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Jaguar is Over
The Panther Finder is brand-new, with a new brushed metal appearance, and enhanced column view, with the items used most commonly in the far left column. Searching is "live" and a lot faster, and is more user-centric instead of computer-centric.
The Finder now has labels, and icons can resize with window resizing.
The iDisk now caches itself locally, so it can be used offline, and the user can copy to and from it more efficiently (with the real copies happening in the background).
A new feature called Expose allows minimizing into a smaller window, all open windows, to temporarily move everything out of the way, sort of like workspaces.
File Vault can encrypt a user directory and decrypt it "on the fly."
Faxing is now built-in, and available system-wide.
Pixlet is a new compression codec that does video compression without noticable artifacts, for 48 bits per pixel: at 960x540 and 24 fps, can be decoded on a 1GHz Power Mac.
Preview is significantly faster, with searching, and PS to PDF conversion.
Panther features fast user switching, a feature in Windows XP, allowing under-one-second (on the demo machine) switching between two different users.
FontBook is a new "pro" app for font management.
iChat AV is an update to iChat that does audio and video conferencing in addition to text, that works with any built-in or USB mic, and any DV video camera, connecting using only a user's screen name. It is going to beta today, and will be included in Panther, and will be sold for $29 to Jaguar users. Apple will sell iSight for $149, a small camera that does audio and video over FireWire.
Apple is preparing a new set of developer tools called XCode, which works with GCC 3.3, does distributed compiles (using available resources on the network), and has other cool stuff. It is fast, it has improved searching (like the Finder, and over entire projects), and it looks like an iApp (though it isn't metal). It removes the need to link; onnly link objects you need to launch. It starts compiling while you are editing, cutting the time you need to compile drastically. It can modify the program while it is running.
1. Make pretty GUIs and lovely gadgets 2. ??? 3. Profit!!! Actually, it's a pretty damn good business plan.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Dude, the keynote isn't even over yet, and you're posting to the site about the news. Geez, talk about jumping the gun...
Don't Ask Questions. I don't know the answers and even if I did I wouldn't tell you.
Ugh!
Another upgrade! I just bought Jaguar for one machine about two months ago!
Got to do it, though.... too much cool stuff in Panther to just pass by.
dochood
What about an upgrade price for Panther? I just spent $129 last fall for Jaguar.
Microsoft should (but won't) take a page from Apple's book. You can as a company, co-exist peacefully with the Open Source community. Apple has put themselves in a great position IMO for the future. Their releases add actual features, making people *want* to upgrade instead of forcing them to. It's a beautiful thing, because you can still use OS 10.0 if you want to, but they add so many features, bells, whistles and in general cool stuff - people really want to get the newest version of their software.
Kudos to Apple for that.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
Most of this stuff should be free for download.
I hate to say this, but apple may be shooting itself in the face with this update.
Combined with people who paid for Jaguar, that brings the OS update cost to ~300dollars US??
Some people claim M$ is greedy...
I just see Apple floundering...
Please explain, in 300 words or less, how Apple is forcing the upgrade.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Dear Mr. Jobs:
... please use a flame more creative than "whiner." Obliged.
Iâ(TM)m not saying I donâ(TM)t want to pay you guys when you upgrade the OS. You guys put a lot of features in every release, and your staff deserves to get paid for it. Panther looks pretty damn cool, for the most part. Just do me a favor. Reward me, even with a paltry amount, for being a customer who likes to keep his OS up-to-date.
Knock $40 off the price and call it a $89 upgrade fee. Hell, even $30, and $99, would be somewhat palatable. Thatâ(TM)s really not that much to ask, considering the discounts one can find elsewhere on the OS after a few months.
Itâ(TM)s a bit more palatable than the pure psychological âoeF--K YOUâ of making me buy the operating system over and over and over again with every new release.
Longhorn users may be waiting until 2005 for their next release, but I doubt theyâ(TM)ll have spent $460 or $690 by that point on keeping their OS up to date.
Sincerely,
Quite Unpleased Customer Who's About to Get His Ass Handed to Him By Fellow Mac Loyalists for Even Daring to Question the Wielder of the Reality Distortion Field
P.S. To all those who decide to flame instead of intelligently reply
Why do people constantly bitch (yes, bitch) when someone dares to charge for software that they can do without?
