Review by Russell Streshly

There was a time long, long ago when I enjoy using my Macintosh. Pleased with so fine a product, I bought many over the years. Certainly OS X (Panther) has thrown a couple gigabytes of ice water on that romance. But Panther has made one thing clear that never was before. Previously I never could quite express what I enjoyed about the older Mac operating systems. I can now. Before, I could find things. And I always knew where I was in the hierarchy of folders. If I had a document in a folder, stored in a second folder that ordering was always transparent. I could see the folders open, one inside the other. And when I closed up, they slipped inside one another quite intuitively. No more. In OS X, I haven’t a clue. I do have a 750-page manual that I keep in my lap when working in Panther. With a trembling finger on the step-by-step instructions and my other hand on the mouse, I can empty the trash successfully. I know the red buttons close something-sometimes something I wanted closed, but more often my home window. (Which I’ve learned to find after a brief but infuriating search.) There are candy colored yellow and green buttons too though I can’t say what they do just now. It’s all there somewhere in the manual, but before reaching for help try a little reason. If the red pill closes a window, what would logic suggest about the functions of the yellow and green? Don’t bother; logic is no guide in Panther. And that encapsulates the problem. In OS X nothing makes much sense, intuition is of no value, everything must be memorized. The claim is that OS X is bedrock stable. Try to console yourself with that tradeoff the next time you face the spinning beach ball of death. Hint: Erase your hard-drive and re-install everything. A rock after all is a rock.

And don’t get me started on the Dock. I’ve read (several times) the twenty-page introduction that explains just how easy the Dock is to use. I condensed all that to a half page of notes, which I’ve misplaced. But the little icons do look nifty. And they do bounce happily-like little corpses on deliberators. In fact OS X has all the chrome gleam and high-tech awe of a modern hospital. Yes it is wonderful how technology can keep a body alive on antibiotics, feeding tubes, and assisted breathing. But remember how wonderful it once was to run free? Effortlessly if memory serves, and without much pain.