At 7:33 pm +0100 10/6/04, Neill Watson wrote:
I noticed that, Paul, but was under the impression that it's significantly slower. However, I've just been thumbing through an issue of Mac User (you can tell I'm becoming converted!) and there isn't a huge amount of difference now the ibook is 1 ghz.
And, particularly if you're 'dipping your toe in the water', this is an inexpensive way to do it.
<I read the rants, and sympathised, but it was sheer bad luck. That sort of thing is NOT typical. Really.>
Judging by the responses on the list, it could be a very vocal minority, I guess, amplified by the fact that this industry has a higher percentage of Mac users than other lines of business.
Yes, but not only that. It's a fact of life that you don't get to hear about it when things are running smoothly; nobody writes in to say 'my Mac is running marvelously, no problems'. When things go wrong, it's sensible to write in and say 'I'm having problems with <whatever>, anyone care to comment?' but you can hardly write in and say 'I'm having no problems at all, can anyone help?'.
<>and not all stuff is backward compatible.
What stuff, as a matter of interest?>
I don't actually know, it just seems that when OSX came out, followed by Jaguar, Panther, Tabby Cat etc there seemed to be lots of wailing from users trying to use scanners and other things that disappeared.
Oh, you'll always get that with any OS. I remember a lady on some list or other saying that she was going to ditch OS X because a scanner she'd bought two years ago for $30 wouldn't work with it. When OS X first came out it was a bit flaky, and quite slow, although I found that aspects of it speeded up my workflow so much, I was happy to grit my teeth over the apparent slowness. Swings and roundabouts; it WAS slower in some ways, but I worked so much faster with it that it was only psychologically slower.
The next release solved the slowness problem, and the one after solved it some more, and the next couple of releases added back stuff that had been missing from the 'old' OS. All in all, a very intelligent upgrade philosophy I think: they had to get it out the door at some stage, but made sure that any shortcomings were fixed quickly, hence the plethora of updates when they'd seen what 'real world' use was like for people. Now it's pretty well fixed, Apple have announced that, after 10.4, due soon, they won't be going for the yearly paid update any more, so you won't be seeing Tabby Cat anytime soon.
I'm running OS X on a machine that was made in 1999. It runs perfectly, and all I did to accommodate OS X was install another 500Mb of RAM. It runs as fast as it ever did with the 'old' OS 9, and although I'm frustrated with Photoshop speed, that's due mainly to the increased size of the files I'm getting from a new digital camera. It runs all day and night, and I only shut it down if I'm going away for the weekend, and I haven't seen anything that suggest I even need to do that. Two system crashes in four years, and even they weren't Apple's fault.
A local Mac seller has kindly offered to loan me a 12" powerbook for a few days, so at least I'll be able to get my head around how it works.
Stand by for a barrage of no-brainer questions, I guess :-)
Go for it, and feel free to mail me off-list with any questions you think are 'no-brainers'.
--
best wishes,
Paul
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