“I love my black cat. It has served me well since October with its new Finder, refined interface, Fast User Switching, and Exposé. I love Panther so much that I am willing to debate until the wee hours of the night with PC Zealots and die hard Classic supporters about its merits. Even in all of its glory, however, there is always room for improvement.” Read the suggested improvements article at MacZealots.com.
Mac OS X Panther: Room for Improvement
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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One feature that I would like to see is the ability to theme, <u>officially</u>, Aqua. I find it annoying that some applications are Brush Metal and some are not ( personally don’t like brushed metal, but that’s just me).
And what’s up with the continual change of the OS X GUI. No more pinstripes (even in the title bar which goes back to the introduction of the Mac in 1984) to the in-ability to have “tabs” which have basically gone away to having just a “button”.
Just my 2 cents [which isn’t much since the dollar $$ is trading so low lately compared to the Euro and especially the pound ]
@Anonymous: I agree about the weirdness of the continually changing GUI. I don’t get the whole button thing. Tabs are tabs and buttons are buttons. Completely different metaphors. Also, pinstripes are a very classy and elegant GUI touch. I’m sad to see that Apple got rid of them.
/me has CDE flashbacks. 🙂 No, but it’s a good idea, really.
What I’d like to see…..
– URL handlers in Terminal.app (i.e. if there’s a URL, you can click it, and it’ll open in the browser)
– Better threading in Mail.app
– Soft-Updates on FFS, and better overall FFS support, and/or case-sensitivity on HFS+
– Monitor Mode on wireless drivers
All said, still, it’s head-and-shoulders above any other desktop OS out there.
> and/or case-sensitivity on HFS+
That’s been added in Panther, hasn’t it? My filesystem sure seems case-sensitive now.
I think it’s a little nuts (and IE-like) that in order to change your default browser, you have to use a menu item in Safari. This should definitely be in the System Preferences. What if I uninstall Safari before making the new browser the default? Can OSX handle that well?
Apparantly, case-sensitivity is available but not enabled by default:
http://www.codepoetry.net/archives/2003/10/26/casesensitive_hfs_for…
This article seems to have been written from the more computer-enthusiast standpoint. Some of the suggestions are good (such as better iLife integration) but others are kind of counter to the way the Mac is supposed to be (or has historically been). Virtual desktops for example, great for power users, but for casual users, more like “Oh shit, what happened, everything just disappeared!!!” Sure, it could be made a preference, but when the Mac geek administering the Macs in the university computer lab turns it on on all the machines because he likes it, the non-Mac geeks will sit down at them with an open mind and get frustrated thinking “wtf is this, argh, I hate Macs.” Above all, the Mac needs to be inviting and welcoming to non Mac users, because they are its future.
The Dock suggestion involving trays is interesting, but there would need to be some kind of symbolization somehow as to which dock icons have windows associated with them. A larger point is that trays seem bit like the concept of “stacks” in XP which I find frustrating – in order to find the window you need, first you have to think of the app that it’s a part of, then you have to find that, then you have to find the specific window you’re looking for. A pretty annoying thing to be doing repeatedly. But the author is right about the Dock not scaling well. We’ll have to see what Apple decides to do about that.
Case sensitivity is kind of the bane of casual computer users everywhere. It is not immediately intuitive. I’m not sure if it belongs on the Mac, or at least if it does, I would like to see it stay “under the surface” and not enabled by default, or maybe only available from the shell.
I’ve heard rumors that the GUI inconsistencies in OS X are the cause of the Classic Mac and NeXT people inside Apple battling it out. Hopefully this situation will be stabilizing soon. A little bit of customizability to the interface is a good thing, but the more fine-grained and wacky stuff should be left to the third-party preference panels. A major idea of the Mac is simplicity and too many preferences defeats that – sensible defaults are what we need, and I think we already pretty much have them.
the only real complaint I have about Panther is the way Safari performs under it. It was mana from heaven in 10.2.x, but in 10.3- even with the new update- on the iBook G3/500 we have at home, Safari is sucking balls. Beachballing left and right. :/ Not something we are used to as Mac users- this is like using IE 5 on Win98 on a 400 mhz P3.
anonymous:
regarding anon’s theming wishes: why is the ability to theme aqua <u>officially</u> so important? what is wrong about doing it the way we do now- unofficially?
for hurdboy:
yes, it would be nice to have a url handler. I remember in NiftyTelnet SSH and BetterTelnet for Mac OS classic, you could cmd-click on a URL and have it opened in your default web browser. That was mighty handy.
