http://www.osnews.com/story/4939/Mac_OS_X_10_3_Panther_Review Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:57:45 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Any Student ADC Members receive their copy of Panther yet? Mon, 27 Oct 2003 19:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Are we going to get it for free? Thought we had to pay too. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I run SETI on my Power Mac G4 and installating of Panther it took an average of 9.5 hours to calculate one set of data. After Panther was installed the time has gone down to an average of about 8.3 hours. This is better than a 10% increase in speed.

Applications felt like they were opening faster and the data from the SETI calculations would support this 'feeling'. I am happy with the new OS and have no serious complaints. It was worth the upgrade. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Again, I am disappointed at apple!
They have not included CARBON Greek support!!!!!
Greek support is left to Rainbow Hellas S.A., and their implementations are generally hacks (had the greek patch by them, not easy to get either, and I had to clean install panther because a direct upgrade from the patched jaguar was not doable).

Why oh why doesn't apple just provide fonts, scripts, keyboard layouts for carbon greek? It seems that carbon will be here for a while and productivity apps (filemaker, MS word, etc) are carbon... either move completely to cocoa and the built in greek is fine, or provide us with a carbon compatible keyboard please! Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Panther rocks, pure and simple. I did a clean install on my 700 megahertz ibook and everything is so much faster, especially the Finder, Preview, and Mail. And, of course, Expose is totally awesome.

For those non-Mac users, check out the quicktime movie on this page for an Expose demo:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/expose/

(Click on the "Try it Out")

Anyway, I have had zero problems with Panther, same with all my Mac friends. I have heard that some people are having external FW drive problems, but I have an external LaCie FW drive and it works perfectly fine. I backed up all my data to it before doing the wipe and installation of Panther, and then restored all my data. No problems.

Overall, for me, Panther was definitely worth the upgrade price. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't know how I lived without Expose. I always have multiple windows open on my iBook and now I can quickly access them all with my wireless Logitech Mouseman (has five buttons). I asigned the thumb button to "All Windows" and I use it constantly. I bought the Family Pack and installed it on two iBooks and an iMac and it works great. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Has anyone performed an upgrade from Jaguar? I would be interested to see how that process went. Everything that I have read is about a clean install. I would be really interested to see how well Apple's upgrade routine goes. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I tried to upgrade my Powerbook and it wouldn't work, it said that it "found errors" during the scanning. I had to re-install on top. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thanks Eugenia, I was wondering about this. I have "jumped the gun" a bit here and already started an upgrade. We'll see how it all goes? I probably should have waited, but... oh well. I am concerned about a lot of the applications breaking and so-forth...

........ good thing I backed up everything beforehand.

schwew! Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? How many work units on it this based on after/previous to the update..?! More than 1-2-3-4-5? -- The calculation time varies *a lot* for different work units and unless you use the same unit which you didn't or use the client over a long period of time this doesn't mean anything (and you didn't do that either because there's no 10.3 for a long time)... Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? upgraded from Jag.....zero issues. Used the standard 'upgrade' option for intallation.

Rock on. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? With the function of Expose that shows the desktop, will it let you work with the Desktop while it's activated? Eg, can you press and hold the hotkey to show the desktop, do a little desktop file management (drop a file into a folder, etc), then release the hotkey and have open apps re-appear? Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I think the answer is yes.

See:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030926115215758 Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? well, the speed increases in SETI@home must be from API optimizations, and perhaps some new prefetching alogrithims in the device manager...they might have even tweeked the memory manager (if SETI@home is running, it mgiht have switched to a batch mode memory managment so it coulr efficently prefetch data to place it in the memory for processing)

I mean, a processor can only crunch so fast once it gets the data, so refinments in the OS managment algorithims is the only way to speed up such activity. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yes it does. You push the hotkey once, do whatever you want do and then push the hotkey again.
I wasn't too sure of how useful this would be, before I actually tried it, but there are lots of cool uses for it. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? --- "Has anyone performed an upgrade from Jaguar? I would be interested to see how that process went. Everything that I have read is about a clean install. I would be really interested to see how well Apple's upgrade routine goes." ---


I not only upgraded from Jaguar when I first got it, but now a couple days later I have done a clean install. The upgrade went perfectly fine for me, and I had done all kinds of interesting hacks and moved things around and such. Frankly, of all the junk I had on here the only thing that actually didn't work after the upgrade was PHP in Apache. Easily fixed by reinstalling the latest Entropy package.

