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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" Reviews Pour In 905

Posted by pudge from the the-verdict-is-spotty dept.
hype7 writes "The reviews on Apple's new Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" are starting to come through. The New York Times (free reg required) heaps on the praise: 'Mac OS X 10.2 is the best-looking, least-intrusive and most thoughtfully designed operating system walking the earth today.' MacCentral is positive: 'From what I've seen Jaguar is leaps and bounds ahead of Mac OS X 10.1 in both speed and functionality.' MacWorld has also chimed in: 'for most users, there are a lot of important improvements in this upgrade: performance boosts, improved printing, and interface enhancements will be immediate benefits. And over time, Mac OS X 10.2's new technologies (including Quartz Extreme and Rendezvous) will make the update even more valuable.'"
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Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" Reviews Pour In More

Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" Reviews Pour In

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  • Too bad Apple isn't giving a discount to current users of OS X, with the exception of recent OS X purchasers. $129 is a bit pricey for an OS upgrade.

    At least the reviews make a point of that.
    • I agree with ya... They should have given the early adopters of 10 - 10.1 a price break.

      I've heard somewhere that Apple is relaxing the licensing restriction in certain cases, where you may install one copy on up to 5 Macs. I can't remember where I saw it at, or the restrictions...but I guess that makes it somewhat more bearable...even if we all did that anyway :)
      • The article about the "Family" license allowing you to install one copy on up to five machines can be found here [macslash.org]...

        siri

      • That's the "Family Licensing Plan", for $199, you can install one copy on as many as five Macs:
        Family Pack Software License Agreement allows you to install and use one copy of the Apple Software on up to a maximum of five (5) Apple-labeled computers at a time as long as those computers are located in the same household and used by persons who occupy that same household. By "household" we mean a person or persons sharing the same housing unit such as a home, apartment, mobile home or condominium. This license does not extend to students who reside at a separate on-campus location or to business or commercial users.
      • You heard it here [slashdot.org]. It's called the "family license".

      • Re:Unfortunately, they got one thing wrong. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:49PM (#4120215) Homepage
        I've heard somewhere that Apple is relaxing the licensing restriction in certain cases, where you may install one copy on up to 5 Macs. I can't remember where I saw it at, or the restrictions...but I guess that makes it somewhat more bearable...even if we all did that anyway :)

        You're thinking of Apple's Mac OS X Family Pack, which lets you install it on up to 5 Macs in one household for $199. I think it's great for people who want to be legal and have more than one Mac at home.

        I can't figure out how to post a direct URL (the Apple Store doesn't like deep linking) but here's how to get there:
        1. Go to the Apple Store [apple.com].

        2. Click "Apple Software" in the left column, the first link in the "Software and Books" heading.

        3. The second choice is for the OS X family pack.

      • They call it the Family Plan, its $199.99 for up to 5 machines, this is from the email they sent .mac subscribers about it:

        Mac OS X v10.2 also comes with family-friendly pricing. The cost for a single copy is only $129, but if you have more than one Mac that you want to add new features and benefits to, you can take advantage of the family version. It can be legally installed on up to five computers for only $199. And be sure to check out all the great software now shipping for Mac OS X, like Microsoft Office v. X, Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Photoshop Elements 2.0, and the newest arrival--Quicken 2003.

        You can get more of course when you visit the product page [apple.com] on their site. I personally am a little peeved since I bought my mac just 6 months ago, and already I need to invest more money into it.

    • Amazon was offering a discount on it, but I think that's over with now.

    • Re:Unfortunately, they got one thing wrong. (Score:4, Informative)

      by The Bod ( 18970 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:47PM (#4120175)
      You are not paying $129 for an upgrade. Apple doesn't sell OS upgrades. When you spend $129 for Jaguar you are getting a FULL version of the OS. You don't have to have an earlier version of the OS installed to install Jaguar.
    • I kind of agree. I do agree that they should give a discount to all previous MacOS owners (of any recent version AFAIAK). However 10.2, while it is a minor upgrade as far as the numbered release version indicates, it is far more than just a minor upgrade. It's been said that 10.2 could really have been called 11. Personally I don't like the idea of jumping quite that far. Maybe 10.5. A lot of major new things are included in 10.2 so I can kind of understand charging more for it. It's not a minor "pay us $20 for the CD" release. I still wish there was a discount though.

