MacOS X.2: A two cents worth opinion...

[cockneygeezer]

Dear All,

After Apple.com announced 10.2 is on the way, a smile appeared on my face. Great I thought, a speed performance is in the works.
When the details of 10.2 were put online, my happiness soon turned to sadness. Nowhere on the website did they mention speed performance.

Instead, what do we get? iChat, Shelock 3 and Address Book 2. Sorry for holding my breath. iChat?! What do I want with a program like that for? Ain't there a third party software application on shareware already that does exactly the same thing? Address Book 2, never used version 1, so what would makes Apple think that I will used version 2? I use Address Book in Entourage X thank you very much. Shelock 3. Hardly use version 2, only to find files on the hard disk, and that takes forever to launch. Never use it to search the Internet or e-commerce websites.

Other toys are Ink, Quartz update and Fast Find. Ink, what I do want with hand writing recognition software for? I don't have a ink tabley anyway! Quartz Update is pointless for my PowerBook G4 as I don't have a supported graphics card. And fast find will only work within that specific window.

On the bright side, I am looking forward to QuickTime 6 and spring folders. QT 6 will be interesting with MPEG 4. I hope that Apple can sort out the licensing issues in time. Spring folders, a welcome return. IPv6 will interesting as well

All in all, I am a bit disappointed with Apple. It seems that they are more interested in putting fancy knobs on to MacOS X instead of making the product more faster and more responsive. Gimicks. (Is that one m or two?)

Hands up who thinks that this upgrade will be a CD update? One hand here already...

 

[lethe]

from everything i ve heard, the performance update in jaguar is enourmous, making it very fast. multithreading has been greatly enhanced in finder, and it now uses gcc 3, which is a much newer compiler, and includes more altivec support.

it also has printer sharing, and smb browsing which are great for networks. the new rendezvous technology is going to be great too. i suppose that the new network technologies aren t too useful if you are a home laptop user, but anyway, the speed increases are supposedly great.

i was going to post you the slashdot article, but it was removed by apple. anyway, i read it, and it claimed huge speed increases.

 

[nkuvu]

Cockneygeezer, why do you think Apple revolves around you?

No offense, but you keep talking about the things that were fixed/upgraded/added that you don't use. What about the people that do have a tablet, did use Address Book version 1, et cetera. What about the people who do have a graphics card supported by QE?

Any software company can only support their old hardware for so long before it becomes bloatware. I think testuser is correct, in that Apple is designing an OS for long term use. Which means that its requirements are barely satisfied by currently available hardware. Once the hardware has been sufficiently improved, OS X will be a speed demon.

I'm not trying to offend by anything I've said, but I am surprised at the number of people who are surprised that Apple is moving on.

And I believe there are two m's in gimmick.

 

[symphonix]

I have every hope that Quartz Extreme optimisation will be implemented on more graphics cards in the incremental updates, probably starting with the best selling machines for the last couple of years and trickling down to all the machines they pushed as being "great for Mac Os X".

I, too, rarely use Sherlock or chat. But I am grateful that those options are there if I need them. And even though I own a full copy of Office, I use Apple Mail and Address Book simply because they are more suited to my needs.

Frankly, I'm pretty impressed with the update. It promises a nice boost in performance and usability, a handful of new features and some new technologies. Rendezvous sounds promising, a Samba browser is very useful to me, and I do actually need a full POSIX command set. I think there's enough in there to leave 50% of users smiling with delight and another 20% giving a satisfied nod of approval.

 

[Valrus]

The poll options seem a bit biased.

But they'll have the opposite of what I perceive to be the intended effect: more people will choose the first option because it's not as strongly expressed. So people who are wavering will pick the first.

Now, if it said "Yes, I think it's perfect!" or "I think they should have given it some more thought," you might have more people choosing the second one.

-the valrus

 

[Sogni]

I realize most purchased their Macs before they knew of OSX and Jaguar, but I knew about OSX since a bit more than a year ago when I purchased my Mac – and did so with the minimum requirements in mind…

So when I ordered my “custom built” Mac I ordered it as a Tower and not the Cube, I was literally half an inch from clicking on the Cube’s order button since I absolutely loved its artistic ‘n futuristic look – even though discontinued by Apple they are still holding their own a year later, Dual Processor 533, nVidia GeForce 2 MX video (although seemingly it’s at the bottom of the Jaguar totem pole it’s still going to take advantage of Quartz – and besides, that’s why I chose the Tower so I CAN upgrade it to my heart’s content and changes in technology – to a certain point of course)

I don’t trust M$ as far as I can throw it – and this coming from a PC user, who has a Beige-Box running Windows 2000 Pro sitting next to my Mac! And yeah I now have Office X – but HELL NO I refuse to use Entourage X!!! That goes for Outlook Express as well!

So I will definitely have a use for Address Book 2! Sherlock 3 came from Watson (at least it looks like it did) and I found Watson to be such a wonderful resource! I don’t have a tablet YET – but as an artist I will soon, and Ink looks so very interesting to me. Quartz is going to give me an awesome boost – as it seems that I’m one of the only ones that’s not complaining about speed…

And a CD Update – considering the Microsoft Tax being forced to update the OS every few years just because MS wants to take Windows in a certain direction and just can’t do it in a single commercial upgrade (98, 2000, ME, XP - and whatever they name the next one)…

So I don’t see Jaguar being a commercial upgrade being a big deal and see it worth every penny - if it truley is a commercial upgrade.

