I’ve read many favorable reviews of Jaguar, all of them saying that now is the time to upgrade, so I’m thinking I’m going to make the jump. I’ve got a 400 MHz G4, currently running 9.0.2.
So my question is, what problems should I look out for? I don’t have the money at this point to upgrade all of my software, which primarily means Quark, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Are there any difficulties in running it in Classic? I realize that this is not the best way to go, but I have to get started in OS X before I can begin upgrading everything else.
Any and all opinions, tips, and pitfalls to watch out for are greatly welcomed. Thanks.
I also have a G4 400 (the “Yikes” model, which was basically a G3 tower with a G4 processor slapped in there) and it runs 10.2 great. I have 512 megs of RAM, and from what I hear, you should have at least 256 megs to run OS 10.2 well.
I also have a 533 G4 “Digital Audio” model, which is what I am primarily using right now.
I have Photoshop 7 and Illustrator 10 (both OS X compatible) but I have had no problem getting Photoshop 6 (and 5, and 5.5) to run in Classic. It ran well on my G3-500 iMac too. Quark so far does not have an OS X-compatable version, and so far, I have been able to run it well too. (Not that I use Quark that much.)
So, tell me more about your G4—which version is it? The “Yikes” or the “Sawtooth” version? (The “Sawtooth” is faster, but my “Yikes” is just fine too.) How much RAM? What graphics card do you have?
One thing—I just upgraded to OS 10.2.2, and I found that my G4 wouldn’t “sleep” anymore. I discovered (as many other Mac users had) that it was a problem with a USB peripheral. In my case, a generic USB floppy that I use maybe once a month. I unplugged it, and now my G4 is sleeping just fine. (When I need the floppy I’ll plug it in to use it and then unplug it afterwards.)
I also want to tell you that while I first resisted OS X, now that I am using it day-to-day I really love it. There are a few differences (and a few BIG differences) but really—once you get into it, it’s fantastic. And so stable. I am really spoiled by the stability. OS 9.2.1 (which is my Classic version) is pretty decent, but OS X is so much more stable.
Another thing—get some books. David Pogue’s “OS X—The Missing Manual” is a good one. Oh! And if you can, try to partition your hard drive and have one partition OS 9 and the other OS X. Well, at least I like it that way. And if you have two hard drives, have OS 9 on one and OS X on the other. Comes in real handy sometimes.
I also have a 400 MHz G4, 512 megs RAM. I run Jaguar and Classic because Quark 5 (which I use a lot) and Illustrator 8 (problems with Illustrator 10 fonts) won’t run in OS X. When printing between Classic and OS X, I occasionally have to manually select printer destinations. Photoshop 7 runs in OS X. I like Jaguar well enough. I also just upgraded to OS 10.2.2, and find it to be quite stable.
Based on the answers so far, maybe I’m a little confused about the Jaguar vs. Classic set-up. How does that work, exactly? Do you have to switch something when you want to use an app that isn’t OSX native? Or do you ‘run Jaguar in Classic setting’?
yosemitebabe, Yikes? Sawtooth? I have no idea. It’s the silver & grey case. I have 576 megs of RAM. I don’t know what video card, maybe a ATY Rage 128Pro? Does that sound right? The computer was here when I got the job, so I didn’t have a hand in the purchasing of it.
I was already planning on installing OSX on a separate partition, I just happen to have one with 3 gigs set side that I’m not using for anything, so that’s not a problem. I’m really just trying to test the waters of OSX, before everyone else in the office commits to it.
yosemitebabe is more tech-knowledgeable about this type of thing than I am, so I humbly bow to her expertise.
I only know that when I boot up, both systems are activated. (One does, however, have the choice to open with one or the other through System Preferences, start-up disk). No, I don’t have to select an OS based on which program I am using. I think it is the other way around; I open a program and it is activated wherever compatible. For example, I open a file that is in Quark and that file opens in OS Classic. If I then open a file in PowerPoint 10 it opens in OS X. No fuss, no muss.
Sorry to be confusing. I may stay out of this to avoid further confusion, except to offer the occasional, “yeah, what she said,” which I know all Dopers really like.
Bottom line for me: OS 10.2.2 = very, very stable.
I also run Jaguar most of the time (at home), and like it a lot. As far as the Classic thing, you have the choice of booting into either OS9 or Jaguar, but if you boot into Jaguar, you can still run non-OSX programs in what is called the Classic layer “inside” Jaguar, which will still be in charge of the computer itself. The only reason you should ever have to boot up in OS9 (which is very easy) is if you have a peripheral or something that doesn’t work with OSX. It’s as simple as going to System Preferences/Startup Disk (like OS9 control panels), choosing “OS9” and restarting.
I have used Quark in Classic, and I haven’t had any problems with it. It feels just like running it in OS9.
