Mac OS X v10.2

Mac OS X version 10.2 “Jaguar” was the third major release of Mac OS X, Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It superseded Mac OS X v10.1 code name Puma and preceded Mac OS X v10.3 “Panther”. The operating system was initially available on 23 August 2002 for a price of US$79, or at a price of US$119 dollars for Apple’s new 'family pack', which allowed five installations on separate computers in one household.^[1] The operating system was generally well received by Macintosh users as a large step forward in the areas of stability, general speed enhancements, and the lineup of both graphical and command line applications available; however, many critics still claimed that significant user interface speed issues existed and that the operating system was still immature and awkward to use.

Jaguar was the first Mac OS X release to publicly use its code name in marketing and advertisements. Today Mac OS X products continue the tradition, and Apple officially refers to their operating systems by their code names (e.g. "Panther" instead of Mac OS X v10.3 or "Snow Leopard" instead of Mac OS X v10.6).

System requirements

• Supported Computers:^[2] PowerMac G3, G4, early PowerMac G5, iMac, eMac, PowerBook G3 or G4, or iBook computer
• Amount of RAM Required: 128 megabytes (Although 256MB to 512MB is highly recommended by many people who have used Mac OS X v10.2.8 as the real amount of RAM used when only the Operating System is running is around 200MB, but it can be run with as low as 96 MB)
• Processor Type: PowerPC G3, G4 or G5 running at 233 MHz or higher.

New and changed features

End-user features

Apple advertised that Mac OS v10.2 Jaguar had new features, such as

• Address Book – A system-wide repository for contact information in the updated Address Book.
• Bonjour – Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous) is Apple’s implementation of an IETF open protocol (Zeroconf) that allows devices over a network to essentially 'find each other' with a directory listing service. For example, a Bonjour enabled printer connected to a network, could 'find' and connect to a Bonjour enabled computer without any user configuration. This technology is used today in applications like iTunes music sharing and iChat Bonjour messaging.
• CUPS (Common Unix Printing System), the modular printing system for Unix-like operating systems.
• Finder – A revamped Finder with searching built directly into every window.
• Mail – An adaptive spam mail filter.
• Network support for Microsoft Windows networks – Increased support for networks in Jaguar. Apple added much more support for Microsoft Windows networks, and Microsoft Windows sharing protocols. Most of the changes were added behind the scenes, which included new Samba tools, and new printing protocols.
• Quartz Extreme – Quartz Extreme was added for compositing graphics directly on the video card, without the use of software to composite windows. The technology allotted the task of drawing the 3D surface of windows to the generally idle graphics processing unit, rather than to the central processing unit. Overall, the technology benefited the areas of user interface responsiveness and general speed enhancements throughout.
• Sherlock 3 – Web services (See Watson)
• Universal Access – Dozens of new features here.
• Increased speed across the entire system
• Journaled file system (first introduced in 10.2.3 Server, later made available to 10.2.x clients)
• iTunes logo was changed.

New applications in Jaguar

• iChat – An Apple-branded, officially-supported third party AOL Instant Messenger client.
• Inkwell, for handwriting recognition.

Marketing

Jaguar marked the first Mac OS X release which publicly used its code name as both a marketing ploy and as an actual official reference to the operating system. To that effect, Apple replaced their standard Mac OS X box with a new Jaguar-themed box.

Mac OS X v10.2 was never officially referred to as Jaguar in the United Kingdom due to an agreement with the car manufacturer Jaguar, although boxes and CDs still bore the Jaguar-skin logo.

Today, all Mac OS X releases are given a feline-related name upon announcement, and Mac OS X releases are now referred to by their code name, in addition to version numbers.

Criticisms

While most critics of the operating system agreed that Jaguar was a great step towards completion of the Mac OS X operating system, they criticized Apple for not spending enough time working on annoying user interface snags, as well as making the user interface user-friendly and 'well rounded.' Even with Quartz Extreme, critics claimed that user interface lag was still a significant problem in the operating system, and that the user interface was still not a completed piece of work. Many critics went as far as to say that the user interface was 'awkward' and when using Mac OS 9, they felt their system was significantly faster.

Version history

Mac OS X v10.2.7 (codenames Blackrider, Smeagol) was only available to the new Power Mac G5s and aluminum PowerBook G4s released before Mac OS X v10.3. Officially, it was never released to the general public.

Mac OS X v10.2.8 is the last version of Mac OS X officially supported on the "beige G3" desktop and minitower systems, as well as the PowerBook G3 Series (1998) A.K.A. Wallstreet/PDQ; later releases can be run on such Macs only with the help of third-part tools such as XPostFacto.

Also, the famous Happy Mac that had greeted Mac users for almost 18 years during a Macintosh’s startup sequence was replaced with a large grey Apple logo with the introduction of Mac OS X 10.2.

References

External links

• Apple: Mac OS X 10.2: Chart of available Mac OS software updates
• John Siracusa (2005). Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar. Retrieved 1 November 2005.