The release od Panther doesn't make your copy of Jaguar any less useful - it doesn't detract from Jaguar's functionality, ease of use or anything else.
If you like what Panther has to offer and can't live without it then buy it. If you don't think it has anything significant to offer or that it's poor value for money then don't. It's that simple.
Nobody forced you to upgrade from OS 9 to OS X and nobody forced you to upgrade from OS X 10.0 to Jaguar. Similarly, nobody's got a gun to your head forcing you to fork over your cash for Panther.
You don't expect free upgrades for life do you?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It seems to me that rather than being analagous to 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, etc. OS X's 10.1, 10.2, are more like System 7, System 8, System 9. Each version has entirely new features on top of entirely different underpinnings. Apple is using the cat names as an attempt to shed the 'They're charging for an upgrade!' stigma.
:(
Not that I'm looking forward to the price, mind you. However, they haven't (that I've seen) given a release date, and as I'm looking to buy a new computer it probably will work out for me. Even if I weren't, I don't think my graphite iMac would take it anyway.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
Well, that's the thing. Is the stuff in Panther worth $129? If so, then there's nothing to complain about (except that maybe you didn't get your money's worth out of Jaguar, but that's just unfortunate timing).
If it's not worth it, I'm sure Apple will support Jaguar for quite some time. As long as these (now semi-) annual upgrades aren't effectively mandatory, then I think it's a good thing - upgrade only when they've made significant changes to the things you like, but at least you get the option to upgrade a lot, unlike with Windows when real feature changes come once every 5 years.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
For those who are counting, that's 5 minor releases of 10.2 since it was released and numerous security updates within 24-48 hours of the publishing of vulnerabilites.
Oh, and it all just works.
Nothing's free my friend. You can pay Red Hat $60/year or Apple $129. I think the Apple user experience is worth the extra $69 to support actual R&D, don't you?
Yeah, but it looks like Apple is releasing as many new features in one year as Windows gets in three.
Consistent UI standards are one of the main reasons the Mac succeeded. The man should at least have the decency to change the HIG rather than ignore it.
>
Well if you're a gamer and price is an issue for you then wouldn't you be better off buying a PC? I never really considered the mac as a hardcore gamers machine.. not that it doesn't have the power for it... but there are other practical issues which makes a PC a better choice for *hardcore gamers* IMHO.
Personally speaking, I rarely use my mac for games.. it was actually much more practical for me to build a PC for that...
Choose the right tool for the job you want to do.
If a completely optional $120 once a year scares you away
Optional? Hardly. Watch as new versions of application programs for the Mac platform quickly drop support for anything but the latest version of Mac OS X. Heck, even Microsoft still requires that programs carrying the Windows XP Logo work on Windows 2000 and Windows ME.
Will I retire or break 10K?
NASDAQ is down 2.6% as of 3:09 eastern time, so it is not out of line with the general market. Apple has some nice new products, but it had better translaet to sales and profits.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Service packs dont introduce the kind of features Apple's updates do.
Service Packs are 99% bug fixes. Something that should have been fixed before you got the product.
I'm out of the Apple loop these days, but surely Apple produces free patches between OS point releases?
"Old man yells at systemd"
I find it curious that many of you will bitch and moan about how expensive MS operating systems are but find Apple's pricing of OS X releases agreeable or complain very little. Looking at the list of "features", this basically looks like a $129 fixpack. Various app speedups, minor enhancements, and slight UI changes for a few apps is worth $129 and Windows is too expensive?
Consider this: I can go out right now and buy a FULL, non-upgrade OEM copy of Windows XP for $99 (plus the negligible cost of a small piece of computer hardware to make the deal legit) to update a system with Windows 98 installed on it. That's $99 for what is a very serious operating system overhaul. Compare this to upgrading OS X 10.2 -> 10.3, which costs $129 for what amounts to a bunch of fixes (and an update to the FreeBSD 5.0 core -- that's relatively major, but not as major as Win9X to NT).
And Windows is too expensive...?
Before you call that person "stupid," I think somebody should point out that you clearly misunderstand what is commonly meant by "proprietary hardware."
