Apple Peel

10.1 In Depth - First Week with Mac OS X 10.1: A Mixed Bag

My first week of using Mac OS X 10.1 has been a disconcerting mix of excitement and (at times) intense frustration. As usual, I don’t know if my situation is representative of that of many Mac users out there. I believe, however, that several useful lessons can be drawn from it.

Smooth Application

Applying the 10.1 update itself didn’t cause much trouble (apart from having to readjust a number of settings and preferences). I first booted in Mac OS 9.1 to update my “Classic” system to Mac OS 9.2.1, and then ran the update after booting from the OS X 10.1 CD (many thanks to Gerry C. for the “advance copy” of the CD).

This process was not as straightforward as it could be — after all, the updater should be able to complete the OS 9.2.1 update without requiring a reboot in OS 9.1. A little bit of experimenting with the “Classic” pane of the System Preferences control panel, however, shows that, when attempting to start “Classic” from a volume that contains an install of Mac OS 9.1, the user is warned that the system is not up-to-date and that he will be asked for the Mac OS 9.2.1 CD to complete this update. Since I don’t have a copy of the Mac OS 9.2.1 CD itself yet (it’s in the mail), I haven’t gone through the whole procedure, but it seems to be better than having to reboot in OS 9.

The fact of the matter is, until “Classic” is relegated to the dustbin of Mac computing — and it might still be a while for a number of people — things are likely not to be as smooth as they could be. It’s the price to pay for such a drastic transition. (In the same vein, 10.1 doesn’t fix some of the visual ugliness caused by the cohabitation of Classic and Carbon/Cocoa applications. Dragging a Classic window behind the Dock, for example, in addition to hiding some of its controls, still causes white blocks to appear in the background of the Dock, which won’t disappear until the Dock is redrawn.)

White block in Dock

Apart from this, however, the update doesn’t pose any major problems. The install process is, in fact, very similar to that of Mac OS X 10.0, except that the installer doesn’t require you to go through the process of setting yourself up as a user and providing all your personal information and settings, unless you elect to erase your Mac OS X volume before installing 10.1 on it (which obviously wipes out all your personal information, applications, etc.). The fact that you can erase your OS X volume before installing 10.1 also indicates that the OS X 10.1 “update” CD actually contains a full install of OS X, and not just an “updater.” The installer checks, however, to make sure that your volume contains an existing install of OS X 10.0 before installing the update.

Unfortunately, for reasons which I will explain later on, I did have to go through the process of wiping out my OS X volume before reinstalling OS X 10.1. That gave me the opportunity, among other things, to experience certain difficulties that I believe should not be part of the installation experience.

For some reason, after the OS X 10.1 installer asked for my user information, it took a very long time (several minutes!) to create the actual user account. In addition, the following screens in the set-up procedure each took a long time to process my information. After having entered my data, I would click on the “Continue” button — and then nothing would happen. Only after 20 seconds or so would the cursor change from the arrow pointer to the “spinning beach ball,” and then later on go to the next screen.

I have already had the opportunity to discuss what is, in my opinion, a flaw in the Aqua user interface, i.e. the fact that the status of a pulsating blue button doesn’t change immediately when you click on it. At the time, I was referring to the “Connect” button in the Internet Connect application (but the problem is widespread and affects buttons in all Aqua programs).

Interestingly, Apple did fix the problem in the Internet Connect application itself. Now, when you click on the pulsating “Connect” button, the button’s status immediately changes to a greyed-out version of the button picture that can no longer be clicked on. This makes sense and is a welcome improvement. Unfortunately, it seems to be just a hack for the Internet Connect application, and not a general change to the Aqua UI that works for every similar button.

Internet Connect button after clicking on it

In the case of the Setup Assistant, the status of the “Continue” button doesn’t change for several seconds after you have clicked on it, and the status of the cursor itself doesn’t change right away either, which means that, for several seconds, you have no way of knowing whether the assistant has actually registered your click and is processing the command or not. I would say, therefore, that there is still room for improvement in that respect, and for all Aqua buttons (unless Apple promises to replace everyone’s computer with a lightning-fast 10 GHz PowerMac G7 on which all commands execute instantly).

How Much Speed?

Once the set-up is complete (whether it’s a partial set-up that preserves your existing settings or a full set-up after the OS X volume has been wiped out), you can start enjoying the welcome (and highly anticipated) improvement in speed in OS X 10.1. The boot process is faster, the Aqua menus drop down instantly, most applications launch in a few bounces, etc.