Anyway, what I have done in OS X for a long time is simply use a service. Sure, I can’t just do something so simple as single-click or cmd-click on the link, but I can double click the link (which selects it, alternately you can select the slower way) and then do the key command cmd-shift-w, which opens up the URL in your default web browser. It’s in the Services menu, which a lot of people don’t see, but it’s been very handy for me.
…and for brian:
umm, you don’t have to use the menu in safari to change your default web browser. you’ve been able to do that in the System Preferences for a longtime- since OS X 10.0 AFAI can remember. I think it’s just there to be convenient; mind you, this isn’t Windows, where if the app doesn’t have an option in its prefs- and only when you are installing it, you’re mostly SOL as far as making it your default browser down the line.
Rather than drawers, why not just take away the ability to minimize windows? With windowshade and exposé, you don’t really need it.
The first thing Apple should do is fix the finder. I want to be able to turn off the default sidebar. I want a mode where it will behave like the classic finder. But whenever I open a window I haven’t opened before, that damn sidebar comes back.
And consolidate Mail, iCal, and Addressbook? I only use Mail, so i hate the idea. Why don’t you just use Entourage or something?
-hugh
Have the system check for permissions; if you’ve yet to do that. Might just fix your problems; also have Safari reset it’s self.
Last resort would be to back everything up, wipe, and reinstall fresh.
$
One feature that I would like to see is the ability to theme, <u>officially</u>, Aqua. I find it annoying that some applications are Brush Metal and some are not ( personally don’t like brushed metal, but that’s just me).
It’s call ShapeShifter and you can get it from Unsanity
http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/shapeshifter/
These are just my suggestons and I know, some are not actually related to the OS …
1. Lighter/thinner/less heavy fonts. At first I somewhat likes the font rendering in OS X – now everything to me just looks blurry and bold.
2. Higher screen resolutions! I know this isn’t a software thing, more of a lack of decent LCD/CRTs but really – for the price you pay, you would think that you might get the a slighty higher resolution.
3. Remote X, R-Desktop, VNC whatever you want to call it but I greatly miss this ability.
4. Finder, it needs an address bar. You can do this from practially any other OS. The ability to simply type the location of a local file can be much faster than clicking through all the directories/folders.
4. Finder, it needs an address bar. You can do this from practially any other OS. The ability to simply type the location of a local file can be much faster than clicking through all the directories/folders.
Allready taken care of. In a finder window, hit cmd+shift+g to have a child window pop out and let you type in any file location.
i’m still waiting for a built-in anti-anti-aliasing setting. i’ve been working on a G5 with 19″ screen, and this AA crap drives me batty! tinkertool does the job, but it really should be a system option to begin with. grumble grumble.
also, i’d like my windows to actually maximize (ie, take up MORE screen than the bare minimum needed) when i press the green button! it’s just awful trying to do layouts and always having to manually drag the window edges around!! or web browsing in safari, or anything else. make the damned button maximize please!!!!
other than that it’s about decent.
it’d be nice if the finder was properly designed. i can’t stand the sparse arrangement of icons, and (as before) maximizing the window (the green button @ top of screen) doesn’t actually maximize anything. it just makes the window slightly (and i mean slightly) bigger. there are too many other instances of this noisome system behaviour to list, and i think tog has a problem along these lines too. will it ever be fixed?
