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Your Journal for Life. App for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It is a very powerful launcher system and meanwhile it is the standard launcher system for Mac OS X (current OS X version wouldn't even boot without it). For those who are not familiar with launchd (or with OS X in general), it is like a crossbreed between init, cron, at, SysVinit ( init.d ), inetd, upstart and systemd. Startup & Shutdown. This is one of the easiest automations on the Mac, and it’s native to OS X. An Everyday User Looks at Mac OS X. Jim Champlin - 2001.11.01. My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submitted articles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all things Mac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email your submission to Dan Knight.

Jim Champlin -2001.11.01

My Turn is Low End Mac's column for reader-submittedarticles. It's your turn to share your thoughts on all thingsMac (or iPhone, iPod, etc.) and write for the Mac web. Email yoursubmission to Dan Knight.

Well, here I am after nearly two months with my Quicksilver G4/867 - nothingbut problems.

Not problems with the G4, really, but problems with Mac OS X.It was really nothing more than a cool novelty until I got 10.1 a fewweeks ago, then I thought, 'Oh yeah, time to put it to the test!'

And so I have. I've tried to use Mac OS X 10.1 as an average,everyday user for a month. I know you've seen these things before, buthow many reviewers are really looking at using OS X the way mostnormal users do? They look at how fast they can run their Photoshopfilters and copy network files, but they don't really look at thecomplete picture.

I've also used my friend and her iMac Rev A as a guinea pig tosee what someone without an extensive knowledge of computing thinks ofX.

Speed

For something to be suitable for everyday use, blazing, ridiculousspeed is not required. Quickness is. OS X, with all of its speed,is still sluggish in the areas that people see. The UI is quite, quiteslow. Of all the reasons to turn off Aqua, the speed issue is the one Isee as being the most pressing. I like Aqua, but what good is all theflashy stuff if it looks like your state of the art Mac is strugglingjust to move a window or scroll through a document? What did my friendsay? She said it was horribly slow. Conclusion: OS X may have aspeedy OS underneath, but to most people, the UI is the OS, andin Aqua's case that's not a good thing.

Stability

This is one area in which I've had nothing but glowing pride. Inthis whole month, I've only had one crash. I was opening a disk image,and for some reason it caused a kernel panic. Not bad at all. I've doneeverything I can think of to knock this bad boy on its face, but Ican't do it. I've opened every piece of software I have, filled themwith documents, then started an MP3 and checked my mail. It was stillpretty responsive and didn't hurt it. Classic went down, but more onthat in a moment. What did my test subject think? She didn't notice.She didn't even consider the issue, because she didn't have anyproblems. Conclusion: X is nearly impossible to crash when all you'redoing is normal tasks.

Classic

This is one of my biggest beefs with OS X. Classic is asinine.The fact that a technologically superior OS would have to run anemulation mode is ludicrous. Carbon was implemented on OS X as alibrary. Why isn't legacy support provided through a 'ClassicLib' ofsorts? Windows NT supports running 16-bit Win16 applications natively,right alongside Win32 apps. Each one is preemptively multitasked in itsown memory area. Backward software compatibility is one area whereWindows kicks OS X's behind. You can natively run stuff designedfor Windows 2.x on Windows XP. OS X relies on 9.x as a crutch torun Office 2001. What about my friend? She had one word for it: stupid.Conclusion: Classic's got to go and something better put in its place.You'd think that after working for three years, they could have donebetter than they did.

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Hardware

Lordy mercy, what a nightmare! I had a column on MyTurn a short while back, regarding HP's dismal support forOS X, and my quest to find a printer that works. Thank you so muchto everyone who emailed me! I settled on an Epson C60, which I'm happyto say is a very good unit - but OS X doesn't like it. Idownloaded Epson's drivers, which installed without a hitch. PrintCenter came up and detected the printer on the 'Epson USB' bus, andeverything looked good - until I tried to use it.

I attempted printing from Preview, and it moaned about not beingable to communicate with the printer. What?!? I just installed it! Ilooked at the USB cable, thinking I might have pulled it, but it wasstill firmly connected at both ends. I unplugged it on the computer'send and plugged it back in. Nothing. I plugged it straight into USBport 2 - the printer made some noises, but still wouldn't budge. Ifinally had to turn off the printer, then turn it back on, and then itprinted, but only once. This would drive someone less experienced withcomputers to take the printer back, thinking it was faulty!

