What is lacking in OS X at the present time is any coherent documentation of the operating system. Training courses cost thousands of dollars and only recently have been made available. There is an example administration exam who's answers I can only guess at. Apple hasn't given clear answers about anything. Apple has spewed TONS of hype and little technical information. Having worked in the music retail busines at one point I've learned to be VERY warry of smoke and mirrors. While I'm quite sure OS 10.1 and 10.2 will be good. I'd like documnetation. Netinfo is a prime example! Surely the least us users are entitled to is some decent documentation and not just fragmentary knowledgebae documents.
  
  David Fedoruk

• Newbie comp users CAN learn OS X
  2002-08-04 12:06:23  cyradisbc [Reply | View]
  
  
  I'd like to respond to some of the few that weren't, that invoke the "clueless AOL" user type.
  
  My sister picked out her first computer with my help at Christmas. (Think "clueless AOL user" squared.) She now has a spiffy G4 tower that I want to steal. She asked about OS X, and my advice to her was that since she didn't know that much about OS 9, she might as well take the plunge into OS X, because there was no point in getting a better understanding of 9. Just USING the comptuer for extended amounts of time was new to her.
  
  She's gotten a handle on it VERY quickly. It's only crashed once, and she was able to fix it with her copy of OS X for dummies.
  
  As far as what home users want-there's no reason why new users won't be using OS X. Basic apps are all there (I'd think they'd want to start shipping AppleWorks with comps again if they can, since Office costs so much) when you install, that out-of-the-box easiness a lot of new macintosh users want is there. Making this this shipping OS was one of the smartest things Apple has done.
  
  My sister to date loves her Macintosh, and has converted her fiancee, who converted just through using her new tower. It works well for her, despite her lack of knowledge--while the primary attraction for switching to OS X is geekiness right now, there's also the desire on the part of new users to just learn one system. This is currently part of what's hurting Apple, but will eventually take off because new computers ship with OS X installed.
  
  I think the average user will be more at home in OS X than most of us think. The trick then becomes proving that.

• Leap for whose sake?
  2002-08-04 11:21:11  photomacker [Reply | View]
  
  
  Derrick, although your enthusiasm for this "leap" is inspired by something worth it, most of the unsupportive comments have their points.
  Unfortunately,that alone kills the practical value of your proposition. There obviously are valid reasons for not buying a copy of Jaguar now, period.
  
  I think we would all agree that Jaguar is an awesome OS and definitely worth more than $130, before we factor in other issues. But when the question becomes "why not upgrade now?" there is no shortage for answers, and even our huge sympathy for Apple won't make 'em go away.
  
  I'm a Mac fan, perhaps even a fanatic. But then, I guess I'm not young enough to be blinded by fanatism. I've had OSX on a partition from day one with no use for it (well, it was quite useless and even annoying in the beginning). I kept it up to date by paying but still could find no use for it. I have a feeling 10.2 is a release that I could finally use, but I no longer want to pay before making sure. $130 is not much for a "real release" of MacOS X, but it's quite a chunk if it'll keep sitting in a partition and I don't see any creativity in that.
  
  I can see why a Windoze convert or unix geek would be so crazy for X, but MacOS 9 has never been something to run away from for me (and it wasn't for any Mac user until the advent of X. Suddenly 9 is a horrible system to run?). Yes it occasionally crashes while running Explorer, but not while I'm retouching 130 + Mb image files and FTPing stuff at the same time (I'm a freelance photographer).
  
  Now I sure would still love to have multi tasking and protected memory. I love X's built in PDF capabilities and it's gorgeous eye-candy (although I'm not sure which is better: eye candy or full stereo sound effects for interaction). I totally beleive in the power and future of X.
  
  Today, 10.1.5 not only feels but also is sluggish on a G4 400 (and anyone who claims otherwise is full of it), does not run the software I already have natively, is not as intuitive and easily accessible as 9, is missing many essential features (like displaying the number of items in a folder, or revealing the original of an alias, etc.)
  
  As that reveals, the promise of 10.2 is quite irrelevant to my expectations. As a matter of fact I couldn't care less about GCC3.1, CUPS, PPTP,LDAP, and BLAH and BLAH and BLAH even though I'm sure those are great things and am glad to hear they're available if needed. Thus, unless I see 10.2 running as lively as 9.2 on a comparable machine it will be hard to justify spending for it AGAIN.
  
  There probably is a lot of freelancers in my position, for whom it will not make sense to leap anywhere until new machine and software purchases are due.
  
