A switcher's (long!) report: Jaguar on an iBook
I am posting this topic in this forum because I would never have switched back from Windows to Mac without Mac OS X.
More than a month ago, I posted a "mini-review" on Mac OS X 10.1 running on an old iMac. Since then a lot has happened
I finally made the switch back to Mac after a four year hiatus. Yeehah!
It all happened at the Jaguar Launch event at my local Apple Store (Cambridge). I couldn't resist the 10% discount on ALL hardware. So I got myself an iBook and a nice little iPod to go along
Oh and I met some very nice people in the process.
So here are the notes I have been keeping about my purchase for the last three weeks.
iBook & Mac OS X (Jaguar)
Configuration
------------------
- iBook: latest model, 12 inch, 700 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB HD
- screen: 1024x768, million colors
- OS: Mac OS X 10.2
- iPod: new model, 5 GB
- points of comparison:
\t- PC desktop: no name, PII 266 Mhz, 256 MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 GL 16 MB VRAM, Windows 2000
\t- PC laptop: Compaq, Mobile PIII 1 Ghz, 256 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 8 MB VRAM, 14 inch LCD, Windows XP
iBook
--------
+ screen: the screen blew me away. It is amazingly bright and crisp. Its size has not been a problem yet.
\t- [update] text does get uncomfortably small at size 12 (Times) in Word.
\t+ Aqua on the other hand looks amazingly good and very readable.
+ design: the machine has an adorable look. Very nice finish.
\t- however, by the end of the first day, the top's white finish showed its limits. It got marked and scratched quite a bit. However it only shows under a bright light. Still I was expecting a more resistant finish/material than that. I guess I fell to the hype by thinking I could get away with putting in my backpack with books and such and tossing it around in the airport.
+ noise (or lack thereof): the computer is totally silent most of time. Awesome.
\t- however when it (sometimes) comes up, the fan gets pretty loud and annoyingly repetitive.
\t- when a CD is inserted it literally sounds like a plane engine is starting up! Much louder than a desktop computer, almost embarrassingly so.
- hard drive space occupation: seeing that by default almost half the hard drive is already occupied (!), 20 GB might not be enough, especially with my intention of using Virtual PC at least for some time.
- special keys: missing or hard to use (requiring key combinations). This is a major bummer, as I am used to the likes of DEL (not BACKSPACE), HOME, END and such on my Windows desktop. I believe PC laptops have those keys but I'd have to check.
+ numerical keypad: I appreciate Apple's effort in attempting to provide a numerical keypad, though in a roundabout way. I still have to see how usable it really is though.
- the battery calculator takes a long time to tell me how much time is left when awaken from sleep
+ battery time seems quite good: I've had 3 1/2 of time with the default configuration
- the speakers are way underpowered and the sound is tiny
- the CD Player does not use a tray system. That's rather cheap coming from Apple.
- heat: the bottom of the laptop gets extremely hot after a while when using it unplugged. This is very discomforting.
- the keyboard has a very nice quiet soft feel
Performance
-----------------
- window resizing:
\t- IE: bearable
\t+ Finder windows: very good. Even excellent on "simple" views like those without auto-arranging icons.
\t- other apps (e.g. TextEdit): quite good
+ application launch: excellent. Almost Windows-like (Windows is lightning fast at opening applications, especially those made by Microsoft.. hint hint).
+ window motion: perfectly smooth. Always has been on OS X.
+ menus: very smooth.
- QuickTime seems to use way too much CPU (about 65%). The "Concert" Apple ad in 480x360 with an approximate playback data rate of 200 Kbytes/sec stutters every few seconds. This is extremely disappointing, and I can see absolutely no explanation for it. QuickTime 6, or the Sorenson Video codec maybe? Unacceptable nonetheless.
- GUI performance is still a bit lagging: for example, when clicking on a background window, two steps happen: the window comes to the foreground and then it becomes active. The slight delay between the two is a tad annoying.
- contextual menus are sometimes slow to come up and navigate
- audio CD copy rate is about 5.5x with default settings (including 160 kbps rate)
- I finally restarted into OS 9. The performance difference is incredible: OS 9 is so much smoother, everything happens instantly: clicking on buttons, menus, contextual menus, opening folders, opening applications. Truly shocking! To think that I was almost lulled into thinking that OS X finally had a smoothly performing UI in Jaguar. Kinda sad, really..
- burning a CD (~350 MB) takes about 15 minutes including verification
Mac OS
-----------
- special keys: the Mac does not seem to support special keys as universally as Windows. For example, HOME and END do not take to the beginning and end of the line, respectively in TextEdit. This is again kind of a bummer. I consider myself a text power user and I need to navigate my text with ease and speed. Is the reason for this limitation the fact that some of these keys are only present on the Extended version of the Mac keyboard which wasn't provided by default on Macs until recently?
Energy Saving
--------------------
+ the energy saving system seems very smart yet non intrusive. It gets into action fast but thanks to the very fast wake up time (instant) I never feel it gets in my way. Likewise, during use, even in maximum saving mode, there is no slowdown whatsoever. This contrasts with the ThinkPads we use at work. The start would always take an enormous amount of time to come up (like 10-20 seconds) and there would be very obstructive slowdowns on a regular basis.
QuickTime
--------------
- QuickTime has so much better performance than on Windows. Not good, Apple, cheating like that.
- image quality is amazing on my iBook!
Mail
-----
+ nice looking interface
Contextual Menus (or lack thereof)
-----------------------------------------------
- I personally hate using menus, especially when I need to perform a given operation on an visible object. I much prefer using contextual menus for this type of operation.
\t- Menus are:
\t\t- non efficient: you have to move your mouse to the menu bar, and move it up and down until you've located the appropriate menu item. Finally you have to go back where you were.
\t\t- hard to locate: you have to think (or remember) and figure out which menu to go in the menu bar and then which item to go to.
