Apple Sets Oct. 24th Release For Mac OS X 10.3

dricci writes "Yahoo! has posted a press release from Apple, regarding the release date of the next major Mac OS X update, 10.3 ('Panther'). The update will be available 8:00 p.m. on October 24th at Apple Retail Stores and Authorized Resellers for $129.00 US (Family Pack for up to 5 users will be $199). Pretty much the same pricing structure they had for Jaguar. It looks like 'old world' Beige G3 support has been discontinued -- the update requires a Mac with built in USB."

Comments

Re:Countdown clock

[hype7]

Flash aside, this is one important update for Mac users and shows how much code optimization can get you in terms of performance

Absolutely! I'm not the biggest fan of XBench, but these numbers do paint a very impressive picture.

Regardless, don't forget the cool stuff Apple's adding - Expose is cool, I got a chance to play with a pre-release version of Panther and it's one of those things that you'll begin to wonder how the hell you ever lived without it. The other thing that I'm looking forward to is the on-the-fly, user-friend 128-bit AES encryption. Your computer goes walkies? Least the pricks don't get all your stuff.

-- james

Panther

[rampant mac]

I had the chance to preview Panther on a friend's PowerBook (1Ghz Ti /w SuperDrive) recently. I was very impressed to see the speed improvements Panther brings to "older" machines. Imagine that, and operating system that removes bloat and performs better after subsiquent releases! While 10.2 was what I finally considered a 1.0 release of Mac OS X, Panther is a huge leap in usability.

Expose is so amazing, expect Microsoft to "borrow" it in their next OS release.

Rumor sites right

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone loves to bash the rumor sites when they get something wrong... but here we are... rumor sites were spot on with this... so credit where credit is due:

Panther is GM
October 24th Release for Panther
Oct 8th official announcement
S+H Upgrade price for G5 owners

Re:Countdown clock

[Ranger Rick]

I've been using the prereleases of panther and it *is* noticably faster, I'd say pretty close to the difference in speed between 10.1 and 10.2.

Under the covers they've done a lot of work to make prebinding work better, for one thing, and gcc3.3 provides vast improvements in powerpc code over gcc3.1 (even apple's modified version).

You probably like record players, too

[SuperBanana]

The only problem I find with the support is that the Wallstreet line PowerBooks, especially after adding a 500Mhz G4 upgrade was one of the best lines Apple ever made.

Please. This is just my-record-player-is-better-than-your-CD-player BS. I had a Lombard, and it was a piece of shit. In your hands it looked, felt, and sounded like a plastic toy. The CD drive door broke. The rubber feet fell off within a month. The case scratched -incredibly- easily and the letters on the keyboard wore off within 2 years. One screen clutch broke, the hard drive died inside of 3 years, the battery within 3 went to half-capacity, and Apple stopped selling new Lombard batteries shortly thereafter. The screen was horrible- in any kind of sunlight, for example, all you saw was green plastic w/ a hint of something in the way of a screen. Half the keyboard doesn't work anymore, the screen has a white line down one side- and to top it all off, the video cable to the screen is toasted; the display went from occasionally flipping out to requiring 2 minutes of adjusting the screen angle, to just not working period.

I now have a revision-1 17" powerbook. It's awesome. Fit+finish is excellent, and everything in the design screams attention-to-detail. The case appears to be very durable(I do have a few small scratches on the bottom however). The screen is terrific in strong light, even direct sunlight hitting it. Gigabit ethernet is fast as hell, airport reception is fantastic, better than my Orinocco Gold card, which was widely considered the standard. In almost every way, my 17" PB kicks the living shit out of your Wallstreet, including battery life...the one exception being weight(so get a 12 or 15"). So do yourself an enormous favor and start using a computer built this decade.

My problem is that Apple broke Bluetooth in a MAJOR way with 10.2.8, and with Panther right around the corner, it looks like it'll never get fixed. That's practically illegal- "we broke it, so just buy the update." Um, no- and as a result, I think I'll be downloading Panther, not buying it.

Re:XCode alone looks worth the upgrade

[watzinaneihm]

They finally seem to have a solution to the "too many windows open" (not apple specific, I have not even used one) problem. I hate to have to hold down Alt-Tab (i like to use the keyboard) and then look around to find which window I want to switch to. Because of this, I tend to have a max of two or three windows open at a time. No OS really helps here, though in Linux I use multiple desktops to group tasks of similar kind (Desktop one for work, two playing music, three for a root login in case I want to mount NFS etc. ) and I can easily switch when the windows hierrarchy looks like a tree.
Take a look at the Apple solution called Expose . They use F9 to cascade all windows (like opera), another key to grey out all windows of other apps than the one you are using. Press F10 and all photoshop apps are highlighted while all other apps fade into grey. In linux Gimp could benefit from such a feature.

Illegal?

[mccalli]

My problem is that Apple broke Bluetooth in a MAJOR way with 10.2.8,

err....really? Works fine here on a 12" Powerbook/Nokia 3650 combination. In fact, with the iCal/iSync updates out today my machine just become a lot more useful as it now sync calendars with any Series 60 device (which includes the 3650).

That's practically illegal- "we broke it, so just buy the update."

Or go back to pre-10.2.8 for free. Assuming it's broken of course, as stated above I haven't seen any evidence for that. Happy to be proved wrong if you can point me anywhere.

...as a result, I think I'll be downloading Panther, not buying it.

Now, if you're looking for something that really is illegal...

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Powerbook users screwed

[valkraider]

I have the same problem! Mine arrived the 3rd, ordered it the day they announced them. What bothers me is that all the G5s get the upgrade FREE, but the NEW Powerbooks are NEWER than the G5s!!! And the laptops are not even considered...grrr.

No bother anyway though, cause my laptop will fit under the family pack that I have to buy for my older machines anyway, it's just the point of it all. They should say - anyone with a computer that SHIPPED with 10.2.7 should get a free (or $20) 10.3 upgrade.

Re:How do you prove you qualify?

[babbage]

I'm curious about that too. My brother is a teacher, and I'm curious what he would have to do to take advantage of the discount. Possibly, nothing.

It used to be that companies would offer steep discounts on software for educational customers, but you would have to verify your credentials in order to get that discount (e.g. buy from a campus bookstore, and have to present your student ID at purchase time, etc).

Now though, at least some companies seem to be a bit more lax about this. For example, I regularly see the student edition of Microsoft Office XP advertised in the local newspaper & area stores for around $100 to $150, while the full version -- which I almost never see advertised -- can be more than double that. The student version only has part of the suite, but it's the part that most Office users would want anyway -- Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook. My fiancee bought a copy of this edition when she got her computer a year ago, and the clerk at the register didn't do anything at all to verify if she's actually a student. I assume that most of the people buying this edition of Office aren't actually students, but the fact that it apparently sells much better than the full edition has encouraged Microsoft to avoid slaying this particular golden goose.

Maybe the same is going on with Apple. As far as I can tell, they don't do much or anything to enforce the restrictions on the educational discount program. Maybe they see it as a small leak that allows for a bit higher sales than they would have gotten had such a program not been available; that is to say, if they started enforcing the "are you really a student or educator" rule more closely, they might lose too many sales to be worthwhile.

*shrug* In any case, I'm going to have to talk to my brother, and find out if he's interested in buying an operating system that won't run on any computer in his house... :-)