You hang around for years waiting for a new operating system and then two come along at once. You can’t help but have noticed Windows XP (for experience) for Intel-based machines, but unless you’re an Apple user you may not have clocked Mac OSX. When Mac OSX did arrive, about a year ago in it’s earliest form, most Mac users didn’t like it. It’s a radical departure from the well-known Mac interface, having an applications “dock” at the bottom of the screen (where you see icons of programs you are using) and no Apple menu access to all those control panels and devices that we’d all got so used to.

There’s a new set of terminology with OSX too. The new user interface is called “Aqua”, with buttons that look like wine gums and rounded corners on sliders and pages. Existing programs, like Word for example, need to be “carbonised” for OSX if they are going to run, and Mac OS 9 is run in what’s called Classic mode.

The OSX is based on Unix and the 10.1 version that I have been using is fast, a radical change from OS 9, and is highly intuitive. OSX feels like fun too. The interface has impressive special effects that could easily be dismissed as gimmicks. The dock pops up from the bottom or side of the screen (you configure it as you wish) so that it is not cluttering the desktop when not in use. Indeed, so economical is it on space that it can be set as tiny and magnify as you roll the mouse over it when selecting the application that you want to use. There is also a satisfying “genie” effect that puts away live applications not actually in use with the appearance of squeezing the application (the genie) back into its dock icon (the bottle).

Microsoft has just released Office X for the Mac which includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and the communications program Entourage. These are complete revamps of the existing Office suite. They all have the aqua look and feel, and operate more like Mac applications than Microsoft products ever have before. There’s a level of standardisation that runs through all native Mac OSX applications. For example, at the desktop the first item in the menu bar is finder and it pulls down to reveal useful items such as “preferences”, and a new feature set called “services” with disk copy, grab, mail access, and text edit. These are handy things to have on the desktop and they also appear in every Mac OSX application.

If you’ve got a G3 or G4 powerbook, iMac, or iBook make sure you’ve got 300 MB of memory and try OSX and Office X out.

Mac OSX

Price: pound;84.26

OSX Server

Price: pound;339.57 for 10 clients and pound;680 for unlimited clients

BETT stands:E34 amp; F34

www.apple.com

Mac OSX

Suitibility for purpose ****

Ease of use ****

Value for money ****