Hi! I’m here courtesy of the Carbon version of iCab running under MacOS X. I did the public beta and now I’ve installed the 1.0 release.
::thoughts::
I’m glad this exists. If I need a server OS, it is nice to have one with this kind of support that runs on the iron that I use. And it is serviceable as a workstation OS, but it has a long way to go before it’ll be my OS of everyday choice and preference!
Dear Steve:
When I open a folder, whether it be from the Finder or within an Open / Save / Save As type dialog box, I expect to be able to type the first couple letters of the folder I want to open and hit return or (in the Finder) go Command-Alt-O to open it. If I have to take my hands off the keyboard and scroll around with the bloody mouse, I ain’t using your OS, are we clear on that?
Now give me an Apple menu I can put stuff in.
And you can huff and you can puff and you can tout it until the proverbial cows come home but I ain’t using that damn dock. So give me a trash can that goes where a trash can belongs. Lower right hand corner.
On the other hand, it’s getting there. I’d say you’ve passed Linux in everyday usability at this point, and you’re gaining on Windows. And the apps are starting to roll in. I like the Timbuktu for X very much!
{Apple Menu\System Preferences\Startup Disk; set to OS 8.6 volume}
Lucky duck. I’m making myself wait until a few more apps get ported to X, then taking the dive. But it’s so hard to resist jumping in the pool and playing with the new OS…
Just create a folder, call it “My Apple Menu”, toss all your stuff in it, and then stick it in the Dock. Viola!
Can’t see why not, myself – nothing wrong with the Dock as long as you set it to auto-hide, IMO. I surprised myself at how I was able to adapt to Aqua after just ten minutes with the store demo unit.
Not bad for less than a month of the official release, eh? Can’t wait to see this at the end of the year.
I installed it on my second-gen iMac (whom I affectionately call Grover) and I’m digging it. I haven’t done much hardcore Mac use since like my old LC II, so this is quite a jump.
I don’t have any technical analysys or anything, but I gotta say, it’s hard to not lick the monitor, you know? The buttons and stuff all look like candy! Yummy.
Rasa, I’m spoiled. I use Kaleidoscope under MacOS 8 and 9 (regular plain-vanilla pre-X MacOS, in other words) and I’ve switched interfaces so often that the Aqua of MacOS X is just one more and wouldn’t even make the top ten (although the pulsing buttons are pretty cool).
Go download “TinkerTool” at VersionTracker or somewhere. It’ll put the trashcan on the desktop and a few other nifty things. Me, I’m used to using command-delete to trash things so I don’t mind the difference.
I’m one of the lucky ones to have a dual-processor G4. For some reason they have all sorts of nasty problems with dial-up connections in OS X. Kernel panics all over the place until some übergeek came up with a patch. It still suddenly disconnects way too often though.
Anybody tried to get the Apache web server running on X? I’ve done everything I can think of to start it up (and followed several so-called ‘foolproof’ tutorials) and it still doesn’t work
I have a first-generation iMac (ever-so effectionately known as Goatanus) who is running 8.1.
Can someone please explain what exactly happens when you upgrade operating systems? Will I lose my files? Or is it like new versions of AOL where all the useful parts of the older versions are trashed to make way for a new color of background and a bunch of flashy features that suck?
They Call Me Sneeze, I just upgraded from 8.5 to 9, to accomodate a new printer. It was a bit of a pain - had to fiddle with extensions a bit, turning them off and on, and re-enter some data about the ISP, update aliases, etc. Took a couple of evenings, on and off, but overall, not a crisis.
I understand that OSX is quite a change from the traditional Mac OS, so it may be harder. I tend to wait until the new system’s been out for a year or so before installing - effectlively letting rjung, Rasa, AHunter and drewbert do the testing for me, bless them.
Yeah, what jti said. Upgrading from any version of MacOS to a later one is generally pretty easy. It’s extremely rare that the new OS will trash your files or require you to reinstall your applications. It may add, as Sneeze put it, “a bunch of flashy features that suck” (those irritating Desktop Printers that tried to land on my screen come to mind), and although far less often may even “trash the useful parts of the older version” (I hate the new Sherlock and therefore saved back a copy of the older version with the “Find File” look and feel and destroyed the new one and kept the old).