How much faster is it than 10.0.4? A scientific comparison would require a full lab of Macintosh computers of various configurations and speeds. On my middle-of-the-road, two-year-old PowerMac G4/450 AGP, the improvement is significant. Of course, I do have lots of RAM (1 GB to be precise), but RAM is so cheap these days that pretty much everyone should seize the opportunity to upgrade their computer in that respect.

Do applications launch instantaneously? Not quite. It takes fewer bounces than before, but once you have a number of applications open and have one or two tasks running in the background, you do hit the occasional snag, with an application launch process that can take more than 10 bounces. Again, this depends on so many factors that it’s hard to say how often this is likely to happen to the average OS X user.

Does Classic itself feel faster? Somewhat, but there’s no quantum leap in performance here. Scrolling down a Word 2001 document in Classic, for example, is still not as fast as it used to be under OS 9. On the other hand, selecting paragraphs of text in Word is significantly faster than it was, at least for me, under Classic in 10.0.4, where you could actually see the block of text as it was being selected, line by line.

Interestingly, the speed improvement is most significant and most perceptible in applications such as BBEdit 6 for OS X, which was notoriously slow under 10.0.4, to the point that it was sometimes barely usable. Under 10.1, BBEdit for OS X, while not as fast as its OS 9 counterpart yet, is much faster. And it hasn’t been updated at all. It’s the same application that was running so slowly under 10.0.4. I suspect that the reason for such an improvement is that BBEdit’s developers simply complied with the rules and guidelines of application development under OS X as set by Apple, without attempting to use “hacks” to circumvent the slowdowns caused by the system itself. With OS X 10.1, they are rewarded for their efforts. The improvements made to the system have a direct impact on their application.

On the other hand, an application such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (updated to version 5.1.2 in OS X 10.1) is a big disappointment in terms of performance. Yes, the menus are somewhat snappier and some actions are a bit faster. But overall, the application barely feels any different from the previous “Preview” version (5.1.1), to the point that one wonders what changes, if any, were made to the program. Scrolling down a Web page, any Web page, is still significantly slower than the same action in Explorer for Windows on a similarly equipped computer.

Various Degrees of “Aquafication”

This disappointment extends to other aspects of Explorer as well. While I wasn’t holding my breath, I was sort of hoping that Microsoft would at least add things such as the use of Aqua “sheets” (those dialog boxes that slide out of the title bar of the corresponding window). After all, Microsoft does use them in Word for OS X (the preview version that was released by Microsoft at the same time as Apple released 10.1).

In Explorer 5.1.2, however, no such luck. Those pointless dialog boxes that pop up to tell you that “The connecting server could not be found” or that “The specified server could not be found”still appear in the middle of the screen, in front of all open windows — and since the text of the dialog box doesn’t even mention which server it couldn’t find, if, like me, you often have several Web pages loading at the same time, you have no idea which Web page the dialog box is referring to!

Modal error dialog box referring to web page in background!

What’s worse, if you happen to click on another Explorer window instead of dismissing the dialog box, that other window comes to the fore and actually covers the dialog box, even though it is a modal dialog box and must be dismissed before you can continue to do anything else! The only solution is then to press the Enter key, which fortunately is equivalent to clicking on the “OK” button that’s no longer accessible!

It would make total sense for Microsoft to use a non-modal sheet attached to the title bar of the offending window instead. Yet, nobody at Microsoft has bothered to implement such a change, even though the application has been in “beta” form for several months now.

As I said, I honestly wonder what — if anything — was changed in Explorer since that first preview came out in April. Even worse yet, the new feature in 10.1 that enables you to turn off font antialiasing (a.k.a. font smoothing) for small text causes Explorer to display its text buttons (in the browser’s Toolbar) and preferences settings with irregular spacing between the characters, making them very hard to read if font smoothing is not on. I just cannot believe that no one at Microsoft has noticed this problem since 10.1 betas were first seeded to developers. It is really as if no one there has even bothered to try out the application in 10.1!

Explorer preferences with text smoothing off

Similarly, other things in Explorer 5.1.2 are worse than they were in the previous version. The contextual menu when clicking on a link no longer appears, now, if you just click-and-hold. The only way to make it appear is by control-clicking. I personally find this very annoying, as I’m used to accessing contextual menus by either clicking-and-holding or control-clicking. And this contextual menu still doesn’t contain more useful commands such as “Open Link Behind Current Window,” which are offered in other browsers such as OmniWeb.

