An auspicious debut: The Dock revisited, and other 10.1 niceties
By Adam Gillitt, October 4, 2001
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I got up on Saturday morning and went down to the San Francisco CompUSA store, where I waited in line for about 15 minutes with a small group that grew to about 30 people before the doors opened. When we got downstairs to the Apple area, alas! there were no copies of the Mac OS X 10.1 upgrade available, just two sheepish-looking Apple reps. They informed us that the FedEx delivery had not yet arrived, and took names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of the first 50 people, promising to contact us hopefully later in the day, or at worst, Monday.
I went home and back to bed (Saturday morning sleep-ins are sacred!), and
shortly after noon, I received an e-mail letting me know that a copy was
being held for me, so I went down and retrieved it and installed it on my
G4/533 DP.
Let’s get some of the basics out of the way. Yes, it is much faster. Yes, it’s much more complete (DVD playback, DVD and CD-R burning, etc.). There are new versions of many applications, including Mail (which no longer pops open a window whenever no other windows are open), Address Book, iTunes and the final (very snazzy, I must admit) version of Microsoft’s IE 5.1, to name a few. Classic seems much more useful; I am now using my regular OS 9 volume as my Classic volume, instead of one prepared especially for OS X.
There are, however, a few problems that I have encountered with 10.1. The most serious is documented on Stepwise – basically, installing 10.1 disables Apache Web serving, which would have been most annoying to try to figure out on my own. I have noticed another bug using the factory-installed ATI Rage 128 card with some OpenGL screen savers, where only the upper left quadrant of the screen updates correctly while the other three quadrants smear.
Despite these caveats, this version of OS X is ready for prime time as promised. The changes are most noticeable in the interface. A lot of attention has been paid to the way the user works with the operating system, both simplifying the experience and giving the user more control.
The menu bar is no longer a vast expanse of empty space. In addition to the clock on the right side, there are now a variety of icons, called Menu Extras, which are activated according to the machine configuration or the user’s choice: for displays, volume, AirPort, IrDA, PPPoE, PPP and battery. These icons can be rearranged by command-clicking and dragging to either side, or removed by dragging off the menu bar. This relieves much space from the Dock while keeping them easily at hand. At least one developer so far has created a Menu Extra for its music stream. In addition, for OS 9 users who miss the application menu on the right side of the menu bar, ASM 2.0b1 is a slick little package that allows you to emulate just about all the functions found under OS 9’s app menu.
The Dock has received somewhat of a makeover as well. The preferences now allow you to attach the Dock to either side of your screen, instead of its default position at the bottom. There is also a second choice for minimizing windows to the Dock, called “scale,” which is faster and less complicated than the default “genie” effect.
Still missing is the ability to anchor the Dock at one end or the other. The OS X default is to center it, which means most icons move from place to place. However, I keep my Dock on the right hand side of my screen and anchored at the end, which keeps the trash can always in the same place (see the screenshot). To achieve that functionality and other cosmetic touches, like transparent hidden application icons and additional scale effects, users need to install either TinkerTool 2, or an AppleScript called TransparentDock, which further allows users to modify or remove the Dock’s background entirely, and enables other features like the ability to restart the Dock. Curiously, the ability to indicate the current (frontmost) application with a blue triangle is no longer an option. ASM 2, mentioned above, helps distinguish the current app by showing its icon and/or name in the upper right corner.
Thankfully, however, it is now possible to change volume icons so you can distinguish them within the Dock. Instead of an anonymous metal drive case, you can personalize the volume with something easier to pick out. Unfortunately, icons in the Dock are still not spring-loaded – when you drag something over a volume or folder icon, it will deposit it at the root.
When a program in the background demands your attention, it now makes its presence felt by bouncing its icon violently – about three times the height and velocity it normally achieves when indicating program launch. It’s both cute and annoying; ultimately, I think the latter will win out. It’s most annoying when you are running an instant messaging client in the background, but it is admittedly better than hijacking the system with an error message. I think it might make more sense for it to bounce once and change color than to have a constant tantrum.
ITunes 1.1.2 (included with OS X 10.1) no longer has its own Dock Extra – its Dock icon is more interactive, and shows the current track as well as simple commands when you click on it, which is even nicer than the most miniaturized of iTunes’ windows.
Many other areas of the Aqua interface have been addressed. The System Preferences panel has been reorganized into new categories (Personal, Hardware, Internet & Network and System), and a new set of preferences for Universal Access and the Desktop has been added. Third party developers can also add their preference panes to System Preferences.
In keeping with the model that the Finder is a separate application and not part of the OS, Finder preferences (displaying volumes on the desktop, window behavior, Trash warning toggle and file extension visibility) are kept in the Finder’s program menu, separate from the Desktop and Dock preferences found with the other System Preferences. This is confusing at best; it seems all of these could be kept in the same place.
The Finder sports several improvements, including ... drum roll please ... scroll wheel recognition, the ability to resize columns in Column view and native CD-R burning. Some of the choices in menus have been rearranged and have new key commands. However, labels are still missing, and contextual menus continue to be few and far between. These are two components of such frequent usefulness to any OS 9 user that their absence is especially obvious. Another nagging problem is that windows still don’t remember their view settings consistently.
Despite a few small problems and omissions, what I found most noticeable is that, finally, with 10.1, OS X feels like a real operating system. Unlike earlier versions, which felt like the contrivances of “The Truman Show,” this is an OS that I can use on a daily basis. Things work right, and now seem to be more in the right place, and the overall OS works and operates smoothly.
It’s not perfect yet – I am encountering a few problems with Classic, (crashes, missing menu bars) which I assume I can eliminate as I refine which extensions load. I found it helpful to create an Extensions Manager set of what I need when my OS 9 volume is used by Classic, and then launch it via the “Open Extensions Manager“ option on the “Advanced” pane of the Classic preference panel. I just leave Classic running in the background until I need an OS 9 application, which cuts way down on launch time (RAM is cheap these days, folks – you can do it, too).
My biggest gripe is waiting for third party developers to produce the goods. Apple claims 1400 applications work with Mac OS X, and some of the larger packages are trickling out, but there are still too many major players missing in action. Number one on my list is Formac, who has yet to produce any sort of driver for the Proformance III card I use to drive my SGI flat panel display. (Picking on other companies is too obvious and has been done to death by others.)
The changes Apple made to 10.1 have helped shape the OS X user experience into something that makes sense, works properly and interacts smoothly. Like most others, I was reluctant to pronounce OS X 10.0 ready for the masses, but with this update, I can confidently say to my mother (my tech barometer of choice), “It’s time to upgrade.”