 

[Jasoco]

Well. Not having experienced Jaguar myself, I can't say anything about its speed.

But I am estatic about the feature list. I bet there's more we haven't seen as well. All the cool things coming look awesome!

I hear speed is well boosted even on an iBook 600. So, that's something to like.

 

[neutrino23]

There is a lot to like about the yet to be released 10.2. In addition to the things listed before it brings back spring loaded folders, USB printer sharing, adds a nifty search box to windows, adds VPN support of some sort, adds Samba server facilities, as well as a big bucket of bug fixes.

From the few reasonable posts I've seen on the subject it seems that Jaguar will speed up things in the range 5 to 20%, apart from QE.

I think there will also be lots of little modifications that we won't know about till it is released.

 

[simX]

Originally posted by cockneygeezer
Dear All,

After Apple.com announced 10.2 is on the way, a smile appeared on my face. Great I thought, a speed performance is in the works.
When the details of 10.2 were put online, my happiness soon turned to sadness. Nowhere on the website did they mention speed performance.

Apple is pushing the main new improvements. Everybody knows that there should be speed optimizations. Just because they don't say it doesn't mean it's not there. Reserve judgement until it's out.

Instead, what do we get? iChat, Shelock 3 and Address Book 2. Sorry for holding my breath. iChat?! What do I want with a program like that for? Ain't there a third party software application on shareware already that does exactly the same thing? Address Book 2, never used version 1, so what would makes Apple think that I will used version 2? I use Address Book in Entourage X thank you very much. Shelock 3. Hardly use version 2, only to find files on the hard disk, and that takes forever to launch. Never use it to search the Internet or e-commerce websites.

The point of upgrades to the built-in utilities is so you will have more incentive to use it because they are more useful. iTunes 1.0 was pretty good, but iTunes 2.0 was even better. THE NEW FEATURES are what's going to make it more worth your while to use version 2 of Address Book or 3 of Sherlock.

Other toys are Ink, Quartz update and Fast Find. Ink, what I do want with hand writing recognition software for? I don't have a ink tabley anyway! Quartz Update is pointless for my PowerBook G4 as I don't have a supported graphics card. And fast find will only work within that specific window.

Ink is for those people who have tablets, and Quartz Extreme is for those who have supported graphics cards. As for Fast Find – first you complain that Sherlock 2 is so slow to find things on the disk, and then you complain about Fast Find. Make up your mind! Also, the Fast Find searches your WHOLE HARD DISK, not just the frontmost window. It shows the RESULTS in the window.

Hands up who thinks that this upgrade will be a CD update? One hand here already...

Of course this will be a CD update, just like Mac OS X 10.1. Think of OS X 10.1 as a free major upgrade to OS X. I doubt that OS X 10.2 will be free, given all the nice features.

As I said before, reserve judgement until you actually get the final version of Jaguar.

 

[lethe]

Originally posted by Tormente
I realize most purchased their Macs before they knew of OSX and Jaguar, but I knew about OSX since a bit more than a year ago when I purchased my Mac – and did so with the minimum requirements in mind…

So when I ordered my “custom built” Mac I ordered it as a Tower and not the Cube, I was literally half an inch from clicking on the Cube’s order button since I absolutely loved its artistic ‘n futuristic look – even though discontinued by Apple they are still holding their own a year later, Dual Processor 533, nVidia GeForce 2 MX video (although seemingly it’s at the bottom of the Jaguar totem pole it’s still going to take advantage of Quartz – and besides, that’s why I chose the Tower so I CAN upgrade it to my heart’s content and changes in technology – to a certain point of course)

speaking of the upgradability of the powermac, i was wondering, is there any way to buy an ADC enabled graphics card? i haven t been able to find any for sale from ATI or nVidia websites. i don t care too much, i have a supported card, but i think this would be very useful information to have. i asked this in another thread but got no reply. maybe i will post a thread in the hardware forum?

 

[fryke]

Originally posted by cockneygeezer
Shelock 3. Hardly use version 2, only to find files on the hard disk, and that takes forever to launch. Never use it to search the Internet or e-commerce websites.

Well. Cmd-F (Apple-F) in Finder doesn't bring up Sherlock 3 in Jaguar, it brings up a small Find-Files dialogue which I appreciate very much for the reason you dislike Sherlock 2: It loads fast. The QuickFind command in Finder windows was there already in Mac OS X Public Beta, so it's not actually a *new* feature, but it's nice all the same. For example if you have a 'Stuff' folder on your Desktop (like me) where you put, well, all the 'other stuff'.

Optimisation is guaranteed, since they're using GCC 3.1 for compiling the whole shebang. G4 owners will see the most improvements, G3 owners will *also* see improvements, the Finder has better multithreading (which will help a LOT), spring-open folders will help with productivity (that's a BIG performance upgrade) and finally QuartzExtreme will accelerate Quartz drastically for people with the right graphics cards.

If you have a machine that performs well now, it will perform even better with Jaguar. But don't let this hold you off of buying a new one. MWNY will bring new PowerMacs, and even before Jaguar will be finalized, we'll have new iBooks, new iMacs and (hopefully) new PowerBooks.