[DeacInCola]

davic, please read the second sentence of my second paragraph...... you may of course take it or leave it but please believe it is well intended advice from someone fresh from going thru what you are about to embark on
now for the general post I was going to make----thank you for your comments suggestions and sympathy..... some asked fair questions which I will attempt to answer from my oldie macaholic, newbie Xer point of view -- I know many hate long posts -- be advised -- long post ahead
my main point of first post and this one is to offer my old OS 9 buddies a different perspective from all the X is the greatest thing since sliced bread euphoric it never crashes stuff we have heard.......... no one should come to X without first reading one of the deailed help books out there and without spending a number of hours on this forum or others like it to get a more realistic view of the problems and pitfalls............ i wish I had..... I erred............and yes I have given serious consideration to completely wiping the 80 gig hard drive, investigating my potential hardware issues and just starting over from scratch with X with all I have learned in mind........ my crsytal ball does not tell me if all that time and effort to reinstall everything I have done so far would be more time than trying to fix the stuff in place........ like not taking the advice I was given that it was fine to have the same short user name and password for all 3 Macs..... if you can picture having 5 near identically named drives there on your desktop you would understand --- for now I have created one of those no icon folders with the real name of the volume next to each similar name.........
1. I want to make it perfectly clear that I am thrilled and happy for all of you that have had such positive experiences with X. In no way am I debating nor doubting what you say and certainly not trying to convince you that you are wrong and that 9 is better.
2. I am new to it, am having many problems, have lost 2-3 weeks of productivity time troubleshooting and learning it and learning the new versions of my basic software , and totally redoing relearning my basic ways of organizing and using my Mac --- I'm sorry folks-- it is different , very very different. Perhaps some of you who went to it when it first came out have forgotten the transition time and in the 3-4 years it has been out I and many like me have continued happily using 9 and gettingmore ingrained into its manner of doing things.
I have looked at X over the past few years, even bought a brand new G4 iMac as soon as they came out as my kind of "learning machine" for X, but it was so so different and my software did not work on it, I only used it every once in a while and for backup since my new 180 gig LaCie drive would only work on it. And i saw enough of what X was that i knew it was going to a huge time consuming pain to make the transition.
3. I miss more things about how 9 worked than I am excited about new things X does for me......I am having to change how I work........ I know it may be a small thing to you but I have tons of years of moving the mouse to the top right corner to change applications...... I'm sorry but I am not overwhelmed by the coolness of the Dock -- its simply different and given time I'll adjust.
4. Everything just works different and that is time. mail vs outlook Express for instance -- more new learning and tons of time learning how to import old mail from OE and it just doesn't come in the same so more time reorganizing and much of it not come in at all. Tried to go slow adding and learning so I used and learned Safari fora week or so before wanting to import my old bookmarks, so i go hunting for an import command and nope, can't do it-- got to take hours cutting and pasting old bookmarks into it...........
Then there's the stuff that won't work period........... first you've got to learn Address book or Entourage and decide which will be best for contact database and then try to export import from your old one (TouchBase) .. nope , sorry -- can't do that after almost a day of work and research online and forums like this trying to find a way to do it...... nope too bad for you, just go ahead and type in all the data from over 1,000 contact files........... and none of the new ones do all that Touchbase does as cleanly and easily as it does............ oh but you say Address book is wonderful and you can iSync it to your iDisk and that is wonderful -- just run iSync I was told....... nope, sorry, does not work as the fields in Address book on iDisk are different from fields in he Mac and as a bonus somehow it copied all of them back from iDisk to Mac and so now I have a mess of duplicates of each contact in the Address book...............
yeah but there's all that new stuff like iPhoto that is so so cool..... OK let's try that.. put 5 dig photos in it to play and learn and see how it works and find Slideshow..... OK let's try that sounds cool-- WRONG .... total and complete old time Freeze solid requiring power button restart (note this was on day 2 of having OS X)......... after repeating the problem, deleting that group of photos thinking one was corrupted but alas it froze and crashed every time (and yes I "repaired permissions" whatever that is every time)........... so I just punted iPhoto for now and will get back to that problem later as I had much more important stuff to do and learn.
how bout 12-13 years of using certain shortcuts in Freehand, one of which was used as many as 500-1000 times/day -- kind of gets ingrained wouldn't you say....... nope, now that short cut (ComTab) is hardwired to switch apps....... I know I know, I'll relearn it -- just use Com D instead..... oh now that makes sense...... Com D has been 'duplicate for15+ years but that's OK, a year from now I'll probably forget these days.................
So basically I wanted to warn this poster above who was about embark on the 9 to X transition for the first time that it was long and hard and fraught with a steep huge learning curve which we Mac lovers have always been able to avoid. i wish someone had been more honest with me, but all i heard was how glorious it was.
And of course what I've discussed is only highlights of a few of the relearning process and does not even address the crashes, freezes, unexpected quits etc that yes, of course I had some under 9, but i knew how to take care of them. Now its a new ball game with new rules new troubleshooting and all this recs for help and what to do make very little sense. now we're told to go to Terminal and type some esoteric code and hope you don't blow it up completely if you leave out a comma. No I never used REsedit -- i heeded the warnings.........
We have a small computer section of a sports board I frequent and of course as usual I had been the voice in the wilderness talking about Macs admit all the PCers......... well now one of the PC gurus is euphoric about his new mac 17" PB he's got coming in. And why? Because he's some kind of programmer and is orgasmic about UNIX and using Terminal and other things to work with X. That said volumes to me. I sadly truly believe at this time that Mac has left its history of user friendly simple clean interface. I resent the time it has cost me but I'll get over it and probably in a year after drinking the cool aid i'll be back on board. I resent having to have permissions to use my own stuff , I essentially work alone, don't need all that junk, but there is no option to avoid it (remember you've got to "repair permissions" every time you sneeze). I resent having to pay another $150 or so for extra programs like Diskwarrior etc just to maintain an OS that already cost you $129 and will again next year (Nortons has been fine but nooooooooooooo I am now told on these and the Apple forums, Nortons is no longer any good for X) But for now with all the things that don't work and are different and right around the corner is Tiger with more gadgets and stuff to learn and go wrong. HOPEFULLY it might address some of the concerns we have now. and don't even get me started on fonts
sorry folks, brevity has never been a trait of mine........ and I see often how you put down people that simply say I hate X, its awful...... so I thought I'd try and give you some specifics of the frustration and to warn other OS 9 folks still sitting on the sidelines..........
PS.......... my most favorite new feature is Expose -- now that is brilliant............ 2nd place goes to Preview with its little side bar so you can open multiple photos and not have 15 new open windows!!!!! 3rd favorite would be longer filenames . See I'm fair, there re a few better things !!!!!! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Please consider me family and let there be no mistake -- I love my Macs -- all 20 or so I have owned.............
Now returning to work, lets see, where was I......... oh, why does every Freehand file I open ask for New Cent SChoolbook every file I open when it is sitting right there in the font folder............is it impt to me? well it is "my" font and is in every FH production file (1,000's) I have for 14 years............