\t- contextual menus are:
\t\t- fast: you can access right at your fingertip, literally.
\t\t- context sensitive: only the appropriate commands for the object on which I right-click (or ctrl-click) are displayed. No need to figure out what menu to go for my operation.
\t\t- cohesive: the menu bar separate the commands from the target object, thus breaking their natural association. This very much like procedural programming vs. object-oriented programming. We know which had the upper hand in the hand.
\t- some might argue that keyboard shortcuts are a better alternative to contextual menus. Those however require memorization and from my experience only expert users ever learn these. Contextual menus have a much lower barrier of entry, yet are powerful enough to satisfy power users.
- contextual menus would gain having keyboard shortcuts on them, just like regular menu items.
Help System
-----------------
- no contextual help like in Windows. I've always found this to be hugely useful.
Games
----------
- God does the situation of Mac games look rather disastrous!
\t- virtually no demos online!
\t- download sites for the rare demo are horrendously slow even on a cable connection
\t- file download in IE is weird, erratic and unreliable. Often blocks at message "... passive mode"
\t\t- [update] the problem was caused by the built-in Mac OS X Firewall which I had enabled. It's gone now but I had to disable the firewall. sux. I tried the PASV option in the Network/Proxies control panel as suggested on the web, but that appently only works if IE is configured to use an external FTP client, which I might do. Still kind of annoying.
\t- the display looks sometimes garbled (e.g. X-Plane)
The Mac Platform
-----------------------
- game demos: it was extremely hard finding demos for recent games for the Mac. The same ones for PC are readily available. This was rather disappointing, after all the talk about the Mac game scene revival.
\t+ pleasant surprise: Quake III Demo (for Mac OS 9) has very good performance and consistently remains at usable levels (30+ fps) upward of 800x600 resolution. 1024x768 makes fps drop below 30 from time to time but is still quite pleasant.
\t+ Myth III Demo also very good performance at up to 800x600
- there seem to be quite a few web sites that do not work on the Mac, even some popular ones: e.g. <a href="http://www.launch.com,"; target="_blank">www.launch.com,</a> one of the best sites for playing Music Videos. That's rather disappointing. Are there any decent alternatives to <a href="http://www.launch.com"; target="_blank">www.launch.com</a> for the Mac, which also let you play the videos full-screen? Why is QuickTime the only free media player not to support full-screen playback??
Jaguar Features
----------------------
- performance: a relatively big improvement on 10.1 in terms of performance. A few key things are immediately noticeable: smoother scrolling, much improved menu snappiness, faster window resizing, faster browsing (maybe b/c it updated my IE version from 10.1's 5.1 to 5.21?)
- this is more of a usability bug fix but now the beach ball only appears within the application that's currently blocking and disappears outside of its window. Welcome fix.. err.. change.
Some Tips
--------------
- option click on an open app on the dock hides the application. Neat.
- turn on Full Keyboard Access for a Windows-like keyboard-controlled interface. About time. The mouse is the most inefficient device ever.
- right-clicking on the Finder toolbar brings a useful contextual menu to customize the bar.
- if you have a five-set sound system, you can use it simultaneously on your Mac and PC:
\t- connect the front-speakers to of the machines
\t- connect the back speakers to the other machine
\t- adjust the surround level to give enough volume to each computer
You'll lose Surround Sound on your PC but it's a small price to pay for much more powerful sound on your Mac
All Around Annoyances
--------------------------------
- alt-tab on Windows is way smarter than command-tab on the Mac. Command-tab always goes in the forward direction, when really you most often need to go back to the previous app first.
\t+ [update] this seems to have in Jaguar, for the better.
- the translucent overlaid buttons for brightness, volume, and eject are kinda cute but the fact that the CPU overhead involved causes a noticeable lag in reaction time in some situations. Apple often has this tendency to put things in software when they should really have left alone at the hardware level, where they'd be much faster (albeit not as cutesy..)
- Mail did not know what to do with attachment files without extension.
+ on the other hand, once saved to disk, OS X handles them pretty well. They were opened in Expander. Not sure why.. Is this the default behavior for untyped files (with neither metadata nor extensions)? In any case Expander did the job just fine and revealed jpeg files lying underneath the attachments. Note that these JPEG files had been attached (without extension) on a Mac OS 9 computer through IE into an email composed through a webmail interface. Since the files had not been encoded first, the resource fork (which contains the metadata, right?) was probably lost in the process. Hence when they made it to my OS X Mail client, they no longer had any type information (not even extensions).
\t+ Now I am starting to see why Apple is advocating systematic use of extensions in file names... It probably was a pain to have to send attachments in OS 9 since you always have to encode the files first (and decode them on the receiving end).
- the way absolutely essential tools are hidden away in the Applications:Utilities folder is craziness! Thank God I now have an item in the dock just for that folder. But a newbie will have no clue, and will need to search the utterly useless Mac Help system. A lot of these utilities (say Print Center, for what is an essential function for most users!) ought to be directly accessible from the Apple Menu, just as in good ol' Mac OS Classic.
Wish List
------------
- alternative ways to control all view options for Finder windows beside the menu bar.
- a single-click of keyboard shortcut to hide all applications
- borders which can be used to resize windows, like in Windows. Are there no borders just for the sake of aesthetics? This limitation can get very stupid at times: when a window is against the right edge of the screen and you want to resize, you're forced to move it and resize it.
- toolbar buttons which give feedback when rolled over, just like the window control buttons. I like this in Windows. It makes it obvious that you're on a hotspot.
- I wish there was an easy way to watch RAM usage
\t- Process Viewer really ought to have an absolute memory usage column rather than just a percentage usage column
- in the Show View Options screen of the Finder it would be nice to have a "this window and subcontent" as an option. This is available in Windows.
