[quadgrande]

I think it's funny as hell that razor is posting pre-release pics of Apple's new OS (which must chaffe Steve Job's ass) on his mac homepage.

What is he gonna do, threaten to shut down you iTools account? Ha ha ha ha ........

I'm still gonna wait for mine on Saturday (FedEx I hope). Interesting reactions everyone. Thanks!

[penfold]

Staples is an office suppliers in the US

Originally posted by GRAFF:
What is this "Staples" store, and how is it that they are selling OS X before Saturday? Aren't they running a legal risk with Apple?

WMG

[Ron Goodman]

Got a copy from Staples, installed it on a wiped partition, no problems. It's much nicer than the beta, and the beta has been my main OS since October. A couple of programs, such as jedit and Manopen, didn't work when I moved them over--there weren't any icon to open the program with, just folders and resources.

[statonjr]

Originally posted by gregomni:
Yep! Silly us, we targeted the 24th for our release, expecting that to be the first day people would be getting OS X....

<sarcasm>
You mean you weren't in cahoots with those geniuses at Staples to get OmniGroup apps out early?
</sarcasm>

Keep up the great work! You guys rock!

[mjpaci]

OK, someone has to say it...

Someone set up us the Bomb.app

Good. Now that that is out of the way, I have a couple of things to report.

1) A leak in my home-office put my Mac and my Linux box in a pool of water.
2) My B&W G3/300 has 512MB RAM
3) I haven't installed it yet on the G4/533 at work yet. I had to take an Ark to work this morning. You think getting cat hair off wool pants is hard? Try rabbit fur (there were on 2 when then entered the Ark). Anyone else in the Boston area?
4) I haven't played with it enough yet to give a fair review. I haven't used any other version besides the beta and didn't even use that for long. It's different and will take a little while to get used to.

--Mike

[crayz]

Resizing in list view.

I can't tell how fast this is, but it looks a little slow(notice how the mouse is getting ahead of the window, and then the window catches up?) Then again, you are resizing a window that contains a QTVR movie preview. The other stuff in the video seems pretty zippy.

[This message has been edited by crayz (edited 03-22-2001).]

That movie showed the window being resized in what I thought was called "column" view. I thought list view was the iteration before that, with the window looking like the iTunes playlist. Just want to get our nomenclature straight: which is considered "list view" that we're talking about slow resizing?

Also, that movie is such a choppy framerate that it's hard to tell if it's smooth or not. (Funny how some of the Apple QT's are smooth, some are choppy. Seems to depend on the size of the movie area.)

[mjpaci]

That is, in fact, column view.

--Mike

Final release on beige 266 G3. 256 megs RAM.

Hell.

2 days to install. Found the problem: don't install BSD subsystems. Everything is slow, not just window resizing. Can't make classic to run. Can't make network run DHCP. I tired to load a buch of softwares to try the multitasking. Chess wouldn't quit and kept taking 46% of the processor. Had a hard time to get the process viewer. I had to kill it too. OS X crashed twice in 2 hours but rebooted ok. I opened all the system prefs to see what they were. Some of them took about 10 secs to open! It feels like the machine jams on something and then it all works at the same time. My OS X is constipated.

The good things: I recongnized my ATTO single channel Ultra SCSI card (OS X is actually installed on a drive on this card) and it did recongnize my ATI card (the one that came with the Mac) and my IX Micro card but it won't boot if I don't have a monitor connected to the second card (go figure!)

So for me OS X has been an extremely bad experiance. I'm just going to work in 9.1 and wait for an update this summer but I doubt that it will make things better for us G3 owners.

We all know that Apple is making money on hardware, not software (specially when they give a lot of them for free) and again, Apple is forcing me to buy a new machine. My first mac was a Quadra 700 (loved it). Not upgradable. Then a 660 AV (the worst computer ever made from Apple) Not upgradable. Then a Power PC 7100. Not upgradable. Now a Beige G3... guess what, not upgradable... No wonder why Apple does whatever it can to stop companies to make upgrade cards...

