Panther: One Week Later
Mac OS X 10.3, better known as Panther, was released by Apple a little over two weeks ago. I’ve been using it for over a week now on my iBook and I’d like to share some of my thoughts about the changes that Panther brings to the table.
The New Finder
As a long time Mac user the first time I saw the new brushed-metal-with-a-sidebar I thought, “what the hell is this?” It just didn’t make sense. After a week though, I think I like it. While I’m still unsure about the brushed metal interface, the sidebar makes navigation quite easy. Since the sidebar is customizable, any folder or disk can be added to the sidebar, providing a quick and easy way to get to that folder or disk.
UI Improvements
Pinstripes are far less prominent in Panther which is a good thing. Pinstripes ran rampant in previous versions of OS X, almost to the point of making me never want to see them again. Now they are gone from the title bar entirely (for the first time I can remember in any version of Mac OS) and they are so subtle in the menu bar and other locations that you can barely tell they are there. The resulting look is sleeker, slicker, and more professional.
The new application switching panel is brilliant compared to past offerings. The new panel is much easier to see than the previous dock-icon-highlighting scheme, and also groups your most recently used applications to the left side making it easier to switch to the ones you use most often.
Exposé
Easily the best new addition to OS X, Exposé makes turns window management hell into window management heaven. What is more amazing than the utility of Exposé though is the fact that it runs incredibly smoothly on my iBook’s 8MB Rage 128 card (which is not supported by Quartz Extreme).
The way I manage windows has completely changed because of Exposé. With Jaguar, I was always minimising windows to the dock, not so that they would be out of the way but because they would be easier to find and switch to. With Panther it takes just one keystroke and I can quickly and easily survey everything that is open and choose which window to work with. It has only been a week since I started using Panther, but I am already having problems remembering how I worked productively without Exposé.
As John mentioned previously, Exposé is also fun to demonstrate.
Local iDisk
The local iDisk is fantastic. The automatic sync function is a little overzealous though. As soon as you add one file it starts the syncing process (or at least it did for me) which is all well and good unless you are adding more than one file (or group if files) on or off at a time. Manual syncing, which allows you to make all the changes you want and then start the syncing process, has worked much better for me.
While having an iDisk was certainly convenient before, Panther has kicked it up a notch with the local iDisk. If nothing else, .Mac users still connecting to the net via a dial up connection should like it, as iDisk has always been a bit of a high bandwidth feature.
Speed Increases
Due to optimisations in Quartz and other areas (such as threading and memory usage), Panther feels much faster than previous versions of OS X, especially on older hardware such as my iBook 600. Window resizing no longer lags, and applications now launch a little quicker, and respond a little faster.
In addition, Panther boots up much faster and, better than that, Panther now shuts down much, much faster than Jaguar. Words can’t express how happy I am that I don’t have to watch that little progress spinner for untold minutes as I wait for my machine to turn off.
Issues
I have only had two issues with Panther thus far, and both are relatively minor. The first is that Finder windows do not remember their new positions, which is annoying but fairly easily remedied by deleting the appropriate .DS_Store files.
The second issue is a little more annoying and I have yet to find a fix for it. I have two symbolic links (UNIX aliases, which work correctly in the Terminal) on my desktop, and any time that an item is added or removed from the desktop they revert from their custom icons to generic folder icons. A simple click on them changes them back to their custom icons. I am not sure what is causing this to happen and honestly I haven’t looked too deeply into it; the annoyance has yet to overcome my apathy.
Worthwhile upgrade?
Panther doesn’t offer the same magnitude of speed increases that Jaguar did when it debuted, but it does offer a much bigger increase to your productivity. Exposé alone makes the price of admission worth while for me, not to mention the new application switcher and Finder refinements.
If you have yet to upgrade and are unsure about whether you should do so, the best thing to do is go to a store and play with Panther for a few minutes. I can guarantee that even if you don’t leave the store with a copy, you will be impressed.
I’ve found that Panther has made file sharing more complicated again. Jaguar was so easy. My high school students shared files from computer to computer in our lab with few if any hang-ups. Now if you don’t have a password on your account there are problems using sharing. The server icon has dissappeared from the desktop, so it is difficult to find and use the servers you are attatched to. Navigation in the connection window has additional steps that don’t seem to add any functionality.
File sharing is my biggest gripe. I have had to use ip numbers to mount volumes on shared windows accounts, because otherwise access is limited to the user account. The network gadget in the finder window can’t mount a local Jaguar volume. I don’t mind a few interface tweaks, but to reduce usibility is a shame. Panther is faster and connects to wireless networks better than Jaguar. I am in love with Expose.
I didn’t go into the changes to the file sharing interface because I honestly don’t use it that much. The few times I have used it though, everything has worked just fine. My only real complaint is that there is no progress spinner anywhere so when you initially select ‘Network’ from the sidebar it seems as if nothing is happening.
After double checking all my network settings (and deleting the preferences on one machine), I have been able to connect to machines running Panther, Jaguar, Windows 2000 and Windows XP without any hassles, even when all the machines are on different workgroups.
One thing I did forget to mention in the article though, was that the lines used to divide menu items in 10.3 are much more attractive and professional looking than the spaces used to divide menu items in 10.2 and 10.1.
