Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

OWC: Plug & Play Hardware RAID up to 8.0TB. High Performance, Data Redundant Solutions. FireWire 800, FireWire 400, USB2, or eSATA. Hot Swappable Bays, Data Rates over 200MB/s. Click here

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

10 Forward

25 Years of Mac

Things I Really Like about Jaguar

Dan Knight - 2003.01.08

Popularity: LEMLEMLEMLEM

I'll be rebooting my 400 MHz PowerBook G4 into OS 9 sometime today so it can be backed up over the network by Retrospect, but the more I work in Jaguar, the more I like it. I may have to invest in that ten user Retrospect client upgrade real soon now.

Today we're going to look at things I really like about Mac OS X.

Independent Windows

The biggest difference between Mac OS X and the classic Mac OS is the way they handle windows. In the classic Mac OS, all of the windows related to a program are bundled or layered together. If you bring a single AppleWorks file to the foreground, all of the AppleWorks windows move ahead of the windows for any other program.

Under OS X, only the window you've selected comes forward. This can seem confusing at first, but it's a great productivity booster. Instead of one window blocking the information you want to copy from another application, you can have the windows in any layering sequence you like.

If you want all the windows related to AppleWorks in the foreground - the way the classic Mac OS did things - just click the AppleWorks icon in the dock.

The Dock

I love the dock. I hate the dock. I have mixed feelings about the dock. It's more convenient than using a program resize thislauncher and a program switcher, which is what I do in OS 9. And it's nice that programs that I drag into the dock stay in the same sequence.

It's still frustrating that the dock isn't transparent and that you can't click through it to get to the resize corner of a window, as in the image to the right. The resize box is somewhere behind the BBEdit Lite icon, but you can't get to it with the dock visible. I still think Apple should add a handle to the dock - just like the classic Mac OS Control Strip has - to make it quick and easy to hide and unhide the dock. Barring that, they should make the dock transparent so you can reach through it.

Screen Capture

I was going to complain about the way Jaguar saves screen captures as PDF files. I'm so used to doing a screen capture, popping it open in Photoshop, working with it, then exporting for Web use. That doesn't work with Photoshop 5.5 in classic mode - or maybe I just don't have the patience to wait an hour or so for it to convert the PDF into a 300 dpi Photoshop file.

For once, Google wasn't particularly helpful. I finally surfed over to OSXFAQ and found the solution to my problem. It's so easy - but at the same time so unexpected. Almost every program I've ever worked with lets you choose your graphic format through the Save As... command. Preview doesn't. You have to select the Export command - and it works like a charm.

It would be nicer if the OS gave you the choice of what format to use by default, but with Jaguar you've got PDF. Period. There are some third party utilities to address the issue, but for now at least I know how to do the conversion.

Find Loads Faster

Apple got smart and stopped using Sherlock as the search engine for your hard drives and network servers. The new find utility pops up in almost no time.

IE 5.2.3 Rocks

I don't know why, but Internet Explorer on Jaguar is much faster that I've been used to on the classic Mac OS side of things. I haven't done any timed tests, but pages pop up a lot faster. It's still not as stable as I'd like, but it is better than IE 5.1.x on the classic Mac OS. Of course, Safari might just make this a moot point.

Safari 1.0 Beta

I got home from work Tuesday night to learn of all the amazing things Apple hath wrought: larger and smaller PowerBooks, even more powerful iApps, a faster version of AirPort, and FireWire 800. But from a practical standpoint, I'm most impressed by Safari, Apple's new browser.

Like many others on the Mac Web, I downloaded Safari immediately, launched it, and discovered that it's fast, compatible, and robust. It works very nicely with Yahoo Games, and it hasn't crashed yet. This could make a real dent in the IE market - and also do significant damage to Chimera, Mozilla, OmniWeb, iCab, and Opera market share.

If you have Jaguar, download the Safari beta. Try it. You'll like it. LEM

Recent 10 Forward

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.