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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."
Will it fix the massive bugs introduced into Bluetooth that have yet to be fixed?
How about the problems with remote filesystems? Put your powerbook to sleep with any volume mounted, even read-only with no files open, and you'll basically have to restart(not even a umount -f will unmount the volume) because almost every app will show a spinning pizza of death.
How about the bug that exists in most G4 powerbooks, where changing the volume level too quickly under "heavy load" causes the balance to shift?
Every OS X release has been rather half-baked, although Apple is certainly doing better now than with 10.0 and 10.1...but it's still irritating that several bugs which affect me on a day to day basis will require dishing out another $100+, when I just bought a $3,000 laptop 2-3 months ago(my fourth powerbook, eighth mac, btw.)
Please help metamoderate.
My understanding is that HFS+ is case-preserving. For people switching from Linux/BSD and used to a case=sensitive fs, are there options to get case-sensitive (you can install ufs but you'll lose journalling)
Apple has an Up-To-Date offer to buy v10.3 for $19.95, for those who've bought a Mac on or after October 8.
However, I bought my new 15" Powerbook a few days after it was announced last month (around Sep 18 or so) and plugged my serial # in for kicks. Lo and behold, I qualified!
I've heard rumors it's unofficially extended back just for certain systems....
There are FAR more apps on the PC that crash under XP, just don't work, or are just poorly written. On average, a 3rd party app for the Mac is written with higher programming/compiling standard. And take note, 3rd party apps ARE NOT Apple Apps.
Besides, one of the programs, I believe this guy was talking about was a Haxie that Panther addresses.
Also, I only use respected 3rd party applications. Adobe, Microsoft, and my favorite shareware (Graphic Converter from Lemkesoft) all come out with INSTANT updates if an update needs to be released.
The article extrapolates statistics too much and is a weak review at best. While I don't expect everything to work and everything to be favorable, at least Apple quickly addresses software/OS issues with updates.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
There are always developers who cheat the APIs a little, and mostly the small shops and shareware folks. Many of them don't think it's a big deal because they update soon enough, and some of them cheat them because they can't afford a real QA/testing team. But most of those apps/developers get the bugs sorted out within a few months -- as the article author pointed out.
If you tolerate risk, by all means get the dot zero version any major software release from any vendor.
If you are risk averse, the smart thing is to always wait a little, perhaps until the first update. In the mac world, you could choose to get 10.3.1, whenever that is, if you desired.
Not everyone has the same tolerance for risk, incompatibility, or new territory.
"...added a superior cooling system to the machine, quietened it, IMPROVED it in every way..."
can anyone confirm/deny that Apple has expanded ftp support in the finder ? (preferable expanded to sftp also)
Right now, the jaguar finder has built in read only ftp, which plain sux
I know : there are many excellent ftp clients available, but being able to mount a volume over ftp as with the iDisk would be extremely user-friendly.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
I can still run HyprCard 1.4 (released in '87, I believe) on a brand-new G4. That says something. That's an app compiled for a DIFFERENT ARCHITECTURE goddammit!
My dad runs ClarisWorks 3.1 on his G4, and that app is at LEAST a decade old.
If developers write apps that aren't up to spec or link against stuff that Apple doesn't promise will be there next year I hardly see how it's Apple's fault.
When the 68040 came out it crashed TONS of apps because developers were using self-modifying code that got mangled in the (then new to Mac) L1 cache. Apple had been telling folks for YEARS not to write code like that because it would bite them later, but some didn't listen.
I think the responsibility lies MOSTLY with the application developers who want you to buy a new copy of their product whenever Apple releases a major update.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Let's just the feature ripped off by Microsoft and shoved into Longhorn in 2005/6. :-)
Actually, it has been claimed that the reason Microsoft is keeping a tight lid on the Longhorn GUI is that they already had a feature just like Expose and Apple somehow stole it. Riiiiiiiiight. Anyone care to provide proof of that? I find it highly dubious that while Expose has been being demoed for months now at every Apple event pimping the forthcoming 10.3, it was only very recently that Microsoft said that it was a feature filched from them and they have in fact been demoing something like that for years. I dunno, I've seen quite a few Microsoft demos, and read about still others. I saw video of the USB BSOD at the Win98 demo. I heard about their pointless "flapping Windows" feature in their knockoff of Quartz Extreme. But I've never heard a peep about their version of Expose, and considering the reaction it got when Apple demoed it and how useful people working with Panther betas seem to find it, you'd think someone would have heard something of Microsoft's.