– URL handlers in Terminal.app (i.e. if there’s a URL, you can click it, and it’ll open in the browser)
Command double-click on the URL
case-sensitivity on HFS+
This is an option since panther
I’d like keyboard control in Finder.. call it a “like from windows” but i really liked hitting backspace to backup the folder tree and i really liked hitting return/enter to RUN a program, not change its name (this one doesn’t even make much since to me, i guess its apple way of forcing the mouse on a user, but yeesh!)
also, is it me, or when you click the red button in windows sometimes it minimizes the program rather than close? i’ve used the mouse since my atari st days, and i think i’m pretty good at clicking what i want seems to just be ‘off’ sometimes
Does anyone know why OS X doesn’t have the ability to mount FTP-servers as “read and write”?
Otherwise the “Connect to Server” and the way Finder represents servers is the most genius way of connecting to servers.
I have to work with DOS-formatted floppies all the time. Mac OS X reads them quite nicely, but writes extra files on the disk. Why can’t Mac OS X just leave DOS disks alone? A “hands off” option would be nice!
My father installed Panther on his G4. Since then I’ve had to put Thunderfird AND Firefox on his machine. The reasons?
Safari will no longer save bookmarks.
Mail freezes completely (requiring killing with the activity monitor) when it starts to load.
The number of threads on the Apple discussion forum for the Mail program is truly staggering. Many, many people are having problems. And of course you can’t reinstall Mail. You have to reinstall Panther (and even this doesn’t seem to work for everyone).
“Imagine minimizing those iChat message Windows and having them shrinking into the iChat icon. Your Dock isn’t going to expand any wider than it already is. When you want to retrieve one of those said windows, simply click on the iChat icon in your Dock to expose a drawer (or some type) that slides out above the icon giving you a larger visual representation of the Window. Currently, the ability to visually distinguish between minimized windows from the same application is difficult, if not impossible. If you had a larger representation of the window, it would make the process much easier.”
Maybe they could take inspiration from KDE. KDE has been doing this for the past three years. You set up a KasBar and when you put your mouse over the icon of the application it gives you a mini-screeen that shows whatever that application is doing. It’s sort of a a more intelligent taskbar.
“Trash in the Sidebar”
KDE 3.2 allows you to put whatever you want on the universal sidebar. I find the idea of a universal sidebar very compelling. Maybe also another idea on which to draw for inspiration.
“Virtual Desktops”
Good idea, but novice computer users do get confused by them. That is until they sop being novice users. It might be nice as an option.
Overall, I find macs very cumbersome to work with, but that has more to do with my workflow and how used I am to Linux systems. I do like their multimedia apps.
I’d like keyboard control in Finder.. call it a “like from windows” but i really liked hitting backspace to backup the folder tree and i really liked hitting return/enter to RUN a program, not change its name (this one doesn’t even make much since to me, i guess its apple way of forcing the mouse on a user, but yeesh!)
Try Command-Uparrow to backup the folder tree, and command-downarrow to open a folder or file.
“umm, you don’t have to use the menu in safari to change your default web browser. you’ve been able to do that in the System Preferences for a longtime”
Yes you do, the option was removed from System Preferences in Panther, bad move IMO.
Exactly. “Command + O” also opens a folder, a file, or launch an application.
That said, there is room for improvement there too. The behaviour is slightly different whether you are in list view, column view, or icon view. Using the keyboard to browse is much easier in column view (no need to “command + Up arrow”, or “Command + O” to open folders, simply use the arrows)
A workaround: save some HTML page, open the Info panel, change the default app for this type of files.
Besides some enhancements not specific to OS X (for example one bookmarks folder for each user, the same for all browsers), I would like an option for exposé: show hidden and minimized windows, and eventually some shortcut to do it.
* fix the damned fonts
i fully agree,
font-rendering and/or the default fonts of X are sometimes quite ok, sometimes simply horrible. Especially at small sizes (bad bad hinting, yuck!)
the lcd of my ibook is so crisp that i notice bad aa’ed fonts and it’s a pain in the eyes.
We need better control over default-fonts, menu-fonts, finder fonts. and this must be SYSTEM-WIDE… too often apps offer some font-prefs, when altering a font you get a inconsistent image: some altered fonts here, standard fonts there… horrible!
