http://www.osnews.com/story/4832/Preview_What_to_Expect_from_Mac_OS_X_Panther_10_3 Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 21 May 2013 15:27:32 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia ... is X11 now included in the default install. Also, what do you call it when you launched the Gnome Desktop, is this equilavent to 'vmware' or is it actually a true gnome desktop running on top of Aqua.

thnx Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? They do have 'somewhat' and upgrade path. I qualified for the up-to-date program, since I got a PowerBook 15" 1.25. I bought it before their Oct. 8th cut off, but apparently they have updated there update to include all new PowerBooks and G5s. Also any system purchased after Oct 8th now qualify as well. Good for new system owners but I do have to agree for existing users somehow getting some sort of discount would be good.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/ Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >is X11 now included in the default install.

It is included in the third CD, but it is not installed by default. During installation you have to tick its checkbox that you want it installed.

> when you launched the Gnome Desktop, is this equilavent to 'vmware' or is it actually a true gnome desktop running on top of Aqua.

Haha, none of the two.
It is running on my Slackware machine and then I redirect its display over the network, so instead of loads Gnome on the Slackware X server, it loads it on OSX's. And as you can see, I use "Xnest", which is a progam that will allow you to have Gnome/KDE/etc running on a window instead of taking over MacOSX's rootless X11 desktop. I can understand your confusion though, it is pretty confusing for most. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >They do have 'somewhat' and upgrade path.

That's not a real upgrade policy. It is a "favor" for those who purchased the machine on the month that the new OS came out. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am going to buy a 15" powerbook...yes I am (don't tell my wife )

My question: I do not want to dual boot, as I see no need for it anymore. However, what do you think is the prefered setup for running both OSX and Linux

a. Yellowdog with Mac-on-Linux
b. OSX running Yellowdog via Xnest or someother method.

As I see it, b will give me more hardware compatability, but A is the far geekier solution....

Any input would be much appreciated. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >OSX running Yellowdog via Xnest or someother method.

This can not be done on the same machine. It requires the Xnest to run on a different machine. YellowDog needs to be running, not to just be mounted.

>Yellowdog with Mac-on-Linux

Slower than the real experience. It is handy if you need to be under Linux to do some work, but if you don't need to use Linux, better run OSX natively. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As always, Eugenia provides a very thorough review, analysing most of the pro's and con's. Reviews like this make it worthwile visiting OSNews every day (multiple times a day, in fact). Thanks Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You had me thinking... "What a fair and balanced review ALL the way up until the end.

You just HAD to say, "which do come in very favorable prices (for Apple machines) for the amount of features they carry (in comparison to other Apple machines)."

Apple computers ARE available in favorable prices for the features they cary in comparison to ALL other computers.

You make it sound like Apple charges a lofty price in comparison to PC of equal specs. This is not true. Apple's prices are very much in line with that of PCs with similar specifications in hardware and bundled software. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia:

So, is there a way to run OSX and run Linux from within OSX on the same machine?

What other options do I have? Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Please don't start the pricing flamebaiting again and goes on and on and on.... Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As usual, you are very thorough and very honest, which is the hallmark of a good review writer.

BTW, from watching the videos Apple put up of some of the WWDC conference sessions, it seemed like Apple was making backwards compatibility a very high priority in Panther. However, you're finding that some apps are incompatible with Panther or at least seem to be (they just crash). This is upsetting, though I imagine most legit developers are already compiling updates of their software for Panther. Still, I wish that Apple at this stage in OS X's evolution could manage the upgrade process a little better.

Panther overall sounds like an awesome upgrade, and I look forward to using it.

Take care,

Jared Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >So, is there a way to run OSX and run Linux from within OSX on the same machine?

1. You need a PC emulator, like Connectix
2. You need another machine running on your home network and connect to it (a I do). Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I suggest that you have OSX running and then load whatever linux apps you need since most require just can actually compile on your mac; plus apple added linux apis onto their system... x11 (at least the betas i tried on jaguar) is not a vmware solution... the apps are actually running on your computer...

if you install yellowdog, you can get all the mac apps you want on their via Mac-on-Linux but that aint exactly best for speed...

i suggest you try out OSX and then if you dont like, just install yellowdog...

no harm done there Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am going to buy a 15" powerbook...yes I am (don't tell my wife )

>

Neither one is particularly geeky, I have a 15 that I run Yellowdog with MOL and GNU Darwin PPC under a dual boot. The only machine really not supported by YDL is the 17 inch Powerbook. Hardware compatibility with Linux in general is pretty well improved now, I have several x86 and PowerPC boxes with SuSE x86 and YDL PPC and all te hardware is picked up out of box. The only hardware issue I did have was with my iPod with Linux but that has changed with gtkpod

http://gtkpod.sourceforge.net

GTKPod works very well with the iPod and yes it will compile on YDL, But if you have to access the Apple Music Store or you just cant live without iTunes, MOL will allow you to interface your iPod with Mac OS X and iPod performance under MOL is pretty good. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Why would you need to run Linux on a Mac? I'm just curious. I have tried running YDL on my iBook and it was fun to play with But I would much rather run Linux on a Wintel Box (they're still useful for somethings). Mac OS X is BSD based and can probably do all the same stuf that you would want with Linux. You can even load fink on it and do an apt-get install 'yourfavoriteprogram'. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Is that new tabs in this screenshot at http://img.osnews.com/img/4832/panther3.jpg (Settings, File Exchange and Devices)?

Another thing that I just noticed that it has only two button of scrollbar in the bottom. I personal would rather to have it both at the top and bottom. Did this changed in the new MacOS X or it's always that way? I had to ask, because I never own any Apple product. :-) Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Is that new tabs in this screenshot

Yes.

>Did this changed in the new MacOS X or it's always that way?

Can't remember. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >>Is that new tabs in this screenshot
>
>Yes.

That's pretty awsome look, I like it! Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Mostly cuz I really, really like Linux. I like the feel of it, the look of it (I am one of those people that tweak the ever loving crap out of their WM) and the apps. Now, if I can get all my GTK+, QT+ and Python apps running on OSX, maybe I will not have a need for it. Time will tell. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? " Another thing that I just noticed that it has only two button of scrollbar in the bottom. I personal would rather to have it both at the top and bottom. Did this changed in the new MacOS X or it's always that way? I had to ask, because I never own any Apple product. :-)"

TinkerTool lets you choose. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia:
1. What is the memory consumption like?
2. For your installation, how much space does it took?

10Q Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You can add double scroll tabs with this app and much more.

http://www.macosxcocktail.com/ Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >1. What is the memory consumption like?

Same as before I would think as Apple still continue to sell computers with 128 MB minimum (eMac, iBook low end models).

>2. For your installation, how much space does it took?