Beige have you tried installing on a HD not on the ATTO card? It would be interesting to you if the ATTO card might be the problem.

[pathogen]

Beige Owner:

My 660AV was my favorite mac. Video clip capture and output in 1993, ethernet! It lasted me as a main box until 1998, using OS 8.1. That is staying power. Not very upgradeable unless you could afford 72pin RAM in those days and Nubus cards. I was lucky to have 64mbs of RAM, and it loved Painter and Photoshop.

Your Beige G3 is very upgradable! I have a 233 mintower from Feb 1998, right now it runs at 500mhz with 1MB cache thanks to a really cheap zif upgrade, has 768MB RAM, a 40gig HD, USB, Firewire and a Radeon 32MB Graphics card. OS X retail is as happy in my old beige G3 as in a 500mhz imac DV, even more so thanks to the Radeon card, which is the best improvement I ever made (though I would prefer an NVidia). And now it can even be an G4 MP thanks to the new XLR8 zif upgrade.

What I'm saying is this: your macs are upgradeable for less than the cost of a new system, it all depends on the choices you make whether they fall into place as being supported for future OS releases. I went with ATI because of all the macs that do have Radeon right from Apple and a Zif upgrade that doesn't rely on a sketchy new ROM. Give Apple time to make improvements to OS X's performance, but in the meanwhile before all your apps run native in OS X without classic, consider waiting as long as you can in OS X's 9.1 boot land (not classic) before you buy a new box - rumours are that by the fall there will be some pretty major new macs.

ps. I really think the problem is your mhz, the drive via controller, and the ix micro card all together. Its really too bad X is trouble with that set up.

[This message has been edited by pathogen (edited 03-22-2001).]

Mac Os X impressions

1. Installation is very straightforward, if not extremly fast on a Biege G3/233. From OS 9.1 to OS X, install was essentially two double clicks, a reboot, and the swap of a CD. Very nice

2. By and large, the transition from Public Beta to Retail was fairly painless. About the only discrepancy I noticed was the lack of SSH. Most other things (accounts, desktop photos) were present. Also preserved were my dock preferences. One thing that was lacking were my networking prefs, though it seemed to hold onto the Public Beta settings (I could surf, but my settings weren't accurately represented in the network pane of the system prefs).

3) Classic took a while to boot, then oddly ran through the new mac setup for OS 9. But, damn, what a difference, speedwise. Clicks cause instant window movements.

4) Screensaver now offers hot corners and a default method for securing a session w/ a password. Very nice. Also, transitioning from the screensave to live desktop is much faster than it was in PB. Plus, there are some nifty new slideshow savers (beach and forest)

5) Not so nice was the disapperance of the /Users/Public folder. I had all of my MP3s there. Luckily, there's a backup at work. I did note there is now a /Users/Shared folder, which appears to have taken the place of Public. But still, not nice losing my stuff.

6) The grabbag applications, including HtmlEdit (good riddance), is gone.

7) Mail has greatly matured. Most of the changes i recommended to feedback were make (sweet). The only prob I still see is that reading a Unix IMAP account still shows the entire home directory of the user on the mail server. And when setting up rules, that tends to really slow down the process of selecting a folder to move mail to.

8) Mail also appears to identify .vcf attachments now. Very cool. It opens them in the Address Book and auto fills as much of the info as possible. And, hmm, that application appears to have grown up a lot.

9) Running a classic application no longer appears to show the Classic application icon in the dock.

10) Egads, Apple moved the location of the Apache conf file from under /Library to the previously hidden /etc. Not bad, but different. And unexpected. And oddly, my old conf file is gone. Luckily a backup copy was saved.

11) The old mount points I had for two logical partitions moved from / to /Volumes. I can symlink them, sure, but I'd rather not have my first notice of that being a script breaking on a critical server.

12) My sincere thanks to folks working on Darwin. Top now quits with "q" instead of having to use Cntl-C

13) maybe I'm trying to do too much w/ my tired system, but the dev tools CD is taking an extremly long time to load (10 mins. plus)

Originally posted by RAzaRazor:
OK, Screenshots here:
http://homepage.mac.com/chaosband/PhotoAlbum1.html

Pix of New Software Update Panel, Version Number (Big), DevTool Apps (The Set Us Up The Bomb!), and IE problem with displaying Pages.

