Is OSX for me?

Pardus

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The wrapping from my new G4 867 is still on the floor, I have had a quick peak at OS x but under great pressure to finish this project so i can actually go on a holiday next week, I haven't spent much time playing around or even reading a whole lot about the new OS. I am a graphic designer, usually working with PS, illustrator, Flash.
should I be working in Osx/classic or just wait until new versions of my software come out?
Is there speed differences between working in OSX classic and 9.2?
 
If you have gobs of RAM, Classic can run quite well. I have 768MB and it runs pretty smoothly.

However if you use a tablet (which anybody working with those apps would have) I don't think the classic-side will see it unless the OS X side does not (if it's USB).

I have a feeling most aren't going to jump until 10.1 due to 3rd parties not jumping until 10.1
 
To answer your question, "it depends".

First let me say that I love OS X. I actually miss it when I am working in 9 at my work (prepress graphic arts house). But there is still a few problems that need ironing (most of which will be fixed in 10.1). OS X is the most beautiful computer OS that I have ever seen. As a graphic artist, you are going LOVE the looks of OS X. I love the fact that almost everything is anti-alised.

Photoshop is about the same speed in both 9 and X, although I have not performed a real time benchmark... just my opinion. The only problem that I have in Photoshop is that sometimes when I start it up, the menu bar is missing. No problem, just quit and start it up again and all is fine with the world.

I have not worked in Illustrator in X yet because I am more of a Freehand person.

I haven't noticed any problems in Quark yet, except it sees every file on your hard drive (including the invisible files and folders, but it has always done that...), so it is a little more confusing to navigate when you are saving files.

I am not sure if there is a Carbon version of Flash yet, but if not it should come out soon. Maybe as a downloadable update.

The problems with OS X and graphic design are:

1) I find sharing files between computers more difficult. I still have not been able to get Appleshare to work like normal. To access my OS X mac, I have to type in the IP address instead.

2) Printers are having a hard time with support. Especially if you have special drivers like imagesetters.

3) Some programs may not work. Technically, 90% of all Mac programs (going all the way back to OS 7) should work in OS X. If you have special prepress or postscript software, it may not work for you.

4) Adobe does not plan to release a font management tool (ATM) but I am sure someone else will. Right now, you just have to do it the old fashioned way. I have had problems with fonts displaying incorrectly in Classic applications too, but not in any of the Adobe products.

All in all, try it out. Work in it for a few days to see what you think, it cannot hurt. But, if you are in a crunch to get your job done, stay with 9 until you have more time.

OS X is definitely worth the time.
 
Thanks guys for your responses, tonight seems to be taking a turn for the worse as monotonous programming has led me to the martini shaker. I am sure before the end of the night i will be booting up X and taking a spin.
 
A few more things...

I read something saying that Quark is completely all for the OS X Bandwagon, but that it will not have a native version for a year and a half. They want to release version 5 first, and then Carbonize it (sounds a little backwards to me). They said that they did market research and that most designers will be making the switch to OS X in about a year and a half.

How they get that, I do not know. What I do know is that even though you CAN run OS X on an 8500, it is so slow you don't want to. So many printing places still use 8500 machines as their primary CPUs, and CANNOT switch until they upgrade their machines.

I think with this attitude for the new version of Quark, that they may find themselves falling behind Adobe.

As far as Adobe goes, they have a preview beta of InDesign for X and the screen shots look nice. They also have a preview beta of Illustrator that looks AWESOME! Photoshop, I have not heard anything about, but I would assume that it would almost be easy to port to X than Illustrator because the manipulation that is done to the images is actually calculated and not just displayed. I would say that in less than 6 months nearly all of the core Adobe products will be OS X shippable.
 
martini eh ???
Sometimes I drink ice cold coffee with baileys when I code lol (which might explain the smartarsed comments and funny method names that I have lol :p) --> but suprizingly everything works well!!!!! :p


As for MacOS X... Since you make your living on graphics apps, I would advise to not go full fledge into OS X just yet. Get it, install it off on a partition and on your free time try to learn it, and get things running. If in the end you see that you can work just as well in OS X as in OS 9 then make the move final, if not wait a little while.

This is what I did,
Even though I am a computer science student and all I really need to code is a terminal and a compiler and OS X has those, my day job requires me to use media programs and such, and personally I have found out that I can work with OS 9 a little better when it comes to media that OS X ( when coding though I go to OS X ). I upgraded my RAM a week ago and now I have 704Mb, and with the advent of 10.1 I think things will be much better than things are now.

My advice is to wait for 10.1 before you start your dry runs :)


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