(reading this is the result of battling Next-OS9 camps inside apple is also a horrible stupid image)
i know apple offers the option do deactivate aa for size smaller than “X”, BUT the resulted bitmap-fonts are BAD and unprofessional. Apple must fix them, they also show bad hinting, crappy appearance.
also theming is a must, bc. this is “user centric”, err so is the other things i mentioned… user must be king.
pure luxury: a top-notch filesystem would be nice! hfs is getting old…
I completely agree with you on the font issue. I’d die for having a properly hinted Tahoma regular 11 as Finder font.
“…and for brian:
umm, you don’t have to use the menu in safari to change your default web browser. you’ve been able to do that in the System Preferences for a longtime- since OS X 10.0 AFAI can remember. I think it’s just there to be convenient; mind you, this isn’t Windows, where if the app doesn’t have an option in its prefs- and only when you are installing it, you’re mostly SOL as far as making it your default browser down the line”
No, I think Brian is right.
In 10.0/10.1 there was a control panel in system prefs where you could select your default browser. In 10.2 (and I assume 10.3) there isn’t. To change your default web browser you have to launch Safari and change its prefs.
please, official detailed shadow-prefs. i dislike the shadows everywhere… it seems to me apple is doing all the things GUI-Designers wanted to do in the 80ies, regardless of usability.
wanted options:
-textshadows yes/no (text-color for desktop is also a must option)
-menubarshadows yes/no
-windowshadows yes/no
-soft blurred shadows/hard shaped shadows
yes, shadows “look” nice for some minutes, after that they annoy me.
right now i use shadowkiller, but textshadows and menubarshadows stay 🙁 – besides: text on bright desktops is nearly unreadable, thanks to the white (default) color and the shadow.. bad beta-testing, apple!
Finder also needs to be able to put the icons closer together in view as icons. The spaces between the icons are eating up my monitor space!
Personally I would hate the dock trays idea, far too like the XP taskbar that I’m having to use as I write. It hides windows from me slowing down window switching, and stopping conpletely being able to glance and see whats open with what document.
I would like to be able to pin the dock to one corner to make it more BeOS/NeXT like, but there is no need to wreak it by trying to make it like the inferior Windows taskbar.
Safari and Mail app work fine under Panther.
Have you tried repairing disk permissions using the Disk Utility?
Everybody calm down.
First, everybody has their eyes on Munich, depending on how well it goes more people will try to attempt the same.
Secondly, you never get reports on the press about how bad some MS rollouts go. I can give you lots of examples of unsuccesfull migrations from NT to 2000/XP/2003 which took more than a year to complete and were a pain in the ASS, had lots of hidden MS costs, etc.
Probably there are some propietary applications involved here which will need to be rewritten/emulated, that maybe the biggest rock in the road. If this is the case, after those tools are ported… you know you are ‘free’ from MS.
As I said all the eyes are looking towards Munich.
And remember that IT dissasters are not monopoly of any osses, I’ve seen some Redhat disasters too.
he repeats a lot of togs arguments, not much to see in the article, the posts were much more interesting. about a month ago, i took a crack at cracking panther too: http://people.msoe.edu/~hohlej/osxquirks.php (unfortunately, still no screenshots)
A must:
Clean up darwin. start from scratch, fix the symlinks, the overly complex libraries, the double standard for shell scripts between running in X and not in X, the path issues when you move in and out of X… just start again with the darwin layer
Better network support. 10.3 seemed to take a step back from 10.2 in network browsing at least. Fix this. All networks should be browsable from 1 menu, I shouldn’t bother myself with smb://, afp:// etc. We need it like the chooser was in 9, but with more afp support for browsing. When i do type an address, and my login and password is wrong GIVE ME THE DIALOG to type in a new one.
Consistency in finder. My view should not determine what command+n does.. either make it open a new finder window, or make it create a new folder. PICK ONE!
Window preference memory. when i change the preferences of how i few my finder windows (with/without side bar) REMEMBER them next time I open finder. maybe a keypress to open without the side bar would be good too…
arrow key to get between buttons on a dialog box… I can’t believe i have to ask for this.
what would be nice:
virtual desktops: not required, but would be nice to have.
trash can on desktop/side bar, not on dock.. an option, but not necessary
darwin folders in finder. an option somewhere to show the darwin folders (usr, bin, etc) (hehe, etc takes two meanings) in the finder.