- I like the ability in Windows to create documents of all sorts directly within a folder by right clicking inside its window and choosing the file format. It gives me the necessary structure when I need to create/work on multiple documents/tasks at the same time. It also means that if I already the appropriate folder window displayed in the desktop, I don't need to relocate the folder within the editing application to save the document.
- very nice Windows XP functionality: switch user without logging off. That's pretty awesome in say a family setup.
- if you like the sleep functionality of Mac OS Classic/X, you'll love the Hibernate ability of Windows. It's super fast and has one huge advantage over Apple's sleep: it actually saves the memory contents to disk and completely shuts down the computer. Hence a hibernating laptop consumes zero battery time. Very cool!
CD Burning
----------------
- my first attempt at burning a CD was a failure: everything seemed just fine until the end. Disk Copy then gave me a cryptic error number and the resulting CD was not usable (not even erasable). It was the CD-R included with my new iBook. The only other apps I had open at the same time were: iTunes playing music, Terminal with top, and ProcessViewer.
+ Disk Copy is great for CD-to-CD transfer for things like backup
Windows Networking
----------------------------
+ excellent!
+ I plugged into my office network and was able to:
\t+ browser the Internet immediately
\t+ access the Windows workgroup and network shares through the Go To Server network browsing functionality. Nice improvement over 10.1 where you had to enter the SMB server's address.
\t+ print on the network printer after some effort. Had to figure out the printer's IP and queue name.
\t\t- was hoping to be able to access the printer as just another SMB device.
+ I was also able to connect my iBook and my PC directly through their Ethernet ports and use a shared internet connection from the PC on the Mac, thanks to the NAT-support in Windows 2000. Truth be told, since this is just IP networking, any client OS should have worked.
Accessories
-----------------
+ I love TextEdit! It's so handy for quick text entry and editing, even formatted thanks to its support for the RTF format. Its font display is much much better than that of AppleWorks (same font and same size: Helvetica 12).
- AppleWorks just does feel right to me. Not sure why. The font display is the first striking thing: it is so bad! It's as if AW does not use OS X's font smoothing. I also seem to believe that text display quality has always been rather dismal at 100% in AppleWorks, even earlier versions.
Catching Up To Windows
-----------------------------------
- keyboard as alternative to the mouse
- window buttons which can be clicked even when a window is in the background
Killer Features
--------------------
+ Services have the potential..
\t+ system-wide spell checking
+ native built-in multiple language support
\t+ support for Arabic: I can have folders named in Arabic alongside folders in English
\t+ spell checking makes available a dictionary for each of the major latin alphabet languages!! So I can spell check my emails in French too. Very cool.
+ drap and drop installation
\t- a caveat is that for those few applications that actually use an installer, it's not always clear how to uninstall them (e.g. gimp-print. If anybody has a clue, please let me know ).
+ no DLL hell
+ no "file locked or used by sombody else" issue
Questions
-------------
- how can I lock the computer, without logging out? I can do this in Windows.
\t- I guess I can use the screen saver instead...
Notes
--------
- for a clear understanding of what Quartz Extreme is and isn't about, read the review of OS X 10.2 by John Siracusa. He has the best clearest most enlightening explanation yet, as usual. Thanks John for your great writing!
Bugs
-------
- the behavior of the software-controlled keyboard buttons (sound, brightness, eject) is somewhat erratic sometimes, e.g. the eject display will come up on the screen but nothing will happen.
- some pretty big/annoying display bugs in the Finder overall
- the icons on the desktop got half hidden behind the right edge of the screen. Not sure what triggered this: must have happened when I left the full-screen mode of iTunes or when I left the screensaver or when the screen went to sleep. In any case: weird.
- something weird: eventhough the power cable was plugged in, the battery indicator was showing the battery getting depleted, as if it wasn't plugged in.
Things to address
------------------------
- TV tuner availability: only USB; will have to keep my PC for a while longer until I replace it by a real TV
- Printer compatibility and availability: was able to use the office's printer
- MP3 Napster-like program availability: LimeWire, pretty nice
- background download manager: built into IE for Mac. Cool!
iPod
------
+ awesome sound quality! great headphones too.
+ super easy to use.. the accelerating spinning wheel is a superb device for navigating a big music collection.
- it is much heavier than I expected. Kinda disappointing since that means it'll probably bounce on my legs at the gym. I'll have to check that.
- it is also quite thick. But hey it's a hard drive after all.
A Few Conclusions
--------------------------
- Jaguar is a nice improvement over 10.1 both in terms of functionality and performance
- however claiming that with Jaguar Mac OS X has finally arrived is definitely stretching it.
\t- Performance is still nothing to run home about, especially compared to Mac OS 9 and even more so Windows: applications are still slow to open, the GUI is still a little bit sluggish, some key applications perform far worse in Mac OS X than in Windows (e.g. browsers: all of them, not just IE; also Mac Help). This does not combine well with the fact that the PowerPC is far behind Intel & Co.
\t- the Finder still needs work, especially icon arrangement
- Windows XP is definitely a worthy competitor, and that should hopefully keep Apple on their toes. Hopefully all the praise that so-called tech "journalists" are pouring down Apple's throat will not lull it into resting on its laurels.
- Some of the reasons why I decided to keep my new iBook despite OS X's remaining issues:
\t- very nicely designed machine with all the right connections
\t- Apple's attention to details (seemingly more in hardware these days than in software)
\t- Aqua: smooth attractive UI and font rendering
\t- Unix: underpinnings and easy access to the command line (say bye to cygwin!)
\t- easy application management: long live drag-and-drop installation. Finally I can start experimenting with new apps without having to worry about messing up my system!