Another Intersting Note: Text Clippings open in SimpleText in Classic Mode. ??

Thanks for posting that picture of Internet Explorer giving a blank screen. Now I know what everyone is complaining about.

This may be moot since everyone seems to be suggesting to use Omniweb instead... but what happens if you resize the frame? Does the rest of the page reappear?

[Rando]

Here's my report:

Hardware used: iMac DVSE, 256MB RAM

I decided to nuke my HD and do a completely clean install.

It took longer to install 9.1 from scratch (about 25 minutes) than it did to install X (about 15 minutes). But still, 40 minutes total -- not bad.

No problems, but an interesting situation. I have a (dreaded) Belkin USB hub. My Epson 740 printer was correctly identified by the OS but wouldn't print if connected to the hub. I moved the connection to the keyboard port, and *voila* -- instant printing. My Intellimouse has no problems being connected to the hub. Bizarre.

Can't wait to play with the MP G4 at work ...

[Aldie G]

afterimage, what about speed. How's app launching, window-resizing? You said nothing about that.

Originally posted by Aldie G:
afterimage, what about speed. How's app launching, window-resizing? You said nothing about that.

Well, most of my experience is with Explorer. Add one more to the voices saying it's not ready for prime time. It clearly lags behind the rest of the system. OmniGroup, pllllllleeeeeaaaassssseee beat MS about the head and shoulders with a fast browser.


AS for the rest, resizing is simply OK, not blazingly fast. Perhaps a mix of processor speed (g3/233) and the unoptimized video card on the Rev A's. Moving windows is fairly speedy, but then it always was for me.

Launching applications is a mixed bag. Classic seemingly took forever. But once loaded, BBEdit was fairly quickly going. It and ITunes were only one bounce to launch affairs.

Now all that said, I'm a little dissappointed that it's not a speed demon. But then, I've really gotten used to the 450/dual G4 at work. So, the G3 has appeared slow for about a year. I'd like to hear some TiBook experiences, since that's where I think i'm headed. But, it appears to me classic is more responsive once launched. I'll post again when I get the machine at work going, taking proper care to backup the essential files.

I think Apple's done a good job of balancing the geek with the comfort aspect. The fairly slim manual does a good job of explaining what familiar territory is different from 9 to X. But, they don't go radically to simple land to hide the power of the OS. The message I got was "there's power there, if you want it."

--late addendum: my experience has been a hell of a lot better than Beige Owner's.

[This message has been edited by afterimage (edited 03-22-2001).]

[Boondoggle]

I don't have my copy yet, but I do know that for my there were HUGE speed differences between upgrading OS 8x's and doing clean installs. I remember one example (os9 I think) where after upgrading from OS8.6 emptying the trash would take forever. A clean install fixed that.

I'm going to start OSX with a blank slate.

Bd

[Craig R. Arko]

One question - if you install OS 9.1 from the included CD is there anything in the Extensions Manager for Classic. Like an "OS X base" or "Classic base'" setting or anything like that? For those of us who will need to dual boot for a while. Or must we create our own.

Craig, you can control your Classic extensions from within OS X's Classic control panel, plus obviously you have the Extensions Manager for when you're booting directly into 9.1. So, yes.

Originally posted by Joey:
Craig, you can control your Classic extensions from within OS X's Classic control panel, plus obviously you have the Extensions Manager for when you're booting directly into 9.1. So, yes.

Conflict Catcher worked in the PB, and recently was updated to handle 9.1 extesnion sets. Has anyone tried it with 9.1 on the final?

