[Tobie]

I've used apple macs for about 5 years. I've actually enjoyed the experience, but I haven't spent any time with other operating systems. This isn't the result of a peculiar loyalty, it's simply that a mac has always allowed me to do what I need, in an intuitive and engaging way.

Despite this, I have often thought of my mac (pre OS X) as an island. Of course you can plug in a printer, or join a network, but I think the desktop metaphor, and something about the friendliness of the file system, made it seem a bit, well, self obssessed. A bit vain. It's always been great at putting media together, editing video or laying out pages, but these are in a way solitary endevours.

I've also felt a little too protected. Reading about the open nature of unix systems after following a mac story to slashdot.org or oreillynet.com, or hearing about people running an apache server and compiling java, these sorts of technologies had seemed a little bit wild and mysterious. I didn't even think about how to apply these technologies to my experience of a computer, nor why I would want to.

Of course I'ld heard about the Terminal utility in OS X, the first few times I launched it was out of curiosity. It was not a profound experience, but I gradually started to use it, to customise preferences for apache or to run my first perl scripts. What struck me over time, was the rawness of this application, the unixness of it, the very explicit way that things were dealt with as files, that particular files could be run as applications (or processes), and the emphasis of these processes using other files as input, and creating new files as output. It doesn't sound very exciting, but it has made me think about the computer in an entirely different way.

Any way, to cut a long story short, OS X feels a lot more mature, it's more responsible and less self centred. I'm quite excited about it, and where it will go.

Hope this hasn't been to much of a ramble, has any one else got any thoughts after using OS X for a while?

[MacGorilla]

Two words: The GIMP!

[goatnet]

I think it's the right direction... In 5 months of using OS X, I've had one crash (thanx Limewire), but other then that, the only times I have rebooted had been my decision.

I really like the fact that OS X gets out of my way when I just want to work.

[Nonsuch]

The stability and memory management of OS X has really made the Mac a new experience for me. I don't have to worry about Outlook or IE taking my system down, which they would do regularly before. I don't have to worry about running out of memory in Photoshop, quitting, allocating more memory, relaunching, picking up where I left off, blah blah blah. I don't have to cope with sh�tty software to use my DSL connection. There's just a lot less you have to worry about with OS X--just what the Mac experience has always been about.

[JeffZPgh]

Sure, OS X has changed the way I use my Mac - I actually use a Mac now. 13 blissful months since I kissed a PC dual-booting windows and linux goodbye.

Jeff

[funkboy]

I no longer am afraid of doing things on my Mac.

Before I hesitated to do too many things at once, or to run too many apps at the same time; X has changed that a lot, since I'm completely confident that nothing can take this machine down. It's crashed twice in like 5 months of use.

Also, it allows me to do absolutely whatever I want, whenever I want. When I use OS 9 on my beige, I'm really starting to get annoyed while I wait for an application to launch - sure, it goes quicker than an app launch on OS X, but in X you can still go about your work while you launch, heck, five apps. OS X has let me be much, much more free in the ways I actually use the computer - I no longer have to wait for anything, I just do it as quickly as possible.

Can't wait for 10.2!

[Graymalkin]

Having just recently put OSX back on my Lombard I have a better perspective on OSX than I did when I first started using it..about a month after it was first released. I've been using Macs in some capacity for a very long time, I began to use them heavily for graphics and video work about six years ago. Moving from Classic to OSX wasn't too big of a step interface wise but the fact I had a terminal made my giddy. I've been using various forms of Unix almost as long as I've been using Macs (mostly FreeBSD and Solaris) and being able to run most if not all of the Unix apps I really find useful is just great. With MacOS I've always wanted a way to get underneath all of the usability to pick at the innards of the system. Even ResEdit was all touchy feely in the mac paradigm. Terminal is a great departure from touchy feely stuff I DON'T want to deal with when trying to root out a problem. Touchy feely isn't bad, I'm just used to rooting out a problem in the direct manner a text shell allows for. This is a definite change in the way I used my Mac being able to work in both TEX and Appleworks or Office is a huge improvement over other systems. Combining my favorite Unix tools with my favourite Mac tools rules.