Im sure there’s more that I just can’t think of right now, but those are the things that stick out in my head.
Why do people always complain about the dock? Ok, you don’t like it. That’s fine. But how about some reasonable suggestions? Do your really want to bring up a drawer when you click on a dock icon? Isn’t that supposed to activate the application? If anything would send TOG into fits it would be that behavior. And, EARTH TO JUSTIN, if you right click on a dock icon it will give you a list of the windows (active, minimized, or hidden) for the app. Sounds like what he wants. Why not use it?
As to other things:
His argument that Mail + iCal + Address Book should be one app really hinges on the concept that there should be tighter integration. We don’t need them to be a single app to have tighter integration. And frankly one of the reasons I moved to Mail from Entourage is because I don’t like having a big window with controls for everything. I mean, imagine taking the bloated iCal interface and adding folders for mail and address book controls? Yuck.
None of his suggestions holds any appeal whatsoever.
it’d be nice if the finder was properly designed. i can’t stand the sparse arrangement of icons, and (as before) maximizing the window (the green button @ top of screen) doesn’t actually maximize anything. it just makes the window slightly (and i mean slightly) bigger. there are too many other instances of this noisome system behaviour to list, and i think tog has a problem along these lines too. will it ever be fixed?
1. I agree that it would be nice if the icon placement had some kind of spacing parameter we could set. I would even settle for a hidden finder setting that wasn’t configurable through a normal pref panel.
2. I don’t know how we fix that noisome behavior. I mean, tog just won’t shut up!!! Or were you talking about the finder?
I think the ability to split the Dock into two pieces – a quick launch section for program shortcuts, and a taskbar section for minimized windows – would help simplify its function and deal with clutter. Have one running down the left-hand side of the desktop, and the other centered along the bottom.
3 words
minimize in place
they had this in beta 10.2 (i think) and someone brought out a hacked version for final of all 10.2.x
i tried it in panther, it killed the dock
minimize in place basically takes the icon of a minimized window from the dock and lets you put it anywhere on the screen
I’ve noticed that a lot of questions come up again and again: setting default browser, shortcut keys, etc. The best site for learning more about your Mac is: http://www.macosxhints.com/
If you read it regularly I have no doubt you will find some real gems. If you already have some questions do a search and there is almost certainly a hint on it. It has certainly changed the way I use my ibook since I discovered it.
(Not affilliated, just a very satisfied reader, blah, blah)
“Safari and Mail app work fine under Panther.”
Go read the Apple discussion forums! Mail.app does not work for MANY people. Not only minor bugs, but many people complaining that Mail won’t even START (or freezes completely) after upgrading to Panther.
“Have you tried repairing disk permissions using the Disk Utility?”
How do you do this? I’m willing to try anything frankly.
I thought Panther was great……until I bought XP for my home computer. All the bad things I had heard about XP seem to be ignoring the benefits and the enormous improvements between Win2k and XP. XP makes it so easy to burn CDs for example. Now my gripes with Panther:
* Like MANY others I have problems browsing Windows networks. Pather refuses to show servers in Finder. I have to mount them using Command-K.
* 10.2 Mail has not been patched to use Exchange server for email. So my Mac at work works differently from my wife’s 10.3 iBook regarding mail checking. This is a nuisance.
* Compared to Mozilla, Mail is a poor email program. Mozilla has many really nice features compared to Mail.
* Sarfari has dumb keyboard navigation. e.g. to switch between tabs in Mozilla is a real simple Ctrl+Tab. In Sarfari you need two hands.
* Alt+Tab in Windows switches between instances of (say) Mozilla. In OS X you are forced to use Expose which is way less efficient than Windows. XP just does it far better.
* Lastly, Apple pricing in New Zealand and Australia is 32-40% higher than US pricing (and that includes shipping and tax). As a result I am probably going to buy a new laptop in a week or two and it will probably be an IBM Thinkpad Series X.