------------------
Marienbad
http://www.appassionato.org

[JohnD]

Installed Dutch retail on a Powerbook G4/400 with 256MB and IBM travelstar 20GB.
2 partitions, 1 formatted for OSX , 1 existing Dutch 9.1
Install went smooth, classic gives and extention problem but i'm booting classic with extentions off for the moment and things work fine then.
IE5.1PV SUX, using iCab 2.4 preview for the moment and it responds much better than IE.
Speed is good, speed can always be better :-)
I like the location manager setup.
X is a different way of life, have to get used to it over time.
Now let the party begin and let the big Apps come to X!!
In a few Months the X starts to glow and then we are hooked to it.

[NewsHound]

Question: I'll be getting a new G4 Cube soon, with 256 RAM, 20 gig, 500 mHz. When it arrives, it'll have OS9.1 preinstalled, along with the goodies that ship with the machine, on the hard drive. As soon as I set that baby up, I'll be installing OS X. Now here's the question: I want to install X on a partition, so do I need to wipe the whole HD first, then set up the partition? Or is there a way to set up a partition without erasing the whole HD first?

Please help, 'cause I'm confused.

Eagerly awaiting X,

NewsHound

------------------
Exit, pursued by a bear.
--'The Winter's Tale,' Shakespeare

[pmcd]

Basically you should just use Drive Setup and partition, which means reinstalling the stuff you want to keep from the Cube. The other alternatives would be pdisk (tricky) and/or FWB's HDT which supposedly acts like Partition Magic on a PC (that is you can re-size, create partitions, etc...without erasing).

Philip

Originally posted by NewsHound:
Question: I'll be getting a new G4 Cube soon, with 256 RAM, 20 gig, 500 mHz. When it arrives, it'll have OS9.1 preinstalled, along with the goodies that ship with the machine, on the hard drive. As soon as I set that baby up, I'll be installing OS X. Now here's the question: I want to install X on a partition, so do I need to wipe the whole HD first, then set up the partition? Or is there a way to set up a partition without erasing the whole HD first?

Please help, 'cause I'm confused.

Eagerly awaiting X,

NewsHound

[NewsHound]

Originally posted by pmcd:
Basically you should just use Drive Setup and partition, which means reinstalling the stuff you want to keep from the Cube.

Does that mean the process goes like this: back up (i.e. copy from Cube to old iMac) software I want from Cube; wipe Cube HD w/ Drive Setup; partition; reinstall system software; return backed-up software from iMac to Cube; install OS X on partition?

I just want to make sure I do this right, and don f*ck anything up in the process.

-NewsHound

[Since EBCDIC]

Here are some user interface (and other) bugs I've found in 10.0 Retail:

<http://www.GeekTimes.com/macintosh/osx/1_0/firstLook.html>

Enjoy!

[Diligence]

Pismo PB500 with 640 MB RAM. Install on separate 5 Gig partition when without a hitch. Overall experience great so far. Mail is wonderful, and so are iTunes and iMovie.


Some negative reactions:

SLOW DIRECTORY LISTING REFRESH
There is no way to manually "refresh" a window or directory listing. I made a movie with iMovie 2, saved it to my Documents folder, and it wouldn't show up. Kept opening new Finder windows to force the directory to refresh but it wouldn't. Finally, doing a search for the file name in Sherlock brought up the file, and when I double-clicked it, the directory contents refreshed.

I also downloaded a few files to my desktop and found that it took a while for the icon to show up (about 15-20 seconds).

TERRIBLE FILENAME CONVENTIONS
Just because MacOS X has UNIX underpinnings, does that mean we're going to have to deal with these terribly obscure file names? Just open up your iDisk to see what I mean. Will today's "Stuffit Expander Update 6.01.hqx" become tomorrow's "KE_Aladd_StuffpkgK021_a.dmg"? This is an absolutely horrible step backward.

CAN'T BRING DESKTOP TO FRONT
What I love about OS9-- I can have four or five apps running, and then quickly click on an area of my desktop that's peeking out on the bottom and double-click a document in the topmost Finder window. This cannot be done in OS X. You have go out to the Dock, and click "Finder" to get to any windows.

---
Also, from an earlier posting that is better suited for this thread:

1) Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer works stock, including right mouse button. But scroll wheel only works in some apps (i.e. terminal, MSIE-- although NOT in form text areas). Doesn't work in the Finder.

