PC Magazine looks at OS X 10.1

PC Magazine has posted a review of Apple’s recently released Mac OS X 10.1. The first major upgrade to Mac OS X since its release garnered and editor’s rating of 4 out of 5 in the new review, entitled Mac OS X 10.1: At Last!

Echoing comments from many Mac users, PC Magazine said that 10.1 is a definite improvement, and the editors note that “many of these enhancements should have been there from the beginning,” as well. The biggest benefit that 10.1 adopters will see is a substantial performance increase, according to the magazine. The editors say OS X 10.1 is much speedier when it comes to opening applications, for example.

The editors note many Mac OS X 10.1 usability improvements, such as a moveable Dock and a reconfigured System Preferences panel that’s now organized into functionally similar groups. Also appreciated are the new items resident in the menu, such as a battery status icon for mobile users, model status, a volume control lever and more.

Although PC Magazine credits Apple for getting DVD playback working in 10.1, the editors knock the update for not being “as robust as many would have hoped.” Of particular criticism is 10.1’s lack of support for older Macs with DVD-ROM drives that use hardware-based MPEG video decoding systems.

PC Magazine credits improvements both to AirPort wireless networking and to iDisk, Apple’s own online storage system that’s part of iTools. Apple also gets high marks from the magazine for improved printer support.

The editors are disappointed, however, with Apple’s lack of support for SCSI hardware. And for some inexplicable reason, PC Magazine chose to criticize Mac OS X’s lack of support for parallel ports. “The parallel port, although not disabled, doesn’t work with printers,” they wrote. It’s all the more curious since Macs do not — and never have — shipped with parallel ports, unlike many Wintel-based systems.

All told, though, PC Magazine gives the new version of Apple’s next-generation OS a thumbs up. “This new version is truly an essential release for the Mac faithful, who won’t feel like beta testers any longer,” they concluded.