I've been running Mac OS X as my primary OS on selected days recently; today I've run Mac OS X all day long. Someday I will likely switch to it permanently, and I need to start getting more familiar with it. Plus, I think I will use Mac OS X primarily at YAPC, because Mac OS 9 has some problems with sleeping (programs crash pretty frequently when sleeping/waking), I need access to both for my talk, if I need to look up something at a moment's notice I won't want to reboot, etc.
So anyway, each time Mac OS X is easier to use, but I also keep uncovering more annoyances. Some notes:
- It took me awhile to get maccvs working. I tried using maccvsX, which is the Mac OS X version, but it was incompatible with the lsh private key I use with maccvs/MacSSH. So back to maccvs (which is Carbon, so no worries).
- BBEdit is Carbon, but its dialog boxes stink. I hate the paned dialogs in Mac OS X anyway -- they are almost entirely unnavigable by the keyboard, take up too much real estate, are far more difficult to find things with than the Nav Services in Mac OS 8/9 -- but in some Carbon apps, it is even worse. I can't hit Return to "click" the glowing blue buttons, I can't hit cmd-D to get to the Desktop. A folder called "osdn.com" shows up as "osdn".
- I cannot find any way to expand subfolders in the Finder. In Mac OS, I can option-click the arrow in list view and get everything underneath. I use this for a very functional purpose: I expand out everything, sort reverse by date modified, and can quickly see what has changed. No such luck in Mac OS X. I found that if I option-click to close a folder, then upon opening it, the top-level subfolders will be opened. What the heck kind of sense is that supposed to make?
- Eudora for Mac OS X doesn't do SSL. So I need to get company email under Classic. Sigh. I could try fetchmail, I suppose, but that is just more work.
- The Keychain works differently. I don't know if I like it or not. One thing that is nice is that you have fine-grained control over which apps can access a specific key without warning. What I want, though, is what is under Mac OS, where I can let an app access without warning until the computer is restarted, or until the app quits. Better yet, I should be able to let it access without warning only for a specified time period, or until the Keychain locks again.
- I miss lots of little things. It takes a long time to get everything working the way I want it. Example: I have a few FKeys (remember those?) to put my sig on the clipboard (works from any app) and others to quote text for pasting in email. I am sure there is a good way to do this in Mac OS X, so I can hit cmd-shift-9 in any app to get my sig or quote text, but I don't know how. Another example: I would normally post this right from BBEdit, but I need to adapt the Perl script first (install SOAP::Lite and its dependencies, move script somewhere where it will work, test, debug if necessary, etc.). Lots of little things.
I am sure there is and will be more, but this is just what I have today, that I can recall. On the upside, I installed
WirelessDriver in preparation for YAPC; since the TiBook's AirPort reception stinks, I can use my external WaveLAN card. Under Mac OS X with WirelessDriver, I can have both cards driven at the same time. Under Mac OS 9, I have to restart to get the drivers to recognize one card or the other.
But regardless of all this, I am getting to the point where I can use Mac OS X without having to run screaming back to my comfortable and heavily customized and personalized Mac OS environment. It helps that Mozilla, BBEdit, maccvs, DragThing, Interarchy, Eudora (except for SSL) -- all my most commonly used apps, except for MacPerl, which still works fine under Mac OS X -- are Carbonized. So it is getting better.
Speaking of which, I have this program called compare_slash which uses Mac::Glue to talk to Interarchy and BBEdit, fetching local and remote files, comparing them with BBEdit, using BBEdit to reconcile differences. It works flawlessly under Mac OS X with MacPerl stuck in Classic, and BBEdit and Interarchy in regular Mac OS X. When I do switch to Mac OS X permanently someday, if I don't get those Mac:: modules ported, I will continue to use MacPerl often.
You don't need classic to fetch mail over SSL...
Elian on 2002-06-18T20:06:39
It's dead-simple to set up a tunnel to do this. Not quite as convenient as automatic SSL, mind, but it's doable. (It is, in fact, what I use on my OS X box)
You can use
stunnel if you don't have shell access to the machine your mail's on, or you can use ssh if you do have shell access there. For example:
ssh -L143:mail.host:143 -L25:mail.host:25 me@mail.host
will log you on to mail.host, and also set up local ports 143 (IMAP) and 25 (SMTP) to automatically forward to ports 143 and 25 on the remote host. Then you just set up Eudora to connect to localhost for IMAP and SMTP. (Works for POP too, but I don't use that)
Swell? No, not entirely. But swell enough.
Re:You don't need classic to fetch mail over SSL..
pudge on 2002-06-18T21:15:12
This took some doing ... I got fink to install stunnel no problem, but it wasn't working. I finally realized that Eudora under Mac OS X was still set to check SSL, and I could only turn it off by launching Eudora in Classic (it was greyed out!). So now I just have two "Personalities" in Eudora, one for accessing work IMAP while in Classic (directly) and one for Mac OS X (via stunnel). Sigh. :)
Thanks for the tip, that end is working well.
Re:You don't need classic to fetch mail over SSL..
Elian on 2002-06-18T21:46:22
I gave up and have my eudora set to always use the local connection. A bit of a pain, since I have to fire up an SSH session even when I'm at home, but, well, it works.
(OTOH, I have the problem where I managed to get SSL busted on my mail server, so an SSL connection directly through Eudora's not possible anyway, but...)
