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| Macintosh OS X | Macintosh |
| In a profession steeped in
tradition, Apple’s new operating system, OS X, certainly will raise eyebrows. After
all, the current classic Mac OS works just fine for most, so why change? That is what I
thought when I first saw Mac OS X, but I’m now convinced that X makes sense for many
law offices, and it will only get better. OS X breaks with the previous Mac OS design by placing a UNIX-style OS kernel on top of Apple hardware. This new architecture provides protected memory for each running application. If your word processor crashes or hangs for any reason, other running programs, including the actual OS, are unaffected. Just “force quit” the non-working application, and relaunch it. No more rebooting the computer to resolve an application or system crash. OS X also provides preemptive multitasking, which means you can surf the Web or use speech dictation while your Macintosh is sorting a database or reformatting a spreadsheet. None of these capabilities exist in previous Macintosh operating systems. The most striking cosmetic change in OS X is the aqua user interface. Simply put, the aqua look of OS X is like moving from black and white television to a high-definition color wide screen. Buttons pulse with bluish hues while awaiting your save command, and onscreen text is gorgeous, anti-aliased and crisp thanks to a new Quartz abstract drawing layer. There also are changes to the look and feel of the OS. The Apple menu is retained, but doesn’t resemble its predecessor. Gone is the chooser as a means of selecting a printer or scanner. No Apple menu-based control panels exist; they now reside as separate applications under a system preferences option. If this is too much for some, various shareware solutions exist to re-establish a more traditional Apple menu. The “save/save as” dialog boxes now attach to the actual document itself, something Apple describes as “sheets.” So you can open a “save” dialog box, postpone saving the document, and still work on that document or others. Extensive networking capabilities are built into OS X. AppleTalk is supported as well as straightforward access to Windows networks. What replaces the traditional Apple Menu is Mac OS X’s controversial interface element, the Dock. This Dock can be placed on the left, right or bottom portion of your screen and consists of a row of icons that represent currently open programs, files and system resources. Any document or application can be added simply by dragging its icon onto the Dock. As more items are added to the Dock, the icons become smaller to accommodate the additional icons. Drag your cursor across the icons, and each one becomes larger as the cursor passes over it. This feature aids in locating which application or document to open. Recognizing that many older applications are still essential, Apple provided OS X with the ability to run OS 9.1 applications. While in OS X, simply launch 9.1 (Apple calls OS 9 its “Classic” mode) as an application first and then boot the target application in OS 9. The Classic OS now controls the computer as before and the legacy application will run. You lose the new functionality of OS X when running 9, but you gain compatibility with old applications until they are ported to OS X. To go back to OS X, simply quit running the Classic environment. There are genuine concerns when migrating to any new OS, and X is no exception. Initially, few legal-specific OS X applications exist, although more applications are being introduced. Microsoft is shipping Office v. X (reviewed on Page 46), which provides law offices with a key suite of integrated applications. IBM completely rewrote its flagship speech-to-text program, ViaVoice for Mac OS X (reviewed on Page 47). This version takes advantage of OS X capabilities in ways not available under OS 9. Virtual PC 5.0 (reviewed on Page 49) is native to OS X, and provides rock solid, albeit slower emulation of most Windows operating systems. Scansoft and ABBYY are shipping Mac OS X versions of their optical character recognition software, OmniPage Pro X and FineReader Pro for Mac. A number of other software developers have released or have disclosed plans to release Mac OS X updates to their software, scanners, printers and other products. System requirements for OS X are significant. You will need a G3 or better, and at least 128MB RAM, with more RAM preferable. For many longtime users of OS 9, the new X interface will take some time to become familiar with. There are new procedures to retrieve, save, store and compile information that will require some adjustment. Apple continues to release updates to OS X, and appears to listen to many suggestions from its user base in providing periodic improvements to the operating system. |
Apple Computer Inc. (800) 692-7753 www.apple.com/macosx Price: $129; includes full install of Mac OS 9.2.1 G3 or higher; 128MB RAM Reviewed by David A. Saraceno, a practicing attorney and operator of MotionLaw, a forensic animation consulting firm in Spokane, Wash. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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