:: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 ::

Two weeks with Panther; Near disaster with CCC

'How did I get along in OS X 10.xx? :: It's been two weeks since I've installed OS X 10.3, and everything has been golden. Much like after I got used to Jaguar, you start to wonder: How did I get along in OS X 10.xx? I even had a chance to put Expose to the real-world, crunch-time test. I came home from work one night and had to put up some important stories on some sites real fast, and the tool we use works best in Internet Explorer (even though I prefer to use Safari). I had seven IE windows open, Safari, e-mail, and iChat to keep in touch with some other co-workers. I don't think I could have survived the 20 minute-test without Expose. It made navigating through everything and multi-tasking it easy. It's no wonder it's the most touted new feature when you read the Panther reviews. It's starting to change the way I use this bundle of chips and circuits.

As for the rest of Panther, I'm getting used to the new Finder, and am even starting to like the brushed metal look. Mostly. I updated to 10.3.1 when it was released last night and had a scare when, an hour later, the dreaded "Your hard drive is almost full; delete some files ... or else!" dialogue popped up. Hmmm. I knew I was pushing my luck with my 20 gig drive in the TiBook (I'm getting a new larger drive this week), but the last time I looked, I had 4 gigs free?! It turned out, after nearly two hours of troubleshooting, that it was because I had decided to stay home at 8 p.m., when I have Carbon Copy Cloner set to run! I'm usually at work (I work nights), or, on my two nights off, I'll go and be sociable. But on this night, I was home, and I had disconnected the TiBook to sit on the couch and surf while I watched the tube. So, when it came time for the backup schedule, it couldn't find my Firewire drive and started copying my home folder onto my startup disk. When it ran out of room, it stopped and I got the "Disk full" dialogue. That'll teach me to stay home.

In other news, that G5 ad I referenced below, the one that featured the fast-as-a-bullet computer tearing through a house and destroying it, has now been banned in Scotland for touting it as the "world's fastest personal computer." Well, I don't want to get in the middle of the benchmark debate again, but I think it's a bit much to ban it, like it's communist propaganda or something. The British ITC decided "the advertising was misleading and ... should not be re-shown in its current form."

And for some comic relief, you simply must check out this Flash cartoon, Steve Ballmer's iPod.
:: Steve 12:25 AM [+] ::
Two weeks with Panther; Near disaster with CCC