I finally broke down about 10 days ago and placed an order on Apple's online store page for Jaguar, the new MacOS X 10.2 release. The user experience on Apple's online store, by the way, is awful. At least, it always is for me. Why? Because the site is slower than snails. And most of the Apple branding and site navigation -- the stuff that lets you know "you're still with us" and lets you know where you are, is gone. Now, I can understand why you'd want to do that -- when the customer is at the point of purchase, reduce the OFD (opportunity for distraction) as much as possible and get them to focus and commit to submitting the order, credit card number and all. Fine. But when the customer is past that point, uh, get them back into reality, huh? For instance, go check on a pending order in the Apple store. Can you say, "hastily thrown together pages"? I knew you could.

After a few days I was curious about what the status of my Jaguar order was. So I went into the Apple site, checked on the order status, and one of those hastily thrown together pages said my order was "being reviewed". By whom? For what? And why? Who knows. "Being reviewed." Okay. Well, hurry up and review my order.

Next day, I check. Status is still: "being reviewed."

Another day passes. Then another. I check again. "Being reviewed." I sense a pattern. I call 1-800-MY-APPLE. "Why does my order say "being reviewed?"

The perky Apple rep says, "Hmm, it looks like your order is held up by FedEx because they can't ship to a P.O. Box."

"I had no idea you were shipping FedEx. The site could have told me that. Instead of saying, 'being reviewed'." It was a Sunday. I wanted to install Jaguar that weekend, so I would have time to mess around with it. I told the Apple rep, look, cancel the order, I'll go to the local Apple store and buy it. So he cancelled it.

I went to the Apple store (note to Fashion Valley San Diego Apple Store manager: tell your employees that customers come first, not trainee cashiers at the point of purchase --- you don't make customers stand around and wait while you chat with each other about how take orders) and bought Jaguar.

I came home. I installed it. It took a long time to install, however it did boot up.

First thing I notice, Steve Jobs has installed apps in my Dock. I did not choose to put them there. Jobs did. This is not the way to get me to notice new cutesy apps like iCal and iChat. So I removed them. It's not "personal computing" when the vendor depersonalizes/decustomizes your setup. Jobs, you know this. Cmon.

Second thing I notice, the fonts and window size of my Terminal app are different. They're worse. Why'd it change!? So I had to figure out how to reset it back the way I had it set before, Jobs: the word's called "preferences," as in mine, not yours. Deal with it.

Third thing I notice, my PATH has been changed, and the ~/bin path is GONE from my PATH environment variable, so none of my scripts "just worked" anymore.

Fourth thing I noticed, Calculator's changed -- for the better it appears. "Paper tape" -- heh.

Fifth -- my "computer" icon in Finder now looks like an iMac "lamp". I liked the old one. These changes remind me so much of the NeXTSTEP 3.0 to 3.1 to 3.2 to 3.3 saga from ages past.

I wasn't aware the DevKit was included. That was a nice surprise.

A Momentary Scare
Another observation having been using 10.2 then 10.2.1 for a few days:

I was shocked, really shocked, when I went to print a document, and a dialog box came up and said something along the lines of, "Duh, printer? You don't have a printer. I can't find a printer. Guess ya haven't set one up."

Of course I have one set up. Works fine. Why do I have to set it up again!?

The printing stuff in MacOS X is embarassingly bad. Overly techie, user-hostile, and antithetical to everything Apple stands for, esp. in light of the "Switch" campaign. After a moment of panic (does 10.2 even "know" what a printer is? does it have drivers? am I screwed?) I clicked on some buttons, scanned through the options, and *guessed* that "IP Printing" (how jargony and user-unfriendly can you get!? "IP printing!?") meant printers connected via a network. Luckily, I was able to figure out how to restore my HP Laserjet 4000N and everything's fine. But less-experienced users? I can only imagine their frustration.

I'm envisioning Steve Jobs running around saying "Printers are so 90s! Hell, they're so 1984! We did laser printers already! Get over it! Think digital! Your Mac is your digital hub, dude! There's no place for PAPER in your digital life! Need to send someone a document! E it, don't print it! Save a tree! Printers? Schminters!"

Jobs: you gotta remember there's a Hierarchy of Needs with users. And PRINTING comes before ICAL and other cutesy toys for most people, I bet. Grumble.