Old Tricks, New Dog

Interestingly, 10.1 not only brings back some of the basic functionality provided by the classic Mac OS, such as DVD playback and disc burning from the Finder — but it also restores some functionality in Classic that we thought we would never get back. More specifically, if, like me, you are one of the many owners of a UMAX USB scanner (i.e. one that is not supported by the alternate scanning application VueScan), you probably know that, in 10.0.x, USB scanning was not supported in Classic — and that UMAX has yet to provide any information about when they will release a OS X version of their lousy scanning software. In fact, based on a report recently published by the MacInTouch web site, one wonders whether UMAX will ever release such software at all.

Under 10.1, surprisingly, the UMAX software runs again under Classic, and you can scan pictures either through the plug-in in Photoshop or through the application itself. Maybe the seemingly shaky situation at UMAX is what prompted Apple to restore such functionality. It’s not the prettiest solution, but at least people with a UMAX USB scanner are able to scan again without having to reboot in OS 9.

Other restored functionality includes (at long last!) OS X versions of the AirPort Admin Utility and the AirPort Setup Assistant, and also improvements to the Internet Connect application, which now behaves more like the OS 9 version and displays the status of your AirPort Base Station while it is attempting to establish a connection. (In 10.0, you wouldn’t get any visual feedback until the connection was actually established.) It also now displays the time elapsed since the connection was established. But the arrow button to collapse or expand the Internet Connect window still points the wrong way…

Apple has yet, however, to restore the “Labels” functionality of OS 9. While labels are supported and the label colors do actually show up in applications that support them as well (such as DragThing for OS X or Eudora for OS X, which uses the Finder labels as the first eight labels in its 16 possible label colors for email messages), the OS X Finder still doesn’t provide any label-related functionality. In the Finder, folder icons are all desperately blue, no matter what label color you gave them in OS 9. And there is no way to change the color or text of any of the eight Finder labels, even if you use them in Eudora for OS X or other programs that support labels. I personally miss this functionality, and wish that Apple would restore it (since it is obviously still accessible and supported at some level)… Maybe in 10.2?

Finder Improvements and Other Questionable Changes

The new OS X 10.1 Finder introduces a number of changes, some of which have been fairly extensively documented and discussed (resizable columns in Columns view, extensions in file names hidden by default, etc.).

New Finder preferences

When it comes to resizable columns, it should be noted, however, that, first of all, the functionality isn’t available in Open/Save dialog boxes, which use a restricted variation of the Columns view. In those dialogs, columns cannot be resized, which means that you might still have some difficulty reading the abbreviated names of certain files or folders. Additionally, while the Finder remembers the global column width setting of a window in Columns view when you close that window, it does not remember columns that have been individually resized (by pressing the Option key while using the widget for resizing columns).

As for file name extensions, I don’t want to start yet another discussion about them here. Suffice to say that the extension hiding scheme in 10.1 is much smarter than the one used in Windows (it won’t let you add an extension to a file name that already has the same extension, for example, so that you will never have a file called “document.rtf.rtf”, unless an inexperienced Windows user sends one to you). Using file extensions at all in OS X is definitely a compromise for Apple and for Mac users, and I guess we all have to make the best of it. Who knows? Maybe one day Apple will be in a more dominant position again, and then have the opportunity to impose more “clever” approaches on a wider scale than it is able to do so today.

The 10.1 Finder also includes a number of additional tweaks and improvements. For example, the picture of a small arrow that is used in the bottom-left corner of the icons of file or folder aliases and which is, in OS X, the only obvious way to distinguish between a file or folder and an alias of that file or folder has been significantly increased in size in Columns view, so that it is actually visible to the naked eye and no longer requires a magnifying glass.

Alias ("More" folder) in Column View

Whether this is visually sufficient to distinguish an alias from an actual file for the average user is still debatable, but it’s still an improvement.

As well, the Finder now sorts numbered items in a more intelligent fashion. If you have a series of folders called “Folder 1”, “Folder 2”, etc., “Folder 10”, “Folder 11”, etc., when sorting this list of items “by name,” the Finder now preserves the more logical order, rather than the strictly alphabetical order (in which “Folder 10” would come between “Folder 1” and “Folder 2”).

