Psyjax!! I'm not putting X down. I'm simply saying that it's not everything Steve's marketers say. It's the best OS I've ever used, too. But they could still improve it in many ways.
Panos, I don't want Apple to keep a low profile! I want just the opposite. I want 'em to be like they were in the late 80s. In your face, not afraid to insult the competition. They had beige Macs because it wasn't the outside that people cared about (even though they were BETTER beige boxes) it was the fact that inside the beige Mac was a DOS killer. And it was that way for years. I miss Apple back when my dad still used Macs. Back when he had an SE/30 for civil engineering work. Apple knew they were badass, and showed it. They also had an image. They were Apple, the company that started the whole personal computer revolution, and they were a company that was made of tinkerers, artists, hackers, code gods, and some sharp businessmen. You had heroes like Bill Atkinson, Jef Raskin, Woz, and you could look at some part of the Mac or the system software and know that this man did it. Now, they're another homogonized corporation, with a CEO as a faceman. He might be a CEO with a vision, but he's still just another CEO. Steve was much better as being a guy who led projects and drove the troops.
As for the networking, it's wierd. I'd put equal blame on OS X and my college's sorry excuse for a network. I find dialup to be many times more reliable and... faster. Our network is a piece of shit. iChat never gave me any network trouble when I was on dialup, but neither it nor AIM want to stay connected. But now iChat crashes, too =^( And that sucks, 'cos I like iChat!
The Windows networking... I don't know. I plugged into a hub with three other XP boxes. instantly they saw each other and they were swapping files. I never got them to see me, and I never saw them.
And Quartz, yeah, it's better than QuickDraw. Windows XP's GDI is better than QuickDraw. But Quartz will be sluggish and a hog until we see 5-th generation 64-bit PPCs. Quartz Extreme goes a long way toward fixing that, but look at who got left out in the cold... Rage graphics users. Thanks ATI, for not fixing the power-of-2 texture bug.
As for Jaguar being "as fast" as 9. Perhaps. Apps run faster than they did in 9. I saw that the first time I used OS X. But even in Jag, some things require the spinning of the pinwheel.
I've been using OS X since 10.0.3, and I've seen it go from being a complete crock into being the best desktop UNIX. But it's still got some ways to go before it's "as good as it can be".
I'm not gonna bitch about hardware. Apple's a computer company and they need a way to drive hardware sales. I just wish they'd been able to offer something better than what they have now.
::I shake my fist at Moto::
And finally. I'm not Anti-OS X. I'm just critical of it. I use it and love it, but am disappointed by certain parts of it. But, as I've seen time and again, every new update brings more and more improvements. I hope that the issues that exist in 10.2.1 will get adressed in 10.2.2, and I look forward to 10.3 or 10.5, or whatever the next BIG release is
Open source is a big issue right now. Freedom of thought vs. freedom to extort is where it's going. Open source is on the side of the right. On the peoples' side. Apple is anti-DRM, but recording engineers are historically one of their biggest buyers. When their bosses start requiring DRM, and Apple won't offer it... where will they turn? MS. Apple won't let that happen. If they hope to survive, they're going to have to relent to the evil that is the RIAA sooner or later. I applaud them for not supporting DRM, and, Hell, I applaud Bill for not including DRM in XP Media Center Edition.
Now... anybody that honestly DOESN'T LIKE OS X... bring it on. We're waitin' for ya.
[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: The Jimmy James X 10.3.6 / Bob ]