[JackMac]

You don't say what computer you are upgrading. If it is a CRT iMac make very sure that your firmware is up-to-date. In fact it is probably prudent to look through the Apple web site for any requirements pertaining to your computer model prior to going to X. Everyone that I know personally who have gone to X have been very happy with it. In my case I needed to get a new computer and my old one did not have the capability to run X. After a couple of weeks, and the appropriate software updates, I never used classic.

[Praxis]

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no one should come to X without first reading one of the deailed help books out there and without spending a number of hours on this forum or others like it to get a more realistic view of the problems and pitfalls

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Again, you're generalizing. I switched straight from Windows to OS X 10.1 (the worst completed version of OS X).
I utterly loved it. It was so much EASIER than windows. I never read a book, I never experienced ANY of the crashes you did.
The only OS X computer I've ever had that crashed a bit was a Pismo PowerBook, which is unsupported by OS X. And it was still stabler than my Windows PC.
My Powerbook is ROCK STABLE.
I'm sorry you've experienced so much trouble, but really, most people don't go through that. What version of OS X are you running?

[DeacInCola]

JackMac and Praxis
thanks for your responses
First of all, congrats on switching to Mac and I have no doubt that X is better than Windows /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif, but that's not the comparison I am making. And you are obviously much smarter and luckier than me if you learned X for the first time without ever reading a book, manual, online Help, whatever.......... where, for instance, did you learn that you have to, ought to repair permissions before and after the installation of any new software?
I have a G4 466 , 512 ram, running 10.3.4, with two drives (12 gig and 80 gig) .............. all upgrade, memory addition, new drive installation, Panther installation, hardware checks and Firmware upgrades were performed by my local certified Apple tech .... I did nothing myself as I wanted it done as clean and right as possible........... trust me, I foresaw a few problems but wanted to start as clean and fresh as possible.......... At he same time I did the same upgrade to my G4 Dual, but it is the Mac my assistant uses and has not been used nor pushed as much as mine during this transition period......... it has not crashed as much as the G4, but the new software learning problems has been the same.......
not all my difficulties are crash related as I summarized above............ and if we were all as fortunate as you, these Help forums would not exist, would they?....... I'm merely trying to help folks avoid the pitfalls that I believe I made in the transition and at the same time with specific threads asking for advice on how to fix/learn some of my problemos,,,,,,,, and I know how sensitive some on these boards are so was specifically not asking for help in this thread so as not to "hijack" the thread subject.......

