Why won't it work?

(From Network Computing Asian Edition)

Byline: David Chin

I am unapologetically a Mac person and was glad when our company decided to acquire a couple of new iBooks for editorial use. I was glad-to say the least. But I must confess that Apple's new Unix-based Jaguar OS (OS X) is a step back in terms of usability. I can only assume that the GUI engineers that did the OS X interface were different from the ones that designed the previous generation of Mac OS. Simple keyboard commands like creating a new folder, for example, have been changed, without consideration that Mac users have been using the previous keyboard shortcut since the Mac was born.

There are some neat new features though. For one, crashing is now the exception, not the norm and it does wake from sleep almost instantly. Jaguar can also share files with Windows machines-it's actually easy with any Windows client except XP. From what I see, new security measures in XP and Jaguar's inherently hardened OS (it's a BSD core) and the inability to define things like a Windows workgroup name make XP-OS X communications a hassle. I had to try so many things that when it did work, I couldn't figure out why.

But being the diehard that I am, I am just about getting used to the new Mac OS-although I'm still learning new ways of force-fitting it into our mixed corporate network. If you are a real networker, you know by now that against all the corporate wisdom of advanced technology and interoperability, in the real world, plug-and-play is anything but.

In true-blooded, cross-bred organic networks that have grown with your organisation, there ...