A “Los Angeles Times” article says that Mac OS X is full of “promise and pitfalls.”
Writer Jim Heid (who is also a contributing editor of Macworld magazine) points out that even though Mac OS X ships in March, it won’t be installed on new Macs until July because, initially, there won’t be much software for Mac OS X. Of course, you’ll be able to run most current Mac apps in “Classic” mode, but Carbonized and/or Cocoa-ed apps (think of them as “native” X software versions) won’t roll out in bulk until summer, according to Apple.
“By not preloading Mac OS X until July, Apple is essentially admitting that the OS won’t be of much practical value until summer, when Apple expects a flood of native Mac OS X software to hit,” Heid writes. “And even that flood, assuming it occurs, will be missing one big wave: Microsoft. At the Macworld Expo, Microsoft announced that a Mac OS X version of its Office 2001 package will ship this fall. Buy a new Mac this summer, and you’ll have to run the world’s most popular business software in second-best mode.”
Meanwhile, Heid notes the new Mac OS 9.1 is out. The new Mac OS version had a low key rollout, to put it mildly. Heid said it’s solid and faster.
But he said the next generation operating system is coming along, and Apple is tweaking it based on feedback received from buyers of the public beta version. And even when the software flood begins, Mac veterans should take a slow and steady approach to Mac OS X, Heid recommends.
“It promises to be an awesome operating system, but so far it is just a promise,” he adds.