If you
read last week's column (Tiger 10.4.4 Update
Cripples Pismo's Internal Modem), you will recall that I've
been in the throes of a tussle with OS X 10.4 "Tiger" on my
heretofore faithful G4-upgraded Pismo PowerBook.
To recap briefly, for some undetermined reason Tiger support for
the Pismo's internal 56k modem had started playing up and worsened
to the point of unusability after I upgraded to OS X 10.4.4,
although the modem continued to work reliably when the computer was
booted directly into OS 9.2.2 from another hard drive partition or
from OS X 10.3.9 on my external FireWire hard drive.
My workaround was using the Tiger installer's Archive &
Install feature to "downgrade" my operating system to OS X
10.4.0, which resulted in restoration of modem support after
several attempts. As I left off last week's column, it had been my
intention to run with OS X 10.4.0 for at least a couple of
weeks to see if the modem fix stuck.
Unfortunately, while the modem fix did hold, another problem
reared its ugly head: Both Spotlight and the Find utility stopped
working. When I typed a word or phrase into the search fields, no
response. And there was no audible indication that Spotlight was
updating the index on my hard drive.
Curiouser and curiouser. I hadn't changed anything or installed
anything new other than reverting to a fresh OS X 10.4.0
install, and as far as I can fathom, these glitches manifested
spontaneously.
Now some folks might be able to get along without a hard drive
search utility, but I can't. I'm not crazy about how Spotlight
works, but it has proved addictive, and a Find utility is simply
indispensable for me. I use them both many times in a typical
day.
I booted back into OS X 10.3.9 on the FireWire drive to double
check that Panther's (superior) Find utility still worked. It
did.
So what the hey? I decided to run the OS X 10.4.1 updater, after
which the modem happily still worked - but no joy with Spotlight or
Find.
Okay, maybe it was something in my settings or preferences
imported when I reinstalled the system. I figured I might as well
bite the bullet and do a completely clean install of Tiger, and
live with the time-consuming hassle of having to restore all my
settings by dragging them over from my iBook and reinstalling some
software.
I don't use a lot of system add-ons, and ones I do - including
WindowShade X and
TypeIt4Me - are easy and
quick to install, so that wasn't too bad a prospect.
In the end, it turned out that the preferences I dragged over
from my iBook Home Library folder mostly worked fine with my
applications, so I didn't have to do much registration key
reentry.
Unfortunately, it was all for naught. With the fresh install,
Spotlight and Find still obstinately refused to work. I tried
running the OS X 10.4.2 combo update in hope that it would
repair whatever the problem was, but it didn't.
The modem, I should note, did continue to work in OS 10.4.2, but
I had reached an impasse with the search engines, unable to think
of anything else to try. Except....
In booting from OS X 10.3.9 "Panther" as a troubleshooting
control, I noted once again how much more responsive it is on this
Pismo than Tiger has proved to be. Indeed, while I've found Tiger
very reliable and reasonably lively on my 700 MHz G3 iBook, I've been
disappointed with its performance on the Pismo from the get-go,
even before the modem and search engine issues manifested.
My suspicion has been that the Pismo's puny and non-upgradable
RAGE Mobility 128 Graphics processor and 8 MB of video RAM
simply are not up to the challenge of supporting Tiger's graphics
demands satisfactorily, while the iBook's Radeon 7500 GPU and 16 MB
of VRAM is satisfactory.
So why not cut the aggravation (I had by that point run a dozen
or so system reinstalls and updates) and just downgrade to 10.3.9?
I would miss Spotlight, which (although its execution leaves much
to be desired) has proved addictive.
On the other hand, I dislike the Tiger Find utility intensely
and much prefer the one in Panther anyway, which would mitigate
things considerably. Besides, third party disk search utilities
like Devon Technologies'
EasyFind (freeware) and SpeedSearch
(US$10 shareware) can serve as alternatives to Spotlight.
I decided to go for it and hopefully end the hassle and
aggravation I was experiencing with Tiger.
I dug out my OS X 10.3 install CDs, stuffed Disc 1 in the drive,
and ran an Archive & Install. The machine booted up. After
checking to see that both the modem and the better Find utility
worked (they did), I went on to run the OS X 10.3.8 combo
update and then the 10.3.9 incremental update.
Running OS X 10.3.9, the Pismo is faster than it was with Tiger.
As a rough estimate, I would say that Finder response is perhaps
20% quicker - definitely noticeable. There is also a general, not
specifically tangible, but very real feel of solidity about Panther
that was missing in Tiger on this computer. Consequently, I'm
inclined to the view that OS X 10.3.9 is probably the optimum
performance OS for the Pismo, even if you have a 550 MHz G4 upgrade
and a 5400 RPM hard drive like I do.
Just as I settled on Mac OS 9.2.2 as being the best OS choice
for my 233 MHz WallStreet,
and OS 8.6 as being the best compromise between features and
performance on my old PowerBook
1400 (even though both machines officially support later
versions of the Mac OS), I'm doubtful that I will upgrade the Pismo
beyond OS X 10.3.9 again.
That, of course, means that it is now definitely on the road to
obsolescence, since there will be an increasing number of
applications requiring OS X 10.4 or later as their minimum
system support. And, of course, one is shut out of the widgets
world.
I find certain widgets useful, but none indispensable for my
purposes, so that is not a major issue for me. I will miss
Spotlight, but I hope that EasyFind proves to be a decent Spotlight
substitute. So far, I like it better than Spotlight. It's more
usefully configurable, both for search parameters and sorting
results. It's not as fast, because it's not indexed, but I prefer
that because the index update (which I always kept disabled in
Sherlock) isn't running in the background eating up processor
cycles and wearing out the hard drive, and the better focused
searches and better organized results probably burn less time
overall.
In the meantime, it's just nice to have the old Pismo working so
well again. It really is a pleasure to use in OS X 10.3.9,
while during the nine months running Tiger I always seemed to be
waiting for it to catch up.
As CS Lewis once observed, "If you are on the wrong road,
progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right
road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most
progressive man. . . . Going back is the quickest way
on."
In this case, it's definitely quicker.
