I must make a horrible confession to the audience. I know this will
shock some, make some angry, and have Apple hunting me down via my ISP,
but I cannot make the switch. I am struggling through the migration to
Mac OS X and find myself very weak. I need help from the Apple
faithful to force the final commitment. I need a support group of some
type to help me stay on the straight and narrow.
"Hi, I am Kevin, and I have used OS X for four weeks without
booting into 9.x"
"Hi, Kevin, great job."
I was one of the early adopters, with my copy of OS X arriving
the first Monday after release. I had a wonderful experience with the
installation of the OS, and even wrote a
My Turn article covering the ease of the process. My desktop G4 ran
the OS respectably, and even my two G3 laptops (Pismo and iceBook), ran pretty well with
the OS. The OS is beautiful and looks great on the screen. After 10.1
arrived, the speed improved dramatically. Couple this with the
stability of the OS, and you have a real winner. Unfortunately, I
cannot migrate entirely to the new OS.
I know many of you are waiting for applications to arrive. Microsoft
and Adobe are keeping many from a total migration, as they make two of
the most important Mac applications. I know that many are waiting for
updates drivers for peripherals and are forced to stay in 9.x. I am not
one of them. I simply like the old system and cannot bring myself to
abandon the good old OS I have come to love.
Let me frame this by saying that I am not averse to change, and I
love learning different operating systems. I currently run 8 different
OSes and have found enjoyment in each of them. I run OS X
exclusively on my G4 tower at home, which has been
nothing but smooth. But on my main computer (the iceBook), I find
myself spending most of my time in OS 9. If I try to rationalize
my lack of commitment, I say that the OS X power management
implementation is mediocre, or that I need Office and hate to use
Classic. I may say that OS X is thrashing my hard drives or that I
need Palm Desktop.
I may say all of those things, but in my heart I realize that
those are not the real reason. I need that big goofy Texas based
therapist that is on Oprah every day to say to me, "You need to get
real and tell me what you want"
I want my good ole OS back. I want my Chooser and my spring folders.
I want my function keys and my happy face. I want Kaleidoscope and
Eudora. I want all of the things that made me happy when I played with
my Mac. I know that OS X is going to be wonderful for all Mac
fans. We have increased developer support, stability, and applications.
But I also know that my Macs will never be the same again.
Scattershots
You will love this story I posted on Macdebate.
Although many will be very jealous.
0830am today: I went to drop off some junk at Goodwill and was
standing outside waiting to have my stuff processed. I look behind me,
and a gentleman is unloading a few computer monitors. I offered to help
him lift them onto the loading bay. As we are talking, he hands me
another box with a bunch of old laptops... a few vintage machines from
the mid 90s. He hands me a second box, and I look down and see a
wetsuit looking PowerBook. I grab it from the pile and ask him about
the machine. He is dropping donations off a batch of stuff left from a
community garage sale. This machine was dead and no one bought it, and
he is carrying all the extras to dump (this was a community sale type
thing). I ask him if he would take $20 for the machine, and he agrees,
as it was for sale for $10!
I handed him a twenty and drove off looking at the machine. The
plate says this is WallStreet 266 with a 14.1
inch screen and 64 MB RAM.
0900: I drop the machine off at a buddy's (unemployed MCSE with Mac
love) to let him check out the machine.
1200: At lunch, I return to his place and see him running the
PowerBook through its paces!
Machine had a dead main battery and a bad hard drive. He had taken
his AC adapter from his PowerBook and a hard drive he had laying about
after his own PowerBook upgrade. He grabbed a copy of [Mac OS] 8.x and
started going like crazy.
For the grand total of $75, I have a excellent condition WallStreet
sitting on my desk. Now I will need to buy more RAM and maybe a bigger
hard drive, but man that was lucky.
These machines are very heavy and seem great on my desk.
I know this machine has reached the end of its life, but it still
seems very quick and useable. I know why our favorite Road Warrior
still sings the praises of this model. I think I will have a bit of fun
with this machine. And after all, this is a site for low-end Macs.
