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Mac OS 9.1 Emergency What was the biggest news that wasn't at last month's Macworld Stevenote? Well, let's think about this a bit. Steve introduced the Titanium G4 PowerBook, iTunes, iDVD, and showed off the changes in Mac OS X, but he must've forgotten that Apple was also releasing a point update to their bread and butter, the Mac OS itself. Yes, most of you were involved in the chaos that ensued shortly thereafter: horrible downloading times -- if you could get into the server, originally only available in segments, one of the largest updates -- weighing in at over 70 MB -- creating a personal hell for impatient modem users who had to have the latest update. What a way to put a damper on the day's euphoria. But that was just the beginning...
Adventures in Insanity After countless attempts to just get the download page to come up in my browser after the Stevenote, I discovered that I'd be lucky if I got just one of the segments. I suppose with all of the increased traffic flowing to see the Titanium 'Book and to grab iTunes, a 70 MB download really didn't stand a chance. After about 20 minutes of failed attempts, I gave up on the Apple site -- which is powered by a server farm that can handle anything... except maybe an overzealous CEO who has to trump every past keynote he's ever made. Luckily for me, Hotline was in full effect. I found several servers who already claimed to have 9.1 ready for download. Within the next 30 minutes, I had all 70 MB and 15 sections of glory on my desktop ready to rock. What was so great about 9.1 that I was willing to deal with this to get it? That's a good question... I don't know. Having all of the pieces was a trophy in and of itself, making it a "must have" download just because it was so hard to get. Increased demand through lower supply? Do we have any Economists in the house? Apple keeps trying that with PowerBooks, why not with an OS upgrade too?
Time to Do Some Serious Damage I didn't know what was new in 9.1, I just knew it came from the land of Steve, so it's got to be useful. Besides, I just spent over an hour trying to wrangle in all of it's parts... I can't stop now. As it turned out, getting the 9.1 upgrade was just the tip of the iceberg that Chubbs (my G4, for those of you taking notes) would hit that day. Let me begin by pointing out, that I try to be a responsible installer. I make regular backups, and always backup the system folder before any OS upgrades... except, of course, this time. In my frenzy to get the upgrade, I neglected to do the basic important steps:
I will admit that I even got a warning from Sorgie over at AppleLust about the dangers of jumping headfirst into a pond of unknown depth, but did I listen? Nope... my own personal AppleLust was in effect. So, I did it... and the first thing I noticed was the big warning that I shouldn't install it if I wanted to use Classic compatibility in Mac OS X beta... this is not a good sign. But I continued... after all, I don't really use Classic while I'm in OS X! A few minutes later, I was rebooting, waiting for something glorious to jump out at me from this point upgrade. And it did...
9.1: in All of it's Glory Besides the holy white light emanating from the CRT as my G4 rebooted, bringing forth the two toned smile that is the Mac OS and the, "9.1" instead of the "9" that I was used to on my splash screen, I got a window. This wasn't any normal window, mind you, but a menu. Yes, the new window menu, it's cool and I was so excited to see that every open finder window could now be accessed from a single menu instead of plodding around trying to find that one in the back (Man, I need a Cinema Display bad!). This was cool enough in itself to justify the upgrade! Who cares about all the features that got "axed" before release (more on that later), the window menu is cool. But all was not well. Soon, Chubbs (my beloved G4), began suffering from all of the bugs that slipped into the latest update: some were frustrating... others were unavoidably annoying... Here comes the bad stuff.
Dreamweaver? You Use That? I do, and those of us who use it on a daily basis were more than a little miffed when we discovered that Dreamweaver, even the brand spankin' new 4.0 version was choking on 9.1. Not just that, some of the problems were so odd, that I thought I screwed up something at first and was about ready for a full reinstall -- still thinking illogically but now due to my quick collapse from euphoria to confusion -- until I checked the forums to find out that other 9.1 users were also seeing all GIFs as transparent or inverted. Also, not everyone had the problem who upgraded to 9.1, although a large majority did. This sounds more like a Microsoft bug -- it's there but you can't get a lock on it. Solutions: Macromedia has a page dedicated to problems with 9.1, but the only real fix involves re-exporting every graphic in Fireworks -- something I don't want to deal with given the amount of graphics I'd have to convert. Apple has finally acknowledged the problem, but just links to the Macromedia page above. This is currently one of three incompatibilities between Dreamweaver and 9.1 and is frustrating enough, that it alone cancels out all of the good.
Internal Confusion Another problem I noticed while trying to identify what was causing the Dreamweaver problems, was that not everyone got the same package? The software package that you download isn't the same as what came on the CD, and the upgrade contains different stuff than the full version. We're not just talking about what was included, but versions too. Why does the download upgrade include a different version of a certain Control Panel than the CD version? Why do new Macs come with different version software than is in 9.1? Which version is the best? What should I do? The last thing a novice needs to hear is that version 1.2.4 is the wrong version and that he needs to find someone with the upgrade CD, so that he can get 1.2.3. Solutions: Unless someone makes a library of every source of software and identifies what versions are necessary with what, I don't know of a solution until Apple corrects it all.
Missing Features? Sure, Mac OS 9.1 is just a point upgrade intended to fix bugs. But aside from seemingly adding just as many bugs as it fixed. But also missing are new features. What new features? Well, the rumored ones of course! Back in the development days of 9.1, there were all sorts of improvements in the books: Open Transport 3.0, the ability to download directly from a digital camera without 3rd party software, and handwriting recognition. These big additions were removed before the release of 9.1 and the rumors indicate that the big Steve axed them so that they could be either improved or just held for OS X. Why give it away today, when you can charge $130 for it tomorrow?
End of Lesson? Of course, you can forget all of the problems above if you want, as long as you learn the main lesson: Always know what you are getting into. We've learned that Mac OS 9.1 is a beast that is difficult to tame. Research is the key to knowing what one is getting into. We also learned that allowing emotions to totally take over can often lead to chaos. Oh, and we learned that Steve's Reality Distortion Field can be downloaded too. Consider my little trip through Mac Hell as a lesson to you all. I'm sure we'll all be thinking about this lesson when Mac OS X shows up at our doors in a few months, right?
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