[Praxis]

I never repair permissions before installing apps.
I finally learned to after having run OS X 10.2 on my iBook for nearly a YEAR without repairing permissions, and it started acting a tad bit funny (hiccups in speed, occasional glitches) and someone here told me to repair permissions.
Ever since, I do it once a month, and have no trouble.
That's like asking a Windows user who taught him he should Defrag the hard drive...its something most people learn over time. Even now, though, I don't do it before installing apps. It's just a recommendation they give.
There is no such thing as a perfect computer, but OS X is the closest I've seen so far (though it'd be cool if they put background permission repairing /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif ). My school had OS 9 computers. My Pismo and iBook had OS 9 preinstalled. OS 9 was FAR less stable than OS X for me.
The Help forums will always exist, for both OS 9 and OS X. As I said, there is no perfect computer. The difference is, the problems in OS X...are SOLVABLE. Windows usually requires a reformat to fix troubles.

[lkalliance]

Praxis, DeacInCola isn't comparing OS X to Windows, he's comparing it to OS 9.

[davic3]

having looked around at other post and agter speaking to several friends who have made the switch it does seem that DeacInCola is in the minority and most users enjoy the new OS. I have played around a little with it on a machine that we have at work. Parts of it do seem very very confusing, i do have a hard time finding files on it or even finding my way around it. Hopefully though I will get better with practice

[DeacInCola]

no doubt I am in the minority. come to think of it since as a Mac man I'm already in a minority and now I'm in a minority of the minority, WOW , doesn't that qualify me for some special givernment compensation??? /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif
Praxis, so what you're saying is that the near unanimous recommendation of every guru on all these forums as well as the recs of nearly all subgururs to repair permissions frequently and certainly after installations and certainly at the first indication of a problem is wrong?? Welcome to minority status!!! /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
davic, As a fellow Niner, I wish nothing but the best for your adventure. Strap it on and come on in; the water's fine .............................. for the majority, but that minority of the country on the west coast of Florida don't think its too fine right now............:)

[Grant_G]

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for the majority, but that minority of the country on the west coast of Florida don't think its too fine right now............:)

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I just got an email from a friend on the North Carolina coast and he says it's effecting them all the way over there. Rain and wind, also tornado warnings. How're you doing in SC?
G

[d00d]

I'm late to the party, but here goes:

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And pray you are one of the lucky ones who has few problems and not one of the rest of us that have daily crashes, freezes, unexpected quits etc etc etc. I have nothing but respect for those who have found this thing so wonderful and stable, but a quick look at these forums as well as the Apple forums will point to pages and pages and pages of people having trouble with one aspect or another.

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People come to web forums to complain and get help, not to report when everything goes right. Believe it or not, years back when OS 9 was prevalent, these boards were filled with OS 9 problems.

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and be prepared to do some strange tings and get strange advice about entering wierd looking codes that mean nthing into something called Terminal which near as I can figure out is somewhat akin to the old ResEdit we were told to avoid.

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Many times it is easier to tell a user to copy and paste a command into the Terminal than to walk them step by step through it in the GUI. It's not a regular thing and when people recommend the usage of one of these commands, they tell you the information you need to use it. And no, the Terminal is nothing like Resedit.

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And a major piece of advice is be sure be very sure what you want to name your computer and your SHORT USER NAME correctly because if you err, it can only be changed under penalty of potential death.

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While changing a short name isn't trivial (someone has made a program to simplify it), changing the name of a computer is brain dead easy.
System Preferences -> Sharing -> change the name of the computer
wipes sweat of forehead That was tough.

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And already the boards are full of people having problems making one tenth upgrade to 10.3.5.

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Exaggerate much? I count about maybe 10 threads with 10.3.5 problems (and I'm being generous). I spend lots of time on these boards and your claim is completely bogus.

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no one should come to X without first reading one of the deailed help books out there and without spending a number of hours on this forum or others like it to get a more realistic view of the problems and pitfalls

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Horse puckey. My brother used purely OS 9 and below for the better part of a decade. He's no computer whiz. For college, my parents got him a G4 iMac. He jumped straight into Jaguar (OS X 10.2). He noticed things were different. He adjusted in a week with no help from me, no books, no forums. It's not such a terrible transition.

