Finally got around to installing Jaguar last night, thanks to wafflelad and rstevens, who is ruff n tuff with his pizza puffs. Installation was typically simple (it is still a Mac, after all) and while it took quite a while, the resulting reboot was startlingly fast. Sure enough - 10.2 is noticeably speedier than was 10.1. Quartz Extreme has something to do with that, no doubt. The new desktop effects are fun, of course, and everything is even prettier than before, but that wasn’t one of my main concerns. As for stability, it’s difficult to compare Jaugar to 10.1, as neither one has ever crashed on me - but it’s no less stable, anyway. Permissions also seem to be handled more efficiently and intuitively.

I was underwhelmed by iChat, and not because of the screenshot you’ll see at that link. I don’t have a problem with it visually; you can turn off all that bubble and icon crap and it’s just text, which is fine. My only problem with it is that it doesn’t remember individual window positions for different messages. I guess many AIM clients don’t, but Mac OS AIM always has and I’ve grown used to it. On waferbaby’s suggestion I’m giving Adium a try, and so far I love it. Very customizable and it does everything I want it to.

Apparently Mail is better now, but I don’t check mail locally so I haven’t really tried it at all. I’m really enjoying the new Sherlock, especially as it’s been separated from the basic Find command. Instead, Sherlock is now a collection of web services in the form of channels. It’s movie listings faster than Moviefone, translations faster than babelfish, et cetera. I like it.

Apart from playing with Jaguar, I’m still getting ready for classes to start again and enjoying the weather. Today’s only the first of September, but it feels much more like the end of the month, and I’m not complaining.