2) First thing I did was drag the battery monitor from the dock. The icon went through a "poof" animation but froze on the last frame. Same with the Sherlock icon. Couldn't get the screen to refresh and make disappear, although the rest of the screen redraw was fine.

3) Was stress testing the window resizing a little, and inadvertently clicked an icon in System Preferences, which got me my first kernel panic. Couldn't recreate this.

4) Been poking around-- found PHP, Perl. Haven't yet configured Apache to work with PHP, any help with this would be appreciated

5) I find the font anti-aliasing everywhere to be a bit annoying and inconsistent in some apps. For instance, in MSIE, HTML text is not anti-aliased up to 12px, but is larger than that. And form buttons are anti-aliased

6) Sounds in Outlook Express (through Classic) aren't work

[Bluebomber21XX]

Ugh. So I get Mac OS X up and running. So far, it's been rock-solid. Confusing, yes, but hey, we need to start somewhere. Anyway, I install OS X. Everything goes smooth as silk, and I even got my iTools and a Mac.com e-mail address.

Except I forgot to install X OVER 9.1. Now I'm screwed. I can't get this OS off of my hard drive WHATSOEVER. My 9.1, my 9.0, and my 8.6 CDs will NOT load after a restart with c held down. Which means I can't install Classic. Goody.

Other than that, it's peachy. Apps take a while to load (minimum of about 6 bounces, and SIXTEEN for IE on my 400 MHz Pismo with 192 megs of RAM)

In any case, I can't get X off of my hard drive, and I NEED classic. I'm taking it down to ComputerWare (Mac only retailer), plugging in an external HD, and wiping this damn system OFF.

This is a nightmare. X sucks.

------------------
For great justice!
http://bluebomber.darkmazda.com/

[Scott_H]

In any case, I can't get X off of my hard drive, and I NEED classic. I'm taking it down to ComputerWare (Mac only retailer), plugging in an external HD, and wiping this damn system OFF.

Can't you just boot form the OS 9 CD, format and "zero" the drive, install 9 then boot from OS X and install that?

bbomber: just reset PRAM. twice for good measure then try booting off an OS9.1 CD. works for me.

or if you're on a new world ROM [> than beige G3], insert OS9.1 CD while in OSX, restart and hold down option key. Open Firmware should give you the option of booting into either OSx or 9.1CD.

[Bluebomber21XX]

I wish it were that easy. I can't boot up off of a CD, and this includes 9.1, 9.0, and 8.6. OS X just boots up instead. Zapping the PRAM (5 times!) didn't work, and the option thing just brings me a blinking question mark over a disk icon. I tried swapping the 9.1 CD for the 9.0 CD when I got that, but I get an extensions conflict and I'm back to square one.

I'm royally, utterly screwed here.

------------------
For great justice!
http://bluebomber.darkmazda.com/

[eevyl]

After a few hours using Mac OS X, I like it a lot. But this are very bad times for mac people outside US.

First, two weird bugs arise in the Finder ONLY if the language is Spanish. I have see them in action in the radio boxes of the Finder preferences window and on the visualization options.

Second, iTunes, iMovie2 and AppleWorks 6.1 are ONLY in US English. Very very good Apple, keep going. I am very frustated because AppleWorks 6.1 US cannot be used with AppleWorks 6.0.4 in Spanish. And Word 2001 is better than AW 6.0.4 in Carbon or Classic mode.

