Yesterday I ran a story from Todd Iorio (“A Note From an Annoyed Mac Loyalist“) where he complained about several aspects of Mac OS X, your responses almost killed my inbox. Here is a sampling:
Yesterday I ran a story from Todd Iorio (“A Note From an Annoyed Mac Loyalist“) where he complained about several aspects of Mac OS X, your responses almost killed my inbox. Here is a sampling:
In response to “A Note From an Annoyed Mac Loyalist”:
My experience with MacOS X has been the icing on the cake as well. In a good way. I have seen the future and it is MacOS X. It is fast, it is stable, and it is backward compatible.
I’m not anywhere near ready to jump on the “where are all the apps?” bandwagon that Mr. Iorio seems to have embraced. Everything I have launched (including professional level packages), runs just fine in Classic. And Apple has *repeatedly* said that MacOS X migration is a ’12 hour process’ and that we are currently at 6PM. Only half way there.
As for Photoshop. Well it runs fine in Classic. I don’t know why there haven’t been any announcements yet, but Adobe has announced InDesign and Illustrator. That sounds like a pretty good MacOSX commitment from Adobe, even if there haven’t been any specific announcements about Photoshop. My guess: Photoshop will be completely rewritten in Cocoa, which will take some time.
As for getting your hands on the update CD. I walked into CompUSA and had one in my hands 30 seconds later. Obviously everyone’s shopping experience is different, but mine was just fine.
Why can’t you download this update? Because this isn’t a 2MB update to your TCP/IP stack. Apple has said that every piece of the OS was touched in some way. The MacOS X 10.1 update CD has 621.8 MB of data on it. This is not an update than can be served over the internet. Your connection might be fast enough, and Apple’s connection might be fast enough, but I doubt anyone has the capacity to serve an update this size to all of the potential upgraders. Not even Microsoft. And let’s not forget, Apple has served OS updates online, just like Microsoft. That’s how I got MacOS 9.1. This upgrade is not the same thing.
Yes, applications tend to be released first on Windows. These are the realities of a market economy. Software developers are going to service their biggest markets first. But, the fact of the matter is that this doesn’t keep me or anyone else from getting their work done and done well using MacOS. I am willing to be patient for software releases in exchange for an OS that is more stable and easier to support.
Yes, a lot of people use Windows. But this does not invalidate the MacOS. And what exactly you mean by a network being windows based, I have no idea. I haven’t met a network yet that gave a hoot what computer you hooked up to it as long as you had an IP address and compatible software and file formats. And if anything, MacOS X 10.1 is off the charts in terms of compatibility between operating systems.
”Who is using the Macintosh, Really?” We are. We are an architecture college of over 300 users. We teach a professional curriculum with professional output needs and criteria. This means we are doing a lot more than word processing. A lot more.
Over the last ten years, the MacOS has proved to be stable, flexible, and powerful. We have grown from a dozen workstations to 8 servers, over 120 college workstations, and over 200 student workstations. We provide support for all of them, including the student owned computers. We also edit and upgrade the content for our web site, teach software workshops on a weekly basis, and teach full academic semester long courses.
Who is we? Two computer support staff. Two (2). That is it. That is the power of the MacOS. And that power is even stronger under MacOS X.
You may be ready to jump ship, but I am not. MacOS X 10.1 has me more excited about the MacOS then ever in the last ten years. The MacOS is more tenable than ever before, and MacOS users should look forward to a great future. I hope you are there to see it. [Robert B. Sandkamp]
Dear Todd,
I realize that Apple could have handled the disc shortage better.
But, please! Stop whining. You sound like a spoiled child who missed seeing the Power Rangers at the McDonald’s grand opening.
Take a deep breath. Realize that everything is ok — that you can get your disc from an authorized dealer and be happy.
Jason, I feel compelled to respond to the comments and statements made by Todd Iorio and posted to Go2Mac.
“There have been ongoing annoyances. All the apps. that are supposed to be best on the Mac (Photoshop for example) are not out on OS X.”
Come on. The OS is 6 months old. Relax, Todd.
“One of my main apps, Maya is now OS X but version 3.5, not version 4, as on Windows but hey, it’s a step in the right direction. I haven’t installed OS X for lack of features (read: no compelling reason to do so) but with Maya shipping and OS X 10.1 adding features (read: a marginally usable OS as compared to 10.0) I decided to take the plunge. Heck, I’d even go out and grab an update CD from the Apple store in Glendale, CA, about 20 minutes away because for some reason Apple wouldn’t let me download it. But they didn’t have any. At the Apple store, they didn’t have any. A quick series of local toll calls revealed that nobody had any.”
Why not just purchase the 10.1 retail pack? Did Todd not think there would be high demand for the free upgrade? I got in line 2 hours early and got my copy. Where’s Todd’s commitment?
“Why am I not supposed to go Windows again? I can get OS updates online, not for $20 and a day of aggravation.”