      Another thing worth pointing out is that you can get 10.2 for only $69.95 if you're a K-12 faculty/staff member or Higher Ed faculty/staff/student member. The discount isn't directly offered to K-12 students. Through a school you can usually get a discount. Apple Specialists would probably also give you a discount for your daughter's computer. Since I work at a Unv and K-12 I bought mine for $69.95.

      • Re:Somewhat agree (Score:4, Insightful)

        by b_pretender ( 105284 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:25PM (#4120549)
        Too many people keep saying that existing MacOS owners should get a discount.

        This makes absolutely NO sense whatsover!!

        Who would purchase 10.2 that doesn't own MacOS?? Nobody. My brother runs Windows on Intel hardware. He's not going to buy 10.2. Face it people, Apple set the *upgrade* price to be $129, because 10.2 only runs on Apple hardware which comes with an Apple OS.

        If you have problems because it is too expensive, then that's a valid concern, but quit saying that they should offer discounts for people who *upgrade*.

        • Re:Somewhat agree (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ahknight ( 128958 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:34PM (#4120631)
          I believe the point is that people who upgrade from other versions of Mac OS X (which is not the entire user base) should get a discount. People, then, who have Mac OS 9 should pay full price.

          I disagree, but that's the statement.

        • Re:Somewhat agree (Score:5, Insightful)

          by JoeWalsh ( 32530 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:45PM (#4120722)
          Too many people keep saying that existing MacOS owners should get a discount.

          This makes absolutely NO sense whatsover!!

          Actually, it does make sense. If the cost of an upgrade doesn't vary whether you keep up-to-date or not, then there is no financial incentive to keep up-to-date. In other words, if 10.3 is going to cost me the same price whether I own 10.2 or not, why don't I just save myself some money and wait a year or so for 10.3? Whereas, if I get a discount for 10.3 by buying 10.2, then I have a reason to keep current.

          -Joe

        • No, it's the OS X users that want a free upgrade

          There are quite a few OS X users who are upset that they are going to have to -pay- for an upgrade which will fix many major OS X bugs and or once again support certain features of Apple hardware (ie software WiFi support for OEM Mac antennas) that where disabled with 10.0 or 10.1

          OS X 10.0 was by no means a complete OS. And, even though OS X 10.1 was much better, the same could be said for 10.1 as well. I can understand why these people are kind'a ticked off. They want what should've been given to them for free.
      • I think that they kind of "snuck" this *major* upgrade on us after the fact. Especially to us "switchers". I'm not very happy that less than a month after I bought a G4 powerbook that I'm told that now to have an up-to-date supported OS I need to shell out full price for a new version. Even on major release updates, most other software vendors have a grace period of when you buy the previous release (a 1-3 months) that you get a low-cost or free upgrade to get the new one. That's good business practice. If you did publicize a new major release coming shortly (which Apple didn't do enough of earlier IMHO), you'd give those who just bought the older release a grace period to get the newer release, otherwise your sales will plummet before the next release with everyone waiting for it rather than buying the shortlived previous release. I'd accept a decent upgrade price as I would expect for other OS's/packages.

        Had Apple said earlier that 10.2 was going to be a major release change (that was considered a major release change as opposed to 10.0 to 10.1), or announced it as OS 11 (which doesn't go well with their OSX abbreviation as then it would need to change to OSXI), then I might have held off for another month to get my laptop. I was uninformed and paid the price. That doesn't make me happy.

        I was told by Apple support when asking about this that I should have known that something like this would be announced at MacWorld (as I guess the Mac faithful are used to hearing), and that had I known past history of MacWorld announcements, I would have waited. Well, if this practice gets well known, then watch system sales drop even more next year before MacWorld as people wait for announcements then too. I don't think Jobs wants to have to stand up and say that they're last month sales are dropping heavily then will he?