3 GB I think (out of a 40 GB disk). Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? double scroll 'buttons', I meant to say. oops. :-) Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Why must you taunt me so with your articles on OSX? I think that OSX is one of the best operating systems I've ever used and wanna use it on a regular basis so badly, but that damn hardware is so out of reach. I'm the kind of guy that buys a new PC bit by bit (Since I don't have the willpower to save up a lump sum), and I just can't do that with a mac. Ah well... someday. Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Panther isn't out yet but I can vouch for Jaguar.. I've already installed Ethereal (GUI version), nmap (front end), Gaim, KDE, Nessus, netrek, xpilot, and a bunch of others.. As long as the X11 environment is launched, these run natively under OSX with a recompile from source code. OSX has Apache, perl, PHP, java .. CUPS, SSH, FTP, it's all built-in (all of by default of course for security). You can install most anything on it that's open source Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? For my pre-order of Panther to arrive (hopefully on 10/24, like the Apple store said)! I purchased the 5-license package and plan on upgrading both mine and my wife's iMac.

Great review, Eugenia, lots of good information, with a nice smattering of screen shots. I particularly like the shots of Xnest. I usually run X11 rootless, and connect to my Linux PC to run apps like OpenOffice.org (it runs MUCH faster under Linux on my PC). Does Xnest come with Panther, or did you get that from somewhere's else? Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Xnest comes with Panther's X11.
What I do is open two xterms, I ssh into my Unix or Linux box from one of the Mac OS X xterms (e.g. ssh eugenia@10.0.0.12, make sure that SSHd is running on your Linux/unix machine), tell it that the $DISPLAY is the ip address of the mac, for example:
export DISPLAY=10.0.0.13:0.0 (for rootless X server)
export DISPLAY=10.0.0.13:1.0 (for Xnest - in a window)
and then on my *local* MacOSX xterm terminal (not the ssh'ed one) I tell it to:
xhost +
and then:
Xnest :1 -name "Gnome" +kb -ac -geometry 800x600 &
and then on my SSH'ed terminal I tell it to:
gnome-session

And that's it, Gnome will load on Mac OS X.
You can also do "startkde" or "startxfce4" or "wmaker" to load other window managers, instead of "gnome-session". Wed, 15 Oct 2003 23:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm happy to see the note about mouse speed issues being resolved (I hate mouse speeds in OS X). But what about other problems? Such as the Finer not updating the desktop contents without having focus? Or FAT floppy problems? Keychain annoyances? Terminal problems with file/folder case and space name issues? Removing developer tools once installed without logging in as Root? Etc... Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You can set the Expose button to be a mouse button. Works great with the side button on my logitech mouse. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Oh, I meant you can set it to a mouse button without doing anything funky. Like mapping the side button to alt-control-F12 or whatever. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In my honest opinion, the new finder feature of colored labels is very a great idea, but I think their implementation is lacking. The labels are too in your face. I think they should have went with a single colored label instead of the label with multiple gradients or whatever you want to call it. Personally I love the idea of icons on icons that Nautilus has had for a while, but their implementation is lacking in some respects as well. Just my .02 cents. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Such as the Finer not updating the desktop contents without having focus?

This is a new Finder, I didn't notice this problem.

>Or FAT floppy problems?

Sorry, no floppy drives here.

>Keychain annoyances?

It seems to remember my passwords to my Samba much better now.

> Terminal problems with file/folder case and space name issues?

Use Xterm baby!

> Removing developer tools once installed without logging in as Root?

I never seen this one...

>You can set the Expose button to be a mouse button.

I need my mouse buttons for other things... Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? because shopping around for laptops, after looking at dell, toshiba, compaq, checking out the prices at Sam's Club, etc etc etc.

I found the prospects rather blah.

I like the fujitsu lifebook 2120...that could be a go.

but with a 12" powerbook, or hell even the 12" ibook, it's just a sharp looking/light/efficient piece of machinery.

I can run my linux stuff(I'm a sysadmin), and the bonus is that I can boot into OS X and play.

I happen to like FreeBSD, and OS X is intriguing.

how's that for an answer?

alternatively:

"because I can"

;-) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux on your Apple laptop is a good idea because you can run console with framebuffer and switch back to X when necessary. Does panther offer switching dynamically between console and Aqua anybody (Eugenia)? Plus you can use mac on linux to run OS X. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > Does panther offer switching dynamically between console and Aqua anybody (Eugenia)?



No. You need to login as "> console" as your username in order to go to command line in framebuffer mode. From the moment you enter Aqua, there is no turning back. Aqua is pretty integrated to the system and there is no in-and-out of it. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > > Removing developer tools once installed without logging in as Root?
>
> I never seen this one...

I think he's referring to uninstalling WebObjects developer tools? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I read what he said about using Grab for the screenshots...and had to poke through to utilities and try it out.

It does do that, but, may i suggest the never crash, no problem

3 for full screen
4 for selection
4 , then space, for selecting individual windows

no other app necessary, straight out of the finder, works in any app. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Isn't it funny that Mac OS lovers have had to buy Mac OS X three times and only now will they get back the colored label feature that arrived in, I think, OS 8. Then there was the spring loaded folders which didn't come back till Jaguar, right? (These are some reasons why some people, like me, considered OS X a bit of a downgrade in places) Plus, it isn't as elegant as it was. I like that the filename field can be colored, but, to quote someone here, it looks a bit "in your face" and what ever happened to the color casts on the icons?

I also do not like these new tabs. They aren't very clearly designed. Which tab is the current one? The lighter one? the darker one? Sure it is more obvious when you have more than two tabs, but what about when you only have two? There needs to be more visual association between the tab and the page of content it connects to. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Which apps are crashing for you? Are they haxies etc... that weren't guaranteed to run by Apple, or something like Word. I think it's quite a different situation, and shouldn't be extrapolated to all apps (i.e., 10-20% of all apps crash, or 10-20% of the quirky utilities on one system...) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Very thourough, and touched on all the points I would have liked.

Panther looks really impressive, If I had a mac, I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade.

I especially like Expose, if only for the eye candy. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > Which tab is the current one? The lighter one? the darker one?

The darker one. The screenshot does NOT have focus on the window itself, that's why you don't see the *blue* color on the selected tab. Mac OS X with Panther has brought a new UI feature: to completely "unfocus" widgets when the window is not on focus, not just the window manager, as all other OSes do.
The new tabs do make sense UI wise, because tabs, are in effect, buttons.

> Isn't it funny that Mac OS lovers have had to buy Mac OS X three times and only now will they get back the colored label feature that arrived in, I think, OS 8.

That's flamebaiting and unfair Jace. When you rewrite the whole file manager from scratch, there is no way you can have all features at once as before. Finder is not at all the same file manager as OS8/9 was. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think he's referring to uninstalling WebObjects developer tools?

Nope. I don't even know what WebObjects is. What I'm referring to is the developer stuff that comes with OS X on the Developer CD. I installed it to see if I could compile CUPS. Once I found that to be a total waste of time and effort, I went to remove the developer stuff; no one using our Mac wanted or needed it. Tough luck. There's no uninstall process and I have to log in as root to trash any of it (and how much do you want to bet it isn't as simple as trashing the Developer folder?). Yeah, that's really user friendly, Apple.

I begin to wonder if Apple has any people left from the old days of designing things in a user oriented way. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? While the Developer tools don't get installed by default, they ARE part of the system. From the moment someone installs them, it will have to be for a pretty good reason, so I don't see any reason to uninstall them. And if you want to add fink and stuff, or develop for Qt, you need them. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You mean this....

