Review: Apple's Jaguar hits the ground running

Apple Computer faithful have been justifiably grumbling about keeping up with the costs of their Mac operating system.

They got hit for $129 in spring 2001 for the first edition of Mac OS X (pronounced 10), and now they have to dig for another $129 for X 10.2. That doesn't count shipping and handling charges if you don't live near an Apple store, and possible hardware upgrades to handle the operating system's more demanding system requirements.

Apple received a stream of criticism from the media and outraged users about the pricing, and I think a lot of it was justified. There should have been an upgrade price for those who bought 10.1.

In addition, Apple upset users by charging $99 for new users of its previously free iTools Web services. Now rebranded .Mac, it includes e-mail services, Web hosting for photos and access to full functions of some OS X features, such as some advanced functions of its iCal personal calendar.

But those willing to dig into their wallets will find in X 10.2, code-named Jaguar, an operating system with many advantages and new features to justify the investment.

The biggest instant gratification is a noticeable increase in system speed. The operating system is quite a bit faster when booting up the computer and in general operation. The installation was flawless. It gave me the option to make a copy of my original system settings just in case.

IChat is an AOL-compatible instant messenger program that replaces the awful OS X messenger from AOL Time Warner. Out of the box it's cute and cartoonish. It will consult your address book and, if you have a picture of your friends, it will make the speech bubble containing the instant message look as if it's coming from their mouths.

Call me boring, but once the novelty has worn off you can revert to plain text.

It's almost flawless, except for the notification icon that indicates a new message has arrived. It bounces in the Dock, Apple's equivalent to Window's taskbar, just once. You could easily miss an important message if you step or look away.

Intriguing is a new built-in technology called Rendezvous, which is plug-and-play networking. You don't need to know any real geeky stuff to get your home network up and running, including connecting to Windows machines.

Apple's built-in mail program in 10.2 is a big improvement over the weak version in 10.1. It offers all of the things that one considers essential: address book integration, filtering, multiple accounts and a universal inbox concept. If you have more than one e-mail account, it will check them all and place the e-mail in what looks like one inbox.

I was most intrigued by the spam filtering, but I'm not sure that it's going to work for me. The default mode is a learning one. It supposedly watches your mail and gets to know what's spam and what's not.

Unfortunately, people who regularly write to me are tagged as spam; replies to messages I've written are also incorrectly flagged; and lists I subscribe to always get hit. There are three modes: Off, training and automatic. I'm too afraid to turn on automatic filtering for fear of losing important mail.

Jaguar also has a built-in firewall, with enough options to satisfy serious fiddlers but easy enough for even novices to set up to keep intruders out.

Most of the core applications I use had no problems with OS X. Others either didn't work at all or did odd things. That's similar to problems users have reported with Windows XP.

There's a plethora of little tweaks and additions that really makes this a worthwhile upgrade, such as processor speed reduction for laptops to extend battery life.

And it has a new feature that makes the toy guy inside me weep with joy. I eagerly bought an Ericsson T68i phone. It uses Bluetooth, a wireless technology for gadgets to communicate with each other within a 30-foot or so range. OS X has Bluetooth built in.

Now, when my phone rings, the built-in address book is consulted on my Mac, and the two act as a smart caller ID feature. I have the option, via a popup screen, to send the call to voice mail or reply via Short Messaging Service, or text messaging, should I not wish to take the call.

I can find an entry in the address book on my Mac and have the phone dial it. Being able to compose and reply to SMS messages with a real keyboard instead of the phone's awkward typing mode is super.

The upcoming iSync will supposedly synchronize my name and address book with the new phone and my Palm organizer.

Wednesday, Apple released a free incremental update to Jaguar (10.2.1) to update Mail, Image Capture, Help Viewer, printing, networking and other features. The 17-megabyte release is available through Jaguar's Software Update utility.

In short, 10.2 has a lot of good new features (Apple counts 150), and a few flaws. But it's worth the investment.

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