\t- iPod
\t- iApps
\t- Mail with smart junk mail filter
\t- applications like Sherlock, Watson, and MacReporter
\t- faith that Apple will keep improving OS X's performance
\t- hope that Apple will finally resolve their CPU lag issue
\t- hope that the game situation will keep improving
\t- appreciation for forward-looking technologies like Quartz, QE, Rendez Vous, and Ink
\t- all the good things I read about OS X's Developer Tools and Cocoa development
\t- Windows networking integration: this is less a reason to adopt Mac OS X than a reason not to dismiss it outright, seeing that 95% of the computers out there run Windows, whether one likes it or not.
\t- Virtual PC: runs terribly on Jaguar but is very usable in Mac OS 9. Here is to hoping!
\t- multitasking and protected memory (and hence stability): again these are the least you can expect from modern OS.
More than a month ago, I posted a "mini-review" on Mac OS X 10.1 running on an old iMac. Since then a lot has happened
I finally made the switch back to Mac after a four year hiatus. Yeehah! It all happened at the Jaguar Launch event at my local Apple Store (Cambridge). I couldn't resist the 10% discount on ALL hardware. So I got myself an iBook and a nice little iPod to go along
Oh and I met some very nice people in the process.So here are the notes I have been keeping about my purchase for the last three weeks.
iBook & Mac OS X (Jaguar)
Configuration
------------------
- iBook: latest model, 12 inch, 700 MHz, 256 MB RAM, 20 GB HD
- screen: 1024x768, million colors
- OS: Mac OS X 10.2
- iPod: new model, 5 GB
- points of comparison:
\t- PC desktop: no name, PII 266 Mhz, 256 MB RAM, ATI Rage 128 GL 16 MB VRAM, Windows 2000
\t- PC laptop: Compaq, Mobile PIII 1 Ghz, 256 MB RAM, ATI Radeon 8 MB VRAM, 14 inch LCD, Windows XP
iBook
--------
+ screen: the screen blew me away. It is amazingly bright and crisp. Its size has not been a problem yet.
\t- [update] text does get uncomfortably small at size 12 (Times) in Word.
\t+ Aqua on the other hand looks amazingly good and very readable.
+ design: the machine has an adorable look. Very nice finish.
\t- however, by the end of the first day, the top's white finish showed its limits. It got marked and scratched quite a bit. However it only shows under a bright light. Still I was expecting a more resistant finish/material than that. I guess I fell to the hype by thinking I could get away with putting in my backpack with books and such and tossing it around in the airport.
+ noise (or lack thereof): the computer is totally silent most of time. Awesome.
\t- however when it (sometimes) comes up, the fan gets pretty loud and annoyingly repetitive.
\t- when a CD is inserted it literally sounds like a plane engine is starting up! Much louder than a desktop computer, almost embarrassingly so.
- hard drive space occupation: seeing that by default almost half the hard drive is already occupied (!), 20 GB might not be enough, especially with my intention of using Virtual PC at least for some time.
- special keys: missing or hard to use (requiring key combinations). This is a major bummer, as I am used to the likes of DEL (not BACKSPACE), HOME, END and such on my Windows desktop. I believe PC laptops have those keys but I'd have to check.
+ numerical keypad: I appreciate Apple's effort in attempting to provide a numerical keypad, though in a roundabout way. I still have to see how usable it really is though.
- the battery calculator takes a long time to tell me how much time is left when awaken from sleep
+ battery time seems quite good: I've had 3 1/2 of time with the default configuration
- the speakers are way underpowered and the sound is tiny
- the CD Player does not use a tray system. That's rather cheap coming from Apple.
- heat: the bottom of the laptop gets extremely hot after a while when using it unplugged. This is very discomforting.
- the keyboard has a very nice quiet soft feel
Performance
-----------------
- window resizing:
\t- IE: bearable
\t+ Finder windows: very good. Even excellent on "simple" views like those without auto-arranging icons.
\t- other apps (e.g. TextEdit): quite good
+ application launch: excellent. Almost Windows-like (Windows is lightning fast at opening applications, especially those made by Microsoft.. hint hint).
+ window motion: perfectly smooth. Always has been on OS X.
+ menus: very smooth.
- QuickTime seems to use way too much CPU (about 65%). The "Concert" Apple ad in 480x360 with an approximate playback data rate of 200 Kbytes/sec stutters every few seconds. This is extremely disappointing, and I can see absolutely no explanation for it. QuickTime 6, or the Sorenson Video codec maybe? Unacceptable nonetheless.
- GUI performance is still a bit lagging: for example, when clicking on a background window, two steps happen: the window comes to the foreground and then it becomes active. The slight delay between the two is a tad annoying.
- contextual menus are sometimes slow to come up and navigate
- audio CD copy rate is about 5.5x with default settings (including 160 kbps rate)
- I finally restarted into OS 9. The performance difference is incredible: OS 9 is so much smoother, everything happens instantly: clicking on buttons, menus, contextual menus, opening folders, opening applications. Truly shocking! To think that I was almost lulled into thinking that OS X finally had a smoothly performing UI in Jaguar. Kinda sad, really..
- burning a CD (~350 MB) takes about 15 minutes including verification
Mac OS
-----------
- special keys: the Mac does not seem to support special keys as universally as Windows. For example, HOME and END do not take to the beginning and end of the line, respectively in TextEdit. This is again kind of a bummer. I consider myself a text power user and I need to navigate my text with ease and speed. Is the reason for this limitation the fact that some of these keys are only present on the Extended version of the Mac keyboard which wasn't provided by default on Macs until recently?
Energy Saving
--------------------
+ the energy saving system seems very smart yet non intrusive. It gets into action fast but thanks to the very fast wake up time (instant) I never feel it gets in my way. Likewise, during use, even in maximum saving mode, there is no slowdown whatsoever. This contrasts with the ThinkPads we use at work. The start would always take an enormous amount of time to come up (like 10-20 seconds) and there would be very obstructive slowdowns on a regular basis.
QuickTime
--------------
- QuickTime has so much better performance than on Windows. Not good, Apple, cheating like that.