What did my friend think? She wasn't able to use her USB Zip 100 orher USB floppy if they were plugged in through her keyboard. The Zip100 refused to work even when plugged straight into the iMac. Both ofthem worked perfectly on my G4. Conclusion: Trying to make hardwarework on OS X would send most people to the funny farm. Bear inmind, though, that Apple has done great work in getting the NeXTstepcore and the Unix side of things to play nice. At least I didn't haveto run emacs and muck around in /etc/

Aqua and the Finder

What can I say about Aqua? It looks nice, it's flashy, and it'sfrustrating. It's moving in the right direction, and it's evolvingnicely. Considering the fact that the Desktop didn't exist until latein the beta cycle, I think they implemented it pretty well. But thereare other blaring issues. One of them is the size of objects; the otheris inconsistency. It's slightly disconcerting to have everythingdifferent sizes. My desktop icons are the default medium size, theicons in most folders are old 32x32 size, but some of my folders havemanaged to get themselves messed up good. My 'desktop folder,' which iswhere I toss all my personal goodies, likes to reset itself to havingmassive 128x128 icons every time I open it. I set it to use theglobal 32x32 size, but next time I open it, it's back to big icons!That's precisely what I mean by inconsistency. I'm not really incontrol of the size of the icons because some odd bug keeps it fromsaving the size I choose, meaning that all my icons are one size, butthen one folder has these huge icons. Yet another folder refuses toopen in anything but column view. Beyond that, every time I open myhard drive window in list view, the Applications and Users folders areexpanded, but I don't want them expanded. Back to the sizeissue: the size of fonts in the Finder is excruciatingly large. Whilethat's nice for a 22' Cinema Display, someone with a 15' iMac running800 x 600 is going to feel like they're running out of space. Andagain, there's no way to change this the way we've been doing foryears. Conclusion: Some considerable work needs to be done here.

The Finder Continued

Well, no, I'm not done yet. Some issues related to security aregoing to drive a lot of people nutty. For instance, take two files Ithrow in the Trash. I go to empty the Trash, and one file disappears,but then it scolds me about not having permission to delete one of thefiles. Why not? I'm using the owner profile. They need to solve thisproblem soon.

And on the subject of the Trash, I'd like to add that putting it onthe Dock is both good and bad. It's good in that it's always easilyaccessible, no matter where you are. You can take a file in the Finderand toss it out, no matter how many windows are covering the desktop.However, it's a moving target. As soon as you approach the Dock, stuffstarts zooming in and out, sliding around, and mainly being a nuisance.You might have been moving toward the Trash, but along the way you hadto go through two other items. Now, the Trash is seemingly fartheraway. As you move closer to it, it accelerates toward your cursor, andyou end up passing it, because you were aiming for where it was. Apain! (More on the Dock coming up.) Conclusion: The Finder is, for themost part, the same as it was. Most people won't notice any differencebeyond the fact that it looks like Aqua, but they will notice the factthat some of the details aren't quite kosher.

The Dock

What a nervous little thing. I like the Dock and what it does, butthe way it goes about doing it is all wrong. The jumping icons slowdown my G4. It slows down noticeably whenever AOL Instant Messengerstarts wailing away at the bottom of my screen. The zoom effects arequite frustrating. I like the Dock on the left side, but it has tolabor over genieing the window into the little space. Why can't we havethe option of using NeXTstep's spinning rectangle?

My friend's iMac dies whenever you minimize stuff. You see thewindow start to morph, then you see it in the dock. My G4 juststutters. I also think the 'slide' animation when hiding is enabled isinconsistent with the rest of the UI. It would make more sense (and beless of a processor drag) if the Dock faded in and out; then it wouldact like a menu!

What did my friend think of the Dock? She said that it was 'neat,'but she missed the App menu. Conclusion: Trying to do the job of twothings simultaneously, the Dock pulls it off, but trades that for atwitchy, goofy implementation. I think anyone could grow to like it,though. I have.

Conclusion

I've only talked about the things that bugged me and my friend themost. There are other issues related to normal consumer use, butthey're relatively minor. What can I say in closing?

OS X is the future. Is it a positive, bright future? I thinkso. It's going to take some adjustment and a little bit of time,patience, and understanding. It's time people stopped trying to compareit to OS 9, because that's not what it's supposed to be. There's areason for the big blue X. It's not just a fancy way of saying 'Ten.'Mac OS X is the future OS of Apple's hardware platform. Is it thefamiliar Mac OS? No, and it's not intended to be. It is a thoroughlymodern system designed for thoroughly modern Macs and for the peoplewho use them.

Give Apple some time, though. It's not even a year old. We'll see areally, really great new Mac OS emerge from it and we'll all wonder howwe lived without it all these years.

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