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if you can picture having 5 near identically named drives there on your desktop you would understand --- for now I have created one of those no icon folders with the real name of the volume next to each similar name

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Huh? Why don't you simply rename them? No fuss no muss. As for the no icon folder, I have no idea what you are talking about.

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I miss more things about how 9 worked than I am excited about new things X does for me......I am having to change how I work

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Major software changes always effect workflow changes. Office 98 was nothing like Word 5.1 and Excel 4. The longer you go without upgrading, the more drastic the changes seem because you missed all the steps in between.

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I know it may be a small thing to you but I have tons of years of moving the mouse to the top right corner to change applications

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So get a third party app to restore it up there. There are several.

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I'm sorry but I am not overwhelmed by the coolness of the Dock -- its simply different and given time I'll adjust.

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I't's not just a coolness thing. It's a functionality thing. The dock opens up all kinds of possibilities, several of which I already can't live without.

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Everything just works different and that is time. mail vs outlook Express for instance

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Geez, can we take an anymore drastic example? We're talking about two email programs made by two entirely different companies, Apple and Microsoft respectively. That's like comparing Outlook Express to Eudora, or Musashi, or Mulberry. Different software companies make their programs different. It's a fact of life. If you wanted something like Outlook Express, why didn't you get Entourage, which is based on the same base code? I believe it also has a terrific import utility for pulling stuff out of Outlook Express.

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Tried to go slow adding and learning so I used and learned Safari fora week or so before wanting to import my old bookmarks, so i go hunting for an import command and nope, can't do it-- got to take hours cutting and pasting old bookmarks into it...........

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While there is not explicit import command, Safari imports from IE for OS X's favorites the first time launched. You can also transfer favorites from many other programs using a number of freeware utilities available on the net.

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oh but you say Address book is wonderful and you can iSync it to your iDisk and that is wonderful -- just run iSync I was told....... nope, sorry, does not work as the fields in Address book on iDisk are different from fields in he Mac and as a bonus somehow it copied all of them back from iDisk to Mac and so now I have a mess of duplicates of each contact in the Address book...............

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Without proper information, it's hard to troubleshoot what happened. I've never read of such an issue and certainly never encountered this myself.

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yeah but there's all that new stuff like iPhoto that is so so cool..... OK let's try that.. put 5 dig photos in it to play and learn and see how it works and find Slideshow..... OK let's try that sounds cool-- WRONG .... total and complete old time Freeze solid requiring power button restart (note this was on day 2 of having OS X)......... after repeating the problem, deleting that group of photos thinking one was corrupted but alas it froze and crashed every time (and yes I "repaired permissions" whatever that is every time)........... so I just punted iPhoto for now and will get back to that problem later as I had much more important stuff to do and learn.

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How were you sure it was a freeze? Did you try pressing escape? Cmd-tab? Cmd-opt-esc to force-quit? It might be fixable simply by deleting a preference file.

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how bout 12-13 years of using certain shortcuts in Freehand, one of which was used as many as 500-1000 times/day -- kind of gets ingrained wouldn't you say....... nope, now that short cut (ComTab) is hardwired to switch apps....... I know I know, I'll relearn it -- just use Com D instead..... oh now that makes sense...... Com D has been 'duplicate for15+ years but that's OK, a year from now I'll probably forget these days.................

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Cmd-tab might be resetable to another shortcut (I'm not sitting at my Mac at the moment, I'll have to check later). Using cmd-D was a decision made by Freehand's maker. Take it up with them. OS X didn't put a gun to their head and say "use cmd-d and no other keystroke."

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now we're told to go to Terminal and type some esoteric code and hope you don't blow it up completely if you leave out a comma. No I never used REsedit -- i heeded the warnings.........

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Some people recommend Terminal commands because they happen to be the easiest solution. It's not the only way necessarily. And the TERMINAL IS NOT RESEDIT.

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well now one of the PC gurus is euphoric about his new mac 17" PB he's got coming in. And why? Because he's some kind of programmer and is orgasmic about UNIX and using Terminal and other things to work with X. That said volumes to me.

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How terrible! Imagine that! OS X gives more freedom in how users interact with the system. Awful! Horrific! (end sarcarsm)
Since when is having more options a bad thing?

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I resent having to have permissions to use my own stuff , I essentially work alone, don't need all that junk, but there is no option to avoid it

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Permissions shouldn't affect you. Turn on auto-login and don't even bother with multiple users. Use a generic login name and password that everybody uses and it'll seem just like it was a single user system from before.

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remember you've got to "repair permissions" every time you sneeze

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Some people recommend it at the drop of a hat. I've never said it was necessary and several other experienced people here say the same thing. It's like rebuilding the desktop in OS 9. That and zapping the PRAM used to be standard advice for OS 9 even when it has no relevance to the problem. It's not so different.