- image quality is amazing on my iBook!
-----
+ nice looking interface
Contextual Menus (or lack thereof)
-----------------------------------------------
- I personally hate using menus, especially when I need to perform a given operation on an visible object. I much prefer using contextual menus for this type of operation.
\t- Menus are:
\t\t- non efficient: you have to move your mouse to the menu bar, and move it up and down until you've located the appropriate menu item. Finally you have to go back where you were.
\t\t- hard to locate: you have to think (or remember) and figure out which menu to go in the menu bar and then which item to go to.
\t- contextual menus are:
\t\t- fast: you can access right at your fingertip, literally.
\t\t- context sensitive: only the appropriate commands for the object on which I right-click (or ctrl-click) are displayed. No need to figure out what menu to go for my operation.
\t\t- cohesive: the menu bar separate the commands from the target object, thus breaking their natural association. This very much like procedural programming vs. object-oriented programming. We know which had the upper hand in the hand.
\t- some might argue that keyboard shortcuts are a better alternative to contextual menus. Those however require memorization and from my experience only expert users ever learn these. Contextual menus have a much lower barrier of entry, yet are powerful enough to satisfy power users.
- contextual menus would gain having keyboard shortcuts on them, just like regular menu items.
Help System
-----------------
- no contextual help like in Windows. I've always found this to be hugely useful.
Games
----------
- God does the situation of Mac games look rather disastrous!
\t- virtually no demos online!
\t- download sites for the rare demo are horrendously slow even on a cable connection
\t- file download in IE is weird, erratic and unreliable. Often blocks at message "... passive mode"
\t\t- [update] the problem was caused by the built-in Mac OS X Firewall which I had enabled. It's gone now but I had to disable the firewall. sux. I tried the PASV option in the Network/Proxies control panel as suggested on the web, but that appently only works if IE is configured to use an external FTP client, which I might do. Still kind of annoying.
\t- the display looks sometimes garbled (e.g. X-Plane)
The Mac Platform
-----------------------
- game demos: it was extremely hard finding demos for recent games for the Mac. The same ones for PC are readily available. This was rather disappointing, after all the talk about the Mac game scene revival.
\t+ pleasant surprise: Quake III Demo (for Mac OS 9) has very good performance and consistently remains at usable levels (30+ fps) upward of 800x600 resolution. 1024x768 makes fps drop below 30 from time to time but is still quite pleasant.
\t+ Myth III Demo also very good performance at up to 800x600
- there seem to be quite a few web sites that do not work on the Mac, even some popular ones: e.g. <a href="http://www.launch.com,"; target="_blank">www.launch.com,</a> one of the best sites for playing Music Videos. That's rather disappointing. Are there any decent alternatives to <a href="http://www.launch.com"; target="_blank">www.launch.com</a> for the Mac, which also let you play the videos full-screen? Why is QuickTime the only free media player not to support full-screen playback??
Jaguar Features
----------------------
- performance: a relatively big improvement on 10.1 in terms of performance. A few key things are immediately noticeable: smoother scrolling, much improved menu snappiness, faster window resizing, faster browsing (maybe b/c it updated my IE version from 10.1's 5.1 to 5.21?)
- this is more of a usability bug fix but now the beach ball only appears within the application that's currently blocking and disappears outside of its window. Welcome fix.. err.. change.
Some Tips
--------------
- option click on an open app on the dock hides the application. Neat.
- turn on Full Keyboard Access for a Windows-like keyboard-controlled interface. About time. The mouse is the most inefficient device ever.
- right-clicking on the Finder toolbar brings a useful contextual menu to customize the bar.
- if you have a five-set sound system, you can use it simultaneously on your Mac and PC:
\t- connect the front-speakers to of the machines
\t- connect the back speakers to the other machine
\t- adjust the surround level to give enough volume to each computer
You'll lose Surround Sound on your PC but it's a small price to pay for much more powerful sound on your Mac
All Around Annoyances
--------------------------------
- alt-tab on Windows is way smarter than command-tab on the Mac. Command-tab always goes in the forward direction, when really you most often need to go back to the previous app first.
\t+ [update] this seems to have in Jaguar, for the better.
- the translucent overlaid buttons for brightness, volume, and eject are kinda cute but the fact that the CPU overhead involved causes a noticeable lag in reaction time in some situations. Apple often has this tendency to put things in software when they should really have left alone at the hardware level, where they'd be much faster (albeit not as cutesy..)
- Mail did not know what to do with attachment files without extension.
+ on the other hand, once saved to disk, OS X handles them pretty well. They were opened in Expander. Not sure why.. Is this the default behavior for untyped files (with neither metadata nor extensions)? In any case Expander did the job just fine and revealed jpeg files lying underneath the attachments. Note that these JPEG files had been attached (without extension) on a Mac OS 9 computer through IE into an email composed through a webmail interface. Since the files had not been encoded first, the resource fork (which contains the metadata, right?) was probably lost in the process. Hence when they made it to my OS X Mail client, they no longer had any type information (not even extensions).
\t+ Now I am starting to see why Apple is advocating systematic use of extensions in file names... It probably was a pain to have to send attachments in OS 9 since you always have to encode the files first (and decode them on the receiving end).
- the way absolutely essential tools are hidden away in the Applications:Utilities folder is craziness! Thank God I now have an item in the dock just for that folder. But a newbie will have no clue, and will need to search the utterly useless Mac Help system. A lot of these utilities (say Print Center, for what is an essential function for most users!) ought to be directly accessible from the Apple Menu, just as in good ol' Mac OS Classic.
Wish List
------------
- alternative ways to control all view options for Finder windows beside the menu bar.
- a single-click of keyboard shortcut to hide all applications
- borders which can be used to resize windows, like in Windows. Are there no borders just for the sake of aesthetics? This limitation can get very stupid at times: when a window is against the right edge of the screen and you want to resize, you're forced to move it and resize it.
