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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
.
Most of the attention at last month's Macworld Expo focused on
Apple's redesigned iMac computer. A one-line remark of Apple CEO
Steve Jobs was, perhaps, more significant to the company and its
users' future.
Jobs mentioned that effective immediately, all Macs would be
shipping with the company's next-generation operating system,
OS X, as the default.
Turn on a new Mac, and you'll be greeting with OS X's throbbing,
glowing interface. While Macs have been shipping with both OS X
and the older OS 9 installed, they have been booting up to the
old look and feel. It was up to users to choose to turn on OS X.
Now users will have to consciously opt for the old way of
working.
Apple was proclaiming that OS X, officially released last March,
is finally ready for people to use on a daily basis.
Initially this wasn't the case. The first official release sported
Apple's new futuristic Aqua user interface, and the power and
stability of OS X's Unix core.
But too often it was painfully slow, especially when starting up
programs. And given Apple's ambition for its computers to be a
"digital hub" connecting cameras, music players, CD burners, and
more, I was surprised that there wasn't much support for these or
other hardware devices. Moreover, when the operating system was new,
hardly any software was designed to make full use of its power. Most
older Mac programs would run in OS X's Classic Mode, but why
would users bother?
OS X looked great, and it was clearly Apple's vision of the
future. But when it first came out, there really wasn't much point in
actually using it.
A lot has changed since last spring. Much of the improvement is
due to the September release of the free OS X 10.1 update.
Programs start up much faster. When you start a program in
OS X, its icon bounces expectantly in the Dock along the bottom
of the screen. In the original version, Internet Explorer took a
painful 13 bounces to start up on my aging iMac. With the new version
it opens in 5 bounces. The Sherlock search tool used to take five
bounces, now it's up in a speedy one bounce.
The update added much-needed support for hardware. Many
CD-burners, digital cameras, and printers now work as soon as they're
plugged in. It's still not perfect; there's not enough support for
scanners or many older devices, for example.
And there's starting to be OS X-native software. Apple claims more
than 2,500 applications. Many of these are things that most users
have never heard of and will never use, but the major players are
starting to release OS X versions of their products, often with
new features. Corel, for example, has been bringing out OS X
versions of much of its graphics product line, getting a jump on
competitor Adobe. Microsoft's newly released Office v. X brings
a perky version of that industry standard to Apple's platform (see
last week's column). And OS X's Unix core makes it easier to
make industrial-strength Unix and Linux applications run on Macs.
Not all the key pieces of software are available for OS X
yet. Adobe demonstrated a new version of Photoshop at last month's
Macworld Expo but stayed mum about the release date, although the
company has released several other products for OS X. Without
Photoshop and Quark XPress, many Mac graphics users aren't going to
move over to the new environment.
Apple's been working to replace the traditional Mac operating
system for the better part of a decade. Now, in deciding that all new
Macs will boot up to OS X, Apple decided that its technology
(and users) are finally ready to make the change.
is a Vancouver (BC, Canada)
computer-using elementary school teacher and technology journalist.
This article was first published in Alan Zisman's "High Tech Office"
column in Business
in Vancouver. These and his other writing
are available on his website, www.zisman.ca.
Share your perspective on the Mac by emailing with "My Turn" as your subject.
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