Mac OS X 10.2 Review

pudge on 2002-08-26T15:03:57

My verdict is in.


Chock full of Jaguar-y goodness.

ct on 2002-08-26T17:53:27

I've run 10.2 since last tuesday. While I'm still having some snags in it, it's really quite amazing.

You mentioned LiteSwitchX. I was just bemoaning to a friend of mine that LiteSwitchX wasn't working. It loads, and you can bind it to option-tab, or ctrl-tab, but 1.0.1 can't punch through the 10.2 keybindings and bind to command-tab. I told him it was the thing I missed most.

He pointed out to me that Apple fixed the one thing in Jaguar that made LiteSwitchX a necessity in 10.1.5, the order of apps when you alt tab.

In the past it would tab in an odd order, starting at the left of the dock and rotating only to the right. LiteSwitchX fixed that and made the apps switch in the order I expected, the first app it switches to is the last app you were in, and shift-tab will go the opposite direction. (Actually, just command-shift, which is easier to hit). In essence, it command-tab's through apps similar to windows, or your average window manager under X11.

I'm thrilled with 10.2, the Terminal is damn near perfect now, handles fonts beautifully, and "just works". And the extra speed on my iBook 700 is very noticable.

Re:Chock full of Jaguar-y goodness.

pudge on 2002-08-26T18:02:55

Yes, I know Apple switched the order, but there are other nice things about LiteSwitch X: the VISUAL order is changed; it keeps track of all recently used apps, not just the last one; and it also allows changing the beaviour of bringing windows to the front with an app.

Terminal still has some font problems. It mangles character combinations (with ProFont, sometimes characters just disappear if typed in a certain order), and even with Monaco, the first two columns have no space between them, while the other columns all have one pixel. It's weird.

Re:Chock full of Jaguar-y goodness.

ct on 2002-08-26T21:22:40

I'll buy that. I still check Proteron's website every morning. I do like the ability to hide and/or quit apps from the list.

I see none of those problems in terminal. I'm currently using Lucida Console, copied from my Win2k box. Perfect spacing, no artifacts of any kind. Though I do think the font is kind of ugly. What I really want is a monospaced Verdana.

Re:Chock full of Jaguar-y goodness.

Matts on 2002-08-27T07:40:11

The order isn't quite "fixed". It goes to the previous app, but then continues on it's merry trip left-to-right along the dock. This is really dumb, because with extreme regularity the second application you tab onto is the current one.

I'm itching for LiteSwitchX to work again.

Wireless Driver

richardc on 2002-08-26T23:15:20

The latest Wireless Driver release (beta4) works just fine with 10.2 once you've removed some some bad lines from the drivers .plist as the new kextload is more strict.

Details here

Re:Wireless Driver

pudge on 2002-08-27T00:12:56

Yeah, I saw some /. readers mention there's a workaround; I don't urgently need it, so I'll wait for the release of the new version. Do you know if the "kernel panic on re-insertion" bug is still there in 10.2?

Re:Wireless Driver

richardc on 2002-08-27T00:22:35

The reinsertion bug is fixed, on my Lombard at least.

Re:Wireless Driver

pudge on 2002-08-27T00:27:07

Rock on! Thanks.