Mac Users Find OS X is for Early Adopters By Michael Flaminio I'll admit it. With the exception of a few basketball games, I spent all last weekend working on OS X. I fiddled with the BSD subsystem and read OS X forums deep into the night. There will be plenty of euphoric and harsh criticism written about Apple's Mac OS X. Neither extreme I feel is truly justified. Apple did an outstanding job bringing this OS to market, but at the same time there are more than a few problems and omissions. Is Mac OS X an imperfect OS? Absolutely. Could have Apple done more before its release? Absolutely. Should have Apple delayed the release? Most certainly not. Apple has been careful not too hype up the release of Mac OS X too much. It might seem odd considering the enormous significance of the release. Instead of a massive block party for the launch, Apple only organized a small press/analysis briefing. Instead of shipping it installed on its computers, Apple is deferring bundling Macs with OS X until this summer. Instead of including all of OS 9.1's features, Apple is promising updates for download as early as next month. Instead of hearing things like a "must have OS," we hear words like "early adopters." What does this all mean? It means Mac OS X is a work in progress. Should this be a problem? Well, that depends on Apple. If Apple is willing to pump out regular updates and fixes for Mac OS X, then I think everything will be just fine. During the development of Mac OS X, Apple cranked out revisions on almost a daily basis. Personally, I'd love to download weekly updates. The updates don't have to be perfect or complete because OS X isn't perfect or complete. Many Mac users might find it a pain to install new updates on a frequent basis, some of which very likely could hurt as much as help. But I don't think that this would be a problem for those really using Mac OS X. Early Adopters Someone asked me once how do they know if they're an early adopter. I could probably make a whole article entitled, "You Might be an Early Adopter if..." Instead I'll just do a paragraph. So, you might be an early adopter if you were the first on your block to have one or more of these products: a PDA, Cell phone, LCD monitor, CD-R drive, VCR, CD player, DVD player. If you had ever owned a Newton, eMate, Macintosh Portable or Pippin, then stop reading this now and buy OS X. On the other hand if you're still listen to vinyl, 8-Track or running Mac OS 8.6, then you're probably not ready of OS X. Essentially an early adopter is someone who is willing to buy version 1.0 of anything. Not only will they be the first, but they're willing to pay a premium for it in both price and hassle. It can be anything from a piece of software to a new model of car. An early adopter is willing to risk the pitfalls of an initial design for the benefits of new technology. How does this relate to OS X? OS X has its pitfalls, but it too has unique benefits. Those using Mac OS X should expect bugs and problematic issues. In fact, if you're a true early adopter, you'll enjoy seeking these problems out. You'll have fun griping about them and take pride in being the first to find a problem. There's nothing, however, wrong with not being an early adopter. I know many people who won't install software that's not at least version X.01. Why do they wait? Because they're more interested in old things that work than new things that don’t. That's fine. This means that Mac OS X is not yet ready for you. On the other hand, there are people who are not early adopter who insist on using new products anyway. I've read a few articles where people seem to think that they're entitled to a perfectly complete OS. Yes, Apple promised us plenty with OS X, but just because it doesn't make your life instantly better doesn't mean that it never will. OS X is an enormous undertaking that can't be done in a single leap. Given the history of its quest for a "modern OS," the fact that Apple even shipped anything is in itself somewhat remarkable. Who should upgrade now? I admit that my expectations of Mac OS X were a bit lower than what Apple delivered. To my surprise the classic environment not only works, but actually works well. I can do everything in OS X that I can do in OS 9.1, just a little slower. The Aqua interface is much improved over the public beta, as is pretty much everything else. Regardless of how much progress was made since last summer, however, not everyone will want to upgrade right away. There're two types of people I think that will want to install Mac OS: Those who want to use it as a full time OS and those who want to just play. Before you take the big plunge, you should know about the issues surrounding the initial release. IGM's Derek Currie will take on many of the bugs and omissions in an upcoming column. But for now, cruise through some of the online support forums on Mac OS X. If you plan to be an early adopter, you'll have to be patient and fight through these problems. Also if you expect to use OS X in its current form, you better have some serious hardware. No matter what, I recommend getting plenty of RAM. Buy as much as you can afford or install. RAM is really cheap right now and several of IGM's sponsors have great prices on great RAM. I'd also recommend getting plenty of horse power. Technically, OS X will run on a 233 iMac, but I wouldn't want to. The CPU and graphics processing is way too slow for OS X. I picked up a dual 533 G4 system just for OS X and I still find it to be sluggish in many areas. Hopefully Apple will optimize things more so OS X, Aqua in particular, runs more smoothly. Until then, if you realistically want to run OS X, I'd recommend a faster G3 or preferably a G4 processor. A dual G4 system is the ultimate way to go to fully take advantage of the OS. There's no doubt that OS X is a step in the right direction, but it is just that -- a step. Apple needs to bring in more features such as the much harped about DVD support and CD writing, while also squashing bugs and improving performance. At the same time, we need more widely used program to go the way of Carbon and Coco. Until all this happens, Mac OS X will remain only for early adopters.