- toolbar buttons which give feedback when rolled over, just like the window control buttons. I like this in Windows. It makes it obvious that you're on a hotspot.
- I wish there was an easy way to watch RAM usage
\t- Process Viewer really ought to have an absolute memory usage column rather than just a percentage usage column
- in the Show View Options screen of the Finder it would be nice to have a "this window and subcontent" as an option. This is available in Windows.
- I like the ability in Windows to create documents of all sorts directly within a folder by right clicking inside its window and choosing the file format. It gives me the necessary structure when I need to create/work on multiple documents/tasks at the same time. It also means that if I already the appropriate folder window displayed in the desktop, I don't need to relocate the folder within the editing application to save the document.
- very nice Windows XP functionality: switch user without logging off. That's pretty awesome in say a family setup.
- if you like the sleep functionality of Mac OS Classic/X, you'll love the Hibernate ability of Windows. It's super fast and has one huge advantage over Apple's sleep: it actually saves the memory contents to disk and completely shuts down the computer. Hence a hibernating laptop consumes zero battery time. Very cool!
CD Burning
----------------
- my first attempt at burning a CD was a failure: everything seemed just fine until the end. Disk Copy then gave me a cryptic error number and the resulting CD was not usable (not even erasable). It was the CD-R included with my new iBook. The only other apps I had open at the same time were: iTunes playing music, Terminal with top, and ProcessViewer.
+ Disk Copy is great for CD-to-CD transfer for things like backup
Windows Networking
----------------------------
+ excellent!
+ I plugged into my office network and was able to:
\t+ browser the Internet immediately
\t+ access the Windows workgroup and network shares through the Go To Server network browsing functionality. Nice improvement over 10.1 where you had to enter the SMB server's address.
\t+ print on the network printer after some effort. Had to figure out the printer's IP and queue name.
\t\t- was hoping to be able to access the printer as just another SMB device.
+ I was also able to connect my iBook and my PC directly through their Ethernet ports and use a shared internet connection from the PC on the Mac, thanks to the NAT-support in Windows 2000. Truth be told, since this is just IP networking, any client OS should have worked.
Accessories
-----------------
+ I love TextEdit! It's so handy for quick text entry and editing, even formatted thanks to its support for the RTF format. Its font display is much much better than that of AppleWorks (same font and same size: Helvetica 12).
- AppleWorks just does feel right to me. Not sure why. The font display is the first striking thing: it is so bad! It's as if AW does not use OS X's font smoothing. I also seem to believe that text display quality has always been rather dismal at 100% in AppleWorks, even earlier versions.
Catching Up To Windows
-----------------------------------
- keyboard as alternative to the mouse
- window buttons which can be clicked even when a window is in the background
Killer Features
--------------------
+ Services have the potential..
\t+ system-wide spell checking
+ native built-in multiple language support
\t+ support for Arabic: I can have folders named in Arabic alongside folders in English
\t+ spell checking makes available a dictionary for each of the major latin alphabet languages!! So I can spell check my emails in French too. Very cool.
+ drap and drop installation
\t- a caveat is that for those few applications that actually use an installer, it's not always clear how to uninstall them (e.g. gimp-print. If anybody has a clue, please let me know
).+ no DLL hell
+ no "file locked or used by sombody else" issue
Questions
-------------
- how can I lock the computer, without logging out? I can do this in Windows.
\t- I guess I can use the screen saver instead...
Notes
--------
- for a clear understanding of what Quartz Extreme is and isn't about, read the review of OS X 10.2 by John Siracusa. He has the best clearest most enlightening explanation yet, as usual. Thanks John for your great writing!
Bugs
-------
- the behavior of the software-controlled keyboard buttons (sound, brightness, eject) is somewhat erratic sometimes, e.g. the eject display will come up on the screen but nothing will happen.
- some pretty big/annoying display bugs in the Finder overall
- the icons on the desktop got half hidden behind the right edge of the screen. Not sure what triggered this: must have happened when I left the full-screen mode of iTunes or when I left the screensaver or when the screen went to sleep. In any case: weird.
- something weird: eventhough the power cable was plugged in, the battery indicator was showing the battery getting depleted, as if it wasn't plugged in.
Things to address
------------------------
- TV tuner availability: only USB; will have to keep my PC for a while longer until I replace it by a real TV
- Printer compatibility and availability: was able to use the office's printer
- MP3 Napster-like program availability: LimeWire, pretty nice
- background download manager: built into IE for Mac. Cool!
iPod
------
+ awesome sound quality! great headphones too.
+ super easy to use.. the accelerating spinning wheel is a superb device for navigating a big music collection.
- it is much heavier than I expected. Kinda disappointing since that means it'll probably bounce on my legs at the gym. I'll have to check that.
- it is also quite thick. But hey it's a hard drive after all.
A Few Conclusions
--------------------------
- Jaguar is a nice improvement over 10.1 both in terms of functionality and performance
- however claiming that with Jaguar Mac OS X has finally arrived is definitely stretching it.
\t- Performance is still nothing to run home about, especially compared to Mac OS 9 and even more so Windows: applications are still slow to open, the GUI is still a little bit sluggish, some key applications perform far worse in Mac OS X than in Windows (e.g. browsers: all of them, not just IE; also Mac Help). This does not combine well with the fact that the PowerPC is far behind Intel & Co.
\t- the Finder still needs work, especially icon arrangement
- Windows XP is definitely a worthy competitor, and that should hopefully keep Apple on their toes. Hopefully all the praise that so-called tech "journalists" are pouring down Apple's throat will not lull it into resting on its laurels.
- Some of the reasons why I decided to keep my new iBook despite OS X's remaining issues:
\t- very nicely designed machine with all the right connections
\t- Apple's attention to details (seemingly more in hardware these days than in software)
\t- Aqua: smooth attractive UI and font rendering
\t- Unix: underpinnings and easy access to the command line (say bye to cygwin!)
