Type and creator codes are unevenly supported. I was dismayed to see that programs like Apple’s own TextEdit silently insert file extensions if you choose to save a file as “My File,” TextEdit will actually save it as “My File.txt” or “My File.rtf”! Mac OS X relies on DOS-style file extensions to a much greater extent than OS 9. There are plenty of problems with the Unix base, though. It lets me descend into the murky world of the command line for the rare tasks that are vastly easier there than with a GUI. I mostly see it as a strength because it lets me use best-of-breed Unix software like Apache and CVS. The Unix core is both the greatest strength and greatest weakness of Mac OS X. There are plenty more problems with the OS X spacial Finder that I won’t go into because John Siracusa has already explained them so well. But even then it takes up more space to show me less information than the OS 9 Finder using the hand-tuned ultra-readable Geneva 9 bitmap. This must be done for each folder because it’s not available in the global list view options. Likewise, the font is so large that the Finder can’t display full filenames in the list view unless you make the name column wider. The default grid spacing is huge, so it’s impossible to create compact small-icon views. Disclosure triangles in lists don’t remember whether they were open. Unfortunately, there are a lot of problems with the OS X implementation of the spacial Finder, to the point where I find the icon and list views almost unusable. The OS 9-style spacial Finder is partially back, after being totally absent in the public beta. It’s extremely slow and not very multi-threaded, often locking up with the spinning rainbow cursor for extended periods. The Finder is the least polished component of OS X. The window layering model would be perfect for me with two additions: a keyboard shortcut for Bring All to Front and a quick way to send a window to the back (perhaps by clicking its title bar while holding a modifier key). This makes it easier to work with more than one application at a time, and I believe it’s the reason that I don’t miss window shading at all, despite using it frequently in OS 9. I also like that OS X lets me mix windows from multiple applications on the same layer. This is one instance where the eye candy is actually useful. Yet, unlike some borderless X Window systems, the subtle shadows make it easy to see where one window ends and the next begins. Windows have a much cleaner look because, as with System 7, they aren’t surrounded with thick borders. Aqua seems to be designed for a Cinema display it feels too big for my PowerBook, and I can’t imagine using it on an iBook. This ceases to be a problem when I crank my monitor up to its highest resolution, but then I get a flickery refresh rate and everything in Classic is way too small. (The Dock’s magnification can be turned off.) The anti-aliased text looks very nice, but I wish it were as configurable as OS 9 because I find small anti-aliased text difficult to read. And the only annoying visual effect is the throbbing default buttons. The only ugly part about it is the flat gray disclosure triangles. If Apple can make it fast, then I’ll be all for it. The verdict right now is that OS X is roughly as stable as OS 9: programs crash more, but the system seems solid. But thanks to protected memory my other applications keep on running, and I can simply restart the offending program. The Carbon version of iCab spontaneously quits several times a day (it never did that on OS 9), OmniWeb crashes daily, and I lose the Finder now and then. That’s not to say that applications don’t crash. I guess there’s still some voodoo in the Mac experience because I now have a stable OS X system that has only panicked once since (still one time too many for a “modern” OS). Trying to experience this for myself, I updated my Mac’s firmware, replaced the Heat driver on my external FireWire drive with an Apple one, reformatted my internal hard disk, reinstalled OS X, and then applied the just-released 10.0.1 update. Most people report OS X to be very stable, and for many it has never crashed. Despite its fancy protected memory, OS X was far less stable for me than OS 9, which often runs weeks without crashes on my computer.įortunately, this experience is not a typical one. I couldn’t drag a file in Finder, unstuff a file with StuffIt Expander, or click a button in Network Utility without fear of a freeze. It crashed several times a day with kernel panics and old-style Mac freezes. However, OS X was such a disaster for me that I was forced to give up. Because OS X 10.0 was released on March 24, I had planned to use it for final production of ATPM 7.04, then squeeze in my article about it at the last minute.
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