1) I wonder how many of these people ‘Upgrade’d to Panther instead of ‘Archive and Install’. Everything I read before getting Panther said Upgrading was a mistake. My A&I transition was flawless.
2) Repair permissions (some names may be wrong but hopefully this will get you close)
a) Open Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility
b) Select your hard drive
c) go to the First Aid tab
d) click Repair Permissions
e) repeat as needed (I do it a couple times a month and after patches)
“I wonder how many of these people ‘Upgrade’d to Panther instead of ‘Archive and Install’. Everything I read before getting Panther said Upgrading was a mistake. My A&I transition was flawless.”
Actually, my Father did a clean install (including formating the drive).
Higher resolution screens are not really possble with OS X, or so I hear. Apparently, the famous vector-based UI just doesn’t scale very well. So at higher resolutions, everything looks tiny.
um, by scale well, i’d assume they mean performace wise. a pixel is a pixel, it’s either a color or not, not matter what resolution it is. a font at 1600×1200 will be exactly the same at the pixel level.
performance on the other hand is something different. higher resolution don’t scale linearly. it’s expected that if the screen is twice the area it wold take twice as long to redraw it. my guess is, even being hardware accelerated (if it is true that it doesn’t scale well), that it takes longer the twice as long to draw twice the area.
point of the story: software scaling has nothing to do with how things are drawn on the screen!
3 words
minimize in place
they had this in beta 10.2 (i think) and someone brought out a hacked version for final of all 10.2.x
i tried it in panther, it killed the dock
minimize in place basically takes the icon of a minimized window from the dock and lets you put it anywhere on the screen
I suspect this would be *extremely* confusing to non-power users as it would be difficult to discern the difference between an icon on the desktop and a minimised-in-place window.
Personally I think a better idea would be a) windowshading and/or b) allow a window to be hidden from view completely (not minimised).
* Compared to Mozilla, Mail is a poor email program. Mozilla has many really nice features compared to Mail.
What’s missing ?
* Alt+Tab in Windows switches between instances of (say) Mozilla. In OS X you are forced to use Expose which is way less efficient than Windows. XP just does it far better.
Cmd+Tab is similar in OS X. The most noticable difference is that switching to an app in OS brings all its windows to the front – you then need to use Cmd+` to select the appropriate window.
However, with any non-trivial amount of windows open (~>=5), Expose is going to be quicker if you already have one hand on the mouse.
* Lastly, Apple pricing in New Zealand and Australia is 32-40% higher than US pricing (and that includes shipping and tax). As a result I am probably going to buy a new laptop in a week or two and it will probably be an IBM Thinkpad Series X.
At least here in Australia, it’s becuase Apple is very slow to change its prices to reflect things like cheaper components, exchange rate changes, etc. Certainly back when the AUD$ was around the US$0.55 – 0.60 mark, their prices were much more competitive. Expect to see a price drop with the next model revamp.
The simple fact is, Macs are expensive – although they *are* most competitive in the laptop arena. Just having a quick look at the Thinkpad X vs 12″ PBG4, the PB seems competitively priced – even more so if you compare to the 12″ iBook (which, admittedly, has a much slower processor). Which models are you comparing ?
I suspect this would be *extremely* confusing to non-power users as it would be difficult to discern the difference between an icon on the desktop and a minimised-in-place window.
Personally I think a better idea would be a) windowshading and/or b) allow a window to be hidden from view completely (not minimised).
actually they did it REALLY well, not sure if it was jag or panther that implemented this, i haven’t been on panther in so long, but when you minimize a window you get the thumbnail and a tiny icon of the app it belongs to on the thumbnail
also the minimized windows don’t have a name, so you won’t get confused between icons and mip windows
as for windowshading, if it’s what i think your talking about (the double click on the title bar of a window in os9 to minimize it), they take up way too much room, i usually have a lot of windows open at once, if i need to get to the desktop or something behind all these windows, the windowshades will get in the way
i liked it in os9, but prefer mip in osx
os-x is not effective in using my screen-space, too much space is wasted for nothing, and i don’t know a way to alter that.
bad apple, they wan’t to sell bigga screens, bastards!