![]() ![]() For the developers, there's no more sumptuous place to be. For novices the "iBundle" scores highly on functionality and usability, particularly for those strange people who think computers are a tool, and not an end in itself. Apple will appeal most to people on the strength of its hardware ergonomics, and features such as instant sleep and wake up. It was with the timer showing 1 hour 43 minutes to go during the Installation Process I had a heretical thought: this operating system upgrade is a minor part in deciding Apple's fate. What would a roomful of machines exhibiting this behavior sound like? Crickets on valium. The machine has a gigabyte of memory, and I'd sure like to know what it's up to. Slashdot and OS News have noted other incompatibilities.īoth my installs on my 733/G4 PowerMac - clean install and update and existing installation - leave me with a rhythmic click, about once a second, from the hard drive. Given the benefits of the more recent BSD code, and the quality of Fink so far, you won't hear too many grumbles from me on this count, but I'd suggest pointing to the unstable branch and keeping track of the mailing list.Ĭhris Roberts at the GNU Mac Public Archive reckons it will take 18 months to get the 4,000 programs in the software library built with the new gcc 3.0 compiler, and has taken the CD off the market. My biggest beef is that the terrific package manager Fink is having problems. I can't recommend these two utilities enough - the publisher Proteron has good taste to spare. Many small utilities need minor fixes - the Jagwyre Dock reclaims Command-Tab from LiteSwitch X, and I'm having problems using MaxMenus, even in its updated form. Which looks uncharacteristically amateur. And the bug which screws the icon text of desktop clipping files when the folder is viewed as a list hasn't been fixed. You still can't sort a column view: which is infuriating when you when want the most recent files to appear at the top of the listing, for example. Users who need bolder windows still can't modify the size of the title bars or scrollbars, or give yourself a way of clearly indicating the foreground window from the background window without resorting to third party theming tools, such as Duality.) (Partially-sighted users are welcome in the Kingdom of Jagwyre: except, er when Steve disagrees. There are examples of poor attention to detail in places: Universal Access is split over two Preference Panes: the UA pane itself and 'keyboard'. ![]() Probably wisely: the behaviour was confusing since only had one chance to reactivate the thumbnail. A good Dock wouldn't go amiss - WorkStrip X is an example of how much innovation Apple could have built into the Dock.Ī few UI experiments from early Jagwyre builds didn't make into the final product: Dock miniatures - thumbnails which could be dragged to float above the Desktop - haven't made it into 10.2. Is there a way of making it one pixel big?, he asks. I just want the choice to be rid of the bloody irritant." If 99 per cent of users like it and want it, that's fine by me - it's a free country. There's an almost religious-like belief in the thing. "Apple seems to have real bee in its bonnet about the Dock - it won't admit to any faults, and won't offer the choice of disabling it. This now blitzes your choice of desktop background, and as one reader despairingly concludes:. With earlier versions, you could (in single user mode) move it out of its "Core Services" home folder and subsequently use a replacement launcher and switcher. There's a stately wait of three or more seconds for the Get Info box to appear, for example.Įarly reader reports suggest that the Dock is more obtrusive than ever. If I was being charitable, I'd describe it as "stately". You couldn't conceivably call it "snappy" set alongside a recent PC. In places, Jagwyre shows important aesthetic improvements, and it's also more responsive in key places. Apple has been listening, and fixed many of the dissonances that made the earlier cuts such a bumpy ride. It restores some but far from all of the functionality missing from its Apple and NeXT heritage. OS X 10.2 gives us the latest snapshot of this work in progress. So it's whether the middle ground must be persuaded to switch: and that middle ground includes as much as 90 per cent of Apple's installed base. But both camps are numerically small - most potential computer users in the West have already had plenty of experience with Windows. These are much-mocked as 'wannabee' apps, but the "out of the box" experience they offer is far superior to a Windows PC. For the former, Apple's default suite of applications plays a starring role. I've been recommending users from two ends of the spectrum to examine OS X: computer phobes who want functionality without fuss - and the UNIX literate or the UNIX curious. ![]()
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