Comments--A Week With Mac OS X PB

We've used Mac OS X PB for a solid week now and we really like it.

Mac OS X PB has worked great for primary computing duties on a G4 Cube that is connected to a large Windows NT network running Services for the Macintosh. Email, web surfing and word processing using AppleWorks 6 (Carbonized) and Corel WordPerfect 3.5e (Classic mode) have worked perfectly, no crashes or other issues, as has printing to laser postscript printers. This is also true, except for printing, for a Power Mac G4/400 Sawtooth on a small ethernet network with an Epson 740 printer.

Unfortunately, we've had lots of trouble with the Classic Environment and other applications, especially Microsoft Office 98's component applications and our favorite 3D games. We really haven't spent much time trying to get them to work and we shouldn't have to. We occasionally experience extreme slowness when the Classic Environment is open. This almost always has been caused by some Mac OS 9 dialog box requiring attention being hidden by a Mac OS X PB window. The Classic Environment seems to need a lot more work to keep Mac OS X from being not much more than the BeOS, an excellent curiosity, especially if Mac OS X arrives in final with few carbonized or native applications. If I ran Apple, I'd keep the final Mac OS X under development until the main Mac applications are ready (carbonized or native) so it can cleanly replace Mac OS 9.

My pet peeves? First and foremost is the need to enter a password to change any of the control panel...er...System Preferences settings despite being logged in as a System Administrator--this has GOT to go. Second, Mac OS X PB does freeze when problems crop up with an initiated action, mostly with the Classic Environment, and the color wheel cursor spins endlessly. I haven't found a way to cancel the command without rebooting just like with Mac OS pre-X. Third, but way behind the others and, perhaps, almost trivial is the unnecessary renaming of functions like control panels (System Preferences) and Get Info (Inspector). This just steepens the Mac OS X learning curve for no real purpose. Despite having worked with the various Mac OS X developer releases and a week with PB, it is still difficult to find things in Mac OS X.

Still, the Aqua interface is gorgeous and carbonized applications work super. But I think we must wait until Mac OS X's Classic Environment is perfected or more critically important (i.e. commonly used) Mac applications are at least carbonized, preferably the latter, however long that takes.