Well, spring has turned to summer, and fall is upon us, and now we have Apple's latest version of their new operating system, MacOS X version 10.2, AKA Jaguar. There's no question that MacOS X is Apple's future, but is it ready for us?

Apple's latest OS creation is MUCH better than even MacOS X version 10.1.5, which was arguably very good. So, let's take a look at some of the new features so you can decide whether you're ready for the plunge.

First off, Apple has made a lot of enhancements to this latest version, including incorporating something they call Quartz Extreme, which hands Finder screen redraws off to your graphics card, if it's an AGP NVidia or ATI card with at least 16MB of video RAM. If you have one of these newer cards, you'll notice a much snappier Finder. Everything will be much more fluid, and menus pop down much more quickly. Why's that important? Because, if the video graphics card is handling your Finder graphics (not just 3D stuff in games), your main processor is freed up to do other things, like handle the applications you're running, such as AppleWorks, or Microsoft Word, or even your web brower and mail application. So, this is a very good thing, and it really makes the performance of your Desktop/Finder much peppier for most things. My 450MHz Desktop PowerMac is now smoother/faster in the Finder than my 600MHz iBook. Of course, some applications, such as Microsoft's infamous Internet Explorer, still manage to behave in clunky ways, as always, including most noticably in window resizing.

Another important improvement is that the Mac can now see, via a browser window, not only other Macs with shares running, but all Windows PC's, as well. No more having to remember either the IP address or syntax (e.g., smb://servername/sharename) and typing it in to get a login screen for the remote share volume. Now, you simply go to the Finder's Go menu, select Connect to Server, and wait while the Mac searches the local network for all available shares, both Mac and Windows. For this simple functionality, you'll no longer have to purchase and install a third party application like Dave to access those Windows volumes. Very Mac like...

Printing has been another bugaboo with MacOS X, so Apple has added a bunch of new printer drivers for common recent printers. These additions may be useful, or not, depending on what printer you have. I still had to install Epson's latest commercial drivers to access my Epson Color Stylus C80 over the network, even though Apple added a lot of Epson drivers to the upgrade. Also, curiously, I found I could no longer print to my Apple LaserWriter IIf over my AirPort connection from my laptop, although it prints fine when I'm connected via wired EtherNet. This matters little to me, however, since I've long switched over to using the Epson C80 for virtually all my printing needs. Its fade/bleed-free ink, photo quality output, and fast performance belie the need to use anything else.

Scanning still seems to be another animal, and many are still unhappy with this. You should be able to scan with a direct connected USB scanner, but networked scanners still appear unavailable. However, I should note that with Windows XP scanning still seems to be much of a black art as well. Since we upgraded our Windows PC to XP, we can no longer use the simple one-touch buttons on the front of the scanner to use it as a simple copier. So, I'm still waiting for an affordable networked scanner solution we can both use.

What about the installation process? Well, MacOS X version 10.2 now offers three options: a Clean Install, an Archive & Install, and an Upgrade option. I had the opportunity to try the first two. The Clean Install will provide you the most ultimate satisfaction, since it replaces everything with the newest approved versions, virtually eliminating any system related problems. However, not everyone is willing to backup/reformat/erase their primary hard drive partition to do a clean install. After all, if you've been using MacOS X for awhile, you've probably customized it some. I chose this option for my Desktop PowerMac AGP G4 Sawtooth system, since I had accidentally installed ALL of the language options when I upgraded to version 10.1.5, and wanted to get rid of them this time (be sure to check the customize and options buttons during the installation to avoid this by unchecking those languages you don't need). It worked fine, and took about an hour. Since I had saved my user folder and applications folder to another partition prior to the installation, I was able to simply copy them back, replacing the default folders in the clean installation, and most everything worked fine. This retained all my preferences and local data, and I didn't have to reinstall all my applications. The one that didn't work I didn't use much anyway, so I deleted it and haven't reinstalled it from the master CD. My 14" iBook was a new toy from this past spring, however, and I wanted to see if I could leave things pretty much as they were, so I used the Archive & Install option for this upgrade. This worked very well. The installer simply renamed the System Folder in MacOS X to Previous System 1 and placed it in a new folder named Previous Systems, then proceeded to install a completely new System Folder, leaving my user and applications folders alone. This took longer for some reason, but the end result was the same, and actually easier than the Clean Install. What's curious to me is that users on the web have been noting that Clean Installs perform the best after the upgrade, Archive & Installs less so, and simple Upgrades the worst. I can understand why the simple Upgrade option would be problematic because the install is only selectively replacing files in the System Folder, and who knows what old application installations may have left there to conflict with the newer system files versions? This last method is also said to take much longer than the first two. However, the first two options both resulted in a completely new System Folder, and should realize the same results. I can only suppose that those users who Archived & Installed had some applications that were problematic with the new OS. I'm pretty anal about my systems, routinely perform duplicate backups, and run Norton Utilities weekly to check, fix, and optimize my systems to keep everything tuned, so that may explain why I failed to notice any performance differences between the first two methods. I can say, however, that I ended up spending the better part of the day performing the utilities cleanups, then backups, then installation process (reformatting/repartitioning in the first case), then tweaks and customization changes before I was ready to simply use my new system. So, plan ahead, this is NOT a casual process.

