A few years ago, Apple advertised the launch of a new operating system by saying "get a brand new computer for under £100". That also applies to this new system, OS X. The only problem is that the new machine feels little like a Mac.
Apple is pushing OS X (pronounced ten not ex) as the way forward, with features such as multitasking, protected memory, more stability, new icons, easier internetting, improved resistance to hackers and so on.
The new system, out in beta (test) version now, is due to become the new Mac standard early next year. It will, at best, surprise many.
At least putting it into your machine is simplicity itself. Pop in the CD, click install and that's it. Twenty minutes later you're looking at the future of the Macintosh.
The first thing that future does is ask you for a user name and password, in no nonsense terms. There is none of the usual happy Mac stuff; no pictures of extensions or anything like that, just a start up progress bar and then the login and password request.
After the login, you are greeted by a group of icons bouncing up and down onto the bottom of your screen on what is known as the Dock. And that's it.
Like most Mac users, I have a bundle of things on the desktop, as well as the trash and hard drive icons. On OS X there is nothing - no files, no bin, no computer, which makes for about 30 seconds of hyperventilating as you worry that all your files have been wiped.
But to get anywhere with OS X you have to really Think Different, as the advert would say, or to be more honest, think like the PC crowd. To get into the desktop you have to click on the Mac face icon on the Dock at the bottom and then your machine opens up. It's a feeling very similar to using Windows because CDs and other discs appear in this window (confusingly they also appear on what Mac users normally call the desktop) alongside other files.
The Dock is the first major alteration to the existing Mac OS that you notice. Anyone who has used the control strip will think they're getting something similar. They're not. The strip was a good idea and it could be moved, edited and so on. The dock is a tad more stubborn.
It stays centred on the screen until it fills up and then it starts to shrink from whatever size you have made it in the preferences folder. To many it may seem like the logical extension of the control strip, but it isn't; it cannot be moved and it doesn't deal with things like sound, internet or monitor settings.
It also takes up a centimetre of your monitor's screen real estate. That might not be a problem on 21 inch monitors, but on a 15 inch iMac it's unacceptable, and portable users will feel the same.
The next difference is the three coloured buttons in each window: one closes the window, one puts the window in the Dock and one maximises the space given to the window. It is not earth-shattering and it does work, but Apple should consider tinkering with this so that applications do quit when the last window in an application is closed, instead of staying open and lurking somewhere.
And somewhere is quite an appropriate word. This OS, maybe with its Unix roots showing through, needs the user to sit down and think it through. It is not what you expect from a company that prides itself on software that lets humans just get on with it without worrying about the plumbing.
Gone is the Apple menu in the top left hand corner of the screen, and there is no Finder or clock in the top right. If you are used to using Macs this is completely disorientating. Those two items, along with the control strip, are my main tools for navigating the system.
More changes: icons are pictures now, and they are also an irrelevancy. It is a nice idea, but it provides too much detail and that can be quite distracting. Pre-OS X icons enlarged by the Dock look horrible.
And anyone who thinks they can get through this by just hitting Apple-n to call up a new folder to rearrange things has to think again. Even the key shortcuts have been changed, reinforcing the feeling that this is not your Mac.
But enough of the exterior, what of the system's innards? First, nearly everything you own will run thanks to the built-in OS 9 emulator. Every major application seems to work fine and the software had no problems, even running Word 5.1 from many years ago, though it was slow at cutting and pasting.
Of my software, most major applications operated perfectly although Norton Anti-Virus refused to work, and games like Deus Ex and Unreal Tournament were very slow performers, despite being run on a 400MHz DVD iMac with 192MB of memory.
The only other items that would not work were Apple's own DVD playing software and Virtual PC. CD playback was choppy while the machine was carrying out tasks, too.
Connecting to the internet was problematic because of the way I had previously logged on to Demon Internet, my ISP, but access was eventually managed through the Internet Explorer beta which was enclosed. Surfing was no different from normal though the new Explorer did seem a little faster in responding to commands.
Applications did crash, but instead of going through the long hassles of a restart, OS X gives you a number of ways of continuing to work while quitting the crashed application. This was wonderful.
It is also easy to get into the Unix that runs the OS, though this may be removed by the final release. I certainly hope so - it was terrifying to watch my girlfriend use her working knowledge of Unix to take control of my iMac, changing passwords and so on without needing the Mac interface. The danger here is obvious; that someone could type in a few codes that could wipe a hard drive. The Unix access might be a selling point for OS X, but it could be dangerous in malicious, or inexperienced, hands.
Something that will infuriate the Mac faithful is that documents are given suffixes, like .rtf, .tiff and so on automatically, making the set up look a little more like a PC.
And working out filepaths and where you are allowed to put files -some folders are protected - could leave users bewildered, again.
So is Apple making a big mistake? Many of the technical criticisms here will no doubt be addressed by the time of the proper release, but the new user interface will confuse, even put off, potential users.
Microsoft's Whistler - the next version of Windows 2000, due out around the same time as OS X - has a more friendly looking interface than the new Mac. That's something I never thought I would see written.
I'm a reasonably experienced Mac user, having worked with several incarnations of the system and run networks of the machines as well. But it still took a few hours to get used to the way things worked in OS X, messing about with settings and working out which buttons did what. Normally on a Mac this all takes about 30 minutes.
Worse, OS X takes effort on your behalf to get the best from it, and as Mac users are famed for diving in quicker than others and not bothering with manuals, this could see a lot of frustrated - if not angry - people.
If security or having an easier time recovering from crashes is a major concern, or you want a friendly version of Unix, or you like to have the latest thing, then the final version of OS X is for you. But by the time you read this I will probably have deleted it, and the CD it came on will be another a new coaster.
In short, Apple has sold the family jewels. This OS comes across as something for business and perhaps geeks. But Apple will struggle to convert the normally evangelical Mac faithful.
The computer that used to smile at startup is now simply not friendly enough for the rest of us.