\t- easy application management: long live drag-and-drop installation. Finally I can start experimenting with new apps without having to worry about messing up my system!
\t- iPod
\t- iApps
\t- Mail with smart junk mail filter
\t- applications like Sherlock, Watson, and MacReporter
\t- faith that Apple will keep improving OS X's performance
\t- hope that Apple will finally resolve their CPU lag issue
\t- hope that the game situation will keep improving
\t- appreciation for forward-looking technologies like Quartz, QE, Rendez Vous, and Ink
\t- all the good things I read about OS X's Developer Tools and Cocoa development
\t- Windows networking integration: this is less a reason to adopt Mac OS X than a reason not to dismiss it outright, seeing that 95% of the computers out there run Windows, whether one likes it or not.
\t- Virtual PC: runs terribly on Jaguar but is very usable in Mac OS 9. Here is to hoping!
\t- multitasking and protected memory (and hence stability): again these are the least you can expect from modern OS.
Comments
I'll post a more thought out reply later maybe...but here's a tip: To switch backwards with apps, use Command + Shift + Tab.
<hr></blockquote>
Text navigation on the mac is pretty straightforward: the pgup, home, etc. keys are document navigation keys: they don't change the insertion point. The arrow keys change the insertion point. Option-arrow will move a word at a time left or right, and a paragraph at a time option-up or down. Command-arrow will move the insertion point to the beginning or end of the document, and command-left/right will move to the beginning or end of the current line.
This becomes a problem in web browsers that use command-arrow for web navigation, but control can be used instead of command in this case.
I do have to take issue with your evaluation of the CD tray though. THis is a portable computer, so you have to have the 'snap-in' kind of tray, rather than the drop in one. A powered tray would've been better, but would drain the battery more.
I do wish they had put in the 'slurping' drive from the Powerbook G4 instead, but I digress.
+ after a full week-end of tinkering with my PC networking settings, I was finally able to access my PC through Go To Server SMB browsing. It works great. For some reason my networking configuration was mixed up between the two network interfaces (go figure, Windows...).
- the error reporting for SMB networking still needs work in Jaguar: I got two error messages with numbered codes: -36, -1035). The second was because my username was incorrect but it gave no textual indication to that effect.
- I got my first kernel panic. kinda scary to look at. i was attempting to access the PC while logging out on that same PC.
- I also tried setting jaguar as an SMB server but the PC can't seem to see the Mac. Oh well.
This means I now have my full home networking setup up and running, and I can start switching my files over. Good stuff.
[ 09-15-2002: Message edited by: cygsid ]</p>
It might prove to be a smart choice to have a central location for all music files but it's still nice to have the choice to put your music files in the location(s) of your choice.
Congratulations and, heheh, Welcome to Macintosh!
[quote]- hard drive space occupation: seeing that by default almost half the hard drive is already occupied (!), 20 GB might not be enough, especially with my intention of using Virtual PC at least for some time.<hr></blockquote>One thing that takes up a lot of drive space is localizations for other languages. If you only plan to use your iBook in English, than you might want to try running the app <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=13503&db=mac"; target="_blank">DeLocalizer</a>. It will go through your system and delete the files that would only be used for Spanish, French, Japanese, German, etc. that you won't need. [quote]- the CD Player does not use a tray system. That's rather cheap coming from Apple.<hr></blockquote> Huh? Tray system? What do you mean?
Last I checked, CD Player was an ancient app for Classic Mac OS. You're not having to boot into OS9 are you? [quote]A pleasant discovery about iTunes: you can disable the option of copying all files added to the music library.<hr></blockquote>I'm glad you found that! To be honest, the only people that I can imagine would need that option are users who either don't know how to organize their own files or are too lazy to organize them. Bleh.
Anyhow, I'm glad you're enjoying your purchase for the most part. As with before, feel free to post about any other quirks or questions you may have.
Here's someone who dares to speak their well-balanced thoughts.
About the iTunes issue, jeez, I can't believe they put that in, as DEFAULT, moreover.
And then this, keep my files organized... (if you haven't updated id3tags, you wind up with your songs scattered all over the place).
This is definitely not a good thing.
And it's true, performance is going the good way, but isn't there yet, at all.
Of course there's the argument, well, 'on my dual 1 gig it's darn snappy', but that's no good. The iBook is as much current hardware as the dual is. It doesn't have to be as fast, but it has to be fast enough.
What about Quicktime not using full screen?
Try 'present movie' choose for size 'full screen'. I have never had a problem with this.
I do agree with the sound. Coming from a loud and clear Pismo, this is a bit of a turn-off.
And other things. But anyway...
<strong>
What about Quicktime not using full screen?
Try 'present movie' choose for size 'full screen'. I have never had a problem with this.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
You have to register Quicktime if you want that feature (don't know with QT6, but this was the case in QT5 and 4)
<strong>- QuickTime has so much better performance than on Windows. Not good, Apple, cheating like that.
</strong><hr></blockquote>
I have seen that on a PC under WindowsME (pretty instable when running QT movies). I am wondering however, it is Apple that is cheating here or Microsoft that don't wants to let us believe that there is software better than WMP?
<strong>I am wondering however, it is Apple that is cheating here or Microsoft that don't wants to let us believe that there is software better than WMP?</strong><hr></blockquote>Well, I'd say that it's just that QuickTime isn't nearly as integrated with Windows as it is with Mac OS X.
Remember, QuickTime for Windows is just an add-in. As you can see from Apple's diagram above, in Mac OS X, QuickTime is deeply rooted into the core of the operating system. It's no surprise that it would perform better here, especially if you consider that a lot of development has probably gone into optimizing for the G3 and G4 processors.