Mac OS X, only if you are "born in the US"

[SupahCoolX]

Eevyl: That's your own fault for not being American! Seriously though.. Even though OSX isn't perfect for those outside the US, I'm sure that no major OS is. Apple should, however, be commended for efforts like the worldwide launch of OSX and the builtin font/foreign language support. They've taken many strides to ease OS upgrades for foreign users. Hopefully, localized versions of apps like Appleworks won't be too far in the future (but Apple DOES have a lot on their plates for the next few months with OSX). Apple is pretty popular in a lot of foreign markets, so I'm sure they won't forget you guys

[JohnD]

Well, excuse me but sometimes you have to wait for 4 months to get localized versions.
We Dutch people are ver flexible and we like to use the US versions but....NOCANDO.
It seems that, due to export regulations, it is not allowed to use a US system in Europe.
We have to the international English version which is basicly the same situation as the Dutch version.
I use Dutch OS 9.1 in Classic and there seems to be a bug with selecting parts of text in dialog boxes.
You can only select from the beginning of a field, not in the middle or at the end.
One bad thing for Apple, the Mhz mith has come to an end.
Now you can compare multi tasking to multi tasking W2K and a Pentium III 450/W2K feels much more snappy than a G4/450 with OSX and video on W2K is much faster.
I hope that the first update give's a little improvement.
At least for now the speed is more than acceptable.

[Omnibus_I]

eevyl I am also from spain.

Do you think is better to buy Mac OS X in the US?

Thanks

[penfold]

Originally posted by JohnD:
Well, excuse me but sometimes you have to wait for 4 months to get localized versions.
We Dutch people are ver flexible and we like to use the US versions but....NOCANDO.
It seems that, due to export regulations, it is not allowed to use a US system in Europe.
We have to the international English version which is basicly the same situation as the Dutch version.
I use Dutch OS 9.1 in Classic and there seems to be a bug with selecting parts of text in dialog boxes.
You can only select from the beginning of a field, not in the middle or at the end.
One bad thing for Apple, the Mhz mith has come to an end.
Now you can compare multi tasking to multi tasking W2K and a Pentium III 450/W2K feels much more snappy than a G4/450 with OSX and video on W2K is much faster.
I hope that the first update give's a little improvement.
At least for now the speed is more than acceptable.

There is from the UK site:

Carbonised Apps
iMovie, iTunes and a preview version of AppleWorks for Mac OS X will be available for download very soon.




------------------
--------------------------------
You're crazy - you think you're going to change this silly little world... better see yourself a shrink
----------------------------------------------------------------

[Lord Kronos]

Translating an OS is not an easy task, and it certainly wasn't Apple's first priority. You have three options: wait till MWNY, use your own language (even if it's not perfect), or use English. It's rather simple .

[This message has been edited by Lord Kronos (edited 03-24-2001).]

Installed 4K78 with German system language on 4 different machines (G3/233, G4-AGP/350, G4-Digital Audio/2x533, TiBook 500.

Strange thing: In the Get Info Window 5 cannot see the Icon anymore - just a blank area. But I can still "blindly" click on the area, copy and paste an icon!

Is this only happening to me?
Is this a localization problem?

[eevyl]

My biggest concern is not about Mac OS X. The spanish-only bugs are mere cosmetic. The problem is AppleWorks. I bought AppleWorks in Spain, so ti came in Spanish. The 6.1 update is in English, so it won't install in my system.

�What should I do? �But a new copy of AppleWorks in English? Of course not. I will do a quick search at the carracho's world.

[yellar]

I've been running X (developer release)for the last 7-10 days on an iBook SE. Having seen the steady progression of X developer releases over the last four years or so, I have to say I am close to ecstatic with the quality of the final release. The many people who have worked on X at Apple have every right to be very proud.

I have found X quite reasonable on an iBook despite its small screen size. The dock size is set quite small and hidden on my machine so as to maximize my limited screen real estate. Most things within X seem to run quite smoothly and with reasonable speed, but there are unquestionably some kinks to be worked out. I have, for example, already decided that I am going to try my best to avoid Classic. While they have removed the classic menu bars by default in this release, it is a memory and CPU hog and it didn't take much to get things to go haywire (start Word while you have a USB printer installed, for example). I am constantly amazed that the reviews of X in the mainstream press have not mentioned this buggyness and have consistently mentioned Classic in quite positive terms.

Despite having worked with X for so long, I am still amazed by some of its features. Mail.app is just amazing; I never thought email could get better than Eudora, but I don't think I'll look back. The ease of saving as PDF still makes my jaw drop and the way in which networking autosenses my ethernet connection and just works is really, really nice. Similarly, having X set up my USB printer as soon as I plugged it in made me realize just how out of date the chooser was.

