OS X: It's Easy As, Well, a Mac
03.22.01
The hardest part of installing Mac OS X was removing a bunch of MP3s to make room on my hard drive for the new operating system.
Apple's new operating system, which goes on sale Saturday, was installed on a 400-MHz iMac DV with 128Mbytes of RAM -- the recommended minimum -- and a 10-Gigabyte hard drive full of MP3s. The machine was previously running Mac OS 9.1, the latest version of the venerable Mac OS.
The box contains three installation CDs -- Mac OS X, Mac OS 9.1 and a CD full of developer tools, including the Cocoa programming environment, which is reportedly simple enough for school kids to use.
The OS X installer says it needs 1.1 Gbytes of hard disk space to install the new system. After clearing enough room, the installation process was a simple double-click of the installer icon.
Twenty minutes and a couple of questions later, Mac OS X was up and running. This contrasts favorably to Windows 2000, Microsoft's next-generation operating system, which takes at least an hour to install.
The Mac OS X installer detected and automatically configured the machine for a home Ethernet network before launching the setup assistant, which presents a glorious "Welcome" animation and plays a little musical greeting.
The setup assistant asks for little more than your location, name and address. It does gather some marketing information, including your e-mail address, and asks whether you want to receive messages from Apple and its partners. The checkboxes are defaulted to "yes."
"Enjoy using your computer and have fun on the Internet," the assistant cheerfully says as you exit.
The installation was so easy, it fooled me into thinking everything would be a breeze.
I planned to connect to the Net, set up e-mail, play with iTools, which includes online disk storage, hotsync a Handspring Visor and connect to another Mac over a home network. Of the five tasks, the first four went more or less effortlessly, while the last was a headache.
The first thing I did was play an MP3. Although the OS X version of iTunes, Apple's audio player, isn't available as a download until Saturday, the song opened immediately in QuickTime. Version 5.0 of the versatile multimedia platform is included with the OS X installation.
The first of many pleasant surprises is the extra volume OS X gets from the USB-connected Harman-Kardon Soundsticks and subwoofer. The sound system is considerably louder than under Mac OS 9.
Connecting to the Net with Microsoft's Internet Explorer and checking e-mail were also easy. Click, click and that was it.
Mac OS X includes its own e-mail client, called "Mail," which is clean and easy to use.
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