If you are one of those people who feel a bit cheated purchasing Panther, try doing a clean reinstall of Jaguar on your machine. With me this made all of the subtle changes that I hadn’t noticed stand out more. Was it a waste of my time to downgrade for a week? Nope, once I realized that I wanted to keep Panther and not sell it on eBay, having a cleaner system to upgrade to Panther made my second install better than the first. I’ve got a Panther Parlor in my home directory now
I had problems archiving and installing so I did a clean install of Panther. Now I’m glad as I’ve had few problems.
Biggest gribes (see above) are legitimate but I think some are due to lack of documentation and learning. I ranted about the inadequacies of Font Book (I’m in graphics) but the more I use it, the more I like it. It seems more powerful than I first thought but I wish it was more adequately detailed in Apple’s somewhat improved help system. Same with the networking.
But yeah, it’s worth it. The customizable sidebar is worth it for me.
I’ve been a Mac user for exactly one year now. My wife and I purchased identical 17” LCD iMacs this time last year. I have had a very long and complicated career in computers, which spans more than twenty years and encompases everything from mini-computers through large Unix servers. I found Jaguar fairly easy to learn, especially once I replaced the nice little mouse that came with the iMac with a macally two-button wheel mouse
When I heard Panther was going to be released on October 24th, I pre-ordered the family pack from Apple. When I got home from work on that Friday (24 October), the package was there waiting for me. Saturday afternoon I backed-up our home directories to the FreeBSD file server, then did a clean install (partitioning the hard drives at the same time to allow for Yellowdog Linux installation, but that’s a different story) on both iMacs.
I just want to say that the speed improvements alone are worth the cost of the upgrade for me. I was finding Jaguar a bit slow in a lot of operations, even with 768 MB RAM in both machines! Panther seems to have ironed out those slow spots and I’m much happier.
Oh yeah, Expose` is awesome!
I have a 500mhz G3 Imac that shipped new with OS 9 installed and OS X.0 included on an install disk. This was my first Mac and I liked the speed and response of OS 9 very much, but hated the stability. I installed OS X the first day and it was beautiful, yet fairly useless (no software anyway), and it was slower than the slowest slow. Even slower than WIN95 on the 166mhz Pentium 1 I had before that!
By the time 10.2 appeared I was using OS X about 95% of the time. 10.2 suddenly felt like a good solid basic operating system, yet of course, still slow, but super-stable. I started to appreciate how the overall stability gave me great confidence in this OS, and in a lot of ways that outweighed the sluggishness of the interface.
In my experience with 10.3 thus far (got it the first day like everyone else, and installed it immediately), I’ve noticed a couple of very minor bugs, and I even (for the FIRST TIME EVER in OS X) had to RESTART my computer a couple of times. That freaked me out, and other people mentioned it in the discussion groups…but, whatever it was, it’s gone now…or at least it hasn’t happened in over a week.
I love 10.3. The Finder, Expose’, Preview, Safari upgrades all make a HUGE difference (to name a few). Everything is noticeably faster now and I keep running into new subtle changes and additions that unquestionably contribute to improved efficiency. The interface is not always the fastest thing ever, but it’s a lot faster and more responsive than before. I think the actual speed boosts in addition to many well thought out refinements make this a very important upgrade and a really great OS.
IF THIS IS THE FINAL OS THAT CAN RUN ON MY G3 (and I’d be very surprised if it’s not), THAT’S JUST FINE WITH ME.
10.3 is the first release about which I can say that.
I tried Jaguar and its awful predecessor on a brand new iBook, and I loathe slow graphical interface responses; however, that’s not enough to sell me on Panther.
I’m heartened by all the positive feedback here, but until GUI responsiveness under OSX on a G4 iBook gets to a reasonable level (I compare it to Win2000 on my ancient P3-600, which really isn’t a tough metric to beat) I don’t think there’s a reason to go through the hassle and expense. Essentially, it looks like Panther is a bit faster, has some ‘improved’ icons, and has Expose. Have I missed anything important? What makes this such a compelling upgrade??
Under Jaguar, if I was to mount an SMB and was to later close the iBook, the share stayed mounted. This is not the case under Panther, and when I close the iBook I then have to re-mount the shares.
Has anyone else experienced this?
“What makes this such a compelling upgrade??”
Bug fixes.
And better multitasking.
Developer Tools.
Slightly Faster.
Actually feels like a 99% complete OS. Finally!
I really Like it…..its the little things really.
Can anyone help me with this issue? I just purchased Panther today. One of the main features I bought it for was the fast user switching. I have a family with two teenage kids. I have a diail up connetion to the interent, using an external 56k USB modem. (the internal modem on my computer got zapped when we had an storm and I have yet to get it fixed) Anyway, I was hoping with Panther, that I could share my internet account with different users at the same time. Well, what I found out was, when you switch users it disconnects you from the internet and you have to dial up and log back in each time you switch users. What a pain. So each time someone needs to use the interent while another person is logged on, we have to do the following… Switch users using fast user switching, dial back into the internet again, and log in again. Is there any way to have an active internet network connection on one apple computer that stays active when you switch beween users on that same computer? If not, that’s a real issue that needs to be fixed. Thanks for the help.
just me
system prefs, network, modem, configure, ppp, ppp options, session options, fourth from the top.
disconnect when user logs out check box
this is checked by default
click to uncheck and fast switch without disconnecting
untested in panther but i use it in jag