Now that Ive done a clean install however (upgraded to larger hard drive), Im even more impressed. Its not significantly faster or better in any significant ways IMHO, and that means the upgrade did a damn good job. I wouldn't worry. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? transfer to linux, that is make the unix version you have now to linux( open source) but under licence, cause if free to all, apple will loose out, what the open source get?

THE GUI!! and maby some features, what`s in it for apple?
Better stability and program, there is a win/win here- apple just need to keep som of the functions, cause it`s not only HW people are bying from Apple.. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Did anyone else find it ironic that Panther is finally released but the splash screen on www.apple.com is still itunes for Windows? Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Excellent! That is encouraging information. I hope my upgrade goes so smoothly. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Yes it does. You push the hotkey once, do whatever you want do and then push the hotkey again."

Could be annoying, no? Let's suppose you hide all your windows to do other things, and finally you don't want to restore the previous state.
The next time you press the hotkey, your windows will be displayed again instead of hiding the windows???

I think that having two hotkeys, one for hide and the other for "unhide" would be better (I dislike the automatic re-display of Windows).

I wonder why is Expose so talked about?
It seems like some nice polish in the UI, but it's still only a minor feature, I'd say.. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I don't really see this is ironic. Panther was on the frontpage for quite some time, and only then moved down to give back space to iTunes. Many Windows users are going to visit www.apple.com to see what this iTunes thing is, and are not willing to look around to find it. Panther on the other hand is targeted towards Mac enthusiasts, who are more likely to visit apple.com regularily or look around a bit more. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 21:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Every time I've looked at it for the past few days, the focus has been on the new G4 iBooks. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? What shows on the front changes from moment to moment it seems.

I went to Apple.com and it showed the iBooks....refresh showed the iBooks....refresh showed iTunes....

you get the picture Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I agree with you about the varying difficulties in processing work units for Seti. However I noticed a similar 10% increase in my XBench app score and that should be consistent, even if not actually representative of real world application performance. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 22:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? No, that's not how it works. You can't move the windows around between when you activate Expose and when you deactivate it. Also, if you open new windows while Expose is activated like that, they remain on top when you deactivate it. Hence there's no need for separate keys. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 23:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Don't forget that Expose is not only activated by hotkeys, but by hotcorners. I know it seems like a silly thing to mention, but it goes a long way with ease of use. It's what really makes this a must have for mouse oriented users. Mon, 27 Oct 2003 23:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? actualy, you need to do a quick click to get it to "stick" then you can work on stuff...when you are done, you can just click again and all the windows return Mon, 27 Oct 2003 23:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I noticed that rather than logging out the User first then allowing another person to log in, OS X allows the other user to type their password from the active user's session

MUCH better, and a bit quicker, than the windows way IMHO Tue, 28 Oct 2003 00:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Franky, Exposé sounds less useful then multiple desktops to me. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? well, since you have never used it, you would not know.

I can tell you, I have used both, and much preffer Exposé to Virtual Desktops. Virtual Desktops are clunky ways to get your work done. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Did you like Virtual Desktops when you used them? Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Maybe I should refrase that.. did you actually use them a lot? or did you juse use KDE once... and decided they suck? Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? they were cool when I first used them (I had moved from windows to Linux at the time)

but as time went on, I found it more of a pain to use them when I was doing work than they were worth.

with Expose, I can just click my mouse button (you have to map it to the button you like, or mouse button key combo)

move the windows out of the way, open what I need, or do what I need to do, close it and click the windows back, OR click the mouse button to spread my windows out and select the app I want, OR bring all windows out for the app I am using and see what is going on and select the window I need.