List of numbered items sorted properly

On the other hand, the 10.1 Finder introduces a new behavior when selecting a file that I am not sure is the best option, or is even deliberate. Quite often, when I select a file in Columns view by clicking on its name, clicking on it a second time a few seconds later to drag it elsewhere doesn’t work. I need to click on the icon of the file, rather than the name, in order to be able to move it. I am not always able to reproduce this behavior, which is why I tend to think that this is a bug rather than a deliberate choice, but it’s definitely something that never happened under OS X 10.0.

Another bug involves control-clicking on a file in List view. When you are in List view, control-clicking on a file results in a generic contextual menu with only a few commands, none of which apply to the item you wanted to select (which isn’t selected, in fact). Instead, they apply to the folder containing the list of files you are viewing.

Contextual menu with no selection!

The only way I have found to recover the “normal” behavior in List view (i.e. control-clicking on a file selects the file and shows a contextual menu of commands applying to that file) is to click once on the file icon to select it, click again on the file name as if to edit the name (or click once on the file name and wait for a second, which produces the same result), and then control-click on the file icon again.

Contextual menu with proper selection

This is hardly an acceptable work-around, however, especially since, while playing around with this in order to capture pictures of the behavior for this article, I ended up causing the Finder to “unexpectedly quit.” This is clearly a bug that needs to be fixed.

The Dock in 10.1

The Dock itself has undergone a number of revisions in its 10.1 incarnation. First and foremost, it can now be moved to either side of the screen. It is still not possible, however, to have it align (“pin”) to the left or right (or top or bottom) corner of the screen. No matter which side it is on, it is always centered.

New Dock preferences

Another shortcoming that Apple seems to have missed is what happens if, like me, you are using more than one monitor. Unless you are using the “Mirror Displays” option, your two (or more) screens are treated as one continuous desktop work space, and, if you choose to move the Dock to the right or to the left, it will go to the far right or to the far left of your desktop. In other words, if your second monitor is placed to the right-hand side of your main monitor, for example, you have no way of having the Dock go to the right side of the left-hand side monitor.

This is an unfortunate limitation. I really don’t see why Apple doesn’t accept that people like to customize their work environment and provide them with a full range of options. After all, now that the Dock can be moved, third-party applications will have to learn how to behave properly with respect to the position of the Dock anyway.

The Scary Stuff

Before concluding this first series of observations about Mac OS X 10.1, I still have to discuss two issues that caused me to waste a significant amount of time this week and are, unfortunately, a reminder that OS X itself and OS X applications in general are still very much a work-in-progress and a sometimes “adventurous” proposition.

The first issue is that, in my case at least, installing OS X 10.1 broke my copy of Eudora Pro 5.1 for OS X (beta 16, which is the most recent beta available from Qualcomm). The problem is simple: right after Eudora displays its splash screen at the beginning of the application launch process, the application “unexpectedly quits.”

First, I thought that it had to do with the fact that my “Eudora Folder” (containing my “Eudora Settings” file and all my nicknames, stationery, mail, etc.) is located on a separate partition and not in its default location, i.e. inside the “Documents” folder in my “Home” folder. I tried moving my “Eudora Folder” back to the default location, and that fixed the problem for a little while, but then the problem came back, with the same symptom.

After much tinkering, I finally found out that the problem seems to have to do with the number of mailboxes and folders that I have inside my “Mail Folder” in my “Eudora Folder.” I have been using Eudora as my email application for years, and the amount of mail that I have archived over those years is quite significant. (My “Eudora Folder” is over 50 MB.) I keep all my mail archived in my current “Eudora Folder” because, quite simply, you never know when you might have to refer to some message you wrote four years ago. Eudora’s search feature is quite fast and powerful, and I often use it to retrieve info about me or my correspondents from the close or more distant past.

By moving some of my mailboxes and folders of mailboxes out of this “Mail Folder,” I was able to get Eudora to run properly again (as properly as this beta runs, anyway). However, I was not able to identify a clear limit beyond which the problem re-surfaces. (It doesn’t seem to be related to an exact count of files and folders inside the “Mail Folder.”)

This is quite clearly a bug in this Eudora beta (which I certainly hope will be fixed soon), but the fact of the matter is that it was the installation of Mac OS X 10.1 that caused it to surface.