/Developer/Tools/uninstall-devtools.pl

Works as advertised pretty well. :-) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'd love to own a new Mac running OSX. My brother has two Macs; at least one's a dual G4 I think and the other's a laptop. I'm tired of fighting Windows, and I'm tired of Linux being so fiddly... One day!!! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 00:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? iSight is just a FireWire cam. Being DV takes some more brains in the device. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have a few other Video grabbing apps that just query the OS to see if any video cameras are plugged in and *recognize* the iSight as simple DV video and they import it fine! I am sure that doing so for iMovie would be easy too, but it ain't. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Microsoft's web site says that a Mac version of Windows Media Player 9 is "coming soon" (the current version is the equivalent of WMP 7). While I'm not hopeful they're going to make it a true plugin for Safari, at least it should be possible to play the content. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I noticed an app running in your lower-right corner of the screen that I hadn't seen before, but reminded me an awful lot of the Workspaces in BeOS. Is this a new Panther feature, or just some app that I have overlooked? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I would like to say that is is possible to assign Expose actions to the extra buttons of a multi-button mouse, unlike Eugena said in his review.

And personnaly i would have given a 8 or 8.5 mark for the speed of Panther, because its really fast now, even on old configurations, not to mention that on newer machines (i would give 9 in this case), it is as fast as windowsxp but with a much, much advanced windowing system. 7.5 is really unfair....

And the finder has not yet been re-written form the scratch, as said, but it still a Carbon application. The revolution of the Cocoa Finder will come later..... Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I didn't like Aqua at first, but it really grew on me after awhile, and I really came to like it. Now, Apple goes and butchers it! First they introduce metal, now they get rid of the window-stripes and make tabs look like buttons? Where will it end? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "I'd love to own a new Mac running OSX. My brother has two Macs; at least one's a dual G4 I think and the other's a laptop. I'm tired of fighting Windows, and I'm tired of Linux being so fiddly... One day!!!"

I just was given a stock 450MHz G4 powermac (sawtooth) and it runs OS X 10.2 and I have to say it's quite fast and very useable. I love it. You can probably find something like this for a few hundred bucks on the web.

- Mark Thu, 16 Oct 2003 01:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Is this a new Panther feature, or just some app that I have overlooked?

It is an app that I link from the review: www.codetek.com

>Where will it end?

Nowhere. UI design is an alive process, it changes and it gets better with time. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, may I please know where can I download the BitStream Vera fonts for Linux like the ones shown in your KDE screenshots? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.gnome.org/fonts/ Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > While I'm not hopeful they're going to make it a true plugin for Safari, at least it should be possible to play the content.

Not on launch.yahoo.com though. It requires the plugin to popup the window and redirect you to the real wmv file. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have not tried it yet, but on Macslash, they have linked to the story and some one made a comment about your complaint about undo in safari to which there was a responce "how about command z"

does that work? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? No, it doesn't. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Thx Eugenia Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? When you open a terminal does it default to C shell or BASH cause I remember reading somewhere Apple was going to make BASH the default shell? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think it is still csh, I am not sure (easy to change though . I know that the xterms open bash though, which are the ones I mostly use. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? One of the screenshots shows Gnome and the version of Mac OS X (10.3) with a G4 867 mhz w/ 640 RAM.

- Is this cpu and RAM enough for a confortable, not annoying, user experience with the Panther "update" ?

(I am about to buy an eMac (CRT display) to try OS X but can't decide on the 1 Ghz or the modest 800 Mhz. If ypou happen to know which VGA card your "Cube" uses (ATI ?) would be good to know too) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I just received my dual G4 from the Apple Store yesterday, but it has an order date of October 2, so I don't qualify for the upgrade.

BLARGH! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 02:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >- Is this cpu and RAM enough for a confortable, not annoying, user experience with the Panther "update" ?

Yes, it works well. I also run OSX Panther on a G4 450 Mhz and while it is a bit slower responsiveness, it is _still_ absolutely usable.

>If ypou happen to know which VGA card your "Cube" uses (ATI ?) would be good to know too)

It used to have an ATi Rage 16 MB, but a good fairy gave me a GeForce 2 MX 32 MB AGP which supports QuartzExtreme.

>I am about to buy an eMac (CRT display) to try OS X but can't decide on the 1 Ghz or the modest 800 Mhz.

As I advise on the article itself, you better buy the 1.25 GHz G4 PowerMac. This powermac is way faster than any of these eMacs (because it has much more cache, not just becasue of the Mhz difference) and it is expandable. And for $1300, is a bargain. The same machine costed more than $2,300 just a few months ago, but the price was slashed because of the G5 arrival. If you are a power user and you don't have the money to get a 12" Powerbook ($1600), get that PowerMac G4 instead. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "If you are a power user and you don't have the money to get a 12" Powerbook ($1600), get that PowerMac G4 instead."

And if you did have the $1600, I'd encourage you to consider the dual 1.25GHz PowerMac G4 rather than the 12" PB... Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Can you kill a process like the Dock from the Process Viewer? Or can you relaunch the Dock from Force Quit in the same way that you can relaunch the Finder on Jaguar? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, depends if you need a laptop or a desktop. If you need a desktop, get that G4 PowerMac, if you need a laptop, get the 12" powerbook. These are the best options for *power users*, cause eMac/iMac or iBooks are consumer products with more limited expandability/speed as opposed to power-user hardware. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Speaking of speed...

I was quite comfortable with a laptop that recently broke- it was a 1ghz PC with 512mb RAM. It wasn't a barn burner or anythng, but it booted quickly, was responsive, and compile times didn't seem to take too long. Can someone with experience with both PC and Apple computers recommend a computer that is roughly equivalent?

And how does Xcode compare (feature wise) with the newest VS.NET? I love autocomplete... I have briefly scanned the xcode website, but doesn't see that particularly mentioned.

PS: Eugenia: the screenshots are gorgeous. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yes, you can force quit Dock and then it re-loads automatically by itself. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I see code completion mentioned now, don't know how I missed it earlier. Still curious about how it compares to VS.NET and the equivalent Apple processor speed (roughly of course). Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I don't know, cause I have .NET on a very old Celeron 533 machine, while XCode runs on a much faster CPU with more cache. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You never mentioned whether or not the version you were using ever crashed. Did this release of Jaguar every crash to the point of no return?

Thanks
-CG Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Only the betas did, when my firewire iSight was not on while booting. The latest versions work fine with no crashings for me. If you actually read the article, you will see that I do speak of stability. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >It would be great if Apple would add mouse gestures for Exposé though

FYI: No gestures but you can already assign Exposé functions to mouse buttons with or without modifiers. I've assigned the middle button on my LogiTech mouse to the All Apps function, COMMAND-middle button to Current App and OPTION-middle button to Desktop and it works great.

>I just noticed that it has only two button of scrollbar in the bottom.
>I personal would rather to have it both at the top and bottom.

Both at the bottom is the default but there is a hidden preference to put them in both places. Look for the freeware TinkerTool app from MacUpdates.com or VersionTracker.com. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? From your article:

>>>>>
It is a similar concept to BeOS' Tracker addons and Gnome's Nautilus scripts (not a coincidence, as both were implemented by Pavel Cisler, who is now working for Apple's Finder). However, I just can't figure out how to use them.
>>>>>

Folder Actions have been around for many years on the Mac as far back as Mac OS 8.5. Far outdating Gnome or BeOS's features and they were in Jaguar as well. What has been added is a better UI for adding scripts to the library folder directories and for attaching those scripts to specific folders. Knowing that, the fact that Mr. Cisler implemented something very much like them for Gnome and BeOS, is more likely that he saw Folder Actions on the Mac and added them to those OS's.

