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Screenshots of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther Leaked
gorman writes "Screenshots of Apple's next major update to OS X, Panther (10.3), have finally been leaked to the web. For months very little has been known about Panther, with only several minor rumors here and there. These screenshots show off many new features, including the return of labels, a brand new Safari-like finder, and an interesting window management system called Exposé. In addition, the screenshots show off refined visuals and improvements to all of the included Apple applications, such as video support in iChat and enhanced spam filtering in Mail. While these screenshots show off a pre-release version of Panther, it's definitely interesting to see what Apple is working on! Steve Jobs will demonstrate Panther during his keynote this Monday at WWDC and will make it available to developers."
Looks like apple is poised again to take charge of the future of OSes. I can't wait till monday so i can see what will be in longhorn 2005.
http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~12fg/Panther/
Torrent of the index.html and all images is here (panther.torrent) if page gets slashdotted.
Improving the the capabilities of the spam filtering in Apple's Mail.app program is nice, but I wonder if they've fixed any of the *REAL* problems? There are so many problems that Macintouch has PAGES of reader reports of issues.
Like, the fact that the application kills its own preferences if your drive runs out of space.
Or the problem of attachments being destroyed when sent if they have a resource fork.
I switched to Mail.app for a day, but switched back to Entourage when I discovered these serious issues, as well as the lack of interface behavior controls (like the fact that Mail.app automatically marks an email viewed in the preview pane as "read", when I don't want it to).
Jory
A few things:
1) I completely stoked to see Security having it's own control panel.
2) Where's the advanced spam filtering mentioned? I just see the normal Mail.app screen.
3) I don't see the Safari driven finder either. It's just the normal finder window with a brushed metallic look. (I still haven't made up my mind on the metallic. I don't hate it, but it's not lickable like the rest of the OS)
4) For anyone who's never used them, folder actions kick ass.
Can't wait till monday.
-E2
The evil monkey commands you to dance.
The image is supposed to be showcasing a new feature called "expose" (it these are real that is), which should help managing your windows. Take a look at the preferences.
Also you'll notice, that foreground windows are shaded grey and have coloured stoplight buttons, while the unfocused window is plain white and has monochrome stoplight buttons. So, apparently unfocused titlebars are not translucent anymore.
I really hope those screenshots are either fake or just plain unpolished/unfinished. Jaguar looks way better IMHO.
-- The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
It's really an elegant solution to window clutter. It's either this or virtual desktops, and Apple probably would dislike virtual desktops due to the "where the hell did my windows go" factor. With Quartz, all the zooming should give the user usable visual feedback as to what's going on.
>Its a damned OS, its a TOOL.. its not some drug induced altered state of mind...
You're partially right - it's an OS, but it's also a user interface, and all of the changes shown in the screenshots are UI changes. It may be jargon that reeks of marketspeak, but "experience" is actually a fairly useful way of thinking about how people work with UIs. It's more than file management and app launching, it's the utility of system alerts and messages, the clarity of the typeface, the ease with which the user understands what's going on, the myriad ways the user's time using the interface is helped or hindered by the UI design.
Taken directly from the MacRumors forums:
[quote]
Re: This is fake
First, I'm really really really pissed off because I wrote this whole message and then accidentally deleted it. Seems you can't control-Z in these input boxes.
Second, I think these shots are fake, too. I hope they are for some of the reasons outlined below. I'll be going into a lot less detail in light of the fact that I'm having to type it all again. I did do an Observation/Conclusion thing, but this time I'll just make the observations and you can make your own conclusions.
I have only skimmed the thread, so apologies if these points have been brought up. Just seemed like everyone was "WOOHOO"ing without really looking closely. And similarity to other posts is just coincidence.
OBSERVATION: In the Activity Monitor window there are strange inconsistencies.
* First there are really tacky colours. Windows type tacky colour, not beautiful Apple colours.
* Second, the "% Nice" uses a , to seperate the decimals, not a . like the rest of the %'s. This smacks to me of a slip-up by someone European making the fakes.
* Third, the "Threads" and "Processes" don't line up right. Unless this is a very early build, it's very sloppy.
OBSERVATION: Yahoo Instant messenger is in the dock and on the desktop. If this is Panther, that presumably means no Yahoo support in iChat.
OBSERVATION: In the full screen of the expose desktop, Safari is all blocked out. Why? What incriminating website could he/she be looking at?
OBSERVATION: Why are the iChat windows censored totally? Why not just block them out like the Safari window?
OBSERVATION: About Finder is all wrong. "The Macintosh Desktop Experience"? And why "Finder version 10.3" rather than "Mac OS X (10.3)" like we'd expect? These aren't big things, obviously, but still...
OBSERVATION: No build number. Seems strange, since they'll most likely be giving out preview copies on Monday, and developers will want to know what build they're working with. If it's the final release, how did slip-ups like above creep in?
OBSERVATION: In the iChat window, it says "There is no camera attached to this computer." Yet the progress bar seems to be showing activity of some sort?
OBSERVATION: The Finder window named Xdrive is metal, but not entirely consistently. The metal has a bar down the right, next to the scroll bar, unlike Safari. This on its own is nothing that important, but the grow icon thing in the bottom right seems misplaced.
OBSERVATION: In the Mail screenshot, the "Working Offline" seems all wrong. Especially the "o" in working.
It just seems all wrong to me. I'm bound to end up with egg on my face, but I thought these items needed discussion.
- Jimmni
[/quote]
Points worth thinking about.
(tig)
"We do not inherit the land from our ancestors"
"We borrow it from our children"
Ignorance and prejudice and fear
Walk hand in hand
They don't because they don't believe it will make them money. Seriously.
... this really isn't an attack on you or the GNOME/KDE teams. Some of this is going to seem harsh, but I'm stating my opinion. Please don't take it personally, or as a slam to KDE or GNOME, since I do actually like both of these projects, even though I don't think they (or Apple, for that matter) are the best thing since sliced neko bread.
... what do you mean, exactly, by "little incompatibilities"? Are you throwing this out to make your post look balanced, or did you have something specific in mind? I couldn't think of anything off hand ... until I realized that switching to GNOME or KDE would likely mean GTK+ or QT, which would involve changing the entire desktop API for every Mac OS application. This is not! a "little" incompatibility. Making some sort of Cocoa wrapper would be a huge pain in the ass, no matter how good a coder you are. That would still be better than forcing every OS X developer to rewrite their application (again, if it used to be an old OS 9- program). This would be a huge waste of Apple's time and money and probably piss off their developers to no end.
Using GNOME or KDE in their next release would be a horrible idea for Apple. And here's why.
Apple already just recently (well, 10.0) totally changed their UI and user experience from what it had been for a decade. That pissed off a lot of hardcore old users. Apple doesn't need to go alienating their users again. (And no, I don't feel that the Aqua themes "count". They're pretty, but they're not "there", from my recollection.)
Performance-wise? The most recent releases of GNOME and KDE felt slower on my 866 MHz i686 machine than 10.2 did on my 700 MHz PPC750. Apple really doesn't need their OS getting slower, especially on their low-end machines, which people here already bitch and taunt as being horribly underpowered.
Finally
Really finally, now, as a matter of personal opinion, I do actually like the whole OS X UI system better than GNOME or KDE. The legions of rabid and not-so-rabid Apple loyalists would probably agree with me, since OS X probably at least tries to follow whatever Apple's UI standards are. Not only are GNOME and KDE "not Apple", but the UI experience is different. So I don't think Apple would garner support from their users by switching.
True, but it's a normal Mail.app screen with nothing in the inbox. That's some damn good spam filtering.