Mel's Macintosh Universe: Computer Corner

Moving to OS X

Mac OSX v.10.2
By Melvin Ah Ching
As Published on AppleLinks, May 30, 2003
This letter is a response to Charles Moore's piece on OSX user adoption.

Just read your article, "Why Aren't More Mac Users Switching to OSX?"

Here are my reasons for my slow transition to OS X.

1. Pagemaker 6.5: All of my desktop publishing work is done with Pagemaker 6.5. I plan on using this app for a few more years or until the time my service bureau and printer stops supporting it. Currently both operations gladly accept Pagemaker 6.5 files along with InDesign (OS 9 & X) and Quark. I've been a long time user of Pagemaker and as long as it works I really don't want to change... plus it works on 2 of the computers I own... Powercenter 150 and Power Mac G4 733 Quicksilver.

2. My main client also uses Pagemaker and has several Macs, none of which are OSX ready except for an iBook which he recently bought, but promptly changed the default start up to OS 9.2. We work in a shared environment and send our Pagemaker files back and forth to each other.

3. Adobe has all but abandoned Pagemaker for InDesign. I do plan on upgrading to InDesign, but since none of my jobs require it, I am in no hurry to do so. We all have to decide when to do our upgrades and I prefer to do mine on my own timetable and not by the marketing calendar of Apple computer or any other software company.

4. I do run OS X about 60% of the time on my Power Mac G4. I recently upgraded to 10.2 and I am currently happy with it. Apple's iTunes and iPhoto are great apps to run on OS X. I also use OSX for building and maintaining various websites with Pagespinner 4.1.... Do most of my web surfing and emails with OSX now...

5. Still I have a lot of older Mac hardware that will run older OS's. Many people do and as long as the old stuff works, they probably have no compelling reasons to upgrade to new hardware and a new OS. I know a lot of writers who just use Word or Apple/ClarisWorks and are totally happy running these apps on their 2 to 10 year old Macs.... I prefer WriteNow 4.0 as my main word processer and happily run that on a number of older Macs.

I do recognize that OSX is Apple's future and it is here now. There are some great new apps that run on OSX which I know I will eventually get.. but on my own time. With the impending release of Panther, I will probably get that upgrade sooner than I did Jaguar (which I only bought in April)....

I am sure many other Mac users are on the slow track or even no track to the OSX path. We just simply upgrade on our own timetable and not on the marketing timetable perpetuated by Apple and the software vendors.

Mel's Macintosh Universe

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