Folder Actions are special AppleScripts that you can attach to individual folders. To do so, choose a folder and cntrl-click on that folder and in the context sensitive menu you will see an option to attach a folder action. The folder actions that you can add are those scripts that are in the folder that you were referening to in your article. The GUI you saw was to allow you to add scripts you wrote that were in some folder in the file system to the standard folder where Folder Action scripts should be stored. You can take any script (as long as it supports the folder actions protocols) and put it into the "folder actions" folder(s).

Anyway, you can read about Folder actions in the online help as well as about AppleScript in the online help.

If you want to add the same folder action to multiple folders, you can do it by hand or (low and behold) by scripting the Finder itself. You can get a list of the folders and attach folder actions to them via writing an AppleScript to do it. Again this is talked about in the documentation.

Hope this helps.... Thu, 16 Oct 2003 03:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Good review, Eugenia. I appreciate reviews like yours as I debate with my pocket book about getting Panther now, or later.

I would like to offer my 2 cents on your comment about the differences in backwards compatibility of third party apps for Mac OS X vs Windows.

[quote]One of the biggest differences between Windows and Mac OS X, in my opinion, is that Microsoft always tries to retain as much compatibility with previous versions as possible while Apple doesn't.[/quote]

This is true to some extent but let me add more to the story. I think Apple is particularly protective of their UI and cares very little about "breaking" apps (or "hacks") that mess with it. However, when it comes to applications in the most strict sense, those like the word processors and media editors etc Apple far exceeds Windows in backwards compatibility, speaking from my experience on both platforms. For example, I still run CricketGraph 1 on my OS 10.2.8! That app was written for System 6, 68K macs, survived unchanged to run on the original PPCs and now is running on the G4 processors through every incarnation of OS X. Now that is backwards compatibility! Sure it is lame to run apps in "classic" mode on OS X, but at least Apple provided the option while pushing the OS forward. The only major app I had that broke through any hardware or software migration by Apple was VirtualPC 2, which did not survive the OS 9 to X transition, but was updated by Connectix with an OS X native version. I think if you look at how many apps survived the transitions between Windows 1, 3, 95, 98, 2000 etc without requiring patches and overhauls by the developers you will see a very different story than your statement implied.

But you may have unwittingly hit on a fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft's OS development approach. Apple is making huge improvements in the under-appreciated system core to make the OS faster and more reliable with every release, having the unfortunate side effect of keeping certain developers on their toes to keep up with the changes/improvements while Microsoft is uninterested in doing the under-appreciated hard work of improving their OSs core, instead keeps adding more bloat/features with each slower running release of Windows. Personally, I prefer Apple's approach even if it means I have to go without my favorite interface hack for a week out of the year (which actually did happen to me once, TinkerTool needed some work to go 10.1 to 10.2.)

Anyhow, as you say, this is just in my opinion! Once again, thanks for a great review that considered important improvements and problems with Panther that I will certainly be adding to my mental score sheet before plunking down the cash. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 04:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Wonderful article, Eugenia. I'll always have fond memories of you and BeOS.

How do Exposé and user-switching transitions work on dual monitors? Has any one seen? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 04:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Does anyone other than me feel that the new 'tabs' are not only ugly be confusing. They don't seem to me to be represtative that another panel/screen is available by selecting the new tab Thu, 16 Oct 2003 04:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Such as the Finer not updating the desktop contents without having focus?"

This is a new Finder, I didn't notice this problem.

If finder has been written from the ground up, as you say, it is highly likely that they've utilised kqueue which they have added.

Also, another cool this is that you no longer need to install the poll emulator! yeah! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Nice review. Thank you.

I'm running 10.2.8 on my 500 MHz G3 Powerbook (256 MB) and it's responsive enough for me. The Panther speed improvements will be gravy.

I really like PB and IB. Can't wait to see Xcode.

> How do Exposé and user-switching transitions work on dual monitors? Has any one seen?

Oooh. Good question. I'm on a dual-monitor setup myself and curious too. Exposé is gonna rock. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 04:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am also running 7B85 on my iBook, 800MHz. As far as I can tell, with Panther it is the fastest iBook I have ever used :-).

The "new" Finder does not implement kqueue. You have to click onto the desktop to have it redraw the actual content. Also sometimes the "new" Finder won' t show mounted CD-Roms on my desktop. The only solution to this is to restart it (at least that is what I found out). Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'd like to echo previous comments about grabbing a new Power Mac G4. The Single or Dual 1.25Ghz now available from the Apple store are most certainly good purchases. OTOH, if you happen to be lucky enough to find a Pre-July G4 (the FW800 models) then you should grab it instead. They feature FireWire 800 and Airport Extreme, something the current G4's do not. I just grabbed a Power Mac G4 Dual 1.42Ghz for $1999. Not only does it wipe the floor with the G5 1.6 (and come with more mem and HD space) but edges out the 1.8, as well, in many tasks.
Check places like smalldog.com for late model units. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I just checked the Terminal with "echo $0" and it says that's Bash. So, no csh anymore by default. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've owned my Powerbook for over six months and have never ever used OS 9. When we install Panther, do they give us the option to obliterate OS 9? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 06:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There is no OS9 installed when you install OSX 10.3. If you want OS 9, you need to have its CD and install it manually later atop. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 07:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Has tab navigation been fixed so that tabbing in a form filled with fields doesn't cause any fields with drop-down lists to be skipped? This is my biggest pet peeve with OSX so far. E.g., if I'm filling in my name and address in a form with fields, my hands are on the keyboard happily tabbing from one field to the next. When I've filled in my street address, then tab to City, then tab to the State field, oops, it skips right over the State field, at which point I'm forced to take my hands off the keyboard and use the mouse to scroll down the list till I come to my state.
Windows is much, much smarter and user-friendly in this regard. When I tab to the State field there, a list of states drops down, and I can press a letter to take me to the place in the list that has the name of the first state that starts with that letter. I don't have to use the mouse at all. Please tell me Panther has fixed this mess. Thanks. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 07:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Concerning folder actions, I think that you don't understand the idea. I don't know BeOS nor Linux (I'm a pure Mac guy but I assume that the MacOS implementation does not follow the same logic.

You say "I right click and I only see options how to edit and remove these scripts and not how to APPLY them to the selected files/folder".

You cannot apply scripts to selected items: attached folder actions scripts are automatically applied by the OS when you perform the following operations: open/clode/move the folder or add/remove files into/from the folder.

You can thus use folder actions for example to automatically send a file by email to some recipient just by dropping this file on a folder.

You should now also understand while actions are specific to a folder and does not apply across the board.

