Applications:
Jaguar comes with many new and updated applications. Some applications such as Address Book, Calculator, Image Capture, Preview, Text Edit, Disc Copy and the Terminal have had minor updates. These applications have new features, bug fixes, and are much better than their predecessors.

Other applications like Mail.app and Sherlock have received major upgrades. Mail.app is becoming a top notch email application, with better junk mail filters, searching capabilities, easier mailbox control, stability improvements, and much more. On the other hand, Sherlock has completely changed. It can no longer search your hard drive, but is an all in one tool for searching the Internet. You can search for web sites, pictures, stock quotes, movies, yellow pages, ebay, flights, and more. For many people, this could become the de-facto standard in searching for stuff on the web.

Jaguar also includes a couple new Apps such as iChat, Bluetooth File exchange, Apple Midi Setup, and some others to come (iCal and iSync). The biggest of these new programs is iChat. iChat is Apple's AOL Instant Messaging application that also allows you to connect to other Mac users, and iChat users on your network via Rendezvous. It has some great features like a clean interface, the ability to get messages while you are signed off or your computer is turned off, and of course other apple niceties. However, it does have some shortcomings. The most obvious is the lack of buddy groups, so all of your buddies are shown together, taking a little organization away. Also, some people have reported stability issues, as well as problems with communication; however, I have not had a single problem with iChat. It has quickly turned into my AIM client of choice.

Features:
Like any good major OS upgrade, MacOS X 10.2 is loaded with new features. Apple claims over 150 new features in Jaguar, many of which probably deal with application updates and configurations, but there are some other features which are highly touted. These include the following:

As noted earlier, Sherlock does not handle hard drive searching anymore. Instead, MacOS X 10.2 has a built in Find File tool for more advanced searches, but if you are looking for a file by name, you can search from the search box in the finder window toolbar. This is very handy, as there is no more need to launch an application to find a file.

Another feature added to Jaguar is Inkwell. With Inkwell, you can use a graphics tablet to actually write like pen on paper into all of your applications. With no extra updates or applications, Inkwell will turn all your written text into typed text. Not exactly a new idea, but having this integrated into a computer OS (instead of handheld OS), is very new indeed, and will change the way people enter text into their computers.

Other highly requested features that made it into Jaguar are Windows file sharing and USB printer sharing. With a simple click of the mouse, you can let Windows users easily connect to your Mac, and share files back and forth. Of course, since MacOS X 10.1, we have been able to connect to Windows users, although now it is a little easier. As for printer sharing, if you have a USB printer, you can share it across your network. No need to have a separate printer for each machine, or cable swapping.

Staying on the networking path, Jaguar introduces a new networking technology called Rendezvous. Rendezvous is no-configuration networking that may revolutionize the way we view networks. It's supposed to be able to connect to computers and peripherals automatically, allowing easy file sharing, iTunes sharing, simple networked printer setup, network chat, and more. All this will be done with little or no input from the user. This technology is in its infancy, so not everything works as advertised yet, but does have great potential.

The last major feature that's new to Jaguar is Quartz Extreme. Quartz Extreme is only available to those users who have AGP nVidia GeForce or ATI Radeon video cards with 16 MB of RAM or more. These higher requirements are because Quartz Extreme places the graphics load from the GUI onto the video card, where it belongs. This frees up your CPU and RAM for other applications and processes, speeding up the entire computing experience. Those who have Quartz Extreme will be very happy with Jaguar.

Configuration:
Jaguar offers many more configuration options over the previous versions of MacOS X. Many of the System Preferences have been changed slightly, and some drastically. MacOS X allows much more customization this way and is starting to bring back the control that MacOS 9 gave us. So, in order of the System Prefs' locations, here are the major changes.

The Desktop pane contains a new feature where you can change your desktop picture on a set interval. This way, you don't have to get bored with your current desktop picture, and makes a good slide show effect in the background for your digital photos.

The next three additions are pretty minor. The General pane contains an option to set the level of font smoothing MacOS X performs. It has optimum settings for CRT and LCD displays, and then a couple options in between. The other two have been moved out of the Users pane into their own panes. Login Items and My Account have been moved for easier access.

Next on the list is Screen Effects (renamed from Screen Savers). Apple has decided to get rid of the icons screen saver module, and replaced it with a super cool flurry screen saver, as well as a random module. The random module was very much needed, as I can't stand watching the same screen saver all the time.

A new pane to Jaguar is CDs & DVDs. This pane contains options for what happens when you insert a blank CD or DVD, as well as options for music CDs, picture CDs, and video DVDs. This was a great move to clean up the process of selecting what happens when each of these is inserted.

