who acquired his first iMac-20 ~ exactly a year ago.

It has exceeded all expectations for intuitive grasp of almost any aim (via trial and error, not turgid manual-poring), for stability and just plain sane Goodness -- not to mention the actual Solution of the inchoate topic 'backing-up'! via the almost unbelievable completeness of Time Machine. You'd think that that feature alone would prompt the Dumpster Solution to millions of frustrated amateur Beast victims. You'd think..

Interesting.. the internal debates about the sophistication of the display-layer, Quartz and such VS sucking-up the initial speed penalty until hardware catches up. Apple-1; Naysayers-0.
So happy though, to have evaded those interim OS X growing pains!
One of the benefits of dropping-in to the latest version and not someone's years-old but serviceable 'starter machine'
(I figured last year that factor was Worth an extra ~$400, just in the saving of retrograde research and aggravation. Seems so.)

I see that the author still has some reservations about the umm neural-network (claimed in-brain) clash with ... the way Finder, the Dock (still) work. I need to read more of his links ever to grok his recurrent point to fullness, natch.

Naturally I concur with his assertion that Apple went with KISS, while not fully satisfying the maestros who really prefer CL for Everything. Whatever deconstruction might be made: in this first year, this user has referred to The Missing Manual maybe 5x. Uncharacteristic behaviour here, after a decade of W98 and the entire Beastware syndrome, but I followed the advice in these parts: don't sweat the internal details OS X almost always knows how to keep itself alive (True, in the event.) It's been hard to break the habit of not-trusting the OS to do the same thing the third time, though.

But this confidence is dangerously near to promoting sloth; I still need to relate hierarchical files/directories to The OS X Way, in order to next organize stuff ... such that both OS and I are on the same page about Where My Stuff (really) IS. Y'know?

So, thanks for this compact and relevant history course!

Related to real time:
Goshes..! Can I REALLY just {finally} order-up a Snow Leopard upgrade, follow the bouncing-ball and have 100% of the Stuff automagically copied over, the disk-hogging uncompressed stuff processed and ... all with, ~0 likelihood of a Time Machine restore being needed? I figure I've waited long enough for all teething problems to be handled by the Update immediately following Install. Surely.

(For that matter, will TM seamlessly and er, recursively recreate its early history / leave the Leopard old-stuff as-is so that one Could reinstall Leopard seamlessly? / or some third mix.) (Now) I'd presume that the new install would sanely instruct TM about the new OS -- and relate what steps would be needed were something silly to be demanded: like going back to Leopard, say.. If you Can revert (?)

Guess I'll need another O'Reilly 'Snow Leopard' tome ... In Case of Fire.
Oh well, beats the 100# of manuals from CP/M through MSDOS=CP/M-clone.

..Bloody Apple works so well, I can't summon the enthusiasm to determine just How it does it.
What a good reason to evade boring logical prose, eh?


I,
Shocked that this sucker is This good.. so far.

as promised. Dazzling to watch it do all that work, flawlessly. All those tiny magnetic domains flipping through their individual hysteresis loops by-the-jillions sans error and nary an unwelcome message nor ambiguity. And I guess it's like this on all the older variants -- just a Bitchin piece of techno.
Kiss on both cheeks to the Apple boffins-All.

Noted though, after Update and then command for Time Machine to update with new OS:
150° F on that nasty GPU diode, correspondingly high on its heatsink, etc. during 7.92 GB --> to the tiny WD 2.5" Passport HD. Heat Kills. Ramped up the fans w/ smcFanControl for the duration. Then back to 'Winter' settings. Love it when such a neat little program does exactly what I want, tells me about it and then goes away. Gotta reboot once more after update, as some of that RAM got eaten distributing and compressing.
Pondering Arstechnica's descriptions, including compressing of all the files for Leopard-remains (within all? the cumulative storage of TMachine, I presume) -- it took quite a while for the TM processing of that 8 GB. No swinky messages, not even a small mew.

(Ordered O'Reilly's handy pocket-size Missing Manual; the full-size one just reminds of all the keen features I'm unlikely to use until … I later find it would have been tidier to have Known.) Too much information.

I WANT BACK all those wasted hours ever trying to get Beastware to approximate something-like predictable behaviour! and that, after those hours of locating drivers, following links re. Gotcha!s and.. the wholesale drudgery of just any Beast-install/fine-tuning/ ad-removal ad infinitum.
Where do I sue the M***********s?
(At even $1/ hour, still not chump change.)

THIS is how software is fucking Supposed To Work. Those Poor Bastards still toilinging in the salt mines of hi-tech design ignorance.. constantly a tad fearful that … Today! may be the next RRR.
It's like going from a Model A Ford with 500K miles on unpaved roads --> an Acura Plutocrat, the moonroof open and Nakariakov on the Cee Dee.
(Now neighbor gets to install on 2 nbs + older iMac, finally having grokked the unique completeness of Time Machine and how silly not to have it, so easily.)


I, Happy Camper
(Even the 'New' mail system properly massaged the files in ~ 10 seconds.)