And for heterogeneous environments with Macintosh clients, Mac OS X is worth a look. And Windows users won't need to relearn simple skills when moving to XP, as Mac users must do when moving to Mac OS X.įor users who've suffered through Mac OS 9's constant crashes, Mac OS X is the answer. Comparing the OS to Windows is more of a draw: Mac OS X's visuals are cleaner and more aesthetically pleasing than Windows XP's Luna interface, but XP's task-based paradigm will help people be more productive. It's amazing that the company was able, in one-fell swoop, to completely out-do years of UI work by the Linux camp: Mac OS X is far more elegant than anything on Linux.
And an emulation mode-called the Classic environment-that runs older Mac OS applications loads slowly, which is a pain for people with a vast library of existing applications.Īpple claims the OS will soon be the most commonly used UNIX desktop. One problem I ran into with the initial release is that it contains no DVD playback software, which is curious. Mac OS X is still incomplete, although the company plans to complete it this summer. The Aqua UI has its annoyances-those darn hopping icons in the new dock, for example-but Apple hit a home run with this OS. Judging an OS solely on its look and feel is shallow I suppose, but there's something special about Mac OS X. The end result is an OS that rivals Windows 2000, Windows NT, and Linux for reliability and stability. That situation changed this spring when Apple finally released Mac OS X ("ten"), which is based on Berkley System Designs (BSD) UNIX, a Mach micro-kernel, and the elegant NeXTStep software that Steve Jobs developed while between jobs at Apple. You might be aware that the Macintosh's weak spot has historically been its OS, which has survived largely unchanged for a decade and a half.