Furthermore, now that iTunes and Appleworks have been released, I don't have a whole lot of reason to boot back into MacOS9. I know, all of you are saying Appleworks? Its no replacement for Word, but now that Appleworks can save documents in Word format it just became a *whole* lot more useful to me. Apple and Dataviz seemed to have a bit of a licensing falling out a few years back, but I am really glad to have file translation back as a feature.

[Spirit_VW]

My first install report (doing the iBook in a bit):

System:
Power Mac G4 "Digital Audio" - 533 mhz single processor, 128 MB RAM, 40 GB hard drive, nVidia GeForce 2 graphics card

Hard Drive:
Partitioned into approx. 1 GB OS 9.1 partition and approx. 39 GB OS X partition. Both are HFS+.

Report:
Install took about 10 minutes. Very smooth, no problems at all. Setup video very smooth, no problems at all.

Boot time a bit shorter than 9.1 in my estimation.

System responsiveness extremely smooth. Menu response extremely smooth. Window drag extremely smooth. Wind resizing ranges from pretty smooth to fairly slow, depending on application and window content. Quite tolerable, though. Dock responsiveness extremely smooth. General UI responsiveness extremely smooth. File related work seems quite quick. System preferences loads in 2 1/2 bounces. Sherlock loaded in 2 1/2 bounces originally, now loads in 1 bounce. OmniWeb 4.0 final loads in about six bounces or so, haven't really timed it yet. Never used IE 5.1. OmniWeb 4.0 final is extremely smooth except for resizing (I think web browsers will have a particularly tough time of it). Page loading speed is on par with IE 5.0 in OS 9 on my 56k Airport connection. Have not tried Mail yet.

All in all, everything seems extremely smooth and fast. I'm extremely impressed with the retail version. I didn't do any magic or voodoo, just a nice clean install.

[r3nt]

1. Installer crashed on initial install attempt.
2. My 256 Mb DIMM is (as reported by System Profiler) as uncompatable.

Dual 500Mhz G4
512 Mb (er...256 Mb) RAM
40 Gb Maxtor Drive

[waffffffle]

I'm about to reformat my hard drive in preparation for X. Is the genereal consensus that UFS is better than HFS+? Is tghat what people have been having more luck with? Thanks.

[Spirit_VW]

Originally posted by waffffffle:
I'm about to reformat my hard drive in preparation for X. Is the genereal consensus that UFS is better than HFS+? Is tghat what people have been having more luck with? Thanks.

Read my install report above. I have had excellent, excellent results using HFS+.

------------------
Kevin Buchanan
The Spirit of Volkswagen
The Retro New Beetle Headquarters
Webmaster, Fort Worth VolksFolks Club

[jwbaumann]

Immediately after firing up the installer the cursor appeared frozen, and I noticed the mouse did not light (400 MHz G4 with pro keyboard/mouse). Plugging the mouse directly into the back of the computer, instead of into the keyboard (yes, I checked both sides) is a workaround, but my mouse is on a short leash. Fortunately after the install it worked when plugged into the keyboard. Seems like a bug on the installer CD, but one which better get fixed before newbies try installing.

[memento]

I already had a separate partition waiting for OSX. Booted from CD np. Reformatted partition HFS+. 15 minutes later was up and running.

Initial reaction: any Finder view with many files (300+) is VERY SLOW. Graphics speed up to acceptable if you drop your monitor resolution and color depth. (I have a B&W G3 300 w/380MB RAM). I usually run at 1280x1024 and Millions of colors, but now I can't - a little disappointing but worth it for MAJOR stability (I've been running since wed night, Staples edition OSX). Quicktime is faster with 4.1.2 in Classic than 5.0 native. Generally a little sluggish, but I'm getting used to that. BEAUTIFUL to look at. Text in OmniWeb is unbelievable. Now that I've moved the dock to the side and installed DragThing I'm happy with the flow of things. Overall, well worth the upgrade!