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I resent having to pay another $150 or so for extra programs like Diskwarrior etc just to maintain an OS that already cost you $129

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You don't NEED Diskwarrior at all unless you've had a catastrophe in your file system, which could have happened in OS 9 and again it would have required a third party app. Do you even realize that Diskwarrior started for OS 9?

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Nortons has been fine but nooooooooooooo I am now told on these and the Apple forums, Nortons is no longer any good for X

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Wait, so there's a problem with OS X because Symantec can't properly maintain its program? The Mac OS is not a priority for them and we know this because Symantec has officially discontinued Norton for Mac.

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will again next year

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Don't buy it if you don't want to. No one is holding a gun to your head. Many people stuck with Jaguar and most apps don't actually require Panther (10.3), just Jaguar (10.2). You've stuck with your current set up for so long, there's no reason you can't do that with whatever version of OS X you're at now.

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oh, why does every Freehand file I open ask for New Cent SChoolbook every file I open when it is sitting right there in the font folder

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Which font folder did you stick it in?

These posts were common back when OS X had just come out, and trust me, earlier versions of OS X weren't as friendly as they are now. The problem is that many people go a long time without upgrading and when they finally do, they have to do a major overhaul of all the software they are using (just as you described). However, most major software packages when through a phase when they worked for OS 9 and X, which should have eased the transition for most users. If you have problems or questions, post them. People will answer you. Many people need help when starting to use a new piece of software. There are Windows users looking for help with OS X and believe it or not, OS 9 as well. OS 9 is completely foreign and harder to understand for them. People find what they started using originally the most comfortable thing to use (at least at first when trying a new system). It's human nature. Making a snap decision because of some growing pains and warning other users off isn't helpful, particularly if you haven't taken the time to educate yourself. I hope you take us up on the offer to help instead of simply using this as your soapbox to scream and yell your frustrations out without actually trying to solve the problem.

[DeacInCola]

Grant G
yeah we got hammered with thunmderstorms a while ago and more coming BUT these are not aprt of the hurricanes which don't cme until tomorrow and Sat... supposed to be mainly big rain event and potential flooding once they get to us, but from another board Tampa posters are reporting evacuations now....
dOOd
thanks for your detailed reply, appreciate it... have only scanned it quickly for now but will read carefully, try some things you mentioned and get back to you, but its clear from a quick read you have misunderstood or taken some things I said wrongly...........I know I probably sound stupid but I do know the difference in Apple. Microsoft, Adobe and Macromedia......... this thread has been a discussion of the transitioin from 9 to X which at least to me involves more than merely the OS.........its the total experience required by the change to X
thanks

[Praxis]

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Praxis, DeacInCola isn't comparing OS X to Windows, he's comparing it to OS 9.

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I realize that, but he also claims that no one should go to OS X without reading a book. My point is that Windows is even more different from OS X than OS 9 is, but I made the switch without ever even TOUCHING a book.

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Praxis, so what you're saying is that the near unanimous recommendation of every guru on all these forums as well as the recs of nearly all subgururs to repair permissions frequently and certainly after installations and certainly at the first indication of a problem is wrong?? Welcome to minority status!!!

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You like to exaggurate, eh?
I said that it isn't necessary to repair permissions every time you install an app. It's not a bad precaution, but its not absolutely necessary. And at the first indication of a problem, of COURSE you repair permissions, I never argued with that.

[Grant_G]

A rule of thumb I followed (before reading Dr-NiKoN's detailed explanation of permissions in my 10.3.5 update thread) was to repair permissions following any installation made by an actual Installer program. Those that are simply drag and drop installs, not necessary. After reading the good doc's treatise, though, I'm not at all sure about it anymore. For those unaware of his credentials, he manages IT over quite a large Mac setup in Norway, several hundred if I'm not mistaken. He knows whereof he speaks.
G

[berg]

Repair Permissions?
Sure it's not Absolutely necessary before and after any major install ... but why wait till something strange starts happening that a simple repair permissions would have fixed initially. Especially for the average user that doesn' know or have the time to research troubleshooting. Troubleshooting should be proactive not just reactive ... That's why I always recommend users to at least install Macaroni if they do nothing else .. that way if they forget to repair permissions after an update it'll be done for them automatically and potential issues are nipped in the bud ..
Here's Apples say on the subject ..
Apple - Repairing Permissions
http://docs.info.app...ple.com%3a80%2f
Before I get a lot of flames on this post I do realize that a lot of you know more than the engineers at Apple, but I just would rather be safe than sorry ...