  
• Leap for whose sake?
  2002-08-05 09:39:10  sootmann [Reply | View]
  
  
  PM, I have one tip that should make your day--
  "...is missing many essential features (like displaying the number of items in a folder..."
  Hidden, but there: with a Finder window open, go to the 'View' menu and choose 'Show Status Bar'. Bam! Number of items and disk space, if applicable.
  
• Leap for whose sake? Well, Good News
  2002-08-04 13:27:31  Derrick Story [Reply | View]
  
  
  I understand all of your points, but only have time to respond to one: speed.
  
  I was doing some work yesterday in my studio and had a couple Macs going at once. I was having a problem with a new memory card reader that was supposed to "work with all computers" and was working with none.
  
  I decided to fire up the PowerBook G3 400MHz (Pismo) which has Jaguar loaded on one partition to see it the memory card reader would work with it.
  
  A Mac user who owns a 600 MHz iBook running 10.1.5 was watching over my shoulder and remarked out of the blue about how fast the G3 Pismo was behaving -- faster than the 600 MHz running 10.1.5.
  
  I usually don't tell people which machine has Jaguar on it because of the NDA, but in light of these discussions I just couldn't resist.
  
  The speed improvement was noticeable to this Mac user on a 400MHz machine. Will it be fast enough for you? I don't know. But I certainly think it's worth taking a look.

• What is causing the "Switch"...
  2002-08-03 18:08:56  matthewmajka@mac.com [Reply | View]
  
  
  OS 9 user's may not care for some of the changes in OS X, but I can tell you from personal experience that OS X is the reason people are switching to the Mac from Windows. I know half a dozen Windows people who have bought new Macs and trashed their Wintel boxes and it wasn't the pretty color of the machines that sold them. I also know of one gov't space research facility that is replacing some Sun servers with the new Xserve. This never would have happened without OS X.
• What is causing the "Switch"... But Why?
  2002-08-04 01:22:48  Derrick Story [Reply | View]
  
  
  My personal observations are consistent with your comment. Most of the people I know who have moved to Mac OS X lately have come from Windows, not earlier versions of Mac OS.
  
  So what's going on here? As you can tell from these talkbacks many traditional Mac users are really quite upset over the whole Mac OS X thing, yet new users from Windows seem to be having a pretty good time.
• What is causing the "Switch"... But Why?
  2002-08-04 17:23:54  dogzilla [Reply | View]
  
  
  Derrick - I think you're misinterpreting the tone of the responses. After reading through all the posts here, I certainly don't feel that the Mac users here are "really quite upset"...rather many of them aren't convinced that the benefits of OSX outweigh the disadvantages of upgrading. Those disadvantages can be something as serious as the expense associated with updating (and even $130 forJaguar, $60 for RAM, and the time and hassle of installing both *are* quite significant for many, never mind the added cost of updating Photoshop, Illustrator, MMX Studio, BBEdit, etc. etc.)
  
  This doesn't mean that they're upset - it just means that OSX isn't that important. And many of these people take the (appropriate) view that there's no need to spend upgrade money if your current tool works very well and there's no personally perceivable advantage to the replacement.
  
  Personally, I use OSX full-time on my 300mhz G3 WallStreet. It's plenty fast for me - I've never inderstood the ppl who complain about speed. But OSX makes sense for me, since I'm a web developer. I have MS Office to do my business work, and Studio MX, Photoshop, and BBEdit for development. My big advantage is that I can replicate my production environment (Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc.) on my laptop and not be tied to the office anymore.
  
  However, for most other people, the advantages are less clear. And to argue that it is our duty to upgrade to support Apple...well, to say I disagree is to put it mildly. If Apple can't deliver what the market wants at a reasonable price, then it will (and should) fail. Their failure will open a niche and a smart competitor will step in and deliver a better product. Apple is an inhteresting company, but it's just a company like any other, and their products are tools like any others. Being religiious about your tools is to put your focus and effort in the worng place: it's what you create with the tools that's important, not the tool sitself.
• What is causing the "Switch"... A Few are Upset :)
  2002-08-04 23:09:16  Derrick Story [Reply | View]
  
  
  Hi, Actually a lot of Mac users are upset. They don't like the change to Mac OS X. They don't like the pressure Apple is putting on them to switch. And they certainly don't like the costs involved. A lot of the mail sent directly to me reflects this. And I see it in some of the talkbacks too.
  
  There's nothing wrong with that. In fact it's a good way to find out what's really on people's minds.
  
  I do agree though, that for some folks, they just don't care. And that's OK too :)

• The top ten.
  2002-08-03 17:36:28  mmurray [Reply | View]
  
  
  I've got my 10.2 on order and I'll be at the shop as soon as its open. But thats because I like having the latest thing. If I was making a more rational assessment of the top ten it would be:
  
  Ten Superb Jaguar Features
  
  1.
  
