Rating: 
Summary: Great Potential for the Future!!
Review: Overall, OSX is really a frankenstein of sorts w/o the ugly appearance. This fusion of BSD Unix, Next, and traditional Mac concepts is a solid base for Apple to build upon. It is, however, a young OS w/ all the pitfalls that come with it. Things like drivers, native programs, and the "perfect" user interface take time so I am omitting the few minor gripes I've had in my experience wih OSX. It is disconcerting for long time Mac users in that it is a mildly radical departure from the Mac tradition though classic mode pretty much will do everything you need once you sit through the long boot up. Also, things like a command prompt and file extensions are alien to the Mac camp. To its credit, Apple has done an admirable job in insulating the not interested user from these details.In exchange for radical changes, Apple has created a truly remarkable OS. OSX is a solid network citizen. The ability to use open source components has turned MacOS into a powerful tool versus what it used to be. I've found OSX to be an asset on my home network. It is much more capable than classic MacOS could have ever dreamed about. The main thing I've enjoyed about OSX is the beautiful crispness of the Quartz display technology. The first time you see it you will be amazed. WinXP cannot hold a candle to it and your Wintel friends will be jealous. There are many things new about OSX. The memory management and program execution technology make total system crashes almost a thing of the past. In seven months, I've had as many system crashes as I'd typically get in three days of typical classic MacOS use for me. System stability is a major issue with me and OSX is as good as any NT or Linux machine I've ever used. This is the biggest improvement over classic. If you are a long time Mac user, please approach OSX with an open mind as it has lots of future potential. You must realize that by using the old "classic does it this way argument" to bash OSX you are cheating yourself out of using your Mac on a much higher level. OSX makes MacOS a welcome alternative to the orwellian path the WinXP family seems to be following. Just make sure you have plenty of memory in your machine, a willingness to learn some new things and a dose of patience as developers and hardware manufacturers begin to fully support this gem.
Rating:
Summary: Great upgrade, if you've got the hardware.
Review: Really a sharp interface and easy to learn. I found most or all of my favorites have made it to MacOS X, and use it full time on both my home (B&W G3) and work (G4 Tower) computers. My only caution is to make sure that your hardware is compatible (it won't run well on G3 upgrades, and the older iBooks and iMacs). Also, adequate RAM really speeds up the system...I had a substantial speed boost when I brought the computers up to 512 MB RAM.
Rating:
Summary: The best operating system on the market. Period.
Review: Run, don't walk, to get this upgrade. Integration with Classic applications is seemless and new OS X apps are coming out every day.
Rating: 
Summary: Watch out for USB driver problems and kernel panics
Review: Six months into using OS -X started having Kernel panics (Apple's blue secreen of death). Not running non-Apple programs, multi-tasking, or running peculiar non-standard hardware (Logitech tracball, HP printer/scanner). 5 trips to the repair shop - new hard drive, new RAM, new system board, upgrade to 10.2.8; 4 phone calls to Apple "Support." Kernel panics returned. Lots of web searches - found lots of boards where people have the same experience, and found the only permanent solution was downgrading to OS9 or upgrading to OS 10.3. "Support" denies it's poor USB software.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for your beige G3.
Review: The beige G3 desktops are supposed to be supported by OS X 10.1, but this is not really the case for some users. Specifically, there are issues with SCSI and with the onboard video. The onboard beige G3 SCSI system has a fairly shoestring termination system which worked under classic, but which fails miserably under OS X in some cases. OS X 10.1 wouldn't boot until I replaced my Apple 12X SCSI CD-ROM with an IDE CD-ROM at Apple's suggestion. Then, it wouldn't finish an install without crashing until I replaced my Apple 2GB SCSI hard drive with a Maxtor IDE hard drive, again at Apple's suggestion. My SCSI Zip is hit-and-miss and sometimes works, but often requires a reboot; my Microtek SCSI scanner isn't supported at all. Once everything is installed, Beige G3 users will find that OS X is SLOW to resize, draw, and scroll windows and that many games don't work. This is because the OS X 10.1 drivers for the onboard ATI video in Beige G3 systems do not use any of the acceleration features of the video chip. Thus, all operations involving graphics, games, etc. are truly time-consuming and annoying -- just resizing a window takes 10 seconds or so and the movement is not smooth, but is jumpy and difficult to manage. Apple say they have no plans to develop proper drivers for the video chips on Beige G3 systems, nor to fix the onboard SCSI support for Beige G3 systems. Fairly frustrating for those who bought G3 systems with the expectation that they would be usable for some time to come. Conclusion: If you own a Beige G3 and have upgraded your system with a PCI SCSI card, a PCI video card and a PCI USB card (to which your Zip and scanner are attached), then go for 10.1! If on the other hand you have a Beige G3 and are trying to use built-in SCSI, built-in video and no USB, you will probably be somewhat disappointed by the performance of 10.1 and the lack of support for external devices.
Rating:
Summary: OSX 10.1
Review: The new os from apple is by far the best operating system I've ever worked with, and yes, I've worked with a lot operating systems: Win 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, ME; Mac 6.9, 7, 8, 9, 10 and Unix, BSD and redhat. For sure OS X 10.1 from apple is the best os for homeusers...
Rating: 
Summary: Terrible...
Review: The OS froze at the store on one of it's better computers...try Windows XP instead
Rating:
Summary: Apple Gives Up, Goes UNIX
Review: The title is correct--OS X is simply UNIX. Yet, it's Apple-flavored UNIX, and that makes all the difference. Unlike Linux or other flavors of UNIX, OS X is easy to use, easy to add hardware that is instantly recognized, and easy to modify. You don't have to ever enter the shell if you don't want to, but just because you don't want to doesn't mean that software developers don't want to, and this is much more powerful than any previous Apple operating software. In fact, if you like old Apple OSs, there's still OS 9 around, which OS X will run in an emulation mode (that's right, you get two OSs in one). And, if you really are strange, you can buy Virtual PC and run Windows in emulation mode here, too--AT THE SAME TIME. Now, that's a powerful OS. Kudos to Apple for doing a total rewrite of their OS code, rather than simply continuing bloatware that had long become full of spaghetti-code inconsistencies.
Rating:
Summary: Apple Gives Up, Goes UNIX
Review: The title is correct--OS X is simply UNIX. Yet, it's Apple-flavored UNIX, and that makes all the difference. Unlike Linux or other flavors of UNIX, OS X is easy to use, easy to add hardware that is instantly recognized, and easy to modify. You don't have to ever enter the shell if you don't want to, but just because you don't want to doesn't mean that software developers don't want to, and this is much more powerful than any previous Apple operating software. In fact, if you like old Apple OSs, there's still OS 9 around, which OS X will run in an emulation mode (that's right, you get two OSs in one). And, if you really are strange, you can buy Virtual PC and run Windows in emulation mode here, too--AT THE SAME TIME. Now, that's a powerful OS. Kudos to Apple for doing a total rewrite of their OS code, rather than simply continuing bloatware that had long become full of spaghetti-code inconsistencies.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant operating system!
Review: Too bad you have to have a Mac to get this operating system because it would take the PC world by storm! I just couldn't deal with another Windows upgrade (which usually requires a whole new computer as well) so I bought an old iMac. An original Bondi blue iMac at that and proceded to slowly bring the old thing up to date to use the latest peripherals and software. I was impressed with the iMac as it was in its old original form. But then OS X arrived (thank you ...). Now, keep in mind this is a massive firmware AND OS upgrade for an old iMac. After a glance through the readme files I began what should have been a long difficult task. Nope. In fact it went so easy I thought something was wrong. Granted, I have a lot of computer experience and some steps were less than intuitive but that's what readme files are for. The bottom line is it's a brilliant operating system (both of them actually since OS 9.2 is included). Yes, even if you have an old Bondi iMac. I made the right decision here switching to Mac and OS X. The Windows PC will be sold off or converted to Linux. This was my last Windows upgrade. Note: you will have to have a lot more base memory (and more video memory if possible) for this to work well and it's not easy to install memory in an iMac. Just follow Apple's excellent instructions for opening an iMac, installing memory and your old iMac will have a new lease on life.
| 
