Just upgraded from 9.1 to OS X. What should I know?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Well, my computer had been acting pretty funny for a while, so I spent last night burning backup CDs, and then I wiped the disk, installed 9.1, and then I dusted off the OS X CD that came with the iMac and installed it.

I’m running 10.0.3, which unfortunately seems to be a wasteland as far as software goes. Everything’s made for either 8.6, 9.x, or Jaguar. (I want my iTunes!) Should I plunk down for Jaguar?

I can, however download iTunes 2 for 9.x, and run it in Classic mode. What’s Classic mode like? Does it retain all the fallacies inherent in System 9.1? (But even if 9.1 crashes, it’s isolated and I avoid a freeze, right?) Is it OK to run Classic apps regularly, or should it be reserved for occasions where nothing comparable is available for OS X?

What exactly is the relationship between the Mac OS X and UNIX? I know that OS X is UNIX-based. Does that mean OS X is a pretty wallpaper for UNIX, like Windows was (is?) for DOS?

Do I now have a fully-functional UNIX box? If so, should I bother to learn UNIX as an OS?

Sorry for the jumping around, I’ve had OS X for three hours after using 6.0.7, 7.1, 7.5, 8.6, and 9.1 over the past dozen or so years, and this is easily the buggest* jump. Any advice would be helpful.

*- typo, should be “biggest.” I sure hope it won’t be the buggiest jump.

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10.0.3 was buggy as hell, especially when you had to switch to classic mode. Jaguar is a bit better, but if you would have posted before the switch I would have recommended waiting just a bit longer. The OS seems better now, but the applications are still buggy. It is pretty drastic change, the whole “intuitive” nature of the Mac is changed. It’s kinda hard to get used to, but I think you’ll like it once you plunk down huge amounts of cash for all new OSX apps.

It’s a RAM hog too, you may want to pick up some extra sticks while they’re cheap. If an earthquake hits the pacific rim tomorrow, the price of RAM will jump before the wobbly Ming vase hits the floor in Taipan.

3

I would reccomend plunking down for Jaguar. The original releases of OS X have been of spotty quality. Jaguar was the first release I was impressed with.

Classic mode allows you to run OS9 apps in their own environment. As you noted, even if that environment crashes, it won’t affect any OSX apps that are currently running. Apps running under classic mode can do anything they can do when running under “real” OS9.

MacOS X is built on top of a UNIX-like operating system called FreeBSD. OSX can do anything that FreeBSD can, including compiling and running most unix software (assuming the source is available.)

Apple has added a number of technologies on top of the FreeBSD core, such as the Quartz vector graphics rendering engine and the Aqua user interface, NetInfo configuration manager and other cool stuff. It would be inaccurate to make a comparison to the first versions of Windows, as they simply provided a graphical frontend for DOS. OSX adds significant new functionality to what is already there in FreeBSD.

Learning UNIX is tremendously valuable thought not necessary. Go for it if you want. You can access your UNIX shell by using the “Terminal” application in your Applications/Utilities folder.

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I second increasing your RAM. I understand 128MB of RAM is the bare minimum for the OS. I have 256MB myself, and it’s barely enough for my games, web surfing, web design, and mp3 playing.

There are decent pre-Jaguar versions of OS X. I’m running OS 10.1.5, and it’s excellent. The only instability issues I’ve had have been with IE 5.1, when certain websites trip it up and choke it. I’ve run Office, Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, and a half dozen other apps with no problems at all. My computer’s on all the time, and it’s never run better. Though the cost is a prohibitive factor, the real reason I haven’t upgraded to Jaguar is because I haven’t felt the need to.

To ease the transition into OS X, I partitioned my drive and installed OS X on one and OS 9.2 on the other. I didn’t really anticipate having trouble with X, but I figured that if I had any software that was incompatible with it, it’d be good to have the option to run it in 9.2. So far, there are only 2 programs I can’t run in OS X: Diablo 2 and my scanner software.

And just FYI: I have iTunes 2.0.3. According to Apple’s website, that version should work with OS 9, and since I can use it in OS X, it apparently works in both OSes.

On the whole, the transition has been very easy. I’d never reformatted and partitioned a hard drive before, nor had I ever installed a whole, fresh OS before. But it was easy. I had to get used to the three dots at the top left of the window for window control (close, minimize, and maximize), and I had to learn to live without being told how many MBs worth of data my Trash would be deleting upon emptying, but those are some pretty small adjustments. Some people don’t like the bright and colorful interface, but I don’t mind it. Icons are bigger, which may be a factor if you have a small monitor.

Let’s see… Unix. You don’t need to know or work with the Unix side, although you can if you wish. Most Mac magazines’ Q&A sections talk about doing things in Unix, and there are quite a few books on using Unix on the Mac, so you can get as involved as you like. I myself have an O’Reilly book, Learning Unix for the Mac OS X. I knew some Unix before OS X thanks to my university’s system, but I think people without prior experience will find it readable and understandable.