Painful as this whole process was, it was nothing, however, next to the other big issue that I was faced with during my first week of using 10.1 — and, this time, it’s quite clearly the system software itself that is at fault.

Last Friday, as I was fiddling with the System Preferences application and, more specifically, with the “Dock” preference pane, all of a sudden the System Preferences application unexpectedly quit on me. Thinking nothing of it, I simply tried to launch the application again. And it launched properly. But no window would appear. The “Close” and “Minimize” commands in the “Window” were greyed out (disabled), and selecting a specific pane or the “Show All” option in the “View” menu didn’t do anything.

I tried logging out and logging back in. The problem was still there. I tried restarting my computer. The problem was still there. I tried trashing a few preference files that had names that sounded like they could have something to do with the System Preferences application. The problem was still there. I then noticed that the Internet Connect application window wasn’t visible either. I switched to that application, and it was affected by the same problem. The application appeared to have launched, but its window was not visible and there was no way of making it visible.

At that point, I decided that a call to Apple was warranted. I was only put on hold for a few minutes (thank God for phone headsets!), and then a friendly technical support person took my call. After the usual round of questions, she quickly realized that I knew what I was talking about. She suggested zapping the PRAM, which we did, to no avail. She then went to talk to a technical supervisor, who made some further recommendations about possible files to trash. We tried that. Still nothing. At that point, we realized that the problem seemed to affect a large number of other Apple applications as well, such as Stickies, Calculator, etc. The technical support person decided to hook me up with the supervisor himself. After he acknowledged the problem, I heard what I didn’t want to hear: his recommendation was to reinstall Mac OS X 10.1 altogether. In his view, somehow a key component of the system, probably some system call that is used mostly by Apple applications at this point (possibly Cocoa applications exclusively), had become corrupted, and there was no way to selectively replace it.

With a deep sigh of discouragement, I said that I would try reinstalling Mac OS X and would get back to them if it didn’t work. Things became even more discouraging: simply reinstalling OS X 10.1 didn’t work. I actually had to back up all kinds of stuff (which took a long time, of course) and instruct the OS X 10.1 installer to wipe my Mac OS X volume entirely before reinstalling the system software. Fortunately, my hard drive is divided into three partitions, the other two being a “Documents” partition with most of my personal documents and a “Mac OS 9” partition with a full install of Mac OS 9 and most of my Mac OS 9 applications. I just don’t want to think of how much longer this would have taken me if I had only had one partition and if I had had to back up everything. In this day and age, with the tens of thousands of files and the gigabytes of data that we have on our hard drives, this is not something you want to do every week — unless you have a more expensive form of back up such as a second huge hard drive or a tape drive. Like most people, I suspect, my back up strategy consists mostly of burning CD-Rs/CD-RWs (and the occasional DVD-RAM cartridge).

What was even more frustrating for me, however, was the fact that the Apple representative didn’t even seem to be particularly interested in this bug. It seems to me that this is the kind of thing that you don’t really want to have happening to thousands of your customers. Surely there is some kind of tracing system in OS X that would have enabled me to provide him with at least some evidence of what actually happened when this key component of the system software became corrupted.

The other problem is that Apple definitely needs to provide its customers with more options when it comes to reinstalling Mac OS X. There is definitely a need, as my own situation indicates, for a “Clean Install” option that does not wipe out your entire volume before reinstalling OS X 10.1. In addition, I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if I had experienced a power outage after the 10.1 installer wiped out my OS X volume and before it re-installed OS X 10.1. Would the installer still “know” that my volume contained an OS X 10.0 install before it got wiped out, or would I have had to reinstall 10.0 before being able to install 10.1 on top of it (a really useless exercise, since 10.1 effectively replaces all 10.0 files with new ones)?

Clearly, Apple is currently asking us to live a bit dangerously, and requiring people to wipe out an entire volume in order to fix a bug in the system software is not a very customer-friendly approach, to say the least.

I should also note that this complete reinstall of Mac OS X did not fix my problem with the Eudora beta.

Conclusion

I am still rather excited about 10.1. It is beginning to feel like my “natural” OS. Given the improvements noted above, Apple is clearly listening to its users and working to make OS X the best OS ever (if it isn’t so already). But 10.1, a.k.a. “Puma,” is only the first major step in that direction since the initial launch of OS X, and there are several other important improvements to make in order to definitively relegate what I call the “scary stuff” (of which Mac OS 9 has its own share as well, of course) to the past.