(HINT for jti and other folks who tend to customize: before upgrading, select all your control panels and give them a Finder label; then switch your extension set to the built-in “MacOS whatever# (basic)” set and reboot. Now any new Extensions or Control Panels added by the new version will overwrite the old versions of the same rather than putting them in Extensions or Control Panels while disabled older copies sit in the Disabled folders; and any completely new ones can be identified once you switch back to your standard Extenion set because they won’t have the Finder label on them, so if they cause problems or you just don’t like what they do, it’s easy to locate and disable them)
MacOS X is not an upgrade to MacOS 9 the way 9 was an upgrade to 8 (or 7, or 6 for that matter). Except for the fact that Apple owns MacOS X, it has no more in common with the other MacOS versions than Yellow Dog Linux does, and in fact it has far more in common with Linux than it does with the OS you are using. Nevertheless, installing MacOS X will not make you lose your files either, not even your existing operating system, even if you install it to the same hard drive. (you can still choose which to boot from). Unless, of course, you elect to initialize the drive first
Once you are running X, your regular Mac applications can’t run except in an emulation environment called “Classic”. Mac OS X contains its own copy of Mac OS 9.1, or you can upgrade your existing (regular Mac OS) System Folder to 9.1 and use it for Classic. Mac OS X itself, however, can’t run those applications. The Classic environment feels about as integrated with X as a DOS Window running DOS apps felt in Windows 3.11 – many things work, some don’t (e.g., almost all Internet programs), and you can’t access things that can be accessed by programs that run outside of the box.
Yay! I received my first email under X, using the Carbonized version of Eudora! (It was a piece of $%#@@#!!! spam junk mail, of course, as I have not replicated my extensive set of filters yet, but it WORKS!).
Not quite. All of the stuff that belongs in my Apple Menu is in folders that contain folders that contain applications, files, or yet more folders. Stick it in the dock and I’ve got a list of folders but they aren’t hierarchical and are therefore useful.
Other news: I found the place that Eudora puts the folder containing settings, filters, and mailboxes, and replaced those folders with aliases of the same folders as they exist on the primary drive I usually boot from (Mac OS 8.6) and, yes, Eudora for X cleverly gets the idea and all my settings and old mail and everything are right there and fully functional. (And any mail I get or send while in X is available to me when I reboot into 8.6 or 9 as well).
I found and installed Graphic Converter for X and it works wonderfully. (Now I can view JPEGS without dropping into Classic!).
In news less wonderful, I discovered that MacOS X is only a half-assed AppleTalk client. I just called Miramar, the folks who make PC Maclan, and they are in the process of developing a complete and unabridged AppleTalk stack for X. Who woudl’ve thought AppleTalk would have to be added to a Mac as a 3rd-party add-on?!!
And I discovered that X knows not of my serial ports. I cannot print to my Epson inkjet. If I want a home printer to work with X, I’ll have to buy a USB PC-card. (and the damn card will have to be supported under X too).
Still, I’ve been running it for a couple hours at work, and yeah, I can actually get work done in X. The last software update / upgrade seems to have improved the way the Classic environment works, to the point that Classic apps are not painful to use in X! (Indeed, I was defining fields over the network in FileMaker).
I need NetBIOS though. X doesn’t come with a NetBIOS stack. And DAVE for X isn’t ready yet either Oh well, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time!
Yay, I got the DSL working! I’m using Verizon DSL with X right now!
I have NetBIOS also, courtesy of freeware program “Sharity”, but it doesn’t let me log into a PC domain, so it doesn’t do me any good at work But either DAVE from Thursby Systems Software or a Connectix product will be available soon
I got Sharity to work and now I have full NetBIOS networking. I actually have the ability to mount shares that the PCs running various flavors of Windows can’t access! (default $ shares). Not that I intend to inform the net admins of that!!!
Very nice! Free for limited mode, but that only lets me access one server at a time, so I sprung for the $59 license.
little bit of a hijack here.
I just upgraded my 5200 to MacOs 8, and I’ve hit a few problems. (Bleeding Edge user I ain’t) The most annoying being my 'puter now emits a constant squeal as soon as I turn it on, and that lasts until I go into the Monitors & Sound control panel… which I have to do every time I start up.
I’ve also completely lost the ability to log onto the web. I was using Netscape 3 with Config PPP. Now neither Netscape 3 or 4 works at all. I just keep getting a ‘Server doesn’t have a DNS entry’ error message. If Netscape is able to load that is.
re: Netscape browser error, what page are you trying to go to? Does it give you that error message again if you click the “OK” button and go Command-L and type in a different (valid) URL, such as http://boards.straightdope.com for instance? It is possible that your browser preferences are trying to load a home page that is no longer valid, but of course that would not explain an inability to browse to other URLs. (So, are you posting to this message board from a different computer?)
Can you send email from the 5200? (If you can send email, you are successfully connected to the internet).
Did you do a clean install to a brand new system folder, or did you install on top of your previous operating system? (Which was WHAT, by the way?) Is this 8.0, 8.1, or 8.6 that you’re running now?
Try this: boot from the installation CD (insert CD; hold down the “c” key and hit the power key and wait until you see the smiling Mac face before releasing the “c” key). Do you get squeals during boot-up when booting from CD?
