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NZ Macguide Issue 6  Yet another upgrade. That's what I thought until Matt Greenop came back from New York. That's when my grumpiness turned into eagerness, listening to his descriptions of what the new system offered.
First, it's a massive upgrade - three CDs - two system discs and another packed with developer resources. On my 450Mhz G4 that was a long install compared to most 'upgrades' - and there's no OS 9 disc; it's officially terminated (if you install over an existing system, it's still there and it still works, and better than ever). Once it's in and you've restarted, you do notice a general speed increase, the most sensational of which is booting Classic, which now takes well under a minute on my machine, making that experience one whole heck of a lot more pleasant. Not much else seems different, but before long you do get the warm, fuzzy feeling that Apple, even for $302.63 inc GST, really does care about us and listens to our needs and little criticisms. So, you're back running. The first thing you'll notice is the bland, grey corporate Apple startup screen - no smiley Mac face - part of Apple's hearts and minds strategy for the corporates? Well, it looks yuck, so it had better work. Otherwise your X interface looks pretty much the same, albeit with a little flattening and squaring-off. One-hundred-and-fifty new features, huh? Who's counting? Well, some won't affect me and you, because our machines just aren't powerful enough - for example, Quartz Extreme which takes better advantage of the latest crop of graphics cards. Others, like iChat and the thoroughly beefed up Sherlock 3, would be a lot more useful in the US than here (note: Kiwi users of .Mac can use iChat over that system) and there are still some minor irritations - no label facility for files and folders in the finder, make a new folder and you have to click it again to name it, etcetera.  | Calculation currency
But other new attributes are just swell - for instance, Calculator. Yay! Finally, bigger and more useful - and I mean much more useful, as it now has conversion. That's pressure, currency (updatable if you're connected to the net - NZ price for the OS 10.2 update was US$141 on the day I wrote this), power, area, speed, length, temperature, energy of work, weights and masses, and volume - and these conversions are tracked so you can go back through them (N.B. you can do most of these conversions on the internet if you're not ready to run 10.2). This is very handy indeed - plus, as part of Apple's greater commitment to those with disabilities, Calculator can now speak buttons pressed, then tell you the answers (Universal Access has also been thoroughly beefed up). Inkwell is a new technology that recognizes your handwriting - write on a graphics tablet, and Jaguar turns it into typed text at the cursor in any application - this works with all your existing applications with no upgrades necessary (but I didn't get to test it as I don't have a tablet).
Sleepers
Some new features are sleeper hits - an option to choose the write speed when burning CDs, for example, plus apple+option+h added to many menus to Hide Others, and the little '+' symbol in a green blob that appears when you move a file over another folder. Other features are welcome returns from pre-X systems: spring-loaded folders, thank goodness, and the clock/date at the top tight of the screen now reads in the right order for us difficult antipodeans all the time (day/month/year).  |  | Get Info - it used to be a pamphlet - now it's a glossy brochure | As usual, Apple's bundled aps are good and many have been revised - Mail is more stable and has a learning, configurable junk mail filter - goodbye to all those Nigerian chain letters - Address Book is much handier and more functional and iCal, the Personal Information Manager, is excellent (freely downloadable from Apple since early September; www.apple.com/ical) and these aps now interface with each other. Seriously, I do virtually all my day-to-day work now with purely Apple aps, including AppleWorks, so for me it's worth the asking price for that alone. And for the first time, the Finder really finds - command+f now launches a very quick, dedicated hard drive search function that doesn't bother with the internet, making it very quick and useful. Stay connected
Bluetooth is now part of the system and finds connected devices, and there's Rendezvous, which lets devices and Macs 'see' each other to make network configuration and (Rendezvous-aware) device sharing much easier, even interfacing with Windows networks. This works well but is much less configurable - without third part software - than 9's otherwise clunkier setup procedure. New Rendezvous adopters include Philips, Canon, Xerox, Sybase and World Book, who have just joined the earliest Rendezvous adopters Hewlett-Packard, Epson and Lexmark.
Driver drunk
Apple has been releasing drivers by the dozen and many devices, from cameras to trackballs to tablets to printers, are supported - but many are still not (come on, Microtek!). Another thing is, I can no longer choose shutdown or restart from the Apple menu and walk away (unless I remember to hold the option key down) as I was used to doing, as a dialogue needing you to confirm or cancel comes up. This qualifies as a mild annoyance. But I must say, it's a great system - if you like fighting yours, don't get OS 10.2 - it's generally fast, beautiful, superbly functional and supports most of the applications that were OS X-ready without any fuss and making some (Photoshop, InDesign, Classic) feel appreciably faster. © Parkside Media 2002
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