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Mac OS X v10.0 Review - Page 2 of 4

Installation
Once I’d done the hard work preparing for OS X, the actual installation was relatively painless. I inserted the CD, double-clicked the installer, restarted, and followed the instructions. Everything went great up until it was time to send in the registration. At that point, my machine (appeared to) hang with a message that said "Connecting to server." I let it sit about 10 minutes, and decided that I’d either typed some IP numbers incorrectly, or Apple’s servers were swamped. I tried hitting CMD-OPT-ESC and was surprised to find that it worked!

When I force quit the registration assistant, my machine continued finishing the install, and booted perfectly. The first hour or so were spent playing around with settings and re-installing software from the PB, along with new stuff from the iDisk. You should definitely check out your iDisk; there’s a ton of great stuff up there to play with in OS X. If you don’t have one, signing up is about as painless as possible. Also keep your eyes on macosxapps.com and versiontracker.com for the latest OS X software releases.

Installing software in OS X is generally trivial. You’ll download a compressed file which expands to a disk image, which you then double-click. When the image mounts, drag the application folder into your preferred location (hopefully inside /Users/username/Applications) and you’re done. To uninstall, reverse the procedure. UNIX installs can be messier, but those will strictly be for people interested in the UNIX side of the OS.

Usability and Education
I admitted my bias right up front. I like OS X, and I like it a lot. It’s not perfect (far from it), but it’s let me do some things with my Mac that were never before possible. With that said, there are definite areas for improvement in OS X … I knew that going in, so I’m not overly disappointed. Things I’d like to see addressed include resizable column views, replaceable Finder font, multiple Get Info windows, spring loaded folders, and a few others.

In addition, the OS needs drivers for external peripherals before it can truly be considered an every-day OS. Until this situation changes, I will still need to re-boot into OS 9.1 for tape backups, burning CD's, scanning, and dowloading digital images. Other than those times though, my home machine will be in OS X 100% of the time. I’ve used nothing but the Public Beta since September until I got my ‘Staples copy’ earlier this week, and I’m quite happy with the progress that was made on the system during that timeframe.

I could go into tons of detail on all the apps and system settings that are available in OS X, but quite frankly, that’s half the fun of using the system – finding those things! The online help system is reasonably good, and there are a ton of web resources out there to help you learn – this site, of course, but lots of others – check the LINKS page for a list of over fifty!

OS X is UNIX based, and you can (if you like), choose to learn much more about UNIX. You don’t have to, of course, but it’s available. I’ve been using three books that I highly recommend:

  1. Sam’s Teach Yourself UNIX in 24 hours – A great beginner’s guide, with a nice easy pace.
  2. O’Reilly’s UNIX in a Nutshell – Just a reference; all commands with brief explanations.
  3. O’Reilly’s UNIX Power Tools - Explains how to really take advantage of the power of UNIX. More advanced, but some great tips (some of which will be making their way to the macosxhints site, after I learn how to apply them to the OS X environment). You should be very comfortable with the command line and UNIX in general to get the most out of this book.

In my one day of serious use of the system, I’ve noticed a couple minor bugs related to retaining settings and window redrawing, and I’ve had one Finder restart (which didn’t affect anything else, of course, thanks to protected memory). Also, my machine is currently incapable of sleeping, due to the Adaptec 2930 SCSI card. Other than that, I haven’t had a crash or hiccup yet and Classic is yet to quit unexpectedly, despite how busy I've been keeping it (as you’ll soon see). While OS X may not be ready for my Mom just quite yet, I'm more than willing to bet it will be by July.

NEXT - Performance

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