You can have a look here for more information:
http://www.apple.com/applescript/folder_actions/

Hope it will help. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 07:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? To complete my previous message, you should know that you can do what you thought folder actions were supposed to do by adding the Apple's script menu

http://www.apple.com/applescript/script_menu/

Now, you can apply scripts to selected Finder's items Thu, 16 Oct 2003 07:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If it aint responsive on a 100mhz machine it just aint good enough.. maybe ok as a girls OS though. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have serious doubts as to whether the new Finder was written from "scratch". To begin with, by all reports the new Finder is still a Carbon application. I see absolutely no reason why Apple would have used Carbon over Cocoa for something like the OS X finder, considering portability back to OS 9 would certainly not be an issue. Second, it sounds as if kqueues are not being fully utilized for filesystem event notification (although they probably are for the search feature)

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. For those of you who read Joel on Software he has written some excellent articles on refactoring versus rewriting:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000027.html
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000348.html

Here's a pertinent portion of the first article:

"Before Borland's new spreadsheet for Windows shipped, Philippe Kahn, the colorful founder of Borland, was quoted a lot in the press bragging about how Quattro Pro would be much better than Microsoft Excel, because it was written from scratch. All new source code! As if source code rusted.

The idea that new code is better than old is patently absurd. Old code has been used. It has been tested. Lots of bugs have been found, and they've been fixed. There's nothing wrong with it. It doesn't acquire bugs just by sitting around on your hard drive. Au contraire, baby! Is software supposed to be like an old Dodge Dart, that rusts just sitting in the garage? Is software like a teddy bear that's kind of gross if it's not made out of all new material?"

Personally, I'd prefer it if Apple recycled large portions of the old Finder for the new one... it will make for a better overall Finder as much of the code will have already undergone extensive debugging and testing. Apple certainly hasn't been one to throw the baby out with the bathwater and scrap perfectly good programs when they're simply in need of a few modifications here and there.

I'd certainly find reusing portions of the old Finder preferable to discovering that Apple did in fact rewrite Finder from scratch, using Carbon for the API and reimplementing a bunch of polling code to monitor changes in the underlying filesystem, rather than using kqueues for proper filesystem monitoring.

(Unfortunately, I think this still means no Cocoa Gestures support for the Finder... would've been nice) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? elinida eisai vre?
ti kaneis ? ola kalaaa?

he he he Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In my experience VLC (http://www.videolan.org/) can play most of Mickeysofts proprietary video files (like wmv) ... It's also much faster than Quicktime, and includes fullscreen view for free.
This is my default video player on all my platforms (osx/linux/windows) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? MS endorses and promotes the strictest RIAA/MPAA/Ashcroft bullying of end-users. Don't kid yourselves — WMV would open your Mac to MS-grade DRM, if only for WM files today. Tomorrow, in the name of "openness", WMV will want to display all of your media.

Sorry, but I prefer to keep my viewing preferences to myself. If I miss out on a decreasing number of WMV-only files because of that, tough.

I don't use PayPal, I don't use eBay, I don't use WMV, I don't fly JetBlue. If you want to be spied upon, that's up to you, but me — let Ashcroft search my soul the old fashioned way — by buying a judge. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As far as a comparison goes, they are both different beasts in terms of what they support. As for the interface, Xcode has caught up to VS.Net in my opinion at least (finally autocomplete).

In terms of coding, Xcode has a lot of nice things like zero link, fix and continue, distributed compiles, etc. It really makes my application development that much faster. Coupled with Cocoa, Carbon, C, C++, Java, Applescript and whatever else you want to throw in there, it makes producing the perfect application so easy. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 09:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I need a Windows Media Player plugin. Apple is touting Windows interoperability, but this is a sore spot right there. I usually need to view WMV video and movie trailers that happen to not be available as QuickTime or Real, but most of the time I wanna watch music video clips at launch.yahoo.com. I mean, I've got the Internet bandwidth, why not be able to enjoy Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Linkin Park videos as the average Windows user can at 300 kbps?

Well how about bugging Microsoft first then to write the missing codecs - Mac OS X is still on WMP7 and half of the content doesn't work. It's not Apple's responsibility to include third-party software that doesn't exist. Just like it's not fair to rag on Apple (as someone recently did) when Aladdin's Stuffit Expander wasn't working as they required - lesson 1: contact the developer of the application in question! D'oh! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 09:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Hardware Support: 8.5/10"

Can you upgrade at all from 10.2 > 10.3? I didn't know that was possible. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 10:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I really don't like VLC, try MPlayer, it's really fast (Mandrake Linux 9.1, NVidia-Drivers) it plays many video file formats and ... there's a OS X-Version, too (yes, with a great GUI) http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net/ Thu, 16 Oct 2003 10:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Great job, Eugenia! I've been reading about Panther and its features for so long - but your review really puts it all together into a user experience. You really do have "an eye for the UI" :-) A really great overview!

About those 1.25 MHz G4's that Apple still sells - they are a great deal. Of course, you do have to have a display too, which is no problem for some, but may be for others. If you're not a "power user", eMacs are good deals too, except you have to get more RAM. Get an iSub though and you have a fairly decent sound set up too. If you get .Mac, the Mac experience is really fun, especially for families.

I know people flame and love to argue about the speed of OS X. I've been using it since the original public beta, when it was dog slow. It is nice, for a change, to get OS updates that actually make you're older hardware faster. One trick with OS X i've found is you've got keep it as optimized as possible. My wfe has an original 700 MHz eMac (with 1 gig of RAM which helps). But, I repair disk permissions all the time and run Disk Warrier once a month to optimize the directory. And, use no haxies, etc. (which is no fun for me), but these things really help. Even that 700 MHz eMac, although no speed demon, is very usable. So, I can't wait for Panther for many reasons.

Eugenia, what is your take, in an overall sense, of Aqua vs. brushed metal? Is Apple slowly completely getting rid of Aqua?? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 11:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have a G4 550 Titanium waiting for me at home along with a new Toshiba 60GB hard drive ready for panther! I am going to replace my windows XP machine with it i think. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 11:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The "Mac-as-Airport-Base-Station" problem confuses me. Confuses me to the point that I went and tried it. I can't see how it requires more than ONE tab of ONE preference pane. In fact - just a single click.

Also, Panther compatibility. I've seen stuff about this on forums and in some cases it's different on one machine to another. Dreamweaver seemed to cause havoc with the new Save dialogs but on another machine they were fine. That said, all things equal with new installed apps and not just ones copied from a Jag install, I've seen zero problems. Also...the inconvenience is NOT "already there" because with the exception of developers, journalists and previewers, the OS hasn't been released.

Want to give us some examples of apps that don't co-operate? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 11:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Are there any screenshots of XCode around? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 11:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yeah, the lack of an upgrade price sucks. Whenever I've bought Apple products, there have been little proof of purchase vouchers in the box. What the hell is the point of these if you can't use them for anything? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 11:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? just got ./ed eh Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Did Apple fix the behavior of the "Connect to Server" feature WRT FTP? Currently, you can connect to an FTP server just fine, have it appear on your desktop, and all that wonderfulness, but it's mounted as a read-only volume regardless of the permissions on the remote machine. If you want to upload anything, you have to either use the command line FTP client or use something like Transmit. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Re your request for a Control-Z keyboard shortcut; keep in mind that it would be Command-Z on a Mac. Macs have Control keys, but have never used them for keyboard shortcuts; that is a Windows phenomenon. However, the command would otherwise work the same way. This is just a nitpick more than anything else.