If not, do a clean install if you have room on your hard drive. Reboot (it should use the newly installed OS). Now open and compare the following folders from the old and the new System Folders:
€ Apple menu items
€ Extensions
€ Control Panels
€ Preferences
Some software that you’ve installed over the years will have put its own proprietary items in these folders. For software that you still use, you’ll want to keep those control panels, extensions, preferences (and, less often, files that go loose into Apple Menu Items). Also, any shareware that you’ve downloaded and used and like that consists of Control Panel or Extension. However, some of these critters may be the cause of your problem with the squeal and/or the browser problem, so try adding a handful at a time (after making a list of which ones you added so you can remove them if need be) and reboot.
I get the Browser error for every page I attempt (including ones that I’ve never had problems accessing in 5 years). (and yeah, now I’m at work posting to the board.)
I’ll try Command-L.
I can send email… but I’m a technoprimitive. I dial in to my Pine server using ClarisWorks 4 for email.
I installed on top of my old OS, which was 7.5.3
I’m now running 8.1
And before I installed the new OS I removed all the unusual files from
€ Apple menu items
€ Extensions
€ Control Panels
I’m pretty sure I’ve removed everything from preferences too.
I’ll try rebooting from the CD to check on the squeal. (I’m not sure exactly when it started, since I always leave headphones plugged into the jack on the front. A habit, since my wife and I have different sleep schedules.)
OK, you’re flat-out plain-old failing to make an IP connection. (I wouldn’t bother with Command-L; that’s just a way of bringing up the “go to URL” dialog box).
You were on 7.5.3, you say. Back in the days of System 7, there was a flavor of TCP that differs from the later version. The later (modern) version is called Open Transport. The earlier version is/was called “Classic networking” or, less formally, “MacTCP”. The connection utilities and the control panels that properly set up MacTCP did not / do not always carry over properly to Open Transport. There was a transition period when you could choose between the two, then, later on, only Open Transport is / was supported. I’m guessing that your connections were set up under MacTCP and now that you’ve upgraded to 8, those connection utilities won’t work and your settings may have to be re-entered.
You say you dial up to your Pine server, which implies that you have a plain old modem connection. If you were using Classic Networking (MacTCP) before, you may still be trying to use a Control Panel called MacPPP or the freeware replacement that worked better, FreePPP, to actually make your modem connect. Alternatively, you may be using some sort of proprietary connection utility that was installed for you by your ISP way back when – I remember when I first signed up with Earthlink, there was some such utility, damned if I remember what it was. Anyway, you can’t use those. You need to use the Open Transport version, a Control Panel simply called PPP. (Unless your ISP uses the far less common SLIP protocol, that is. If so, let me know and I’ll dig out the information on how to set up SLIP under 8). The PPP Control Panel should be set up properly with your username and password, the correct telephone number, and the server’s IP address and domain. (You can get these latter two from your ISP if need be).
You should also check the Control Panel called simply TCP/IP and verify the settings. It should be set to use PPP.
One way of checking to see if you have been given an IP address by your ISP after the modem has connected is to open and turn on the Web Sharing Control Panel. If you have a valid IP address at the time, it will display it.
Hey Barbarian – did you ever get your configuration problems sorted out? I’d email you to find out but you don’t have that feature enabled at SDMB.
I had some configuration problems of my own: Mac OS X’s Classic Environment (for running regular non-“Carbon” Mac applications under X) apparently doesn’t like the combination of Sharity (NetBIOS) and DHCP over Ethernet network configuration. I thought I’d hosed something but I’ve since discovered that I can boot into classic with X set up as if for DSL connection and then switch to DHCP and it works fine. (bit of a pain in the ass, though).
I just started using OS X this week. Just trying to get up to speed on Carbon and Cocoa and all that stuff. I like it. I have forgotten too much Unix stuff, so I am trying to use the Shell more and more often.
Unrelated to what i need it for, I have had some trouble. I can’t access our network under OS X. Under 9.1 I have no trouble getting onto our NT volumes and copying files. But, under OS X, I can’t access them.
You can’t access the NT volumes that you were previously accessing without trouble under 9? Am I correct in assuming that you are using the AppleShare device in the Chooser to mount shared NT volumes?
Well, under MacOS X, AppleTalk is a 4th class passenger. It gets better shrift under NT, actually. You can mount AppleShare volumes only if they are using the form of AppleTalk that sits piggyback on top of TCP/IP. (In our office, that means nothing but a couple of AppleShare IP Servers).
On the other hand, you can use Sharity and mount those same volumes using NetBIOS, the way a PC would, assuming that those volumes are shared over NetBIOS (i.e., “Windows Networking”).
(To be fair, the form of NetBIOS that doesn’t sit on top of TCP/IP has also virtually disappeared and is seldom supported any more).
You can grab a free copy of single-server Sharity from the VersionTracker web site, and if you need to mount more than one volume at a time, the license that is one step above that is only $59
Alternatively, you can hold out for some 3rd-party s/w that will restore full-fledged AppleTalk networking to X, one likely candidate being Miramar, which makes the MacLan product that gives AppleTalk to Windows PCs.