  Fast Finder: Yes, there will be spring-loaded folders (who says Apple doesn't listen ;) ), but the real news is that the Jaguar Finder has been rewritten, and it's sweet.
  
  *** This would justify it alone for me - but my works pays the fee for the new system so its not so hard to buy it.
  
  2.
  
  Mail.app: This is probably the real reason that Microsoft is ticked off; Mail.app in Jaguar is better than Entourage. It's more stable, has much better junk mail filters, and it integrates with Apple's online services.
  
  ** I use Eudora. This does nothing for me.
  
  3.
  
  Rendezvous: Apple's branding for Zero Configuration Networking is the most exciting networking thing I've seen since AirPort.
  
  ** I thought this would do nothing until other hardware adapted. Its a great idea I have missed being able to plug into an appletalk network and join the internet. Our local IT people will hate it as it will mean a loss of control.
  4.
  
  Integration of FreeBSD 4.4 and GCC 3.1 into Darwin: This is real Unix, and it just got better with Jaguar.
  
  ** I guess this is good.
  5.
  
  Common UNIX Print System (CUPS) for print sharing: Uses Internet Printing Protocol to manage print jobs and queues, but supports other protocols too, including SMB.
  
  ** Ditto
  
  6.
  
  Point to Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP): Apple wrote their own PPTP implementation that includes IPsec. Macs can now easily access secure Windows servers. And it's built right in the OS.
  
  ** Won't use it.
  
  7.
  
  Lightweight Directory Access Protocol 3.0 (LDAP): Jaguar includes LDAP 3.0, which is an upgrade from 10.1's LDAP 2.0
  
  ** Doesn't excite me.
  8.
  
  Quartz Extreme: Uses OpenGL to improve graphic performance. If you have a new Mac, it really improves performance.
  
  ** Doesn't run on my Powerbook G$ 400 Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
  
  9.
  
  Address Book: Becomes your core database for contact management that can be used throughout Jaguar and by any Jaguar-savvy application. At last, one address database that works with all of your applications.
  
  ** I use Personal Organiser.
  10.
  
  
  QuickTime 6: Incorporates Mpeg 4 and AAC audio for state-of-the-art multimedia. Have you seen the Mpeg 4 demo?
  
  ** I have already downloaded QT 6 and watched the
  KeyNote with it.
  
  Michael
  
• The top ten. -- I like em!
  2002-08-04 01:01:41  Derrick Story [Reply | View]
  
  
  Hey, these are ten things that I think are cool about Mac OS X. You could ask 30 beta testers and get 30 different lists. That's the fun of it. I'm not saying that my 10 have to do it for you. But I did want to add some substance to my advocacy so as not to be one of those windbags that's nothing more than hot air ...
• The top ten. -- not enough!
  2002-08-05 13:42:32  techx [Reply | View]
  
  
  There are some good features, but it's not a new OS. It's not ASIP -> OSX 1.x or OSX 1.x -> OSX 10.x. Period.
  
  I don't pay money for NT service packs.

• what is the user base like ?
  2002-08-03 17:30:15  mmurray [Reply | View]
  
  
  I was interested in your comment:
  
  
  If you would have told me a year ago that we would have an OS as good as 10.1, plus all of these vital applications, and only a 20 percent conversion rate, I would have told you that you just don't know the Mac community
  
  Is their public data available on what the mac user base looks like? Until you can see that its pointless to argue about who should or shouldn't convert and whether 20% is a good number or bad. I know lots of people who would never upgrade their system until they buy a new machine. They probably don't even realise you can up grade your system. Then there are those who vaguely know its possible but last time they did it to Mac OS 9 so many little app's and extensions they used broke and they don't want to go through that again. Who are the users ?
  
  (1) The ones who will never convert until a new machine ? How many are these ?
  
  (2) The home power users, running home or small businesses. How many are these ? These are probably persuadable.
  
  (3) The people using macs run by a central IT service. Here you have to convert the central IT people.
  
  Unless you know the percentages its hard to assess how much you could improve the present conversion rate. You also need to know the rate at which people turn over machines. I think that will drive a lot of the coversions.
  
  Michael
• what is the user base like ?
  2002-08-05 11:47:55  antman [Reply | View]
  
  
  Apple's userbase has tons of people with old machines that are impossible to upgrade to OS X. One of Apple's problems on this point is that they chose to have it run only on new machines. My question is, what percent of the userbase are old machines? There are a lot of people that have old Macs and would probably buy a pc for their next computer. Apple needs to woo them back.