Mac OS X 10.1 at the One Week Mark

We've used Mac OS X since the Public Beta and it became our primary OS when 10.0 came out in March. Version 10.1, which we've used in the office and on travel for a week, simply moved Mac OS X to a new plane. It installed over Mac OS X 10.0.4 like a dream with nary a problem. Startup time has been cut in half, applications launch nearly instantly, AirPort Base Stations can be managed and DVD playback and CD burning work well as does almost everything else. We wrote "almost".

So what doesn't? Here are our major gripes:

- Mail is greatly improved with flags, an Outbox and reply/forward icons and we love it. Unfortunately, it is still cursed with too many long-spinning color wheel cursors. Emails with HTML and images are the worst offenders but not the only ones.

- Networking over AirPort or with Windows machines still doesn't show all the shared clients in the "Go/Connect to Server" window. However, if we know the IP address of any client on the network whether a Mac on an AirPort connection or a hard-wired Wintel box we can connect to it. In fact, file transfers are very fast, even across an AirPort connection. Still, clients should show up in the window under AppleTalk or Local Network without having to know the IP address.

- Some applications in Classic mode are much slower than with the previous Mac OS X v10.0.4. Our main example is Adobe GoLive. We use it every day and it has slowed down appreciably. Macromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive, whichever comes out as an X native version first will get our business.

- The modem in our iBook (Dual USB) has no sound feedback while making a dial-up connection. This presents too much of a challenge while traveling, especially outside of the country.

There are a few more glitches like a small increase in battery consumption during sleep with PowerBooks. But, hopefully, each will be fixed in short order with the "minor" updates that Apple plans to release over the next few months.

Despite these shortcomings, we think Mac OS X is fabulous and we're not looking back.