The great OS X 10.1 experiment, part II

About a month ago, I decided I wanted to know whether Mac OS X 10.1 was ready for me to switch to it full time, or whether I--a long-time Mac-using professional--still need Mac OS 9 to get my work done.

In the first installment of this saga, I lamented the iBook's noticeable but not debilitating oomph-deficiency. Apple clearly anticipated this criticism, since it released a speed-bumped iBook with a 100MHz bus the day after that column appeared. I will report on the new iBook after I have used it for a while.

In the meantime, the 66MHz bus iBook is proving an able workhorse, and while it's no speed demon, it's still plenty fast enough to work on. I do, however, stand by my assertion that 128MB RAM is woefully inadequate, and, having installed a 512MB DIMM in the iBook I'm currently writing this column on, I can say with considerable authority that this is a must-have hardware upgrade.

But hardware isn't everything. My 10.1 adventure is mainly about whether I have the software I need to do my everyday work. I can't, unfortunately, talk about the various bits of beta software I've been using, but quite a few critical pieces of software have not yet been released, without which I simply could not work. So, from that perspective, 10.1--nota bene: sans Classic--currently doesn't have the apps I need to work, Apple's grandiose pronouncements of over 1,400 apps notwithstanding.

And that's the crux of this issue: app availability is not about quantity, it's about quality. I need specific apps to do what I do; having a gazillion apps isn't helpful if the ones I need aren't ready yet.

That said, there are several software programs without which my 10.1 experience would be considerably bleaker. The one utility without which I would be well and truly sunk is DragThing. While 10.1's dock is now more configurable and therefore less of a pain in the posterior, I keep several DragThing docks floating around, and have a few hot keys associated with items I use with particular frequency. Highly recommended.

Two noteworthy small utilities are TinkerTool and Prefling. TinkerTool lets you change preferences already set in the OS, but for which Apple doesn't provide a user interface. It's non-invasive and lets you easily revert back to the system default state.

Prefling allows me to open the System Preferences app to the preference pane I need, rather than forcing me to make that additional hunt and click if I were to simply launch Sys Prefs. I use the app several times a day. Prefling has been around since well before 10.1, so I can't quite understand why Apple didn't integrate its functionality into the OS, given how staggeringly useful it is. And while I don't use it myself, several Mac OS X users I've talked to swear by ASM, since they simply can't live without their Applications menu.

For those who, like me, need to make lots of screenshots, there simply is no alternative: Snapz Pro X is the bomb under Mac OS X. Apple's Grab distinguished itself in the early days by being a better solution than pointing a digital camera at one's Mac, but only just.

Finally, QuicKeys X is a utility that I can't live without under 9.x, and which shows great promise under X. However, since it can't (yet) select menu items--something its maker CE Software tells me it's working with Apple to make possible--nor can it alias keystrokes that don't generate text, it's not quite a direct replacement for its Classic forbearer.

I confess, I cheat every evening and boot back into 9.2.1, since there is one crucial app I need that isn't reliable under 10.1: my data backup program. I back up my data nightly over the network with Retrospect. Since the whole point of backups is total reliability, this is not an instance where I feel comfortable using bleeding-edge software.

Mac OS X 10.1 remains a huge improvement over 10.0.x, and critical apps are becoming available, albeit very slowly. In my next column, I'll wrap up the 10.1 experiment, talk more about the iPod, and report on the new PowerBook G4 667.

Can you use 10.1 for work full time yet? Which OS X-native apps are still missing and stopping you from making the switch? TalkBack to me.