I just read an Ars Technica review, by John Siracusa, of Mac OS X 10.0. For the most part he's right on the money and write a relatively impartial review, considering Ars Technica is more of a PC site. His main problems with Mac OS X is the performance of the Finder and the more limited user interface compared to Mac OS 9. And he's right, people who are comfortable with Mac OS 9 will not like Mac OS X, at least at first. Such has always been the case when the OS made major changes (like going to Multifinder, or color, or going to the PowerPC processor). I certainly think I will be able to live with the current limitations and although I did once say that I wouldn't be an early adopter to an OS, after my first experiences with Mac OS X I'm hard pressed to stop myself from switching to it full time. Change happens and you either adapt or you don't -- I don't necessarily think that one is better than the other.

In any case, it's time to continue my explorations of Mac OS X. Now it's on to the programs in the Applications folder. The first application is Address Book, which looks to be at first glance a nifty little utility. Before I go on I should point out that I don't expect any of these applications to be best-of-class, better than commercial applications. Apple tends to provide smaller, more focused, elegant applications that fulfill 80% of people's needs. That's enough for he average user, power users know where to get better applications that address their particular requirements. One usability point that I'm just noticing. The various windows are indepent of each other. Click on an application's window and that's the only window that comes to the front. You have to click on the application icon in the dock to bring up all of that application's windows. Another thing to get used to, but I'll adapt. Another thing that I missed from the last part, you can hide all other windows or just the current application. The commands were moved to the application menu.

Back to the Address Book. It has LDAP support, although I couldn't get it to work with Oracle's LDAP server and couldn't get out of the firewall to test the other servers (I don't have the Ricochet set up yet). It's a simple database, elegant yet non-configurable, other than adding LDAP servers, categories, and some custome labels. Each contact has a first and last name, title, company, one address, five contact/email fields, and four custom fields. Not a huge amount of information, although adequate for simple users. I'd really like two address support, and tracking birthdays in a calendar (or a calendar for that matter), things I've become used to with Palm Desktop. The main window shows a searchable list of entries, with a split pane at the bottom showing the currently selected entry's contact information (though not the custom fields or most of the phone numbers). There is space for a little picture for each entry. You can assign multiple categories to people, then only show certain categories, one way to differentiate home and work since you have to give them separate entries. It would be nice if the zip code were automatically filled in once you type in an address. Just go to the Internet and look it up, though I guess there would be privacy concerns. The Address Book also ties into the Mail application.

The Applescript Script Editor looks much the same. The Script Runner is new. It leaves a small window up which you can drag scripts to run or choose from a pop-up window. The Calculator is as anemic as the standard System 9 calculator, though it looks quite nice. The Clock application shows a little clock in the dock, though it's kind of redundant since there is already a menu clock. It is an example of an application that shows status in the dock. The Dock Extras folder has some dock mini-apps: Battery Monitor, Displays, and Signal Strength. Nothing too useful there. The Chess program is based on GNUChess. Nice graphics but otherwise not too many features. It does support voice recognition. Image Capture downloads pictures from a digital camera. Not too useful for me since I use my PowerBooks PC Card slot to transfer digital pictures. Internet Connect is used to dial up to an ISP or to an Airport network. Another small, self-contained application with few options.

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