Installed on s separate partition on my iMac DV+/450/192MB RAM this morning. Installation took about 14 minutes and everything worked fine. Some things (window resizing mainly) are still a bit pokey, but not distractingly so. I have already learned to appreciate the dock. I am playing music on iTunes, writing emails, browsing the web, and have classic environment running with no problems. I like the mail icon which adds a small red number to indicate how many emails are in your inbox. I also like the mail program, primarily for its ease of use. Filters, etc., are very easy to configure. I didn't try to import my email from Entourage, which I have heard is problematic. OmniWeb is nice, but I wish Opera for X was finished. Explorer 5.1 is all but unusable, still. The Opera people might have better spent their time getting Opera for X done than for 9.1. There is an opening on X for somebody (OmniWeb, Opera, iCab) to step in and gain market share while MS keeps us waiting. It's amazing that IE hasn't progressed, usability-wise, since the PB. AppleWorks works just fine. I haven't worked with iMovie yet.

All in all, I am very impressed. I haven't seen X since the PB and it has progressed tremendously since then. I would have used PB daily except for no printer support. X has it, and I can use it every day, except for things I only do now and then, like burn CDs (and help is coming in April.)

I would give Apple a solid A- for this first release version of X and I would encourage anyone with the hardware to run it (and a bit of knowledge of their computer) to give it a try.

[holiday]

the Kruder & Dormeister tune at the introduction of OSX install was a nice touch.

[Milio]

Originally posted by Bluebomber21XX:
I wish it were that easy. I can't boot up off of a CD, and this includes 9.1, 9.0, and 8.6. OS X just boots up instead. Zapping the PRAM (5 times!) didn't work, and the option thing just brings me a blinking question mark over a disk icon. I tried swapping the 9.1 CD for the 9.0 CD when I got that, but I get an extensions conflict and I'm back to square one.

I'm royally, utterly screwed here.

Welcome to the wonderful bugginess of OS X. I reported this problem to Apple repeatedly, but it still made it into the final.

A significant problem here is that OS X modifies the firmware of your system. It's not something you can flash the pram to cure. And since you don't have any form of OS 9 already on the drive, my usual troubleshooting methods aren't going to work.

Try this: Put the OS 9.1 CD in the installer. Go the the System Disk prefs and see if it is an option that you can select. If so, choose it and restart. If your luck holds, then it will boot from the CD. You may need to hold the C key to help it along.

Another possibility is to install OS 9.1 on another hard drive with another Mac. Then move that drive to the OS X Mac, either as an external drive, or as a second internal drive. Don't try just replacing the drive that OS X is installed on, because the system is incapable of booting it now. Once it's installed, see if the System Disk prefs will see it. This is probably the better method, but it's a lot harder if you don't have spare Macs and hard drives laying around.

What's happening is that when the OS X installer runs, it modifies the firmware to tell it to use a completely different OS. When the firmware is in this mode, it isn't even capable of natively running any old Mac OS. You need to somehow tell it to switch to the other mode. This is usually done with either the System Disk prefs or holding down the Option key at boot.

Because you don't get anything when you hold down Option at startup, I'm going to guess that you are running an older system that doesn't have the newest OpenFirmware on the board. My beige G3 is the same way. When you installed, irrevocably altered the motherboard on your system. If you can get it back to OS 9, you will probably be fine. But in my extensive testing, one of my machines needs occaisional coaxing just to boot. (Apple engineers provided me with some of this info.)

There's a whole lot more fun like this hidden in this new OS.

[Milio]

Originally posted by waffffffle:
I'm about to reformat my hard drive in preparation for X. Is the genereal consensus that UFS is better than HFS+? Is tghat what people have been having more luck with? Thanks.

I'd recommend HFS+. If you are installing it on the same partition as 9.1, then you have to. If you want OS X to benefit from metadata such as creator/type information for your files, then you should use HFS+.

If you are setting up OS X to not use Classic, and to run strictly as a unix box with a nice GUI, then UFS will probably work fine for you.