In this issue:
-- OS X Transition: Seminar report and some tips
-- Purchasing Panther (OS X 10.3) for Less
-- Couldn't Care Less about OS X?

Issue 8, 10/14/03
Written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion

© 2003 Seneca Design & Training, Inc.

 

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OS X Transition: A Survival Guide for Designers and Design Management
-- Seminar Report and Tips

Over the past few months I've been reading, bookmarking, and testing everything I could get could my hands on as far as OS X's impact on design and publishing networks is concerned. I needed to create a full-day, lecture/demo-based seminar on the topic of "how to keep a design network running smoothly while moving from OS 9 to OS X" for Dynamic Graphics Training (be careful what you pitch!) and so I wanted to be as prepared and accurate as possible.

Yesterday my seminar went "live" for the first time at Chicago's Allegro Hotel. We had an over-capacity crowd of designers and pre-press types, half of whom flew in from out-of state (Arizona, Kentucky, New York, etc.) to attend. Definitely a hot topic. From their questions, comments and reactions, it appears to be a hit -- by the end of the day they looked much more confident and excited about moving to OS X than they did at the beginning. I'm looking forward to receiving copies of the evaluations they filled out for DGT so I can fine-tune the content for the next one in San Francisco in November.

And of course, with the next major version of OS X -- 10.3, aka "Panther" -- due out on October 24 (at 8:00 p.m. to be exact), I'll have to update it anyway. (See the next story for more information on Panther.)

In the seminar, I spent the morning covering OS X's advantages and disadvantages for designers, technical stuff about preparing your Mac for the upgrade, actually installing OS X, and then gave a quick orientation to the new Finder, Dock, and windows; and the implications of a UNIX-based OS for end users.

The afternoon got to the meat of the issues near and dear to our hearts: Working with Classic and OS X (explained via carrying a print and a web project through a mix of programs in both modes), Font Management, Printers and Peripherals, Networking and File Sharing, and Troubleshooting and Maintenance.

The font issue was by far the most troublesome for designers and publishers, with printing in OS X and Classic a close second. If you're having trouble with these issues too, here are a couple of Apple documents I found to be very helpful:

Using and Managing Fonts in Mac OS X v10.2
http://www.apple.com/pro/archive/creative/fonts/

Included PPDs and Use of PostScript Printers
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107002

Remember, though, these documents apply to 10.2 (Jaguar) -- things will likely change with 10.3 (Panther). The good news is that Apple's made font management much easier for designers in Panther, according to a beta tester/graphics consultant I spoke with.

Another thorny issue I encountered while doing research for this seminar was File Sharing. Tens of thousands of small- to medium-sized Mac design workgroups rely on OS 9's Sharing Setup to move files around their network. They don't have a file server, they use Shared folders and hard drives instead.

That method is far more difficult to implement in OS X because of its secured, multiuser nature and the resulting file permissions issues. I won't get into the details here, but if you're trying to figure out a way to maintain the same workflow for your workgroup, check out SharePoints:
http://www.hornware.com/sharepoints/

It's an application that comes close to replicating OS 9's "shared folders" in OS X. I haven't used it myself, but I spoke or traded e-mails with many other design and publishing managers who swore by it. Best of all, it's "donation ware" -- meaning it's free, but they provide a few ways for you to contribute some funds to its continued development.

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Purchasing Panther (OS X 10.3) for Less

If you go to Apple's Panther preview page :
http://www.apple.com/macosx/

... you'll see a "Buy Now" link. Apple's charging $129.00 for a single copy and $199.00 for a family pack of 5 users, the same price it charged for Jaguar (10.2). Unless you purchased a new Mac or a copy of Jaguar after October 8 (in which case you can upgrade to Panther for shipping and handling after it's released), there is no discounted upgrade price for current OS X owners.

Of course, *after* I purchased Panther from Apple's site for the full price, I discovered that you can get a single copy of it for $99 from MacConnection, the mail-order house:
http://shop.macconnection.com/web/Shopping/Product.htm?product_id=467206
...or call them at 1-888-213-0260 to order it over the phone.

To get the $99 deal, you need to purchase Panther from them before Oct. 31, 2003 for their discounted price of $119.95. It comes with a $20 rebate on top of that -- the PDF rebate form can be downloaded from their site.

Want to see what Apple has in store for us with 10.3? You can get a shallow overview on that Panther page cited above.

Other unofficial sources -- full of details -- abound. Check out Think Secret (http://www.thinksecret.com) ... the home of Mac rumors and speculation, many of which turn out to be true. You can find a ton of early beta information by clicking the Archives button and checking out the stories from July until now.

Another good unofficial source is reading what all the Panther beta testers, discretely hidden behind screen names, are discussing amongst themselves in MacNewsNetwork's forums :
http://forums.macnn.com/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=462415&sortby=&sortorder=
... that long URL jumps you to the results of a forum search on the word "Panther" (2000+ threads!).

... just keep in mind that often, the final shipping version of a piece of software is different than what the beta testers were seeded to bang on.

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Couldn't Care Less about OS X?

If you're happily using OS 9 or you're a Windows user, I apologize for not having any relevant content for you in this issue! I've just been in an OS X frenzy recently, as you can tell, and it's spilling over to all areas of my life. Now that the first seminar's over, I can start thinking about other things.

I have a backlog of great tips for DesignGeek that I'm going to try and clear out in upcoming issues, as well as information about Adobe Creative Studio and QuarkXPress 6. So stay tuned!

 

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OS X TRANSITION:
A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR DESIGN STAFF AND MANAGEMENT

If you're in San Francisco, southern California, Washington D.C. or Seattle, you too can attend the seminar Anne-Marie talked about in this issue, updated for Panther, and fine-tuned by the wonderful "beta testers" who attended the Chicago seminar.

Why attend? Well, in addition to receiving a ton of useful resource and step-by-step guides she created explicitly for this seminar, and a great OS X book, you'll discover all the ins and outs of moving your design/production workflow to OS X without a hitch. Yes, she'll cover installing OS X and how to use the Dock and so on, but a big focus will be on publishing-critical topics such as font management, file sharing, user account strategies for design workgroups, printing, and optimizing Classic for seamless performance (yes, you *can* use Quark 4 or 5 in OS X!).

Anne-Marie is a seasoned OS X user in a design studio environment, as well as an OS X trainer for other design and publishing workgroups (if you can't make the seminar, call to arrange custom training at your site). You'll have plenty of time in the seminar to discuss your particular OS X concerns for your workflow.

Seminar details here:
http://www.dgusa.com/dgstore/a/dgtosx.htm

And registration is here:
http://www.dgusa.com/dgstore/product.asp?prodno=4030

All of Anne-Marie's software/seminar training info, student pix and testimonials, fees, etc. are here:
http://www.senecadesign.com/training/

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DesignGeek is a free bimonthly publication written by Anne-Marie "HerGeekness" Concepcion, a cross-media designer and authorized Adobe and Quark training provider. She owns Seneca Design & Training, Inc. in Chicago, Illinois (http://www.senecadesign.com/).

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Copyright 2003 by Seneca Design & Training, Inc.
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