CRO MAG RALLY OSX MAC OS X
CRO MAG RALLY OSX PDF
CRO MAG RALLY OSX DRIVERS
CRO MAG RALLY OSX SKIN

Drivers are special pieces of software that handle interactions between your Mac and the things attached to it. But would that really be an improvement?ĭriversĚ less obvious problem with OS X is the lack of native hardware drivers.

CRO MAG RALLY OSX MAC OS X

It’s true that you can switch back and forth between Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X as necessary. You can run OS 9 applications in OS X’s Classic mode-but why bother? Doing so won’t give you any of the advantages of Mac OS X, and programs often run more slowly. Most widely used applications won’t be available in Mac OS X-native versions until summer or fall. When we installed OS X on several Macworld systems, we found that Macs with less RAM slowed to a crawl when asked to do difficult tasks, or multiple tasks at once.ĪpplicationsĚs we went to press, few popular programs had been upgraded to take advantage of Mac OS X’s new features. (AltiVec is a set of PowerPC instructions paired with a vector-processing unit that enables a G4 chip to perform calculations on up to 16 data elements simultaneously-in applications written for AltiVec.) But OS X also appears to like lots of RAM.

OS X seems optimized to take advantage of the G4’s AltiVec instructions.

CRO MAG RALLY OSX PDF

Because graphics in OS X are based on PDF, scrolling through a PDF document was at least twice as fast in OS X as in OS 9.1. This test showed us some of the potential of OS X-native applications. OS X showed promise in one area: scrolling through a PDF document. In our Microsoft Excel test, a spreadsheet calculation took anywhere from two to four times as long in Classic as the same calculation in Mac OS 9.1 straight up. Here, too, performance improved greatly on the G4 systems.

In most Adobe Photoshop tests-Photoshop runs only in OS X’s Classic environment-OS 9 had an edge over OS X that ranged from slight to very significant. See “A Perfect 10?” for more test results (from Macs with 256MB of RAM only). Running OS X on G4 systems did close the speed gap significantly, and even on G3 systems, increasing RAM from 128MB to 256MB improved scores substantially.

Timed against the Finder in OS 9.1, OS X’s Finder made a disappointing showing when we asked it to open about 200 folders. Most people who have loaded OS X will tell you that the Finder “seems slow.” Our tests confirmed this. If an application freezes or seems to be endl To help you avoid system meltdowns, Mac OS X provides a new version of the Force Quit feature. But as more OS X-native applications become available, crashes should be few and far between. When applications running in Classic crash, however, they can hang up the Classic environment and all programs running within it. Moreover, when an OS X-native application does crash, the operating system and other active applications keep running-most of the time-so you don’t have to reboot your Mac. The new operating system does away with extensions and control panels, which are often the cause of crashes. Like a Rock Perhaps the most important reason to switch to OS X is an invisible one: stability. Users of dual-processor machines should eventually feel an overall performance boost in day-to-day work. OS X also takes advantage of multiple processors better than OS 9 ever has. As a result, Mac OS X should prove more crash-resistant than previous versions.

CRO MAG RALLY OSX SKIN

People notice OS X.īut OS X’s beauty is more than skin deep. Sit in an Internet café with OS X running on your PowerBook-make sure you’re positioned so that other people can view your screen-and you’ll see what I mean. We compared the speeds of applications running in Mac OS X and OS X’s Classic environment (which lets you run Mac OS 9 applications within OS X) with those of applications running in Mac OS 9.1. Macworld Lab and I hooked up dozens of peripherals to see which ones worked with OS X. There is a chance that it will run your current applications more slowly (or not at all), that your external hard drive or printer will not be compatible with it, and that it will be unbearably poky. This is a brand new Mac OS, built from the ground up. Usually, when Apple releases a new version of the Mac operating system, the questions you have to ask yourself are: Am I ready? Do I have the right model Mac? Is upgrading worth the cost? (In OS X’s case, that’s $129.) All of these questions apply to Mac OS X, but this time there is another, equally important question to ask yourself: Is Mac OS X ready for me? The impulse is understandable, but switching to OS X May not be prudent. OS X is here at last, and you can’t wait to begin using it.

Cro mag rally osx