I pre-ordered Mac’s OS X because the educational rate was a dirt-cheap $69. Now I’ve got it and while I’m anxious to use it, I’m wondering if I should hold off a bit. Among my concerns:
I use my iMac mostly for manipulation of music (ripping, mp3’s, burning, etc. on iTunes, which has an OS X version), and Internet stuff. Any advice is appreciated.
Most of the advice I’ve heard says to partition your drive - one part for OS X and one for OS 9. That way you’re not completely out of luck when you need a feature that’s missing from OS X right now - burning CDs is one of them, I think. Also it’s missing DVD playback, and a few other things. Everything is supposed to be ready by the time they start installing X on brand-new machines, sometime in July.
been to http://www.macfixit.com ?
Just wish I had a Mac new enough to run X. 
MacFixit’s a great resource; check out their new Mac OS X page for OS X-related info.
As for me, I’m not making the upgrade just yet. I’m holding off until I get Myst 3 on DVD (which should be out late this summer).
[sub]Yes, I’m a dweeb.[/sub]
Yes I’m very happily married…yes you’re younger than me…yes you’re in Hawaii…but damn 
I like it when you talk Mac 
I’m assuming you got the Release Candidate build, yes? The official build ain’t out yet. Anyway, your existing non-Carbon apps will work in the Classic environment. Classic is still far from perfect, but it works pretty well.
As for CDRW and DVD, that should all be working in a matter of a few weeks. The RC build does not have support for it AFAIK.
The best way to find out what problems you may encounter installing and running anything is to learn what problems others have had. That said, I suggest taking a quick peek at the MacFixit OS X forums and reading some of the threads there.
There are three relevant forums there: Troubleshooting Mac OS X, Mac OS X Applications, and Mac OS X Talk. There’s also a thread dedicated to OS X installation tips. I’ve poked my head into all of the forums and the installation thread, and they’re all worth looking at.
You can find links to the three forums and installation thread on the Mac OS X page I linked to in my previous post (they’re at the very top of the page).
beagledave– 
Friedo, the final release IS out, I bought it at Staples on Saturday. I’m typing this right now on my Powerbook G3/500 under OS X.
As drerwbert suggests, I have my machine partitioned into two drives, one for MacOS 9.1, and one for OS X. You must upgrade to 9.1 before upgrading to OS X. Actually, I had a bit of a struggle getting Classic to run under OS X, I have a third partition so I just put a clean install of 9.1 there, and use that to boot Classic. Otherwise, I just boot from my old 9.1 partition when I want to burn CDRs, watch DVDs, or use any of my funky old extensions, one of which is surely the reason that particular system folder crashes when Classic launches. So I just use the new one I made just for OS X, and leave the old one alone.
So far, I’m totally pleased with OS X, and compatibility with Classic apps has been excellent. The only thing that doesn’t run under OS X or Classic is Virtual PC and they’re working on that now. The worst part of OS X is the total piece of crap Internet Explorer version that ships as the default browser. It’s a beta, it was supposed to be finished in time for the release date, but again, MS deliberately screwed Apple by shipping a horrid, buggy product. Fortunately the OmniWeb browser is available for download, it is native OS X and it is a LOT better than IE. I love OmniWeb!
As far as I can see, there is no downside to OS X, due to the great compatibility with Classic, other than the minor issue of CDR. You can access all files in the OS X side when you boot into 9.1, so you can back up to CDRs and do DVDs. But so far, once I got Classic settled, I haven’t booted into 9.1 once. It’s rock stable. Oh yeah, printer drivers are a bit scarce, I guess that is a downside, but not for me, I use a postscript printer and those are fully supported. But if you’ve got an inkjet, I hope it’s on the list of Epson printers with drivers available today, otherwise you’ll have to wait a bit.
Once you’ve got OS X installed, it’s really intended for use as a full-time always-on system connected to a cable modem or other full-time online access. You can run web servers, and all the geeky unix stuff. It is a LOT better than any of the Linux distros I’ve used. It is a bit confusing when you tweak some of the low level internals, since most Mac people don’t have unix experience. But you better get some, this is the wave of the future.
Okay, partitioning seems the way to go. But that only gives me more questions, questions which will show how little I know about computers:
Thanks again for any help!
I’ve used MacOS X in the store demos and think it’s the coolest thing I’ve seen all year. Even so, I figure I’ll wait a few months (for the initial glitches to get ironed out and for more applications to get converted over) before I make the big switch.
I have to admit, though, I’m seriously tempted to switch now – UNIX-level robustness, that yummy Aqua interface, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…
Try this link:
There’s a section on partitions and OS X at the bottom of that page.
The book mentioned in there, Sad Macs, Bombs, and Other Disasters, goes into detail on the topic of partitioning. It’s worth checking out. I recommend you get it anyway, if you own a Mac; it’s one of, if not the best Mac troubleshooting book out there.
Also:
http://www.macosxhints.com/pg1.php
The page I linked to above has this link on it as well, but I’ll post it here too in case you miss it. It’s a site dedicated to OS X topics. The lengthy ‘Before Installing’ section is about partitioning.
Good luck, and have fun.
Another suggestion for general info about Mac upgrades (software and hardware) is
Thanks everyone for your advice. The partitioning was easy and OS X is working nicely for me so far…
With one exception: Compuserve. (I’m only using it because I can get it for free.)
When I first fired up Compuserve from the folder that I had copied onto my computer from my backup CD, it said it needed to use something called Compuserve Link and needed some file in the system folder. “Oh!” I thought, “I accidently deleted a file from my old 9.1 system folder. I’ll just do a reinstall.”
I did that, and got pretty much the same problem. I installed Compuserve on my OS X drive, started it and it basically couldn’t find my modem. It INSISTED that I connect through TCP/IP because it couldn’t find my modem… or something.
I also did an install on my 9.1 drive (but did the install while running OS X) and got the same problem I did the first time.
I admit, the details of this might be mixed up, but I just want to know if anyone knows how to get Compuserve to run under Mac OS X.