[ 09-16-2002: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>
It's the same problem that creates slow Mac ports, just in reverse.
Some responses for cygsid:
You did a big comparison of menus vs. contextual menus, but that's sort of pointless because OS X has both. If you don't have a two button mouse, then you get to contextual menus by holding down the Control key and clicking.
[quote]
- no contextual help like in Windows. I've always found this to be hugely useful. <hr></blockquote>
Control-click (or right-click) on anything, and a contextual menu will come up, and "help" should be one of the items.
[quote] - God does the situation of Mac games look rather disastrous!
- virtually no demos online! <hr></blockquote>
Well that's a slight exaggeration. If you didn't find demos, then you weren't looking in the right places. See, the problem is that the Mac OS is not Windows. Therefore if you look for Mac software where you normally find Windows software, you probably won't have much luck. Just like you won't find Windows updates on Apple's web site.
So I suggest you try looking at sites like <a href="http://www.macupdate.com"; target="_blank">Macupdate</a>, <a href="http://www.versiontracker.com"; target="_blank">Versiontracker</a>, <a href="http://www.macgamer.com/"; target="_blank">MacGamer</a>, <a href="http://download.com.com/2001-2038-0.html?tag=dir"; target="_blank">Download.com</a>, and <a href="http://mac.ign.com/"; target="_blank">IGN Mac</a>.
That should keep you busy for a while. As far as you complaining about download speeds... well you know that's not the Mac's fault, right?
[quote] - Performance is still nothing to run home about, especially compared to Mac OS 9 and even more so <hr></blockquote>
You need to try Jaguar on a FAST Mac, not an iBook. More specifically, you need to try it on a G4-based Mac. Try Jaguar on a new dual 1 GHz Mac if you want to see it running fast.
There's more but I'm not going to get into it here. But I would like to point something out that you may not have noticed: You're trying to use Jaguar as if it were Windows, and then you complain about things not working exactly like they do in Windows. See, the problem there is that if Jaguar worked exactly like Windows did.... it would be Windows. Isn't that sort of the point of doing something differently?
You may have to try a bit harder to unlearn your Windows methodology for getting around the OS, because it'll just slow you down in OS X. Learn how to work OS X better and you'll be flying through the interface. For one thing, learn keyboard shortcuts. there's a lot of them and they'll make your life easier.
ARGHH ITS WONDERFUL!!!!!!!!!!
*orgasm* etc
everythings so amazingly fast and smooth, sure I'm coming from a pc thats aged a bit but still I didnt expect anything great with all the talk of osx being slow and stuff but what the heck are people on? Works like a dream for me (even before I installed the jag update).
Err Tibooks hot and noisey? what the heck mines icey cold most of the time, so nice to caress and stroke, well I admit the bottom gets a little hot if you've used it on your knee a bit but nothing too horrific and the top is always cold. And I'm still not sure if i've heard the fan, played quake 3 for a bit and it was still very silent, only noise it makes is when you put a cd in but that can't be helped. The display is beautiful took a screenshot and was shocked how bad it looked on my stupid pc monitor.
Ahhh tis a great great machine
As I read through Cygsid's post it was all the little things that I totally agree with -- especially the context menus and the navigation in text fields. I think you could read Cygsid's comments and say that he's clinging to the Window's way of doing things, but I think that could be to quick of a response. For me, a casual user, I don't want to (and don't have the time to) learn all those little keyboard short-cuts. Having something that is familiar from the Windows side I think will help the average user make an easy transition .
In fact Xaqtly wrote in his post:
"?.I would like to point something out that you may not have noticed: You're trying to use Jaguar as if it were Windows, and then you complain about things not working exactly like they do in Windows. See, the problem there is that if Jaguar worked exactly like Windows did.... it would be Windows. Isn't that sort of the point of doing something differently?
You may have to try a bit harder to unlearn your Windows methodology for getting around the OS, because it'll just slow you down in OS X. Learn how to work OS X better and you'll be flying through the interface. For one thing, learn keyboard shortcuts. there's a lot of them and they'll make your life easier."
This is exactly my point. I sit with a Windows PC on my desk at work all day and the last thing I want to do is come home and learn a lot of keyboard short cuts. Mabye it's not that I need to unlearn the Windows way of doing things, maybe it's that Jaguar needs to learn to do a few more little things the Windows way. Perhaps that may sound like blasphemy, but let's face it Windows isn't going away. In the end in Apple is the one with only 5% market share and they should try to be more accomdating. I'm not trying to say that Apple should sacrifice anything that make's their OS unique or better, but just make it more familiar for those of us who do switch.
On a side note, my really big pet peeve with the Mac so far has to do with ejecting CDs. Why is it that you can eject a CD using the OS (throw it in the trash) but you can not close the tray from the OS? In order to close the CD drive I have to go to the keyboard. It's nice having the eject key on the keyboard but damn it, give me an on screen eject command/button that opens AND closes the cd tray. Maybe I'm just a moron and I haven't figured it out how to do that yet, but it drives me nuts.
In the end I'm glad I bought the Mac. I have no big show stopper complaints, but more context menus with more options (i.e. rename file) and figure out the damn eject thing and I'll be a really happy camper.
<strong>In the end I'm glad I bought the Mac. I have no big show stopper complaints, but more context menus with more options (i.e. rename file) and figure out the damn eject thing and I'll be a really happy camper.</strong><hr></blockquote>
There's actually a very nice method for renaming files on the Mac. Just click the filename under the icon and it will select, ready to be renamed. (You can also rename by clicking, or selecting via the keyboard, the icon itself and then press Return.) Much easier than right-clicking, moving down to select "Rename", then renaming.
But I do agree with you; the Mac could still pick up a few tricks from Windows in regard to keyboard navigation of the UI. It's got much better in Jaguar and I expect will continue to improve.
[ 09-18-2002: Message edited by: Hobbes ]</p>