As for the Windows Media Player plugin, Microsoft makes one for the Mac. However, it is an ActiveX control, and therefore it only works in IE/Mac. Yes, IE/Mac can use ActiveX controls, but they have to be specifically written for the Mac; I suspect that the WiMP/Mac plugin is probably the only such ActiveX control in existence. Because IE/Mac can also use the standard Netscape plugin architecture used by all other browsers, most people writing Mac browser plugins write only in that architecture, thus covering all Mac browsers which use plugins at all.

Will Microsoft rewrite the WiMP/Mac plugin using this standard architecture? That's unclear. Given that IE/Mac has been discontinued, there are no browsers left on Mac which can use the old technology, so it's at least theoretically possible. It's known that they intend to bring WiMP 9 to the Mac, so they may choose to port the plugin as well. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I don't like the look and feel of the new tabs. The old ones showed, my opinion, more what you were doing or which tab was actually open.
For the speed: I was really impressed by the improvements to this point (using panther 7b85). And it feels much faster on my G4 466 than XP on my girlfriends new 1,25Ghz PC.

* new does not mean "top notch" Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How did the author obtain her copy of Panther? It's not out yet. If she's got a developer's seed, surely she is in flagrant violation of her NDA by posting this "review" of an unreleased product. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Nice review Ohenya.
I have a 500 Dulie running 9.1 and would like to upgrade to Panther. My biggest concern is the speed of my older machine. If it works well with your 450 cube, than I should be ok. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How can you call a human being a 'god' ?
That human being defacates, sleeps etc. etc.
Mortality and divinity are mutually exclusive. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Ctrl-Z?!?

What planet is this guy from? He will be waiting a long time before Mac OS uses that for Undo.

Try Cmd-Z! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? hello,

is there actually a way to diable AA inside of MaxOSX?? I tried a ibook some weeks ago - but all the fonts where toooo blurry fo my eyes -> so i like non AA at all -> the sreenshot of mozilla inside of the X11-window was the way I like (the fonts of the safari-screenshot was too blurry for me)

Is there a way to completly diaable AA (while using a special font for display-rendering like Adobes Times, helvetica and courier)?

Thanks! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia,

I wish you had spent a little time with File Vault. I'm curious as to whether or not using this feature slows anything down considerably, as it's supposed to be "on-the-fly" encryption.

Anybody know more about File Vault? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've fun FileVault a bit on my 12" PB, and didn't notice any performance impact, though I was only using typical documents, not editing video or anything. :-) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia... use less screenshots in the future please, they make me drool too much on my keyboard... And when reading your review I started banging my head against my monitor as a punishment, for beeing so foolish as to spend more than 4000 guilders in 1.5 years on my x86 machine... And that's just the hardware I'm talking about...

I'm gonna get me a Mac, anyway I can...! I'm willing to even sell my album collection-- no that's out of the question... Or...? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have no problem putting windows and apps under the dock on my machine, with 10.3 What gives? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How did the author obtain her copy of Panther? It's not out yet. If she's got a developer's seed, surely she is in flagrant violation of her NDA by posting this "review" of an unreleased product.

Well, what she could have done, like most reviewers do is contact Apple directly and asked whether she could get an early copy for a review.

According to your logic, every "sneak preview" and "behind the scenes" report should get the heck sued out of them. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? With the new version Finder, is it possible to change how the sort order when using the multi column view? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Folder action scripts, aren't really comparable to the Gnome Nautilus scripts (or the beos scripts I presume). A folder action script, is a script that implements a method (or methods), that are called if you do an action with the folder.
I have for example a script attached to my movie folder. Whenever I move a divx to my movies folder, it reads the filename, it reads the comment field, and it adds it to my mysql database.

If you want to run a script on a selected folder/file, you have to use the script menu. But I agree with you that Apple should have added the option to add scripts to the (context) menu, at a folder to folder or a system wide basis.

Windows Media Player 9 was demoed at WWDC. One of the main features of Windows Media Player 9 was the plugin support. (They were playing a movie in Safari) I don't know when it will be released, they said fall, so it should be coming pretty soon. Maybe when Panther is actually released. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Just for the record, iSight is *not* a FireWire DV camera. It is a FireWire camera that records YUV; it does not compress and send signals in the DV codec (would require way more horsepower) and that's why iMovie doesn't recognize it. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have no problem putting windows and apps under the dock on my machine, with 10.3 What gives?

Hmm, I tested it on panther v85, and the problem seems limited to Fire. Safari, Finder, had no problems. If you move fire to the edge of the screen, it snaps back. If you move it over the edge, it doesn't Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I liked this review but I don't agree with a few comments. Since people have touched upon other omissions, let me concentrate on the factual error.

You state that 10-20% of the apps will not work. This is simply NOT true! Apple has not changed any of the APIs!

Apps that do not work are HACKS! Apps that have reverse engineered Apple's INTERNAL APIs which were not meant for public. This is certainly the case for apps that use Apple's menu item system instead of using the public one. Also, apps that HACK Safari etc will not work since the function entry points have changed.

ALL of the apps that use PUBLIC AND SUPPORTED APIs work just fine! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "ALL of the apps that use PUBLIC AND SUPPORTED APIs work just fine!"

You can't say that, you don't know what they've changed internally, while they might not have "meant" to break anything, it's entirley possible that things have gotten broken, so until people have been running it for an extended amount of time, and try out all there apps, you can't just blindly say "nothing is broken". Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, you really need to learn how to take screenshots in OSX... stop using the Grab app, you can take a screenshot using command-shift-3 all at once, it will save it on your desktop.

command-shift-4 will let you select an area and then take a screenshot. command-shift-4 then hit space will let you take a screenshot of a window.


-justin Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 1. AppleScript is a very cool scripting language for Mac OS (Classic9 and X) and it has been around for many versions. Mac OS has an OSA (Open Script Architecture) which make it really ease for applications to become scriptable, whether using AppleScript or other scripting languages (e.g.: Frontier).

2. Folder Actions have been around in Mac OS long before BeOS, Mac OS X. It's not an imported idea, it's actually another Apple idea that's has migrated to other OS's.

3. Folder Actions allow you to assign a script to a folder. Folder Actions don't really do much more than this. It's the script that does all the work, by defining triggers (like 'on modify folder' or 'on adding item'). So, to see it work you must assign a script (the action) to a folder. The main objective of Folder Actions is to make a folder "aware" of certain actions so it triggers a sequence of commands (defined in a script).

4. Bearing in mind the whole Folder Action concept described above, assigning the same Folder Action to multiple folders would be useless and actually buggy.

5. Finally, Panther is compatible with a lot more than 80% of installed apps. on my sistem, only NetBarrier seemed to hard crash the OS at startup. Anyway, it's very robust and very fast.

By the way, great article :-)

Alexandre
abcarvalho@mac.com Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You should blame MS for not having a Windows Media Plugin, not Apple. Also, if you have Windows Media Player on your mac, Safari will usually tell you, that there isn't a plugin installed, wwould you like to open the application and playback the file (something to that effect). Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You can't say that, you don't know what they've changed internally, while they might not have "meant" to break anything, it's entirley possible that things have gotten broken, so until people have been running it for an extended amount of time, and try out all there apps, you can't just blindly say "nothing is broken".

This is certainly true. But, I'm yet to find one app that breaks because of the internal handling. If you know of such error, please report it to Apple.

Eugenia, could you give us a list or a sampling of these 10-20% of the apps that don't work under Panther? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Why is it that so many clueless people are allowed to review technology. One would think that more than a base understanding would be required before someone was allowed to be published.

It's simple to place applications under the dock. I do it all the time!

"CTRL-Z" is a Windows shortcut. A Mac user would know that the shortcut for undo is Command-Z. The UI shortcut was invented on the Mac in 1984 and hasn't changed since. Microsoft "adopted" the cut, copy, paste, undo shortcuts as CTRL key sequences.

As for compatibility the only major application I know of that won't be compatible with Panther when it ships is VirtualPC and guess who owns that application?!? You are so VERY wrong about Macintosh compatibility through upgrades as opposed to that in the Windows world. I can run apps (even games) from the mid-80's on my brand new G4 running OS X (& Classic). This is not the case in the Windows world. Try to run a Windows 3.1 app in Windows XP. Good Luck! Sure you can run your favorite DOS programs....hahaha!

Eugenia...spend a little more time on the Mac! You might actually learn something. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 15:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As for compatibility the only major application I know of that won't be compatible with Panther when it ships is VirtualPC and guess who owns that application?!? You are so VERY wrong about Macintosh compatibility through upgrades as opposed to that in the Windows world. I can run apps (even games) from the mid-80's on my brand new G4 running OS X (& Classic). This is not the case in the Windows world. Try to run a Windows 3.1 app in Windows XP. Good Luck! Sure you can run your favorite DOS programs....hahaha!

Correction! VirtualPC runs just fine on Panther! I'm running it right now. VirtualPC is not compatible with G5 regardless of the OS. This is because the lack of endian switching support of the PPC970.

I'd still like to know which apps, that use published APIs, don't work under Panther and work under Jaguar for example. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Microsoft always tries to retain as much compatibility with previous versions as possible while Apple doesn't."

Except with Word, PowerPoint and Visio....{from personal experience}

"I noticed that with Jaguar and I noticed the same with Panther: about 10-20% of the third party applications just won't load anymore, or they will crash on load."

Could you name a few? I have been testing Panther on my applications, and haven't noticed any difficulty. I would be extremely interested in learning what might be causing this...so I can avoid it. (without knowing more, I'm guessing that those apps were using some of the unpublished/private APIs that got removed in Panther). Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, if you're looking to play new Windows Media files on OS X, try Mplayer. I haven't used it on OS X before, but on Linux I've rarely run into a file that it can't play. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Why not just use the mouse button options Apple already inclcluded? Try actually looking at the pref pane before you complain about a lack of features that are already there. And if you actually mean mouse gestures, wake up, only you and 3 slashdotters actually use them. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 16:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > And if you actually mean mouse gestures, wake up, only you and 3 slashdotters actually use them.

Then I'm one of the three >:) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 17:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Thanks for the review; it's the first comprehensive look at Panther I have read.

Of course I am curious whether Apple has fixed my favourite OS X irritation yet: does the Open Files dialog box show the contents of the desktop on the actual desktop, as it used to in OS 9, or are all of the desktop items that aren't disks still split off into a "desktop" folder buried somewhere in the folder hierarchy?

Also, about this new Finder design - in previous versions of OS X, it has been possible to turn off all the new widgety stuff and continue using the Finder in its classic mode. Is this still possible in Jaguar, or are you forced to use the new metal windows?

Thank you. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 17:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Semi-offtopic...

iTunes Music Store now for Windows...Lots of yummy features for those of you that can't (won't) switch. Exactly the same as the Mac version, including the sharing to three computers using Rendezvous. Oh yes, it's gorgeous. Probably the best Windows app ever made.

Steve (Jobs) actually had to do something he's never done before: give a demo on a PC. Three cheers for Apple! Thu, 16 Oct 2003 17:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've read somewhere that Panther's Internet Connect will act as a VPN client with L2TP/IPSec compared to Jaguar's only doing PPTP. Anyone given it a try? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 17:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hello!

Thank you for an excellent review. One question:
What build was tested? v85 or some other? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 17:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How is this review not a violation of Apple's non-disclosure act? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 18:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >elinida eisai vre?

nai

>ti kaneis ? ola kalaaa?

do3a ton theo

> what is your take, in an overall sense, of Aqua vs. brushed metal? Is Apple slowly completely getting rid of Aqua??

Possibly. I am growing fond of the Metal UI, however, it is a bit too dark.

> keep in mind that it would be Command-Z on a Mac

Of course I know that. But regardless, it does not work.

>surely she is in flagrant violation of her NDA by posting this "review" of an unreleased product.

As you can see this is a *Preview*, and what to EXPECT from OSX 10.3. OReilly and others have _already_ posted their similar articles, just none as in depth. I tend to write [p]reviews, not press releases.

>Eugenia, if you're looking to play new Windows Media files on OS X, try Mplayer

Sorry, but I need it as a browser plugin. I need it for launch.yahoo.com Thu, 16 Oct 2003 18:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Gestures? get this: http://www.bitart.com/CocoaGestures.html Thu, 16 Oct 2003 18:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'll love to try and/or switch to OSX, but I just cannot justify the price of the hardware. I'm sorry, but US$1500+ for a laptop with a 12" screen is just too much.
If the miracle ever happens and Apple either decides to allow clones or make a x86 version, then I'll jum in a nanosecond.
Until then, is XP and Linux for me. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 19:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? $1500 too much? then buy a $999 ibook. oh wait... it's more fun to whine about it. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 19:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? That was not a big deal for me as I don't have any important data on my Macs, but it may be troublesome for people who who are trying to install on their primary machine.

Why would you have to loose all your data with clean install? This is what I usually do (bad experience in Windows taught me that): I got my iBook 12" 900MHz with Mac OS X 10.2.4 preinstalled on 40GB disk drive with single partition. After playing around for a few days just to get the feeling about the system (this is my first Mac ever, I had occasional experience of using pre-Mac OS X systems, but no Mac OS X, but I have some experience with Unix/Linux, which was helpful), I booted from Mac OS X install CD, run Disk Utility from there, delete the only partition, and made two partitions: the one named Jaguar for the system, and another one named Users, for the data for all the users (well, just me for now). Then I clean installed the OS on the Jaguar partition and after that was done, I got two "disks" mounted: Jaguar partition mounted in the root directory /, which contained the whole OS, and Users partition mounted in /Volumes/Users. Then, I logged as root (actually you don't have to, but I prefer that way), copied all the content of the /Users directory (made during install process) on Jaguar partition to Users partition, deleted /Users directory from Jaguar partition and from the Terminal.app made a symbolic link in root directory / named Users:

>cd /
>ln -s /Volumes/Users Users

Now I got /Users directory, which is actually a link to another partition. Logged out, logged in as milke, and I was done.

After several days, I wanted to assure myself that this works, so I booted from install CD, from disk utility formated the system (Jaguar) partition and did clean install once again. The whole process of making symbolic link must be repeated, but after I did it and logged as milke, I got my sistem back with all the preferences (because they are kept in my home directory on Users partition). Even the icons on the dock representing yet uninstalled apps (destroyed during format and install process) were there, represented by stylish question marks. You don't even have to throw them away, install the apps and put them back on doc, just install the apps, log out and back in, and the icons representing apps are back in all their beauty. Launch them, and they wake up just as you leave them the last time (window position and size, colours and other preferences are retained).

Now, I know that you Eugenia know this for sure, I just wonder why don't you use this approach? Also, this might be helpful for the Mac users coming from the pre-Mac OS X background, who don't know much about the Unix-like systems, but would like to configure their systems that way.

Sorry about my English ;-) Thu, 16 Oct 2003 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have no problem putting windows and apps under the dock on my machine, with 10.3 What gives?

Hmm, I tested it on panther v85, and the problem seems limited to Fire. Safari, Finder, had no problems. If you move fire to the edge of the screen, it snaps back. If you move it over the edge, it doesn't

Well then the reviewer should really think a little harder about complaining about a problem related to an application, vs. the entire OS. Her point about Windows Media falls under this category too. She should pay attention to where the bugs are... most of them aren't in the OS. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Unfortunately, since Jaguar, the shortcuts only give you PDF files, and that's not cool. You don't have the choice anymore. And Grab is not the solution.

I suggest a little freeware, Kunvert. It transforms your PDF in a JPG or PICT. It can automatically adjust the size of the image, destroy the original, and shut itself down once the conversion completed, and some other things. Really a little marvel. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 20:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I've seen numerous comments that Apple should offer an upgrade price (read: discounted from the $129 retail). But, this doesn't really make sense, as anyone that is buying Panther is paying this upgrade price. All major point releases of the Mac OS are an upgrade and are at an upgrade. Why? Because you can't buy a Mac without the OS already installed.



To the person who questioned the top & bottom scroll buttons vs grouped, you can choose which way you want it at System Preferences/General. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 20:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? - Will XCode be on one of the 10.3 installation cds or later release ?
- Is it now stable - compared to earlier versions and ProjectBuilder ? Thu, 16 Oct 2003 20:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The review is good, but I could not find a screen shot showing the tabs that were mentioned in many of the comments. Are these tabbed windows? Many swear by tabs, but they never seemed better than other application switching methods, to me. Does anybody know when and in which OS tabbed windows first appeared? Beos? Some browser?

I made a comment on Expose' in another topic, but I think it is more relevant in this thread:
>>

The "clear-screen" option of Expose' sounds slightly different than prior versions. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 20:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? you can download windows media player for OS X from microsoft.

it sucks though. sometimes it won't play back a movie at all.

you can also install mplayer through fink. Thu, 16 Oct 2003 21:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I asked Which tab is the current one? The lighter one? the darker one?

Eugenia replied:
The darker one. The screenshot does NOT have focus on the window itself, that's why you don't see the *blue* color on the selected tab. Mac OS X with Panther has brought a new UI feature: to completely "unfocus" widgets when the window is not on focus, not just the window manager, as all other OSes do. The new tabs do make sense UI wise, because tabs, are in effect, buttons.

What if you're color blind? What does it look like in greyscale? Is it still recognizable and obvious? I still think there needs to be a "physical" indication of which tab is associated to the active page.

I commented:
> Isn't it funny that Mac OS lovers have had to buy Mac OS X three times and only now will they get back the colored label feature that arrived in, I think, OS 8.

Eugenia replied:
That's flamebaiting and unfair Jace. When you rewrite the whole file manager from scratch, there is no way you can have all features at once as before. Finder is not at all the same file manager as OS8/9 was.

That may be true, but it's a technical person's response and justification. This isn't something an end user is going to think of or be as forgiving about as you will be. An end user sees Mac OS X as the upgrade path from OS9, which Apple intends. Then they see how many features they were used to that are gone. I'm not baiting at all. I'm grouchy about this fact as an end user. I've been very dissatisfied with OS X, while the tech world has been loving it to death because it is so pretty and it is a Unix. Sorry, but that's just not enough for me. Fri, 17 Oct 2003 00:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Actually Jaguar's General Preference Pane of the System Preferences utility allows each user to choose to "Place scroll arrows: (1) At top and bottom, or (2) Together." Nice feature. Option (1) is more convenient when you're scrolling and over scroll and want to go back a few clicks, and Option (2) allows you to do it like Windows, keeping us sane as we switch back and forth. Fri, 17 Oct 2003 02:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I know a lot of you probably use a different shell than Zsh, but I couldn't help but contribute this code snipet found in my .zshrc file. (Conversion to other shells is trivial...) This automates my $DISPLAY environment variable setup when using SSH to remote from one UNIX box to another. Each of my boxes has the same snipet, such that when I remote-in using the newly defined ss function, the $DISPLAY variable is set automatically to the machine from whence I am running X11, causing all X client requests to be routed to the machine where I'm sitting... Quite nice, indeed!

.zshrc
########################################
# Function ss
# Calls ssh client with '-X' parameter (if the environment variable $DISPLAY is defined), in
# addition to all parameters specified.
ss () {
if [[ ${DISPLAY} = '' ]]; then
ssh $@
else
ssh -X $@
fi
}
# Show our DISPLAY environment variable upon execution of zsh
print -- '$DISPLAY is "'${DISPLAY}'".'

(See SSH man page for details.) Fri, 17 Oct 2003 02:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Your review is fair and balanced, but you mention two things that may or may not exist in the final release: first, you had some crashes. But you're using a beta (which you may not have legally, BTW; if you do have it legally you're in violation of Apple's NDA) and these crashes may not remain in the final release. Second, you say "10-20%" of your third-party apps don't work? Geez, that's a lot - how about real numbers: is that, what, 2 of your 10 third-party apps? Don't forget that there are/will be updates to these apps available, so you shouldn't blame Panther for that. Fri, 17 Oct 2003 06:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The article is marked as PREVIEW, not a review. that's what a preview means. Fri, 17 Oct 2003 06:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? btw did you notice that there's nowhere mentioned "MacOS X 10.3" on the apple site? everywhere it says "MacOS X Panther".. seems like apple wants to get rid of classic version numbers. Fri, 17 Oct 2003 11:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? All of your comments are marked "Already reviewed" in this and other article comments threads. Is this simply a function of you being the editor of the site, or is someone clicking 'Report abuse' on all of your comments? Fri, 17 Oct 2003 13:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I always kind of wondered what those "coupons" were inside the Jaguar box. I "assumed" an upgrade path, but sadly not.. Fri, 17 Oct 2003 13:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? For Windows Media under OS X, or any other major OS, use Mplayer. MPlayer for OSX is easy to get and install and supports every format under the sun, except FLAC (for some reason). Fri, 17 Oct 2003 19:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If MM is upset at $1500+ for a 12" what about $2500 for a fully loaded 10" -- Sony TR3A? Or similar price for Dell's loaded ultra-lites? I'll take the 12" Powerbook anyday. Sun, 19 Oct 2003 01:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Honestly.

Troy Thu, 23 Oct 2003 15:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments