Why OSX is better, reason 5: No Chooser

When the first Mac came out about the only thing you could print to was the imagewriter. That wonderful hunk of dot-matrix technology was activated from, you guessed it, the chooser. How odd, then, that years later the only way to pick a printer in OS 9 is still the chooser. It doesn’t care that you are working in a multiple printer environment, some color, some black and white. Sorry, you still have to head to the chooser. And yes desktop printing provides some short cuts but not enough.

OS X thankfully puts the chooser right where it belongs, in the coffin with the rest of Apple’s classic operating system. I don’t miss it one bit. Where, you ask, do you choose which printer you want to print to? Right where you need to, when you hit the print window. Wow. It’s that simple. No more hoping over the Apple menu when you need to switch printers. You still have to use the Print Center to set up printers for the first time, or, if you want, to cancel and resume jobs. But not to change printers. Also now the network functions are removed from the Print Center. OS 9 confused matters by having the ability to choose servers in the chooser and through the network utility.

Thanks, Apple, for burying the chooser. I don’t miss it. Now when I want to switch printers I do it in the print window. Easy.