However OSX has changed the way I work in a negative aspect as well. Many things are not as fast as they were in OS9 for no apparent reason. Even now typing this I have to wait several seconds for the text box to update itself with what i am typing. I'm often times done typing a paragraph and thinking about what next to say while the system is still working at filling the box with what I just typed. I just drank half a glass of applejuice waiting for that first part of the paragraph to type itself into the text box. That sort of crap is something I can definitely live without, my Lombard is not THAT slow where I can type faster than it thinks. Even with the fastest key refresh rate I can set it is slow as can be. Sometimes I even find myself typing slower just so I can better read what it is I am typing. The same goes for just using the GUI in general, web pages scroll much slower and menus have slow response times. Of all the things I want fast on a computer the GUI is most important. If it can make me THINK it is moving somewhere around the speed of light I am going to be a happy camper. BeOS was great at doing that, it could be running on a slow machine and still be peppy and responsive even when seriously bogged down with background work. BeOS even booted up quickly which just made you feel like you had a rocket engine strapped to your computer's processor.

OSX has definitely changed the way I work on my Powerbook even if it can act like a lame mutt sometimes. It is only slightly less responsive than Ximian GNOME running Nautilus as the desktop on this same machine . It does let me connect fairly effortlessly to Windows and Unix shares and as mentioned I can run Mac stuff alongside Unix stuff. Playing something in Quicktime or iTunes next to a window with a perl script loaded into emacs is something I quite enjoy.

[barbarian]

OS X has made me not worry about crashing which is huge. I no longer save files every 30 minutes for fear of a random crash. This is huge and the main reason I try to stay working in X. I also really dig column view in the finder despite it's obvious faults.

But in many ways OS X has been like going back to the early 90s. Despite great font support, I no longer have a decent font manager (a big problem for me). Despite it's vaunted multitasking, my computer often feels sluggish, and the finder is slow beyond belief (those damn view by kind sorts are murder). Despite all it's built in drivers, I still have problems burning CDs with my CD-R, my scanner remains silent, and my machine with a formac card will never have accelerated video. I know the hardware problems would be solved with a new machine, but I have almost $6,000 invested in my 800mhz G4 and I feel the least Apple should do is give me OS 9 parity.

My workflow has also suffered. I also have yet to find a solution that lets me get at files/apps as efficiently as I do in OS 9 with TaskMenuBar/Popup finder tabs. With task menu bar I have one click access to all my open apps. The dock does this, but tmb groups them so I don't have to hunt through a long string of icons, and TSM allows me to quickly switch and hide the other apps. In X this is more convoluted. Spring Loaded tabs allow access to about 120 important apps and files with 2 clicks and I have everything subcatorized and neatly labeled. The dock simply doesn't have this. In OS X I substitue dragthing and launch bar. I use dragthings process dock as an app switcher and launch bar as an application opener. Both are nice, but dragthing's process bar is always getting in the way of things (instead of being neatly in the menu bar and launchbar for all it's genius forces me to remember the names of things (sometimes I prefer to just pop open a tab and see what sound apps I have available). Finally despite Steve Jobs' claim that X will reduce window clutter, I often find the large finder windows with giant fonts and huge toolbar icons to be deeply space inefficient. With several windows open and the transparency in window titlebars, my X screen often looks like a total mess.

I do love the fact that OS X can read multiple internet streams without so much as a hiccup. I love being able to install devtools while I write something in Word... and I especially love not crashing, but this doesn't help me be more efficient.

[Cipher13]

Has OSX changed the way you use your mac?

Yep. I use it slower now.

[V0ID]

I'd have to agree with funkboy. With OS9, I was always conscience of what software I was running, and what I was about to run. I'd always have to think about ram requirements and CPU usage. For example, with OS X when I'm looking for MP3s I'll often run Limewire AND xnap (both Java apps) at the same time without a worry. I'd never ever contemplate that under OS9! Java just sucked up too many resources under 9 (and I would be living in fear of a crash).

And after all these months since 10.1 was released, it still manages to surprise me every now and then. Just yesterday I was running the CLI version of SETI@home (nice set to 20) and watching mpegs without a hitch on my 400mhz G3.

Another thing, if I have my web browser rendering a large page, or maybe 2 pages at once (or maybe it's crashed), I can switch to another app like Mail and do other things while I wait. This was never possible under OS 9. If a program was really struggling, trying to bring up another app was impossible. The whole system would be unresponsive.

[malvolio]

Originally posted by barbarian:
<STRONG>My workflow has also suffered. I also have yet to find a solution that lets me get at files/apps as efficiently as I do in OS 9 with TaskMenuBar/Popup finder tabs. </STRONG>

Get LaunchBar. It is incredible! The fastest way to launch apps/open files I have ever found. It's so good, it's scary!

[chris v]

It's certainly changed the way I use control+command+power key. I've had a few Kernel Panics, but they're few and far between, not twice a day, like the old system bomb.

It's also extremely nice to be able to launch an app, then go back to doing whatever I was doing, without missing a heartbeat. I'm getting used to the idea of burning CDs and copying files in the background. I've learned a bit of UNIX, too, which is not really a bad thing, in the bigger scheme of things.

