Forum Moderators: travelin cat
Of course I like Mac OS X a lot, but a full transition to it network wide still meets some chalenges :
Software availability is one of them. A lot of Mac using friends are also in the print industry. They all use Quark Express...
Software licencing costs is another major one. As an example, buying 10 licences upgrades for all the software required to a GFX arts studio will cost a lot of money. Of course, most PhotoShop specialits already did the transition because of time savings.
I have 4 older iMacs all lined up in a network dedicated to crunch logfiles 24/7 and publish reports on their own. I am not about to upgrade them. When something ain't broken, I dont touch it.
You're absoluteley right, unfortunately.
>A lot of Mac using friends are also in the print industry.
lol, yep, me ie. :)
However, since there's also (still) the classic mode, it's easy to switch between the systems. Allthough, honestly, i don't have macosx installed on those machines that are used for the publishing or scanning stuff. But most of my web server and surfer machines and my macs at home are running macosx now.
>I have 4 older iMacs all lined up in a network dedicated to crunch logfiles 24/7 and publish reports
erm, sounds like you're sitting somewhere at my office ... ;)
Luckily I run a small Multimedia department, three people plus myself, so the switch was not terribly expensive. We have just now gotten to a point where we no longer have any reason to run classic. The scan software we use was the last to go.
Steve Job's dream of an iHub has also produced some nice - plus free - apps. Our little studio is responsible of a lot of product photography; iPhoto has presented us with a very cost effective and quick solution for importing. Safari has come a long way in its short existence - much faster than IE or Netscape. Mail seems to be an exceptional bit of software, but I still like MS Entourage better.
The network capabilities are much more user friendly and stable. And, sharing on a network is more secure with the UNIX since of privileges. Although privileges can be a pain at times they are a nice bonus. Try uploading a site several people have worked on from DW MX were someone forgot to set the privileges properly; DW freaks. That is they only thing that tends to give me a headache. However, Super Get Info as now taken care of that.
So I guess I am trying to say that I hated OS X at first, but now I can't imagine working in another OS.
When Quark XPress finally goes to system X (it's really the most significant piece of software that hasn't been "carbonized") it will be the end of the trail for OS9.
True, you can still use old Macs on older systems . . . System 6 is good for nostalgia. It wasn't a bad OS, far from it.
But OSX kicks System 9's ass. It also kicks WinXP's ass as far as I'm concerned. What other OS does everything you want and looks good while doing it? I was skeptical about Aqua in the beginning ("pretty. uh huh") but after hours and hours and months of use, I find it to be an unobtrusive skin that sits there in the background where it belongs (but looks good while doing that, too).
Having that Unix core has proven both to be a great, useful addition, making me more productive, and also a fun toy.
IMO, switching an existing Classic machine to OSX can be a bit hairy and a nuisance, whereas buying a machine with OSX pre-installed makes it a lot easier.
BTW, I'm using Safari now. Safari has indeed come a long way. I was using that aqua-skinned Mozilla ("navigator" aka "chimera") but I've switched over to Safari for almost everything. Still have to use MacIE for online forms since some of them are buggy in every other browser. I do sometimes use Opera because it has superior features (toggling images and stylesheets).
I hate Mail, though . . . BLECCH.
One of the great things of the books that OS 9 users will find helpful is a "where did it go?" section. This section lists all the functions from OS 9 and then tells you where they have been moved, renamed, or discontinued. It also features some beginners UNIX comands for working in the terminal and gets really indepth on a couple of the subject concerning the Darwin UNIX core. But, this is not a must read section for those with no interest in playing under the hood.
The copy of the book I have was for version 10.1; I am on 10.2.6 now and can still refer to the book for a lot of things. I have it up on the studio technical book shelf and I see it getting pulled and refered to all the time.
[safari.oreilly.com...]
Good book: although I'm already sold on the issue of OSX (Fantastic!), I found it great as a well-explained, easily-read tour of the new OS. Will clear up any nagging doubts about ugradesa anyone might still have..... now that Quark is on board as of this last week, retaining OS9 becomes completely hypothetical anyway.
The topic header for this thread is SO, SO spot on: occasionally I browse the web on an IE for PC setup at work..... after being spoilt on Safari and Quartz rendering, I just feel so sorry for all the Windows users out there, still labouring away on their clunky, poorly rendering and buggy setups.
Yea, it's the font rendering. No jaggies - like a PDF. It spoils you :)
I don't even have Classic installed on my machine anymore. I can't think of anything that's not available for OS X that I need (I don't use Quark).
When I first intalled X it felt foreign - I kept wanting to boot back into 9... took about two days to make it feel like my own computer again. About a week later there was no turning back. Now I can't even look at 9... 9 seems so "ugh", for lack of a better word.