For Position Only: Stumbling Toward Mac OS X
It became increasingly clear in the last few months: I needed to retire my G3 workstation, which had grown sluggish and temperamental since I bought it in spring 1999. At that time, it rocked with 128 MB of RAM, a 6GB hard drive, and OS 8.5. But recently, software upgrades have taxed its processing power and begun to take a toll. This spring, I could only open a couple of applications at a time (only one if the one happened to be InDesign 2.0). By early summer, I became subject to unexpected system freezes. In August, I got one of those dreaded system bombs — for the first time ever on my trusty teal tower — and I knew the time had come.
I had to upgrade. To a G4 processor. To OS X. To Jaguar.
On a Scale of 1 to 10…
I deliberately waited a year and a half to upgrade to OS X thinking it would mean a smoother transition. When Jaguar was released this summer, I figured that meant OS X was stable enough to take the plunge and that by now, all the applications and drivers I need would be readily available– with the noted exceptions of Acrobat Distiller and QuarkXPress — for this “modern” and “wildly innovative” operating system.
As system upgrades go, I’d rate this one about a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. All the foundational ducks were in a row — yes, Jaguar is stable and yes, my workhorse apps are available. Photoshop, InDesign (which I prefer over QuarkXPress), and all the other tools of my trade installed smoothly and ran sweetly from Day 1. The problem was that I couldn’t use them because I was too busy sweating the small stuff — it wasn’t nearly so easy to get the basic tools of my business (both hardware and software) up and running. For independent creative professionals, that’s worth noting.
Stump the Chumps
After waiting for what seemed like an eternity (but was really only three weeks) for my back-ordered Jaguar-equipped G4 iMac to be shipped to me, it finally arrived: I had all 17 inches of LCD display, 80 GB of hard disk space, DVD-burning SuperDrive, and 768 MB of RAM unpacked, plugged in, and turned on within minutes. But I’m not Jeff Goldblum in the commercials and I don’t use a dial-up Internet connection, so I experienced my first headache: configuring my DSL modem. It required only four tech support calls — two support calls to Apple and two to my service provider, both of whom liked to double-, triple- and quadruple-check my TCP/IP settings, which I copied over from my old system and were correct from the get-go.
Of course, I knew my settings were right all along, but would they listen to me? No. If the problem wasn’t my TCP/IP settings, all they seemed capable of doing was referring me to the other vendor to sort out the problem. Finally, on my second call to my ISP, the rep suggested it may be a bad port and I might have to send the system back to Apple (egad!). That’s when I swapped some cables around to check, and ta-da, I connected! Lesson #1: My computer and my hub don’t communicate with a cross-over Ethernet cable.
Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
The good news is that yes, Classic does work seamlessly in OS X. The bad news: you need to use it. At least I do, because half of my peripherals don’t have drivers yet for Jaguar.
Let me amend that: My Ricoh digital camera doesn’t work with iPhoto import, and Ricoh hasn’t yet updated its OS X driver for Jaguar. But it plans to, which is more than I can say for Canon, which hasn’t made support for my CanoScan scanner available for OS X at all, much less for Jaguar. And neither Canon’s Web site nor its customer support will commit to having plans to do so — ever. Great. Another example of planned obsolescence. Take two giant steps forward with a speedy new computer, one leap backward with peripheral compatibility. (Unless the unsupported device is a printer, in which case you can use Jaguar’s CUPS technology to achieve backward compatibility. Lucky for me my HP LaserJet and Epson inkjet printers are supported.)
The Tech-Support Shell Game
Figuring out the myriad of other pesky problems continued to make me pull my hair out last week. For example, Apple bundled Smith Micro’s FaxSTF with my system, but as it turns out, the version they included wasn’t updated for Jaguar. Go figure. But no one at Apple could tell me that was why my fax-modem didn’t work. (Thanks anyway for the free 90 days of support.) Only after a day’s frustration with dead-end customer service recordings at Smith Micro and repeated keyword searches was I able to figure it out and find the updater buried in a deep, dark crevice of Smith Micro’s Web site.
And of course all this time I was actually trying to get work done and earn a living, so having Quicken available was a priority – but it couldn’t open my files. Intuit was perfectly willing to send me new install disks of the application, which came preinstalled on the computer, but when my files still wouldn’t open, the company wanted to charge me $2 a minute to help me on the phone. No thanks. A couple more hours spend plundering through the company’s online support netted me the answers I needed. Do you think I can charge them my usual hourly rate for the time I spent making the program they gave me actually work?
Lessons Learned
So although it’s not my favorite part of being a small-business owner, I did don my IT hat for a few weeks there, and things are finally running fairly smoothly. I have a relatively basic set-up here, working independently with only minimal needs for networking and the good fortune of having manageable, even flexible deadlines. Still, the process of getting all of my devices and business applications to work smoothly has sapped me of the energy needed to tackle the important stuff: to calibrate my LCD monitor, for example, and to manage my fonts, which are out of control on this OS. I’ll share my insights on those topics and others — like how to create real PDF files in OS X — in future columns.
The moral of today’s story: Sure, the aqua blue interface is pretty, but like all good and meaningful things in life, be prepared to work for it.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on October 10, 2002
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