  • Just installed it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bdowne01 ( 30824 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:38PM (#4120080) Homepage Journal
    We just loaded it up on a Mac G4 here at work, and even the die-hard-love-to-bash-the-mac-user-Windows fans were impressed by the visual speed improvements of the GUI.

    Granted I haven't had a chance to take a look at everything new, but so far--it seems awesome.

    Can't wait to get home tonight to install it on the iMac!!
  • command line apps seem very much slower

    alot of people say that the abi has changed because of the change to GCC 3.x but they should not work because of the ABI change not slower whats up ?

    regards

    John Jones

    • Re:command line apps slower (Score:4, Informative)

      by foobar104 ( 206452 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:29PM (#4120581) Journal
      command line apps seem very much slower

      Believe it or not, it's a graphics thing. Try turning off antialiasing in Terminal.app. The option is found under the application menu, in Window Settings, on the Display pane.

      You must not be using Quartz Extreme. With QE, there's no difference between AA and non-AA in Terminal.app.

  • Macworld owns Maccentral (Score:4, Informative)

    by Arcturax ( 454188 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:43PM (#4120142)
    Just FYI, Macworld ownd Maccentral and thus anything coming out of Maccentral will be a parrot of what's coming out of Macworld.

    Not to say that's wrong, just saying that you might have well only mentioned one of the other and picked a different 3rd example.
    • "Just FYI, Macworld ownd Maccentral and thus anything coming out of Maccentral will be a parrot of what's coming out of Macworld."

      Except that I read both reviews, and the MacCentral one is different from the one from MacWorld. The MacCentral review even points out problems with iChat and Word.

  • Looking good (Score:2, Informative)

    by franzzup ( 96552 )
    OS X 10.2 has been shipping with new Macs for over a week.


    It feels a lot snappier. I've installed it on a blue&white G3/300, and even without the boost from Quartz Extreme (which requires AGP and Radeon/GeForce or better) the GUI has picked up speed. The Finder is MUCH faster at handling windows with a lot of files and no longer feels like it's asleep at the wheel.


    Maybe OS X will be usable below the Dual GHz G4 level after all. The next thing to try will be iPhoto, which was ridiculously slow on my 500 MHz iBook.

  • Just thought it would be interesting to note that Apple is selling "site" licences for home users as what it calls the Mac OS X Family Pack [apple.com].

    Just thought it was neat. Bummed that there was no upgrade price, many users were only going to purchase one box of Mac OS X 10.2 and load it on all thier home machines. Now you can legally upgrade all your home machines, for a much more resonable amount, and Apple gets $199 instead of $129

  • The artical writes:
    International Affair Mac OS X v10.2 comes with full Unicode support and thousands of dollars worth of high-quality fonts -- including Japanese and Chinese -- and supports non-Roman alphabets (like Arabic, Thai and Hebrew) via improved input and a new Unicode Character Palette.>
    Which is a really simple but nice addition. I dont know how many times I've been browsing the ent and run across a Japaneese site. Having dial up, I dont usually feel like downloading 5 mb Unicode translator packs.

  • Busted link (Score:5, Informative)

    by The Droek ( 241974 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:47PM (#4120184)
    Correct link [macworld.com]

    Gotta watch those quotation marks!

  • Mac's are walking now?? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bembleton ( 589035 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:49PM (#4120212)
    'Mac OS X 10.2 is the best-looking, least-intrusive and most thoughtfully designed operating system walking the earth today.'

    RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!! The Macs have become self-aware and created legs to run around and reak havok!

  • Does it seem to anyone else that history may be repeating itself here?

    The old NeXT operating system was very nice and had many of the same features that OSX does (not suprising since OSX, if memory servces, is based partially on NeXT). But NeXT didn't get out of the hardware market quickly enough and support hardware choice with enough earnest and IMO ended up falling as a result.

