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Mac OS X Panther 10.3 Reviewed
JigSaw writes "OSNews posted a (constructively) critical, but also favorable review of Mac OS X Panther 10.3. The article discusses the new features, what works great and what's still sour, and it also includes a plethora of screenshots." The review's conclusion suggests Panther is "...a worthy operating system, easy to use, easy to set up, easy to get pleased by it. It just works."
I can't understand Apple's warranty department. They're virtually no help
I have a G4 powermac, a 1.42GHz machine which worked well and for the most part kept me occupied and did the tasks I needed doing. The noise however, was something that's been driving me, my wife and my pets crazy. The dog wouldn't come in the same room as she's scared of the thing. She also attacks the hairdryer in the bathroom, and I think that's a subtle hint that the thing was too loud and what it sounded like.
Looking deeper into the machine I found a couple of fans that when running at a certain speed reached a phenomenal noise level. With the computer in its cabinet they were bad enough but I felt like I was near a jet taking off if I had the Mac up on my desk. I pulled those fans out and they looked like they could be replaced by standard, quieter fans. I took one from the last PC I'd built (yes I'm multiplatform) and it fit well, so a quick trip into town I bought a pair and installed those.
The G4 was fantastic! The reduction in noise was something I could immediately appreciate, but my happiness didn't last too long. Within half an hour the machine was locking up and crashing. I opened it once more to see I hadn't been a moron and done anything stupid, when I noticed the apple supplied heatsink was BURNING hot. I mean really hot, I couldn't bear to touch it more than momentarily. I never trusted that heatsink, the sheer bulk of it looked like it was made to be produced easily and not cool properly. I ditched that heatsink (after letting the machine cool down for an hour!) and replaced it with a Zalman flower. I'd never seen cooling like it could do, so it was the logical choice. The heatsink for the G4 attached differently, but it was easy enough to adapt the zalman with insulated wire tied underneath the CPU board.
This worked a little better and the powermac booted, and stayed working far longer. For about three days, and from then on it wouldn't boot. No chime, just fans spinning and no video. Even the hard drive barely ticked a couple of times. By now I was furious, my previous macs had given me little trouble but this one was a pain. I phoned the apple center nearest me, and as it was only a few months old I was assured everything should be covered by warranty. It turns out because I had MODIFIED the computer that my warranty was void. wtf? I added a superior cooling system to the machine, quietened it, IMPROVED it in every way, and they deny my claim? I was livid at the store manager, but couldn't get past his denseness. Know what else? Apple keep on record what you've done. I replaced the original loud fan, the original heatsink and tried once more, and again my claim was refused on the basis I'd done the damage myself.
I'm still a Mac user, but a very annoyed one still waiting on repairs to my G4 that I have to pay for myself, and that I consider are Apple's warranty responsibility that they've gotten out of having to pay for by some stupid clause. Read the fine print guys.
purchased more than zero Apple products? Wow, you must be either really stupid, or cannot handle a multi-button mouse. Anyone with 12 Apple products needs to be summarily shot! Steve Jobs blows goats! And what is all the bullfeathers about the over priced G5's? They make nice toasters...
In other words, she's a fat version of Mike Bouma?
Nor will Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, I presume.
Since Apple is going to x86, will it install on my $199 Wal-mart box?
I recived my Dual G5 2Ghz machine today! All specced out! 720Gb Raid! 6Gb of RAM! and of course Panther Beta.
I turned it on, only to be greeted with a sadmac error. It turns out that Apple had accidently sent me the 68k version of OSX, so I had to go into the BIOS and boot in 68k compatibillity mode, go to the Apple site and Download the G5 version of Panther. After taking 8 hours to download it, I formatted the disk, and did it again.
Unfortunatley, The G5 procsssers were built without DMA support, and therefore it took around 15 hours for it to install. I thought this was unacceptable, but then I remembred my old DMA adaptor for my 486-SX (the Sx didn't have DMA support).
So I grabbed it, soldered an ISA slot onto the G5 motherboard, then recompiled the Darwin kernel with the ISA support patches and VOLIA! My mac was fast as hell! Unlike my imac which took 20 minutes to copy a 17 mb file, this only took 15 seconds, if that, unfortunatley, not everybody knows how to solder ISA slots onto their motherboard, so hopefully some company will make a PCI-X version for the G5, then it would really rock!
Of course it's "worth" it. That's how they string you chumps along for $129 a year.
Apple has you bent over and is sticking it up your poop shoot. You've been humped, sonny boy.