Since starting back on the job, I've meant to file my own report on OS X.
I've dabbled with it before, but this is the first time I've been able to use it in a production environment. It's on a G5 with 3gig of RAM.
Verdict after nine working days?
Stunning. I think it is as good as many of the most appreciative reviews claim it is. If I have complaints, they are largely centered around getting re-adjusted to the finder, and those are not really complaints about the OS per se, only about my unfamiliarity with it.
There are one or two things I miss from OS 9x, but I can live without them. The new benefits make up for them. It's fabulously stable. The new protected memory feature is tremendous, especially if you're using some hastily ported, buggy piece of software like Premiere 6.5. I swear it kind of makes me wonder why they bothered. More bugs than any pro piece of software I've ever used.
I like how customizable the finder is. There's a consistent logic to everything in the OS which just makes sense. It is, if anything, more logical than the older versions. There are some really cool media management features embedded in the OS as well; things that may not really be apparent unless you're doing some serious production work on it, but they sure have made my life easier when it comes to doing things like sourcing sound effects, music cues, and referencing the files against printed indexes, plus the ripping speed is ridiculously fast. It's almost as if the OS has pre-converted all 44/16 CD Audio to aiff file format. Excellent! The development projects producer was shocked at how fast I was getting it all done.
It turns out that not only am I working on a development project, but I and only one other editor are the company's G5/OS X-Panther guinea pigs. Not sure why we got chosen, but I'm not complaining one bit. I already love this computer, and I'm not even completely fluent on it yet, although it doesn't help that both my home computers still run OS 9.
So, since you've all been dying to know for two years now what I think of OS X, there ya go.