    Being a die-hard Linux/Unix advocate I am starting to warm up to OSX from what I've been reading but I will absolutely not give it a second look until there are more vendors that are building hardware for it than just Apple. I use Unix/Linux partially for OS/hardware freedom of choice, I am not about to go to a platform that gives me little lattitude in either dimension!

    • Re:NeXT again? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Space Coyote ( 413320 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:06PM (#4120378) Homepage
      But NeXT didn't get out of the hardware market quickly enough and support hardware choice with enough earnest and IMO ended up falling as a result.

      Didn't get out of the hardware business fast enough? That's an interesting postulation, but I know a few people who still use NeXT workstations for certain tasks, and none who use OpenStep on x86. There has been exactly one successful OS vendor on the x86 platform, but many Unix companies have carved out a good market for themselves selling purpose-built high quality hardware, which apple is doing right now. Putting OS X on that shitty beige Dell with the WinModem, funky sound card, and god-knows-what other cheap knockoff hardware won't give the average user any kind of benefit, if the thing even works at all. This is the problem Linux is running into and having much difficulty with.

  • Windows users can compare and understand better (Score:5, Funny)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:51PM (#4120234) Homepage
    Mac OS 10 is showing us how a good operating system is designed. That's useful so that Windows users can compare and understand better what they are getting.

  • Jaguar? (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeee ( 137160 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:53PM (#4120246)
    I hear MacOS X is great and all, but am I the only one who hears "Jaguar" and thinks not "lithe jungle cat" but instead "pretty but unreliable British automobile"?

  • Developers, Developers, Developers... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chairmanKAGA ( 515972 ) <nwzamecnik@y a h oo.com> on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:53PM (#4120249) Homepage
    ...What no one is mentioning is that yes the OS is amazing (worth the high price of a Mac IMO) but the Dev tools are simply fantastic. If your a pro you get all these amazing dev tools for free and if your a beginner now you have a reason to start.

    The Cocoa framework is, once you understand it, the easiest, most powerful framework there is. You can make amazing, truely object oriented programs with a full GUI in no time t all. Objective C is a great language and the fact you CAN use all your C/C++ code in your programs and integrate things adds to the functionality.

    There is an object called NSTask that allows you, the programmer in code, access and use the function of ANY command line tool in your program. Who else offers something like this?

    I really suggest to all developers to take a good look at developing for this computer. It's fun, effeciant and powerful. Not to mention free and of course you have all your favorite command line tools, compilers etc. In fact, every program compiled with the free compiler is GCC.

    It's simply, great.

    Native Java also =)

    • Re:Developers, Developers, Developers... (Score:5, Informative)

      by illerd ( 579494 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @03:07PM (#4120870)
      He's right, the free dev tools and the Cocoa framework are hot shit. The advantage of NSTask over system() and popen() is that its an object and it fits in seamlessly with the rest of the framework. With almost no code you can have it post notifications when there's data available and call other methods. Its just one example of what the framework is all about. It lets you build no-brainer Java like applications that run like normal applications and can actually do usefull stuff. It's got all of the advantages of Java (minus cross-platform, of course) and it compiles into native machine code. And you can work with whatever existing c/c++ libraries you've got. AND THE WHOLE THING COMES WITH THE OS. Not on a separate cd you have to send away for or anything, but right on the retail cd. Any developer with a Mac owes it to himself to check it out.

  • To all the porting fans (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:54PM (#4120263)
    Has it not occoured to you that the reason that Mac OS X is so stable and fast is because they know exactly what hardware it will need to run?

    I've read many comments here saying how Apple should port the OS if it's so good. But one of the reasons the OS is good is that they don't have to worry that someone will try to run it on an Althalon, or put in there $0.99 NIC and expect it to work. Just ask the Linux community and they'll tell you the bigest headache is getting drivers for all of the hardware that is out there.

    So maybe we should think about this in the future. If every hardware vendor had the same quality control as Apple, and was as methodical about testing that everything works together we'd all have an OS that works as well as OS X, no matter what it was.

    Trust me if Apple ported there OS to the x86 people would be screaming from day one that it sucks. They'd probably blame Apple for doing it on purpose to get people to buy Macs.