Years ago, when Apple was using NuBus and IBM was using Microchannel for their respective card expansion options, those were examples of proprietary hardware. You could only plug Microchannel cards into those IBMs, and you could not use them with any other PC (unless they licensed Microchannel from IBM.) Eventually, both the IBM PC division and the Apple designers came to their senses, and they switched to Intel's PCI design, which pretty much the rest of the home computer industry had already moved to.
Proprietary hardware is troublesome, because it restricts the availability of expansion and replacement parts. You are either locked into the original vendor, or to the handful of hardware makers who have specific hardware license agreements with the company who invented the hardware platform in question. Over the years, a lot of companies (including Apple) have attempted proprietary solutions for memory, video, expansion cards, etc. They seldom succeed, unless they manage to get the rest of the industry to adopt it as a standard.
Writing an OS that is specific to your company's computer architecture (such as OS X for the Macintosh or Solaris for Sun servers) is not an example of "proprietery hardware." It's an example of operating system software integration, and if vendor lock-in (for the complete system, not for replacement parts) doesn't scare you, it can be a very good thing.
My G3 tower has been upgraded with a third-party IDE hard drive, a third-party G4 CPU, a third-party PCI SCSI card, a third-party Firewire CD-R drive, and lots of third-party memory. All of these parts were industry-standard items which could have been installed in almost any x86 box sold in the last few years, too (except for the CPU, which could be used on any open-firmware motherboard, but then you can't drop a P4 onto an Athlon board, either.) If Apple used proprietary hardware, as you claimed, none of this would have been possible. I would have had to purchace my CPU, HD, memory, SCSI card, and CD-R from Apple themselves.
I mean think about what you are saying - if that is your criteria for being open then Microsoft has Apple beat.
Microsoft, they have never, as far as I remember, sold any proprietary hardware at all. The only hardware they sell is usually stuff like re-branded HP mice and keyboards, using either PS/2 or USB.
I'm not sure what your point about Microsoft is. Their software is not open, just as a lot of Apple's code is not open, but that doesn't really have anything to do with what we were talking about (proprietary hardware.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Seems pretty reasonable, just speced a 1.6Ghz Opteron, 512MB DDR ECC (PC2100), DVD-ROM, DVD-RW, GiG-E, 80GB Segate SATA drive, Audigy 2 OEM, Win XP Home, ~$2,000, and if the Apple comes with an FX it will have much better graphics (was using onboard because it was not going to be used for anything graphics intensive). Plus Velocity Engine is MUCH better than SSE2 for vector ops.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
I hate to say this, but it looks like a bit of a Windows XP-catch up release to me. As a regular and happy user of both operating systems, I say there are definitely useful things missing in OS X that XP has by default. Faxing for one - news in the developers conference, but Windows has had that as standard since 1995. Fast user switching - an absolute god-send to me, and extremely welcome. But again, it's an XP catch-up feature. Video conferencing? Snap - a catch-up with Netmeeting.
Now, that's not to say I'm disappointed with things. Personally, I think a pause to fill in the missing gaps is welcome, and I'll definitely appreciate not having to remote desktop to my PC to send off a fax. There are also some nice new Mac-only features to go coo at, but on the whole I'll stick by my opinion that in terms of functionality at least, this is a catch-up with XP.
One thing I am disappointed in is Safari 1.0 however. Using it at the moment, and I went back to all the sites I'd reported as being rendered incorrectly - they're still rendered incorrectly. Not one bug fixed. You also can't block images coming from a particular server - a feature I use a lot in Firebird, can't tab onto drop-downs and you can't set your homepage to be a group of tabs. A massive let down. It hasn't done nearly enough to become my default browser yet.
Also disappointed not to see an iSync update - Symbian-based phones aren't properly supported at the moment, and since most of the smart-phones sold in the UK at least are Symbian-based then that's an itch that needs scratching.
Overall happy then, but I still think this is a bit of a catch-up rather than anything revolutionary.
Cheers,
Ian
Honestly, I see no point in switching. Who's gonna pay 129 dollars just for a brushed-metal finder? No performance enhancements, no nothing. Those improvements in the network are are nice, but I still think it's worthless, specially because most people don't care whether NFS lock works or not. I know people are gonna bash me like crazy because of this (curse u apple lovers :p), but u guys are /.ers not people who are alienated about computers, as most people in the world are.
