I've been interested to note the dissonance in approaches to
making the transition to OS X between Dan Knight and myself.
My way has been to install OS X on a second Mac and gradually
learn how to use it and the suite of native applications I will need
to make OS X my production system. (This would also work on a
single Mac, booting back and forth between OS X and OS 9,
but would be less convenient).
Dan has chosen to make the switch first and then do "on the job
training," as it were, with extensive use of familiar legacy
applications running in Classic mode. Consequently, Dan is nominally
switched to OS X before I am, even though I started the process
back in November and he made his move only last week.
- Editor's note: I disagree with that assessment; I haven't
switched to OS X. I still spend most of my time in
OS 9 simply because I'm more productive there. Maybe
one-third of my time is spent in OS X getting comfortable
with it, and about half that time is in Classic applications
simply because I'm using Claris Home Page for my Web work and
haven't yet completed the transition from Claris Emailer to
PowerMail. Unlike Moore, I don't have a second PowerBook to
dedicate to each OS. More on my transition in today's Going
Ten, Part 3: Progressing Slowly. dk
Neither way he is "right" or "wrong," just different.
My philosophy on the matter has been that if I'm going to use
legacy applications, I might as well use them in the legacy OS, and
my determination from the start has been to go entirely OS X
native when I take the plunge. I'm an all-or-nothing kind of guy who
doesn't like compromises, whereas I perceive Dan as being more of a
moderate (hope I'm accurately representing you here, Dan ;-)
). I've only started up Classic a couple of times under 0S X,
both times by accident, when I double-clicked documents that needed a
legacy app to run.
The downside to this, of course, is that I have to wait until the
software I need to do my work is available and sufficiently debugged
to make it tolerably usable. In my estimation, we're not quite there
yet, but we're getting a lot closer.
A major advancement toward the goal was the installation of
ViaVoice for 0S X dictation software. Because of a chronic
physical condition, I require dictation software for stints of typing
longer than a paragraph or two, so there was no point in my even
trying to use 0S X for production until a dictation application
was available. Happily, despite some significant bugs, ViaVoice X is
the best dictation software I've used (when it works).
Dictation software aside, I suppose that the sort of software one
uses will inevitably influence the way one makes their OS X
transition. Here's what I'm using.
Text Editing/Word Processing/HTML markup
My main text-cruncher and HTML application in OS 9 is Tom Bender's
Tex Edit
Plus, and so it is in OS X. Tom got off the mark early in
developing an OS X port of TE+, and it shows. The X version is
stable and works just as well as it does in OS 9 as far as I've
been able to tell so far, except that it takes a bit longer to start
up - at least on the G3
PowerBook.
I'm also impressed with the new, OS X-only Okito
Composer word processor, although it is very much a work in
progress yet.
Email
I'm using three of the four email clients that I use in OS 9:
Eudora 5.1 , SweetMail
2.1, and Nisus
Email 1.6 (alas, old standby Eudora Light doesn't support X). All
three work tolerably well, although Eudora has been buggy at times. I
just downloaded the latest Eudora beta (20), and I trust that it will
be an improvement stability wise. I should I hasten to add that
neither SweetMail nor Nisus Email is bug-free either, but they're
both quite usable as well.
Browsers
Again, as in OS 9, I use several browsers. In OS X - iCab,
OmniWeb,
and Netscape
6.2. I still have to get one of the text-only browsers -
Links
or Lynx - up to
speed, that is: me up to speed on how to use them.
Graphics
MicroFrontier tells me that they are working on an OS X version of
my favorite graphics application, Color
It! However, for the present, there is the Open Source GIMP
(too big and complex for me - 189 MB!), GraphicConverter
(perhaps the best candidate until Color It! is available), Deneba
Canvas (too expensive), and the painting module of AppleWorks
6 (which I don't have at this time). This is one area where I
would be tempted to resort to Classic. I'm not waiting for Photoshop,
because it's just too expensive. I don't use it in OS 9
either.
Desktop Database/NotePad substitute
Notepad
Deluxe and Znippetizer
so far - two different, but cool, OS X native apps from
Scandinavia that do the job nicely.
FTP client
Transmit and
Captain
FTP. Both work. Transmit is very slick. Captain FTP is
freeware.
Text Search Utility
SpeedSearch
- works great, just like it does in OS 9. Better than Sherlock, and
it doesn't require disk indexing.
Text Macro Utility
TypeIt4Me
is quick, easy, and intuitive to configure. Rather than getting in
the way, it streamlines operations remarkably, especially for folks
who suffer from typing pain. The OS X public beta is a bit
buggy, but this is one I wouldn't want to get along without.
Spell Checker
Since Tex Edit Plus doesn't have a built-in spell checker, I need
a freestanding one. My favorite in OS 9 is SpellTools,
but there isn't much hope for an OS X version, so the candidate
here is Excalibur
which is freeware and works reasonably well.
It will be interesting to compare notes with Dan as the OS X
journey unfolds for both of us. Where both using PowerBooks - me a
500 MHz Pismo; Dan a 400 MHz
TiBook. I am underwhelmed by the sluggishness of Finder response
and application opening times on the G3, while Dan so far hasn't been
complaining, inclining me to be deduce that his G4 machine is
handling AltiVec-optimized Aqua, more slickly then my nominally 25%
faster G3 machine is. I have 640 MB of RAM, so I don't think that's
the problem - 500 MHz iBook owners with plenty of RAM are making the
same observation. OS X is usable on G3 Macs, but it's better-suited
to a G4.