all Apple needs to do is allow tab switching of apps to be maped to another combo and I can manage all my windows from the mouse buttons. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I used Linux for 4 years with nothing else before I got my Mac with OS X ( I still use Linux...and I have an XP laptop now as well )

so I had and HAVE plenty of exposure to Virtual Desktops. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Panther changed the way it works with windows and now my WIndows laptop can't see my home folder after I turned sharing on. do I need to enable my home foulder to be shared? if so how do I do it. I looked in get info and there was nothing.

and my XP laptop does not see my USB printer connected to the Mac like I heard it was suppose to. it is suppose to appear like a PS printer so I can just see it when I browse. but this does not happen, I have to put in the CUPS path to get it to work. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? With my setup no windows ever need to be under any other windows.. if I want to not see an app for now all I have to do is drag it on the pager to another desktop.. and if I need it again and can't remember where I dragged it, all I have to do is middle click on the desktop and I see a handy window list. If I want a window hidden just to see whats under it, all I have to do is roll my mouse wheel up on it's window title, and then roll it down to get it back.

Alt Z and X go among the desktops very quickly and the mouse wheel moved among desktops also. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? both do the same thing for the user, but to me, Expose does not interupt the workflow as much as Virtual desktops do, and when you get skilled at it, you can be even more effective IMO using expose.

but what ever. it is like the diffrence between using a wooden handel Hammer (Virtual Desktops) and a fiber glass handled hammer (expose)

the newer one is slicker and has certain attributes the other does not have but the older one does the job fine as well. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 02:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? debman:
fast switching is not login/logout. This is something which is known long time ago by the way although not for Apple users. Fast switching is the ability to login to second account without logging off the first one. That can be done in XP and OS X. Why this urge to proof that OS X is better or more innovative in everything whatever that would be? Tue, 28 Oct 2003 03:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I know that, I use windows all the time at home.

but in windows, it takes you to the log-in screen when you say "switch user".

in OS X, while you can still go out to the log-in screen if you would like to, OS X lets the users switch right from teh session and enter the other user's session right away with no intermediat screen, like the log-in screen. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 04:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? So instead of full screen window there is small window? Tue, 28 Oct 2003 05:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? no, you select the user's name from a drop down list in the right corner, if the user has a password, you get prompted to type it in in a pop-up window and then it enters the session, if there is no password, it just goes into the session. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 05:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? windows key + L switch instantly to the user selection. Klick on icon. That would make it even faster. I am not defending windows (personally I think that latter than better) but I dont see that much difference here. By the way on BSD/linux press ctrl+alt+Fx enter name and password next enter xinit -- :X. That would make it more cumbersome. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 06:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Or they could have further optimized the standard libraries that Seti@HOME calls and contributed to the speed increase. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? W/ Linux it is faster if you use GDM.. You just run gdmflexiserver and login again. Also it allows you to login again in another window which I doubt either OSX or XP allow you to do. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There's a good chance that freezing issue is related to MirrorAgent.
Try disabling automatic sync of iDisk (if you use that) and the freezing may well seize. It did for me.

MirrorAgent needs a bit of polish it seems.. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 13:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Has anyone else had the experience where you open the finder and the scroll bars are missing? I went into my 'Applications' directory and could not scroll up or down, but after switching to another folder and then back..... it seemed to have fixed itself.

Just interested to see if anyone else had seen this yet? Tue, 28 Oct 2003 14:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd like to switch from my Dell XP-based laptop to a Powerbook. Can 10.3 let me log into a Windows 2000 domain? Regardless, I would still have to purchase Office v.X with Virtual PC running XP Pro for some legacy apps. Can't wait to upgrade my fiance's Mac to 10.3 anyways. Thanks! Tue, 28 Oct 2003 17:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I heard that it does, I would investigate on Apple's site for the particulars. look in the support section under panther, also look in disscussions, and ask around there. and I am sure there will be a "lost manual" book coming out soon, there might be some nice infor in that as well about it. Tue, 28 Oct 2003 19:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I just did a clean install on my iMac. Does anybody know how to re-install the classic environment from the disc that came with my computer without installing all of the extra applications and crap that the installer wants to with it? There is not custom install that I can see. Wed, 29 Oct 2003 03:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments