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created 26 Sept. 2000

Living with OSX on my network, a week in the trenches, part 1.

Well, I've been living with OSX for just over a week now, and it's been a surprisingly mild ride. In fact, quite the pleasurable one. Just as some background info: I'm running the Public Beta on a G3 PowerBook '99, aka Lombard, with 192 MB of RAM, with an 18GB hard drive, with two partitions, the second one being a 3GB partition for OSX. I had not been able to run earlier developer previews on this setup for any useful length of time. Another important aspect of this is that I cannot, (for various reasons), run Classic on my setup, but I knew that before I installed the Public Beta, so no surprises there. The interesting aspect to this is that I have had to keep all of my applications and utilities 'native', so I am really getting a feel for OSX as more than a carrier for Classic applications.

First of all, as any Unix administrator will admit, Unix is not crash-proof. It's very resistant to crashes, but not immune. And I have on occasion been able to grind the Public Beta to an absolute halt, but it's been consistent enough that I can now submit a decent bug report on it. I've also had the Carbonized version of the Netscape M17 beta kill the whole OS. This is not that uncommon, I've watched Netscape kill Solaris servers as well. However, a reboot, and I'm back in business. I would have to say, running beta applications on a beta OS is definitely the way to have an interesting life.

At any rate, I find that there is very little I miss from the Classic world. The networking speed of the Public Beta is fast. In my own informal tests, I'd say by a factor of five to ten in some cases. Internet Explorer is faster, snappier, and access pages much faster than IE 5 in MacOS 9. I did try OmniWeb, and can see where it is technically a better browser in a lot of ways than IE, but IE works the way I like to, so I use that. Mozilla seems to work, but I can only keep it running for a matter of minutes, so I can't really say for sure if it's faster or not.

The Dock is turning out, for me at least, to be much more useful than I had thought. Even with ClassicMenu running, (the OSX version of the Apple Menu from Sig Software, at www.classicmenu.com), I don't really use it that often. I placed an alias to my applications folder on the dock, and between that, and the browser view in the Finder, it works really well. In addition, I have put around 15 applications on the Dock, so I can get to the things I use regularly with decent speed. I was never a great user of the control strip for a lot of things outside of Location Manager, and setting display resolution, so the lack of that doesn't bother me either. I do wish that I could more easily move it from one monitor to the other, but it's consistent in that it follows the menubar from what I can tell, so at least I know where it's going to be. I have found that the Dock can be very annoying if the applications don't deal with it well. Case in point is Internet Explorer, which will extend it's Favorites list down into the Dock area, making it hard to get to choices at the bottom. I would also like to be able to ctrl-click the trash, and have that give me a context menu, as at the moment, it simply opens the trash up for me. But that has the feel of a beta-bug, not a permanent issue, so I'm not too worried about it.

One of the very nice things about the dock has to do with the fact that it is not static. I know we've all seen the demos with "Mission Impossible 2" playing in the dock, but that's more of a parlor trick. What is useful is the way you can have the CPU usage meter running in the dock, and still easily see how hard something is beating your system. Or the fact that the OSX mail client shows you from the dock icon that you have unread messages in your inbox. Things like these show a lot of potential for the dock if developers take advantage of it. By allowing live displays in the Dock, it also gives it a lot of potential to make up for some of what the Control Strip gave us. I do have to admit to not really liking the new clock. It works, and it's pretty, but it's in the way all the time. However, VersionTracker has a listing for a third party menu bar clock, so again, if Apple doesn't give it to me, someone else will.

This is one of the more interesting areas of OSX, what *isn't* included with it, and I find the choices interesting. So my thoughts on it follows this line. A lot of what we take for granted in OS9 actually started life as shareware. Things like SuperClock, WindowShade, being able to use Location Manager and the Control Strip on non-PowerBook Macs, most of these were bought, or licensed by Apple. But in X, they are all gone. Now, (and this doesn't count Location Manager, I'm more than a little sure that it is on the way), by doing this, Apple does two things. First of all, it creates huge opportunity for interface shareware developers, much like existed in the System 7 days. Secondly, it gives Apple a chance to re-evaluate a lot of the OS utilities, and see which ones are important to users, how many users they are important to, and why. This way, Apple can make better decisions on what to keep from the Classic OS. It's easy to assume that Apple has just killed all of this stuff off, but if you look at it, this is the first time in years, maybe ever, that Apple has had a chance to see, in the 'real' world, exactly what their users want from the MacOS. The Public Beta gives them that chance, and it will be much more useful than user surveys ever are.

The Desktop and the Finder are other areas of concern for Mac users and rightly so, as in the end, these two things, more than anyone else make the Mac what it is. From my experiences, I don't think that Apple has gotten rid of either, they've just altered them a bit. Where the Finder and Desktop were once thought of as one and the same, now they are more separate to the user. From what I can tell, there are not a lot of differences that are all that radical.

For starters, the Desktop is still functional, with the only differences being the fact that internal hard drives don't automatically show up on the desktop, and the Trash is in the Dock. I've got all kinds of folders and applications living on my desktop, happy as can be. I was able to move things like Disk Copy to the desktop, again, just like in Classic. Note: Move, not alias or copy. The actual Desktop folder exists in a sub folder of my User folder, but this is no different than when using Multiple Users, or Macintosh Manager under OS9. Your personal files and preferences are kept separate from the master set. This is good, as that way, it is harder to do real damage to your system. I also think Apple has done a masterful job on simplifying the directory structure *especially* compared to DP4. While it still needs a few tweaks, like maybe moving the root Library directory under the root System folder, which would then give you a directory structure very close to an OS9 Mac running Multiple Users. Aliases seem to be a bit more spotty, mostly working the way we are used to, but in some cases, breaking if you move the original, most notably in the login items tab in the Login control panel. Again, I think this is more due to "It's a Beta" than "Apple's dumping Aliases". Another interesting change is the absence of the 'Put Away' command, (cmd-Y) to dismount network drives, among other things. Instead, you use the 'Eject' command, (cmd-E) to accomplish this. I'm not sure if that's good or bad, but for me, it's probably closer to bad. Again, this strikes me as a "It's a Beta" detail.

The Finder hasn't changed that much either. If you use cmd-B, or Hide Toolbar from the View menu, and stay in list or icon view, it still looks very similar to current Finder windows, with some added buttons. I have not found, in a week of almost constant use, any case where I hit the wrong button to close the window instead of minimizing it. The window controls are spaced well apart, and you have to click on the button to activate it, not just near it. This includes rollovers. You can in fact activate the rollover effect, yet not have the active area in of the cursor in the clickable area of the button. So you are either on target, or nothing happens. This is acceptable, as the buttons are big enough to make targeting easy, yet not so big that you can easily hit them by mistake.

I also have to admit to really enjoying the browser view. Especially for someone like me, who does have very deep folder hierarchies, it's nice to be able to scroll back to the parent folder or hard drive without having to close/open windows. Once you get used to it, it's quite a bit faster for navigating folders and finding things. One thing I do *NOT* like is that you can only move windows via the title bar. This can get quite awkward, and makes things harder than they need to be. I'm also not thrilled with the menubar acting as a ceiling, but only on the main monitor. If you are not going to let us slide windows up past the top of the screen or menubar on one monitor, then eliminate that behavior for all monitors. On the other hand, since you can only move windows by the title bar anyway, you aren't moving them too far up. The one really curious window behavior involves what happens if it gets hidden behind the Dock. There's a nagging inconsistency there. If the application in question is the Finder or Internet Explorer, you have to hide the Dock to get to the window, or just give up, close the window, and re-open it. If it's the email application, then the title bar pops back up above the Dock as soon as you release it. TextEdit leaves it alone, until you select the window from the Window Menu, at which point it pops it above the Dock. I like the Email application's method for new users, and TextEdit's behavior for experienced users. In any case, 'losing' a window behind the Dock is not an acceptable mode, and I hope that however this is dealt with, it's dealt with at a system, not application level, at least for the basic behavior.

Those of you who hate the brushed metal look in Sherlock will be happy, as that is now gone. QuickTime still has the metal look, with all it's good, (easily draggable), and bad, (hard to tell it's in the background) features, although the older favorites drawer is replaced by a button that says TV, which is less intuitive than the old version, as I wouldn't expect my favorites to be in a tab in the TV button's window. The stereo controls are gone, and the volume slider is an actual slider now, not that pseudo-wheel it was.

In any case, there is a lot to like about OSX, and a lot more than just Aqua, although that's what I've covered here today. Next up, a look at the more geeky parts of OSX that will make an administrators heart beat a little faster.

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