Mac OS X 10.2 clearly puts Apple way ahead in operating systems, Charles Haddad writes in his latest ” Byte of the Apple ” column for BusinessWeek Online . In fact, he says that all Mac users who’ve been resisting the move to Mac OS X should move to Jaguar, the “anti-Windows.”
“It’s arguably the best OS ever released for personal computers,” Haddad praises. “Fast, stable, elegant and intuitively easy to use, OS X makes owning a Mac once again a mark of distinction.”
The columnist praises Jaguar’s ability to connect and talk with PCs, Rendezvous networking innovation, Quartz Extreme (which fixes Mac OS X’s “sluggish” performance on older Macs), the revamped Sherlock 3, new Find feature and iChat. He even likes the innovations “borrowed” from Windows XP: the ability to set text fonts to display without any jagged edges and the capability of setting file and names to appear to the right of their icons. But thank goodness the similarities between XP and Jaguar stops there, Haddad writes.
“Unlike Windows XP, when you install it, it doesn’t force you to type in a long serial number,” he explains. “Nor does it require any activation or copy-protection process, as in Windows XP … Apple is no saint, that’s for sure. But at least it wants to empower — not control — its users. And that distinction helps make the Mac truly special once again.”