The differences between 10.0 and 10.1 are every bit as big as between Windows 98 and Windows ME. I haven’t seen Windows ME available as a download from Microsoft, much less free!
“Adobe has COMITTED (sic) to Photoshop on Windows, where’s the commitment on OS X?”
Adobe is committed to OS X. Again, I remind Todd that this OS is 6 months old.
“Maya (and every other application it seems) are released first on Windows. Networks at every post-production (film and video, isn’t that the domain of the all-powerful Mac?) are Windows based or at the very least Windows compliant. Who is using the Macintosh, really?”
And this is a failing of the Mac OS itself how?
“I love my PB G4, don’t get me wrong. It’s the best hardware on the planet. If only I didn’t have to put up with all the issues surrounding the Mac OS…<> Oh well, an adequate stock of CDs or web downloadable update may have kept me on board a little longer but the current situation? In a professional situation, after 9 years of loyalty, the Mac is becoming untenable.”
I don’t understand. Apple releasing OS X six months ago suddenly made all your OS 9 applications stop running? Do you not think there will be additional shipments of the upgrade? Again, did you not think there would be extremely high demand for the initial shipment of upgrades?
If Todd’s intention was to rally troops to join his complaining, it had the opposite effect on me. Simple unemotional knowledge and reasoning put all of his complaints easily in perspective. Todd seems to be unreasonably impatient, unwilling to acknowledge market economics, looking for attention, or just trying to talk himself off the Macintosh. At Seybold, Adobe showed almost their entire set of offerings running on OS X. They will all be released in the next 90 days. In the meantime, won’t the OS 9 versions continue to run? [Stephen Alison]
I have to agree with Todd here in some respects because I too have felt the wave of Window washers, as I call them, putting the pressure down. I actually have two computers. A Mac G3 and a 750Mhz PC that I built myself. I’m still awaiting on the Adobe line of products to go OS X until I even attempt a upgrade to it. So far, all I’ve seen is Illustrator and that software is about a 1/8 of my work flow day so it isn’t worth upgrading.
The studios I’ve been working for are starting to have less and less Macs in them. Mostly because of price vs. support
issues. PCs seem to be overall cheaper and easier to fix/upgrade. Even though they still have Macs, those have been pushed over to the QA departments for testing machines. It’s really hard for me to even ask for a Mac on my desktop. [j thomas]
Let me get this straight, the supposed “straw that broke the camel’s back” was not being able to get a 10.1 update CD on the DAY it came out?!?! Come on now, unless you are in line with the rest of the lemmings on Oct 25th I bet you will have trouble finding XP that afternoon as well. Give me, no give us ALL a break-relax, and go see them today after the fedex guy makes his run. I can’t stand it when people whine to hear their own voices! [Norman Hayward]
It upsets me that people are so quick to judge things bad in situations like the release of 10.1. The user that wrote the article titled “A Note From an Annoyed Mac Loyalist" seems not to be seeing the “big picture.”
Many users have jumped and said "OS X is not any good since there aren’t any (or very few) big apps for it yet." I myself am a Macintosh Administrator and Senior Network Administrator for a large trading card company and feel a bit frustrated that I can’t move my designers to OS X as quickly as I would like since all apps they use aren’t native yet. I would like the user experience to be complete as possible and have all apps running native.
However, what many users fail to see how major a transition this is. Moving to MacOS X is at least as, if not more, complex than the 68000 to PowerPC transition of the early 90’s. I think that since Apple did such a good job with that, users think this move is just as simple… or even easier. Heck, it’s just software this time, right? It’s not like they completely changed the processor or anything!
Growing pains and early frustration aside, I think Apple has done an outstanding job during this transition. No, they haven’t gotten everything right and they are bound to make more mistakes. However, considering the operating system couldn’t be more different from OS 9, they have done amazingly well. For instance, the whole notion of the "classic environment" is an amazing bit of coding to me. Imagine someone telling you that, "Hey, we are switching all cars to run on nuclear fusion. However, since there aren’t enough nuclear fusion gas stations out there at the moment, your car can also run on unleaded gasoline until we complete the transition. When done, you can take your current car and run it on nuclear fusion." That’s basically what Apple did. Microsoft would never be able to do this. Having recently gone through a major Win2k migration, I can attest to this first hand.
Users also seem to be blaming Apple for the slow speed at which the "big guns" as we call them here (read: major apps) aren’t yet ready for OS X. Yes, Apple may have been a little slow in getting information to some companies. And yes, many companies decided to wait until 10.1 so they knew that almost all the cards were in place. However, last time I checked, Photoshop is not Picture Viewer. It is an extremely complex application which I am sure contains enough lines of legacy code to have you reading until your death!
Transitions take time. If Apple can pull it off in one year, they will have done something amazing. Imagine Microsoft trying to do this and you will thank your lucky stars that you have an Apple.
BTW – if you are sick of MacOS X, think it’s taking too long, and you have a PBG4 that you want to get rid off, let me know. I’ll be happy to take it off your hands at no charge. [brianlees]