MacOS X 10.2 has a couple of other features, some of which I have mixed feelings about. The local search function has been pulled out of Sherlock, which is now up to version 3. So, to search in the Finder, you just press the Apple (Command) - F combination, as in olden days, and a search window opens. The remainder of Sherlock is now devoted to searching the Internet. This means you can now startup Sherlock, search for a movie in your Zip code, get movie times, a map showing where the theater is, a quicktime trailer for the movie, and, sometimes, order tickets online in one easy window. Pretty cool, and it works, mostly. You can also easily check on stocks, access Internet Yellow Pages, search for and check on the status of a flight, access the eBay auction site, and look up words in an online dictionary. All pretty useful stuff. Jaguar also now has handwriting recognition built-in. All you have to do is plug in a USB drawing tablet (I tried it using Wacom's Pen Partner), go into the System Preferences and access the now-visible Inkwell Preferences panel, select a few settings, then open TextEdit or Microsoft Word, for example, and print (no cursive) away. Unfortunately, the recognition is not as good as the old Newton's was, and seemed to be missing some critical editing features. I kept getting upper-case characters when I didn't want them, and couldn't find any way to lower-case them. With the Newton, I simply drew a quick downward slash with the stylus through the misrecognized character to change it. Of course, Jaguar also has Quicktime 6, which includes the new MPEG-4 decoder, but if you want to save any videos to your hard drive, you'll have to pay $29.95 to get a new registration code to upgrade to Quicktime Pro 6 (your old QT Pro 5 code will not work). Finally, Jaguar has a more comprehensive, but now Internet based, Help System. This means it's almost useless unless you have a fast Internet connection (e.g., DSL or cable).

So, what do I think? Was it worth it? MacOS X 10.1.5 was already pretty stable, so MacOS X 10.2's rock solid stability came as no surprise (I virtually never turn my Macs off anymore, just putting them to Sleep when not using them, then touching the space bar for instant on.). Startup times are about the same, although 10.2 spends more time before the blue screen/progress box and less during it. The Happy Mac icon has been replaced by a bland gray screen with a plain gray Apple logo centered on it. The Classic Environment starts up MUCH more quickly now, which is a definite plus for users still using MacOS 9 applications. MacOS X 10.2 users who sign up for Apple's .Mac service will be able to download and use the new iCal calendar application. The Address Book application is now better integrated for use by other applications (including iCal and Mail), but I still prefer Microsoft's Entourage (but this does require you purchase Microsoft Office for MacOS X). The new iChat application is included, but your friends will have to be using the lastest AOL client, or iChat if in MacOS X 10.2, to be able to see when you're logged in (I actually use Microsoft Messenger instead, since I don't know anyone on AOL.). All in all, superficially, the upgrade doesn't seem compelling at $129, but under the hood I've heard many improvements, bug fixes, and optimizations have been accomplished, so it is indeed a major upgrade. If you haven't yet tried MacOS X, this is the version to get.

One last thing. MacOS X requires robust hardware. If you plan to upgrade your Apple G3 or G4 system, load it up with as much memory as you can. Also, if your AGP (NOT PCI) video card is replacable, consider upgrading it to one with at least 32MB of video RAM (the minimum is 16MB) to take full advantage of Quartz Extreme. The new ATI 9000 Radeon sells for around $150, and the discontinued, but faster ATI 8500 Radeon, is now selling for under $200. From the user's perspective, Quartz Extreme alone makes this upgrade well worthwhile.

- Dave Marsh

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