    • Re:To all the porting fans (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bryan Ischo ( 893 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:58PM (#4120814) Homepage
      I don't really buy this argument, which I have heard over and over again every time Mac OS X is brought up.

      Let's think about Linux for a minute: very, very little "vendor" driver support, and yet 90% of PC hardware works flawlessly under Linux. Certainly a Linux distribution vendor, like Red Hat, could never afford to produce solid drivers for all of the hardware out there, but they don't have to; the community does it for them.

      If Apple could open source their kernel driver API (maybe they have already? I don't know, I don't really follow Mac OS X), and found that enough hackers out there were enthusiastic about Mac OS X and wanted to get their hardware working with it, then it is highly likely that Apple would find itself in the same position as Linux - solid support for 90% of the hardware out there.

      Apple could even do some kind of "certifying" of hardware and independent drivers, which would involve testing the hardware and inspecting the drivers to ensure that they work well. The end user could then feel confident that as long as they buy Apple certified hardware, they will achieve the same level of reliability that Apple has historically been known for (as you suggest, once again I am not an expert on Macs).

      All of the reasons that keep being presented for Apple's locking of its OS to one proprietary hardware platform really just fall flat. Some people have suggested that Apple makes their money from hardware, not software, and so porting their OS would be shooting themselves in the foot. And yet, Microsoft has become one of the richest companies in the world due in large part to their OS sales; they sell very little hardware. Other people suggest that Apple must retain control of the hardware to be able to ensure reliability. And yet Linux is one of the most reliable operating systems out there and 99% of the hardware that people use under Linux use drivers that were produced freely by the community.

      I think that porting Mac OS X to the x86 platform would be a major boon to Apple; it would reduce their reliance on a small set of hardware manufacturers (for the CPU, at least), and it would allow many people who are on the fence because they either don't want to switch to a proprietary hardware platform, or don't want to buy entirely new hardware just to use Mac OS X, to give OS X a try.

      I for one would buy Mac OS X for x86 in a heardbeat. The only thing that has kept me from using OS X is the hardware issue. I intend to remedy that when my 4 year old x86 laptop, still going strong, dies on me. But I could be enjoying Mac OS X already if Apple would just see the light on this issue.

  • I dread when Apple makes the front page (Score:5, Insightful)

    by feldsteins ( 313201 ) <scott.scottfeldstein@net> on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:55PM (#4120268) Homepage
    I'm starting to dread when Apple news makes the slashdot front page. That is when 3/4 of the discussion tends to be about multi-button mice, "proprietary hardware" and how we don't want to pay for it, stuipid misunderstsandings about the OS, and on and on and on.

    I almost prefer the apple.slashdot.org ghetto that we're usually relegated to. At least there it's about 3/4 people who actually understand something about the platform and don't need to bring the discussion back to "why I don't like this platform" no matter what the original story is.

  • I'm sick of people complaining about the price... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:55PM (#4120270)
    Listen... $129.00 is CHEAP for a *BSD 4.4 Kernel OS that I can use and enjoy and works without me having to become a vi expert and "tweak" crap until 4:00am. Most of you (Taco, what's the % of people with Windoze that read slashdot?) are reading this on a Windoze box, and the only "five nines" (99.999%) in the computer industry is the number of people who didn't pay for their latest windoze distro. So WOW, it's time to fork over a little cash for quality for those who choose Max OS X. What a concept! I have to *gasp* pay for software?

    I'm Switching(TM) in a few weeks. Can't wait to brag about having BSD as my main kernel (with a Suse/AMD box on the sidelines).

    :)

    • They shouldn't of modded you down. He is right.

      Keep in mind people that Linux is cheap because development is uh like free. A distro only need to hire packagers and write a few installer scripts to put things together and then add some support staff's. Lets Face it. $50 is not the price of an average os or would a company even break even on a sale at that price. I think we may all be spoiled because of linux.

      What apple is offering is really not that bad for amajor upgrade. THe graphics layer had to be rewritten from scratch, smp code had to be re-updated, several apps were added, and I bet apple had to fund some usability testing so they could improve the ui. Its not a 1.2 release but rather a verison 2 release and I think the versioning has confused some people. MacOSX will always stay version 10. If Apple changed to MacOSXI then the OS name would change and confuse consumers. If it were $129 for a bunch of bugfixes (cough cough win98se), then it would be different.

      All the other cheaper upgrades so far were minor revisions. ALso if you own version 10.1 or 10.0, you do not have to upgrade. Think about the internals here. System 6, System 7 and System 8, all looked alike from the outside but were totally different inside which made them different releases. Same is here.

  • Well... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Auckerman ( 223266 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:55PM (#4120272)
    First David Pogue (NY Times) is biased towards the Mac for the most part. Consider that when you read him.


    Now, having gotten that out of the way. OS 10.2 is nice. Speed improvement is striking. Not in the way that, "it should have been that fast in the first place", it's more in the way of the first time I installed BeOS on a computer to see it in comparision to WinME.


    Networking is definitely faster. I haven't benched anything yet, but I can say if you have a fast line, you will see your web browser of choice speed up considerably.


    The "disconnect from Network bug" is still there. Connect to a SMB, AppleTalk, or DAV volume and pull your network cord (or turn off the machine exporting the drive) and you will get the spinning wheel of death.


    Video Performance is spooky, even on an origional G4 tower. You really have to see it to understand.


    iChat is next to useless, but the auto discovery of other clients is nice.


    SMB export was a pain in the ass. You have to enable it on a user by user basis, which wasn't obvious, in the Accounts preference pane. Then after it's enabled for a user, you have change their password. Since the GUI client changes both the Samba password and Unix password for the user, at the same time, the users CANNOT just change their password on the command line. This also raises fears that the Samba passwords are stored in cleartext on the harddrive. I suspect, this is not the case, but haven't look yet. There is no convient way to set the SMB workgroup in the GUI


    XDarwin needed to be repaired (which is available at the X on X site and seemingly not part of what Fink compiles) to work. This was annoying.


    The firewall has Gnutella as an option to allow.


    My SCSI CD Burner stopped working. I suspect the old SCSI bug is back for the time being.


    Some other shit I foget....

    • Re:Well... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by aeames ( 528197 )
      I've been using Jag for about 2 weeks now... The SMB thing is a pain in the ass...I go back and forth from work and when I forget to unmount shares from one place my computer basically just dies. Relaunching the Finder hardly ever works. iChat is completely worthless. I'm sticking with Adium (tabbed message windows are a must.) The speed is appreciated--especially launching apps, but window resizing has not improved. The Terminal app is faster though, which is nice. I'm still waiting for iCal. Overall I'm very happy, but not everything is perfect. I guess I expect too much.

  • Apple on x86 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zmalone ( 542264 ) <{wzm} {at} {pylae.com}> on Thursday August 22, 2002 @01:57PM (#4120293) Homepage

    Many people are commenting that Apple needs to move to x86, however, I think there are a few problems with that. First of all, Apple has never strictly enforced the licensing systems they have in place. Nearly all Mac users I've dealt with are lax about it too, usually installing the copy they get with their new computer on their older equipment, or borrowing a copy from a friend. There has never been much pressure from anywhere not to do this, because, after all, "everyone knows that Apple survives off hardware". As Apple has no copy protection scheme in place, they are worried that they would loose massive amounts of money by just selling an OS to a crowd which has always viewed the OS as a freebie.

    Apple could avoid this by creating their own bios, or some other way of restricting the machines that could install Mac OS X for the x86, but historically, this hasn't worked well, just look at IBM. In the Mac world though, they have been able to hold patents and such on far more of the machine, preventing against unlicensed clones (they prosecuted quite a few companies in the '80s over Mac clones). If they don't have complete control over the hardware, its doubtful that they could prevent clones.

    Finally, if we assume that Apple decides to release an OS X port that works on all x86 hardware, they would have to compete with all the x86 vendors on price (Dell, etc.), as well as Microsoft on the OS (and all the OEM agreements that entails), and they would have to set up support for a huge amount of hardware that they don't have experience. This seems unlikely to me.

    As a combination of all these issues, I just cannot see Apple moving to x86 any time soon. Sure, they might be able to do it, but I don't see it making sense.

    • Re:Apple on x86 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Etcetera ( 14711 )

      As Apple has no copy protection scheme in place, they are worried that they would loose massive amounts of money by just selling an OS to a crowd which has always viewed the OS as a freebie.

      It's been said before, but remember that prior to System 7.1, all System updates were free (unless you wanted printed manuals.)

      I still remember those glory days in Jr High when I'd walk into the local Apple Computer dealership with a box of Sony disks and walk out with System 7.0.1...

    • First of all, Apple has never strictly enforced the licensing systems they have in place. Nearly all Mac users I've dealt with are lax about it too, usually installing the copy they get with their new computer on their older equipment, or borrowing a copy from a friend.

      Uhhh... I think that this applies to all software - not just Apple OSs. This is why the new XP stuff has the online product activation. If Apple followed suit, I don't see how they'd lose any money. The bottom line is that Apple initially planned an OS for x86 [toastytech.com]. Microsoft got scared so they made an "investment" in Apple [com.com] and then OSX for Intel mysteriously disappears.

      OSX on Intel would be extremely profitable for Apple. Unfortunately, I think that Microsoft makes it extremely profitable for Apple's management not to release it.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Apple is trying to kill off native AppleTalk and just using AFP via TCP/IP.

      AFAIK, Jaguar supports mounting Windows shares out of the box. For Mac OS 9.x, you can get DAVE [thursby.com] from Thursby.

      There is also a means to get OS X machines to speak old-school AppleTalk. Dunno if it'll work in your situation, but you enable it by using the NetInfo Manager application. Go to /config/AppleFileServer, and modify the attribute "use_appletalk" from 0 to 1. A full description of the procedure can be found at the bottom of this page, [euronet.nl] but what I wrote above is enough to get an OS X Mac speaking old AppleTalk.

      ~Philly
  • Just can't get Atari out of my head? Y would Apple port OS-X to the Jag? O! I C!

  • non-reg NYT link (Score:2, Informative)

    by ydnar ( 946 )
    here [nytimes.com]
  • I ordered the Family licence, but got my hands on the 10.2 upgrade CDs in my 17" iMac.

    So I installed on the older hardware around the house.

    Beige G3 with Radeon/466MHz G3/Firewire
    iMac DV 400 MHz
    Powerbook G3 400MHz

    The Beige G3 is really snappy. Bootup is down to about 25 seconds from when the chime starts to when the Dock shows up. Everything about it is fast, fast and stable.

    iMac and Powerbook are also very snappy. Finder draws when a large folder on a remote drive open are as fast as they are in 9.2.2.

    My Beige G3 would hang about one every two days when I monkeyed with Firewire, no longer.

    10.2 on my PowerBook G4 550 is really fast. Only problem is that I can't get Dave to uninstall.

    Worth the $200 for 5 or $129 for a single.

  • A Few rarely talked about but cool things in 10.2 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by toupsie ( 88295 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:21PM (#4120507) Homepage
    1) Inkwell [apple.com] -- Turn that cheap Wacom Graphire into a real input device for text. Works like a charm -- better than the Newton ever did.

    2) Universal Access [apple.com] -- So what if you got all your eyeballs, ears and arms, doesn't mean you can't take advantage of the amazing Universal Access controls in Mac OS X. Apple's Text to Speech technology rules. Now my Mac talks to me when certain events occur, "Mutha Fucka! E-Mail Server Down!", "Some asshole is NMAPn' me!!!". I can also hilight text and have the Mac read it to me with a simple keystroke.

    • Quartz freaking extreme.

      Imagine - a OS who's GUI is being handled by the graphics card...

      what an idea!

      QE makes Mac OS X feel like Mac OS 9 - except that you get vector graphics everywhere.

      Resizeing the whole screen, watching DVD's thru a translucent window, and drop down menus no longer drag your computer to a halt. - so long as you have a 16 meg Radeon or nVidia video card.

      For users of older machines - you'll still like the performance enhancements, plus the longer battery life.

      10.2 is worth every dime.

  • Quartz Extreme (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Dr. Spork ( 142693 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @02:29PM (#4120583)
    From the Macworld article:
    Essentially, Quartz Extreme is a technology that off-loads most of the burden of displaying your Mac's interface to the Mac's dedicated video processor and video RAM. ... By using your video subsystem to composite all the different objects on your Mac's screen, the technology allows your Mac's main processor and memory to concentrate on other tasks. The result is a system that feels more responsive, especially when it's busy with other tasks. When we had lots of applications open in the background, there were far fewer spinning cursors in OS X 10.2 than there were in OS X 10.1.
    Now, here is a feature that makes a whole lot of sense. I mean, we hardly use the GPUs on our fancy cards when we aren't playing 3D games. About time our OS took advantage of them.

    So why doesn't Linux and Windows have this sort of feature? I would love to see Gnome or KDE rendering everything using my GPU, so that my CPU could do something more interesting.

  • missed x86 hardware/OS point (Score:4, Insightful)

    by medcalf ( 68293 ) on Thursday August 22, 2002 @03:42PM (#4121282) Homepage
    Let's say that Apple were to port OS X to commodity PC hardware, and were to make their own high-quality (and likely expensive) well-designed x86 boxes running OS X. If you're not running on an Apple box, don't expect OS X support.

    Other than predictable bitching, the first thing that would happen is that Windows would be installed on the box by a number of users who like the hardware, but not the software. The second thing that would happen is that people would likely be able to get OS X running (badly) on cheaper hardware, reducing in the process Apple's reputation for solid and dependable software. This would reduce the user base for OS X software at the same time as Apple's hardware profits are sinking. App developers would flee in droves, and the OS sales would trickle to a halt. In about two or three years, at most, Apple would either be back on PPC (having lost a lot of money) or dead.

  • Still leaves many BIG PROBLEMS unresolved (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dh003i ( 203189 ) <dh003i@gmail. c o m> on Thursday August 22, 2002 @06:47PM (#4123014) Homepage Journal
    1. Windows should be completely vectorized. This is faster to load than bitmaps, takes up less RAM, and less hard-drive space.

    2. One should have the option to turn off all of the fancy features of Aqua -- i.e., shiny effects, transparency, animation. Why? Firstly, many find these features tacky. Secondly, they serve little or no function. Thirdly, to speed things up. Transferring the rendering of the GUI to the GPU is better than letting the CPU do it (note to X-windows WM developers, hint hint), but it requires many users to needlessly upgrade their GPU when they wouldn't have to otherwise. Thus, one should be able to turn off these resource-hogging features.

    3. Minimization/maximization. Windows should minimize to their appicon on the dock, and hold clicking on that appicon should bring up a pop-up menu of the instances of it running. Dragging the appicon of a running application off the dock should quit that application, while dragging an instance of it off the apicons menu should close that instance. After the app's closed, dragging the apicon off the dock again should remove it from the dock, if it was a permanent member. Maximization should maximize to the entire screen.

    4. Bring back Apple menu, with all the nifty menus. The old apple menu was great -- had applications, control panel, and many other useful menus. The new one should get those features back. Btw, control panel options should be entirely accessible through menuing: why make us open up a whole new window?

    5. Keyboard control. Apple has long had issues with keyboard control -- namely, that you can't do everything you want from the keyboard. I suggest a very simple and traditional fix: F1 opens up File, F2 opens up Edit, F3 opens up View, and so on and so forth; in other words, they F# opens up the #th menu item.

    6. Scroll bar buttons. Up/down scroll bar buttons should be available at the top and bottom of a scroll bar column.

    7. For other things which Apple should integrate into their WM (as should every WM), see this site [rr.com].

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