With Mac OS X Version 10.3, Apple delivers what’s probably the most polished desktop operating system available today, says eWEEK Labs.
Apple’s Panther Stalks New Ground
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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The best thing out there.
Its nice, yes. Is it comfortable ?
Mostly : yes.
Is it fast ? yes, better then before. realy fast ? well, better then ever compared to older versions of OSX.
To be honest, it great. But its not alone.
Take a look an KDE 3.1.4 or, if you can, look at KDE 3.2.
You will be impressed.
krgds,
Frank
It is the best OS out there in my opinion (and many others who aren’t mac heads), and being so young (3 or so years old) is a great feet in it self. I work in the computer labs at my school, and the other techies who are all Windows/Linux PC users all want to have a taste of OS X. So I bring in my Laptop for them to play with while we are not fixing something, and they just love it. The speed, the Apps that they though were never there, just the beauty of it.
Too bad it doesn’t run on my hardware
With extensive use of brushed metal theme in Panther, one can say that it is indeed the most polished OS around
.
I installed Panther/Yellowdog 3.0 (dual-boot) on out two iMacs on the 25th of October. So far, I’ve really loved Panther. It not only feels faster than Jaguar, it IS faster than Jaguar! All things considered, it was a very well spent $199 + tax + shipping (in the U.S.). I have noticed one or two bugs though.
For one thing, Panther sometimes “forgets” about SMB shares that are attached. I’m running a FreeBSD 4.8 server for NFS and Samba shares, which I never had any problems with when I was running Jaguar, but all of a sudden, Panther either can’t see the file server (I mean it can’t see the Samba shares or the server in the network browser), or shares that were attached “disappear” mysteriously. Both of these occurances usually require a reboot to cure.
Asside from that, I have found Panther to be very fast and very stable.
Has anyone else noticed any problems, especially with SMB mounts?
yes, I have noticed this…I can not longer mount my SMB server to the desktop from GO, though I can navigate to it (hey Apple, how about mounting it in the desktop!!!) AND, I can not connect to my printer from Windows in the new way that I heard was going to take place… I heard that all printers connected to a panther machine would appear to be PS printers so windows machines can just see them….did not happen, in fact, I can’t print to the printer from OO,o on windows through ipp, but I think that might be a limitation of OO.o since i can print everything else from Windows.
I bet those several people who had their firewire hard drives erased are thinking that this is “the most polished” OS ever….
Sebastian
Hey debman, stupid question, but you did enable printer sharing in the System Preferences app right?
yes
I can honestly say IMHO that Panther is the best OS out there. I’ve used Mac’s for over 14 years now, Windows for 8 years and Linux for over 4 years now and Panther flat out is the easiest & most intuitive with nice quality apps to run on it.
I’ve been using KDE for a while now as it’s the best Linux environment i’ve used, but it doesn’t compare yet to Mac OS X. Personally I think at the rate Mac OS X’s Aqua & Linux’s KDE environments are improving Windows will simply be no match, and MS’s customers will complain wondering why MS is lagging behind so much. In the mean time Im glad Mac OS X has impoved a lot. I look forward to actively using it.
For power users, this is *the* killer feature. If you’re regularly working with lots of windows open, it’s worth the upgrade price on its own.
Expose is hands down the best method for task switching I’ve ever seen. It takes OS X’s mediocre-at-best task switching paradigms and supplements them with one that is almost unbelievably easier, quicker and more intuitive. The default shortcut keys are terrible, but bind them to mouse buttons and it allows you to switch to an arbitrary open window out of dozens with little more than a mouse click and about half a screen’s worth of movement.
Expose is the first really new idea to hit GUIs in a very long time and it *rocks*. It will change the way you manage windows and tasks and nothing will ever seem as good again. It did to me, and I was only using it for a few hours.
I really hope there’s some people working feverishly to get a reasonable imitation working under KDE and/or GNOME.
young?
BSD and the mach kernel have been around for decades.
The OS schema and ideas are all Mac with a little NeXt thrown in — both have been around for awhile.
Apple acquired NeXt in 1996.
Looking at the news.com entry exclaiming the NeXt buy out they projected the following:
“Apple expects to ship products with the Next operating system in 1997.”
Not as young as you might think?
NeXt was 11 years old in 1996 when it was purchased. Mac OS X is therefore essentially built on top of technology that has been worked on in one form or another for 18 years.
With the same logic:
Friend: Hey, ACK!! Have you listened to the new Rolling Stones CD? It’s fantastic!
ACK!! New? Hardly. Guitars and drums have been there for centuries. Mick Jagger and pop music have been there for decades, and the CD is a more than twenty years old technology. Nothing new to listen there.
the wheel has been around for thousands of years so an AMG Mercedes is nothing special, by your logic anyway. Its old technology right?
MacOSX wasn’t around 18 years ago. It has old foundations but its a new product. Even if you had a time machine you couldn’t find it.
After using Jaguar for a while (hey, I just switched), I’ve noticed that there are ‘lines’ when I play certain DVDs, especially those with lots of quick movement. Reading on the web, I’ve found out that this is due to Apple’s DVD player using weave decoding. This is really annoying and takes the fun out of watching DVDs.
Anyone know if Panther solves this problem? Or is there a way to change the way DVDs are played in Jaguar?
the wheel has been around for thousands of years so an AMG Mercedes is nothing special, by your logic anyway. Its old technology right?
No, no , no. You are talking about revolutionary changes such as engines and rubber tires and such. OSX is evolutionary. It is old. Mach is old. BSD is old. NeXT is old. OpenStep is old. The dock is old. The desktop/shelf is old. They have been repackaged to look new. Don’t get me wrong, I like OSX, but if you think OSX is new then you’re dreaming. It is visually different but not very technically different.
MacOSX wasn’t around 18 years ago. It has old foundations but its a new product. Even if you had a time machine you couldn’t find it.
The original poster was trying to say that it is a very nice OS considering it is fairly young but that is false. It is nice because of, not despite of, the old foundation underneath. The technology has been tried and true for many years. Apple just packaged it into a nice, visually appealing OS.
@Anonymous
ACK!! New? Hardly. Guitars and drums have been there for centuries. Mick Jagger and pop music have been there for decades, and the CD is a more than twenty years old technology. Nothing new to listen there.
That is very silly comparison. I am pointing out the simple fact that Apple unlike say Be did not re-invent said OS wheel but used already existing technology and an already existing product both the existing Mac OS and NeXt to create Mac OS X.
Therefore unlike the original poster it does NOT surprise me to see the amount of progress Apple has made with the platform.
the wheel has been around for thousands of years so an AMG Mercedes is nothing special, by your logic anyway. Its old technology right?
No, Mac OS X is something very interesting and special.
Just like the AMG Mercedes is something special.
However, it does not surprise me that a new Mercedes can roll because it is based off of old tech ie wheels.
What the heck is wrong with old tech? Nothing.
I was just trying to explain part of the reason Apple has made so much very good progress so quickly.
The based their efforts off of solid old tech.
It has old foundations but its a new product.
I am not questioning this but people seem to treat OS X as if it was a re-write unrelated to the technologies Apple took great pains to buy back in the day so they could move forward with the combined experience of both Mac OS 9 tech and NeXt tech.
I never noticed any interlacing on Jaguar.. I haven’t had a chance to pick up Panther yet though..
Maybe its just the specific DVD you were watching? I know some DVDs have lower quality, and use interlacing, while others do not.. On linux I usualy just activate one of mplayer’s numerous deinterlacers..