Networking my machines has been a breeze, and with them being more stable, I'm not having to re-mount remote drives twice a day, so I keep my machines networked more. It sure is handy being able to drag and drop between home and work, and count on it staying up for days at a time without having the "file server unexpectedly shut down" message again and again, like in OS 9 whenever a machine had to be restarted.

CV

[ratfink]

Originally posted by Cipher13:
<STRONG>

Yep. I use it slower now.</STRONG>

heh...

The main difference with me is rebooting into 9 everytime I want to work on music. (I do love some things about X though--omniweb.)

Geof

[midwinter]

The idea of keeping all my work in a "home" directory has simplified my life a great deal.

[Bruce O'Neal]

yes. i think as i become more comfortable with os x and learn all the little shortcuts, i am a devotee. i am still a little worried about all the unix stuff and have had some problems with permissions, but it seems like the shareware application i downloaded has helped me over those hurdles too.

overall, i like being able to multitask and not have to wait on the system to respond. netscape 6.2 still gives me problems (i cannot get it to shut down without a FORCE QUIT and is the only application i have seen that can bring the system down).

overall, i like os x and feel that as it matures it will be one heck of a killer OS. it is now, but the future of it looks bright.

[bbt]

the only reason why i use a mac is because of x

most times i'm on win2k or xp pro

i'm surprise that mac did not have memory protection before x

nt is really old several years ago (and still unfriendly) but even it has mem protection

all the home flavors of windows are not compatible with heavy users

one nice thing about x is that you can relanch the finder, in windows the explorer.exe (not internet explorer) can be stopped but there is no way to relanch it other than restarting the system

[mbryda]

Originally posted by bbt:
<STRONG>i'm surprise that mac did not have memory protection before x</STRONG>

Me too. That and not really supporting Multitasking really blew my mind.

<STRONG>one nice thing about x is that you can relanch the finder, in windows the explorer.exe (not internet explorer) can be stopped but there is no way to relanch it other than restarting the system</STRONG>

Yes you can. In XP/2k do a CTRL-ALT-DEL, Hit T for Task Manager. From there, click File, Run. Type in Explorer. POOF, Explorer will pop back in place. I do it all the time when Explorer crashes.

-Matt

[ 05-03-2002: Message edited by: mbryda ]

[Mongrel]

What's changed for me? Well, what used to take 20 minutes now takes 25, what used to take an hour now takes 1.25... and so on.

On the upside, skimming through photos is pretty nice. Also, watching movies and listening to MP3s without opning an App is pretty killer too!

[malvolio]

Originally posted by Mongrel:
<STRONG>What's changed for me? Well, what used to take 20 minutes now takes 25, what used to take an hour now takes 1.25... and so on.
</STRONG>

So, how long have you been using OS X?
In my experience since installing 10.0 more than a year ago, what used to take me an hour in OS 9 (not counting forced restarts) now takes me half an hour.

[KaptainKaya]

I have all my apps launched and I rarely restart. Sleep is good, I love the instant-ness you get from sleeping to working. Things might be slow a bit here and there, but I've actually been able to do multiple projects without fear of crashing hard.

[Mac Guru]

Exactly, what used to take me hours in 9 now takes minutes.

I love OS X, it is a godsend for me. It's far more logically organized (THANK YOU UNIX!) and things just feel right.

I'd never use anything else...

Last time 9 was launched (35 days)

Mac Guru

[Toyin]

OSX has definitely changed how I use my Mac. In OS9 and below I was very careful about multitasking. Generally, I would sit and wait for processor intensive tasks to finish before moving on. I would hesitate to switch apps (let alone surf the web) for fear of crashing. In OSX I continue on my merry way despite what's going on the background. I'm always amazed when I look at the CPU monitor and see both CPUs maxed out on a background task, while I continue to work on something else. This is with very little noticeable change (1.5gb of RAM also helps). I rarely quit applications in OSX (unlike OS9), the only time I do is if I think the dock is getting unruly and I'm really not using an app.

OSX has also changed how I manage files. I have a lot more nested folders and organized files due to the ease of columnview and the efficiency of the toolbar.

[kennethmac2000]

Originally posted by Mongrel:
<STRONG>What's changed for me? Well, what used to take 20 minutes now takes 25, what used to take an hour now takes 1.25... and so on.</STRONG>

Can you give a concrete example of something that took an hour which now takes an hour and a quarter?

[x user]

OS X change my whole mac experience. When I use OS 9 on other peoples machines I now cring....

[asxless]

Has OSX changed the way you use your mac?

I've been using OS X full time since last Thanksgiving and Macs since 1984. I generally enjoy using OS X and have grown to really appreciate the improved stability, etc. of the BSD underpinnings but...

The lack of PowerBook (iBook) specific Energy Saver features have caused me to use my Tibook almost exclusively as a desktop instead of a portable since switching to OS X. This is a major change in my use of the TiBook. I was so comfortable with the high quality OS 9.x ES features that I rarely used my TiBook while sitting at a desk with the power plugged in. I regularly spent a whole day at work running off of batteries (2), networked via AirPort, sitting anywhere I felt like (or needed to be) or used my TiBook to work & watch DVDs on a long haul international flights (10-15 hrs). This style of usage just isn't as feasible/convenient with OS X, because battery life is so poor and you can't hot swap batteries without being plugged in or shut down.

asxless in iLand

[ 05-06-2002: Message edited by: asxless ]

[undotwa]

To me, OS X is simply beautiful. However two things are stopping me from using it as my preferred OS: optimization, and the Finder. The reasoning for the first is just so obvious, just make OS X faster! I do dig the new column view but Apple needs to improve it so it's easier to organize files ( using it to open files and execute programs is really efficient and 'pleasant').

The dock, Aqua, Protected Memory, that awesome Java support... are the best thing since slice bread.

edit: grammar (is=are)

[ 05-05-2002: Message edited by: undotwa ]

[Jerommeke]

yesterday i had to help my mum figuring something out... she has a performa 450 (doesn't wan't anything newer), and when wanting to swwitch apps my mouse was at first being directed to the downside of the screen, before noticing there was no dock to do the job

[Samanoske]

one Word: Multitasking

finally I can run more than 1 process with good performance on my DPG4

[Mac Zealot]

Definately multitasking.. for once I actually avidly use my dual screens, and processors

Secondly, stability: Despite bugs in internet connect, my incompetent ISP, and the USB audio bug, I never experience crashing in OS X besides when I do something that contradicts a bug. In OS 9, I'd have bus errors (very friggin annoying), and when a program froze, the whole OS went down the toilet with it (force quit actually is force crash).

I recall a time on a g4 in OS 9 where I simply went into a menu, and a half-finished dialog box popped up.. (flush)

One thing I love on OS X is I can burn something, play a game, etc, and return, the burn is finished. In OS 9, doing the same gives you horrible performance in the game, and the burn stops.

In OS X, I can have the visualizer in itunes running in a window, and be doing other things with no lag, I can have 6 major programs open and experience no lag, I can host my sites and muds happily, and not worry about lag when I engage in a very demanding rtcw or q3 battle.

With great shareware, I also experience iAlarm, iSleep, etc, my computer now not only acts as a web router, but a web host, a mud host, a gaming machine, a DVD player, a great entertainment system, and an alarm clock. Did I mention how great the news works with OS X and hypnet?

It's amazing how I can take a well reputated program that's quite popular for the unix platform, and just compile, and get going! Using pico, any mud base, sysinfo scripts, etc, and live on. The compatibility is spectacular, and in most cases, I actually see windows becoming more and more propretary than ever, even Bill Gates admits that windows is so tightly coded that it cannot be modular!

The one thing that amazes me, is even on my dp800, I can sit watching a DVD, drag it around my screen, make it play very high resolution, etc, all seeing the great power of the machine handling everything so smoothly, windows is said to do this, but until they make it developer friendly, I doubt it.

I have 3 ways to edit C code (projectbuilder, textedit, and pico), I have more than that to compile (third party compilers, projectbuilder, and gcc), and can do it in only seconds! Honestly, the mac platform, OS X especially, makes me feel like the one in power, and can take my mind to far extremes as I contemplate my next bits of writting, getting experienced with photoshop, etc, as my mind becomes more experienced with a huge variety of applications, and uses them just as effectively.

In a way, I love OS X, everything about it is great, even how the buttons pulse and the windows minimize, it all feels so smooth!!!!

Compared to OS 9, it feels brighter, more awake, more vibrant, and MUCH snappier. Despite the few bugs the OS currently has, I see these overcoming in the near future, only to make the experience for all of us, I especially, much more enchanting, exhilerating, and exciting!

[Sam Venning]

Yeah. Now I can't use "File --&gt; Print" to print a Finder window. This is such a useful feature in publishing circles. Now if I want to print a Finder window I have to go through many steps (screen snapshots etc).

Of course... the MacOS X has never locked up or crashed.

[Cellery]

Yeah, the stability and quick wakes on my PowerBook are what's keeping me in X, the upgrade from 9 took more of the things away that I used (labels, popup folders, control strip, USB Printer Sharing, snappiness) than I got with X.