~Philly
quote from Eugenia: /* why not be able to enjoy Red Hot Chilli Peppers or Linkin Park videos as the average Windows user can at 300 kbps? :P */
Because the word "enjoy" does not immediately come to mind when the words "Linkin Park" are uttered, you can safely say you "enjoy" them just as easily as the typical Windows user by not watching them at all.
Jesus.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
You can do a clean install of just the operating system and still keep all of your data. It's called an "archive install".
As for the Applications you'll either have to reinstall what doesn't come with Mac OS or you can probably just move them to your local Applications folder (~/Applications/) before the install and then move them back to
Sapere aude!
The broken apps are those that are Carbonized and Cocoa apps are unaffected. Apple is appeasing the programmers by offering the gradual migration path from OS 9 API's that they demanded when OSX was first announced as a development project. These same developers dont seem to be making much of a fuss about the bumps encountered along the path of migration. The end users complain without understanding the process.
Apple learned its lesson well from MS... make the developers happy, and they will write software for your platform. With software comes customers.
Don't bother feeling bad for a Mac user... man, thats so wrong I don't even know where to start!That was pretty much the incentive for a Unix based Mac in the first place.
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
Isn't it hard to accuse Apple of bloating the OS when every release gets *faster* and *more* efficient?
Or the features are *more* effective?
Like better Samba, and thus Windows, networking? Or better printing? Remote volume protocols? Etc?
GPL Deconstructed
I bought a new PowerBook when they came out, and had around 3 weeks of testing with both Jaguar & Panther, which i got last monday (dev version). I thought some feedback from a Windows to Linux to MacOS X switcher could interrest some of you folks. I haven't 'officially' switched to MacOS X yet for several reasons. Most of which are minor details concerning habits and my way of working, I'm mostly a Perl dev. The only good reason why i am not switching and won't probably switch in the future is an obvious lack of any kind of basic customization.
;-), others are very very minor and not very annoying.
Most Mac users have a very strong argumentation in favor of their way of working and the gains they get from it, however should that be a reason to force this way of working on all users? This where i do not agree. This ain't a freakin Jihad! Although some of you obviously think it is, my expectations for anything claiming excellency are reliability, performance and flexibility. Flexibility isn't met if i can't change the behavior of my interface to my likings, no matter the advantages and disadvantages of my choices. Your way might be better, just like catholism might be better than islam, there are simply no good reasons to enforce it!
Some of the details: Keep in mind that i only have a few weeks of training ( ordinary everyday usage ) with Jaguar and even less with Panther. If you see something on my list that can be fixed ( easily or not ), please give me some feedback, i might switch the less annoyances i see. I'm not listing all, some will just generate flames
1. I would like to be able to configure the behavior of the 'X', '-' & '+' buttons of a window.
I can understand why some folks say the 'X' behavior is far more logical than the traditionnal behavior. Suppose you start a deamon. The program window pops up, you configure it and close the interface ( window ), not the program. That makes a lot of sense, however, how often do you think a dev like myself configures deamons? Almost never, therefor that behavior becomes useless and very annoying to me. Yeah, yeah now i have to change my habits to 'cmd'-Q, which is annoying and doesn't provide much more efficiency. For me it just becomes another '-'.
I define 'Maximizing' as taking the maximum amount of space a window can. The '+' is not a maximize button for it only maximizes to what the application think is the maximum. I find this simply illogical. Usually, you first resize a maximized window to what you'd want it to be, so the app remembers it and you finally have something that looks like a maximize. In my mind, this is doing too much for something that should require only one setting in system preferences. I don't like setting maximums on all my windows all the time, it's simply annoying as hell.
2. I would like to be able to resize any window from any border.
I don't like dragging before resizing or resizing and then dragging, it's painful and a waste. Yes i do want my windows placed carefully and strategically on my desktop, so i can read from several of them at the same time without touching any controls. With the resize border only in the lower right corner, this becomes extremelly annoying.
3. Moving things around.
Lots of ppl like the dock-style interface MacOS has. I do not hate it, it's just incredibly unconfigurable. You can only move it left, right & bottom and can't even "uncenter" the biatch! True some folks like zooming, genie and whatever fx you can code for it. But you know what ? The most important thing is missing, and that's flexibility. What if i don't want the trash in there, because my dock is tiny ? What if i want the clock on the dock ? What if i want the dock to take the maximum amount of horizontal space ? Etc... I'm not mentionning that weird app bar at the top, with which you can do just about nothing.
Some thoughts about why i would like the clock to be on the dock in the lower right corner. The lower right corner is sim