There is a way to tell if you have a Yikes or a Sawtooth, but I’m too lazy to go upstairs where my Yikes is and look (right now—I’ll get back to you). I’m almost sure that the audio jacks on a Yikes are vertical, while the Sawtooth’s are side-by-side, but it could be the other way around. Anyway, it’s the placement of the audio jacks that gives it away. You can find pages on the Internet that will tell you (that’s how I found out) but damned if I can find anything right now. (I guess Google let me down on that.)
You need about 2 GB for Jaguar, so your 3 gig partition will be just fine. I just installed Jaguar on another partition last night (as a “backup”—I have way too much disk space) and as usual, the installation went seamlessly. I used a little over 2 GBs of space.
When you are in Jaguar and you click to start a Classic app (Quark, for instance) you get the Classic “emulator” popping up. It’ll look like OS 9 is booting up, on a little window on your OS X desktop. Freaky, the first time you see it. It is using your already installed version of OS 9 to do this, so you must have OS 9 installed. (Obviously you do.) As soon as Classic is completely booted up, you will be able to run your app, and it will have the appearance (and stability) of any other Classic app. (i.e. it won’t have the “Aqua” appearance to it.) Toggling back and forth from Classic to OSX native is no big deal. OS X automatically knows when you are starting a Classic app, and does its thing when it needs to.
If you find you have trouble running an app in Classic mode, it’s easy enough to change your start-up disk, boot into OS 9 and work from there. But really, I never have to do that. But I guess it happens sometimes.
576 megs of RAM sounds fine. It also sounds like you have the ATI Rage 128 16 meg video card, which is fine (that’s what I have). Just go to Apple’s System Profiler and it’ll tell you what video card you have.
There is a System Preference for launching in Classic, which you can elect to Start when you log in or not. When you launch a Classic App, it will launch anyway, so depending on how often you run in Classic mode you may want to have it launch on log in.
I should also add that Office X runs extremely well on OS X. Not that I have any vested interest in getting people to buy it…
There’s a great OS X tutorial here - go to the right side of the page where it says “OS X Guidebook2 v1.1” - it’s a PDF file, which will open in Preview under OS X if you don’t have Acrobat Reader installed.
Oh. I was wrong about the placement of the sound jacks on the G4s. I found a link on one of the lowendmac.com pages I gave above. And here’s an illustration showing the difference. The “AGP Graphics” G4 (Sawtooth) has jacks that are vertical, the “PCI Graphics” G4 (Yikes) go horizontal.
Yeah, Office X rocks. Though I’d like it better if there were a way to “sync” my data in Entourage across multiple Macs and my iPod, like I can with Address Book and iCal. I wish Apple and Microsoft would team up on iSync to make this possible, then I could switch my calendaring-type stuff from Entourage, instead of the not-as-powerful iCal.
So do the OS X versions of Photoshop, InDesign (Quark must die!), Go Live and Illustrator. And OS X is a joy to use. I find myself cringing when I go into work and have to suffer through the plain-looking, crotchety old Mac OS 9.
Yeah, Entourage doesn’t directly support this. There are workarounds where you move your identity folder to the other machine. You can also sync Palm to multiple Macs. Moving forward I think we are going to support iSync, but I’m not sure how that will all shake out though…
Jaguar is probably kinder if you don’t already have a MacOS X environment set up. If you do, it isn’t quite a seamless upgrade from OS X 10.1.x –
a) If you have Fink set up, and have downloaded and auto-compiled some Unix programs, you may need to start over with them. This is true for X Darwin applications as well as command line apps.
b) Sendmail, once again, will (what else?) break and you’ll spend a day hacking prefs files getting it working again.
c) Some 3rd party tweaks like Duality skins, FruitMenu, X-Assist, etc., may not work until you download more recent versions, and some may not work at all.
d) A small handful of programs will do their screen redrawing and/or previewing and printing weirdly, most notably for me FileMaker Pro, which is the main reason I haven’t upgraded from 10.1.5
You may want to check out 10.2.2 (6F21) - they fixed some Quickdraw GWorld offscreens issues specific to PPT SlideShow, and I see in the release notes they also addressed some redraw issues in BBEdit and Mailsmith…
Well, if you all do line up with iSync, that would likely create a new Entourage user. As it is, I’ve got four icons in the Dock: Mail, Address Book, MT-NewsWatcher and iCal, which could be reduced to one, if Entourage would be iSync-ready.
In fact, I only moved over to the Apple apps from Entourage in order to tie all my stuff in with iSync and iChat. It would be cool if you all would tie Entourage into the new system-wide Address Book database, too. That would actually take care of the contacts thing with iSync, I believe. Oh well. I’m sure whatever you all get around to doing will be worth it. Even if I have to shell out more bucks for Office v.XI or whatever.
Oh yeah, and while you’re here, heh heh, any word on IE 6?
Could someone out there send me the darn installer for the latest OS X update? I have tried to run updater several times, but I suffer from thin pipes here in Saudi, 'specially during Ramadan.