One of the biggest changes to the system preferences is with Energy Saver. Not only does it have preset settings for long battery life, higher performance, DVD playback and presentations, but it also distinguishes between power adapters and batteries on iBooks and PowerBooks. That way, you can set your laptop to use less energy when running off a battery, and normal when running off AC power. This was probably my most missed feature from OS 9.

A couple smaller changes are seen in the Mouse, Sound, and Internet panes. The only changes to Mouse are a scrolling speed setting for those who have scrolling mice, and an option to ignore the track pad when a mouse is plugged into an iBook or PowerBook. The Sound pane now has a few more output settings, as well as a place to set your sound input preferences. The Internet pane has really just been updated to take advantage of .Mac, including a built in iDisk Utility. In the iDisk section, you can view free space, buy more space, and set access privileges for your public folder.

On the other hand, the Sharing pane has received a major overhaul. You can now use the Sharing pane to quickly turn on and off Personal File Sharing, Windows File Sharing, Personal Web Sharing, Remote Login, FTP Access, Remote Apples Events, and USB Printer Sharing. Also included in the Sharing pane is a way to turn on and off the built in firewall, as well as poking holes in it for outside access. Finally, the last section in this pane is for Internet sharing. This is where you can set your computer to act as a software router, or an Airport software base station.

The final System Preferences update goes to the Speech pane. Speech Recognition has been given a bunch of new features, while the Default Voice setting is pretty much the same. The new kid on the block is Spoken User Interface, where you can have your Mac speak back alerts, tell you when an application needs your attention. speak the text under your mouse, and speak selected text. Your Mac could end up talking more than you do.

Miscellaneous Additions/Changes:
Beyond what was discussed above, MacOS X 10.2 also offers the following under-the-hood and other changes. Some of these changes were highly requested by users, others should have been no brainers for Apple. Of course, they all help to enhance the user's experience.

First off, according to Apple, spring-loaded folders were requested more by end users than any other missing feature. So, they brought them back in Jaguar. They don't quite work like MacOS 9, but it's mostly the same. While the navigation via spring-loaded folders is not there, moving files via spring-loaded folders works perfectly. For those who don't know, this effect is seen when you drag a file onto a folder, wait for the folder to open, and keep going deeper and deeper until you find where you want to put it. After you finally drop the file, your desktop clean itself up. Definitely a handy feature.

Another feature which Apple, and other companies, had nearly completely left out of MacOS X is scanning. Image Capture can be used with scanners to get your images. However, it doesn't always work that great, and not all scanners seem to work with it. Hopefully Apple can polish this into a better alternative to booting into OS 9 for scanning.

Another part of the OS that has changed is the way CDs are created with the built in Disc Burner. Now, when you insert a blank CD in the Finder (unless you set otherwise using the System Preferences), it asks you if you want to make a Finder CD, an iTunes CD, or a Disc Copy CD. The first one now makes a ISO disk, which means there is no option for Mac only discs. However, these ISO discs make the folders unreadable on Windows machines, something that needs to get fixed.

A couple new visual changes in MacOS X 10.2 are smaller shadows, a mouse shadow (for Quartz Extreme users), more glass like buttons, chasing flowers, a new busy cursor, a large green plus sign when copying files, and windows that zoom to their folders when they open and close (ala MacOS 9). Of course, at first you may think that these graphical improvements may take more CPU power, but Jaguar does have many minor speeds boosts that help it out in this area. I feel that even on a system without Quartz Extreme, Jaguar is quite a bit faster than MacOS 10.1.

First off, MacOS X 10.2 has moved from an aging C++ compiler to a much more matured gcc 3.1. Of course, this means that some things just don't work right anymore. Some games, printer drivers, applications, and other things may not work correctly under Jaguar. Of course, developers are working super hard to get all of their apps 10.2 compatible, so this shouldn't be too big of a deal anymore.

Still, those older printer drivers that have stopped working means that if you have a printer that doesn't have drivers that come with Jaguar, you may be out of luck until the manufacturer updates the drivers. There are some solutions which take advantage of the CUPS printing built into Jaguar which may work well, but can be difficult to use.

On that same note, many of the menu extras that came onto the scene after 10.1 was introduced, no longer work. Again, the developers need to update most of them to use the latest APIs, and there are workarounds, but your favorite weather, CPU monitor, or other utility may not work anymore.

Finally, as was the case with all previous versions of MacOS X, hardware that worked with MacOS 9 will not necessarily be compatible with Jaguar. The list of compatible hardware grows everyday, but is far from complete. Most aging devices don't work at all, while other devices only partially work. Unless specifically stated, this is a hit and miss issue.

Rating: 10 out of 10 Mac Faces.

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