With 10.1 now widely available, I will start encouraging other people — those with hardware that’s powerful enough — to upgrade to Mac OS X, but I will also make certain that I am readily available to them, not only to explain the various idiosyncrasies of the system, but also in case something “scary” should happen to them too.

If you haven’t moved to Mac OS X 10.1 yet, I strongly suggest that you consider the option of wiping out your Mac OS X volume as part of the installation process. This seems to be the safest approach if you want to avoid nasty bugs and experience a smooth transition.

I certainly hope that I will now experience many weeks of relatively bug-free Mac OS X 10.1 usage. Whatever happens, I’ll be sure to share it with Applelust.com readers, so that you have a better understanding of the exciting new phase in the evolution of personal computing.

Pierre Igot

What do you think? Talk about in our Forums...

• Stuffit 7 (10-18-02) Dr. Neale Monks. What purpose does file compression have in this day of 100 GB hard drives? Is version 7 worthy of the upgrade fees?
• Fireworks MX (10-8-02) Dean Browell. Fireworks is more than just a pretty face; The last app I needed to convert entirely to OS X delivers in upgrades and features as well...
• Dreamweaver MX (10-8-02) Joel Davies. Not being satisfied with just carbonizing it's product, Macromedia made sure that Dreamweaver MX was the killer app for web design.
• SliMP3 (9-6-02) Pat St-Arnaud. The SliMP3 is a small, simple and elegant network devices that connects to any audio component with RCA inputs and lets you browse, search and play music directly from your computer's MP3 collection.
• Voyager III v.3 (8-16-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Carina's Voyager is the grandfather of Mac planetarium programs, but does it still have what it takes to keep up the current generation?
• CodeWarrior 8 (8-16-02) Douglas A. Welton. Doug dives into the latest version of this robust multi-platform programming tool.
• STM Sports Backpack (8-9-02) Pierre Igot. How will this backpack designed for the "global digerati" stack up when Pierre puts it to the test with his mobile digital lifestyle?
• Scope Driver (8-2-02) Dr. Neale Monks. An alternative to the 'point and click' telescope control paradigm: a powerful list-based utility for Autostar and LX200 telescopes.
• Apple Final Cut Pro 3.0 (7-19-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate reviews the video-editing powerhouse Final Cut Pro 3 and sizes up its competition. Does Final Cut Pro 3 hold its ground?
• Strata DVpro RME (7-16-02) Matt Frederick. Matt Frederick. Matt takes a comprehensive look at Strata DVpro, Strata's pro-level non-linear editor for digital video.
• Stargazer's Delight (6-28-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Looking for a viable shareware alternative to the big commercial astronomy software packages? Neale may have found one.
• TheSky (6-21-02) Dr. Neale Monks. Neale takes a look at the easiest to use planetarium program for the Mac.
• NI FM7 (6-21-02) Matt Frederick. Matt takes this software replica of Yamaha's DX7 synthesizer for a test drive.
• Griffin's iMic and other USB audio devices (6-14-02) Pierre Igot. Do Griffin's promises of significantly superior audio input and output performance ring true?
• The Digital Universe (6-14-02) Neale Monks. Planetarium program, astronomy encyclopaedia and space flight simulator all rolled into one - could The Digital Universe be the ClarisWorks of astronomy software? Neale Monks takes a look.
• After Effects 5.5 (5-31-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate reviews the OS X native version of After Effects and likes what he sees.
• InDesign 2.0 for Non-Professional Designers (5-24-02) Pierre Igot. In the second part of our review of Adobe InDesign 2.0 for Mac OS X, Pierre Igot looks at InDesign from the point-of-view of the non-professional designer - and finds plenty to like.
• Corel Graphics Suite, Part 2 (5-24-02) Dean Browell. CorelDraw returns in full force and Corel R.A.V.E makes its debut.
• Corel Graphics Suite, Part 1 (5-17-02) Dean Browell. CorelDraw is back, and it's brought some powerful friends that makes this Suite worth the look...
• OmniGraffle 2.0 (5-10-02) András Puiz. Analog napkins are so 20th century -- this gem from OmniGroup knows (almost) all about diagramming. András Puiz wishes all Mac developers developed a similar understanding of Aqua, and of Mac OS X in general.
• Watson (5-03-02) Michael Tate Jones. Tate discovers a 'Swiss Army Knife' for OS X... it's called Watson.