Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Slow transition to OSX

Earlier this week (August, 2006) two books arrived from Amazon; “Little MAC Book, OSX Tiger” and “OSX for Dummies.”
My current rig, the twin-processor G4, has both OSX and 9.2 on it. You can choose what it boots up. I switched it to OSX, but was utterly buffaloed. The mighty Mezz uses 8.6, which 9.2 is very similar to. So we switched it back, since I do well with 8.6, and didn’t have time to figure out OSX.
So I’ve been using 9.2 for some time, but have always wanted to switch to OSX.
I was introduced to “Little MAC Book” at Visual Studies Workshop. It was a fine introduction to the dreaded MAC world for Windoze people.
So “Little MAC Book” was my choice regarding OSX, since it’s so helpful.
I never read much of “Little MAC Book” for Visual Studies Workshop, since I really didn’t need to. “Little MAC Book” is rather basic, almost for ‘pyooter-users starting from Square One. “Little MAC Book, OSX Tiger” is almost the same way, although so far it’s helpful. “Gee, OSX is a lot like 9.2; it just looks different” — which probably means I could have figured it out without books. But I didn’t have time — and 8.6 was what the mighty Mezz used.
“OSX for Dummies” is Linda — although as far as I’m concerned it might be more help than “Little MAC Book, OSX Tiger.” “Little MAC Book, OSX Tiger” had a comment that 9.2 was terrible — as likely to lock up as Windoze 95. Well, I don’t know; maybe so. I never worked that much with Windoze 95, but our lone PC at the mighty Mezz had it, and wouldn’t shut down unless you pulled the plug. 9.2 sure bombed on me enough times; supposedly OSX cures that by segregating the system-memory used by apps. So the app may crash, but not the entire rig.
OSX is also based on a Unix kernal, and will supposedly even do the Unix command-prompt; something Linda is familiar with. The fact it’s Unix-based is what makes it stable. People have switched to Linux (a free Unix) because under Windoze an app might freeze the entire rig.
So what’s happening is that OSX is turning the personal computer into a mainframe; a rig that never crashes.
I’ve always wanted to run OSX, primarily because all the software upgrades I want to do want OSX. The ones I have are 8.5 or better, but not OSX. I can run my old apps under OSX-Classic Mode; but all my apps are years old.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home