Well Jags been out for what 14 months now, and everyone has known Panther was coming for ages, so why did you buy Jaguar now ?
Being a recent convert to the Mac/Apple fold, I find I have both concerns about these upgrade cycles and at the same time, I feel they are justified.
Let's take a look and see what we are comparing so we aren't comparing Apples and well.. you know.
In my mind, there are really only three platforms out there: Apple, Windows, and *nix(Linux,BSD,Solaris,etc).
Let's look at the "cost" of upgrades for each of these, shall we?
With Apple, it seems you pay $129 for each major revision change. People who were using 10.0-10.1 were charged to go to 10.2 and now it seems that 10.2 users(myself included) will be charged to go to 10.3.
My experience with my iBook running 10.2.6 has been about as damn near perfect as I have ever experienced on any platform with a user interface to match. Sure I paid top dollar for a laptop which won't beat my fellow co-workers' 1-2Ghz laptops anytime soon, but I also won't be cursing at my laptop for wiping out my data either. That has got to be worth something.
With Linux, we get free kernel and OS upgrades. However, each time I went through the upgrade process, I had to literally double check every software package and perform countless recompiles to get things right again. On average, with every major kernel release I have had to spend the better part of an afternoon performing "installation" exercises. With every minor release, I have had to recompile the kernel. I didn't pay cash on the barrel for the upgrade, but I paid for it in time.
With Windows, it has always been a struggle. People say *nix is unfriendly. I say it is Windows which is unfriendliest of all. You have to pay about $149 for an upgrade to the OS or in my case, $349 for the "full" version of the software. To top it off, if I have any aspirations of a marginally stable system, I have to perform a clean install and not just an upgrade on top of my existing system. This results in at least a full day of work on my part in re-installing the OS and all of the applications on the system. I pay in time and money.
Now. With that in mind, I'm looking at the prospect of paying $129 for the 10.3 version of Mac OSX:Panther for my iBook which will run better with other systems and be even friendlier.
I think I can live with that.
Winged Power Photography
Not suprising, but most the comments here are about either the new G5s or the cost of the upgrade. But, if you look through the features, IMHO there's some pretty cool stuff. Sure, I've bought all the updates. Sure, I'm annoyed that I gots to buy another (or time my system upgrade just right). Sure, I'm a complete Mac fan. But in looking at 10.3, I said wow more than a couple of times.
1. Expose - This actually looks really useful. You can never have too much screen estate, and although I might prefer a virtual screen functionality, maybe I won't care. This easily lets you not only sort through the clutter for a single app or all apps, it keeps everything the way it way (just with the new window on top). No more minimizing then having to bring back to the top. Right now, I'm running Win2k and even with my Taskbar at three levels, I've got so many terminals up it's disgusting. I'm pretty sure this is a completely new concept, but I'm sure someone will tell me otherwise. I can prolly still patent it tho....
2. Multi-User- Ok, this isn't huge. X has allowed Unix to do it for years, and XP beat OSX to the punch. But, in classic Apple style, they map the various users onto a cube and rotate that to go between users "because they can." Waste of proc power? No, cuz it's Quartz and the graphics card is handling all that. Useful? No. Supacool, I think so. Hopefully you're not limited to 6 multi-user logins though.
3. File Vault - 128bit automatic encryption/decryption of your home directory. Of course, I'm sure this slows the system and I would probably turn it off, but it's certainly viable for enterprise users. Until you lose the key, of course.
4. Font Book - I'm not a graphics guy, I'm a low level embedded software freak. But, I hear those graphics people have a lot of fonts and for some reason, have all sorts of finding the one they want. Well, here's Font Management built right into OSX.
5. X11 - Frankly, this is a no brainer. Any argument that the Mac doesn't have that many apps for it have been shot dead. At least when it's the Linux people saying it. Sure, Windows still has more apps, and more than one way to do it, but does it matter that there are 10 word processors for Windows when all anyone uses is Office?
Throw in an increase in speed speed speed, better windows (and the rest of the world) connectivity, a rewritten (Snappy!) Finder, Quicktime, and who knows what else under the hood and you've got a great update. Sure, a lot of software will have to be tweaked to work with the update, but OSX is still maturing. APIs will stabilize soon and be solid, but Apple is adding functionality on top of all this.