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Review of Mac OS X 10.3
alphakappa writes "The NY Times has a review of all the new Panther features which states that the 150 odd features added are so good that calling it a 0.1 upgrade is not fair. It finds the new Expose feature and other security features (like being able to encrypt/decrypt the entire home directory on the fly) extremely appealing. Gripes include the $130 price tag and the (somewhat) lack of backward compatibility."
If you don't already know about this, and your eyes are glittering with the prospect of encrypted home directories.. there is a way to do this in linux also. It's called the cryptoloop. This is a kernel loop extension that uses the CryptoAPI encryption options to create an encrypted loop of a mount for your system. Although I don't think there is anything to make it as automagic as they probably have set up in OSX, this is something that's out there for those of us that are ultra paranoid. You can visit the CryptoAPI site here where you can get everything you need, or look into the new 2.6 test kernels that have cryptoloop and the CryptoAPI options as a standard feature.
It's only 69.99 with the educational discount for those in high school, college, etc. That's how much I paid for it.
Keep in mind that a "fresh install" on a Macintosh doesn't mean the same thing as on, say, Windows. A "clean install" means that the installer renames the previous System directory and writes out a new one, so you don't lose any data, settings, etc. The alternatives are:
- Upgrade: write the new OS over the old one. This sometimes has side effects, if you had system extensions installed (e.g. third party drivers) that don't work with the new version of the OS.
- Clean Install, preserve settings: do a Clean Install (as below), but preserves system and user settings, etc. This is the best choice, unless you're really short on disk space.
- Clean Install: renames the old System, and installs a clean new one. You then have a nice clean system, and can selectively copy third party drivers, application settings, etc., that you know you want.
- Format: reformat the drive, then do the install. This is for when you're doing an install on a random external drive, or wiping an old machine.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Since Pogue has been writing tech books for years,
I'd say he's fairly well qualified to write a review of the OS.
And for the most part, he's dead on. Expose has changed
the way I work, that feature alone is worth the upgrade cost for me.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine...
what you've done here is really lame.
/. community a little better than that.
I don't think it is very appropriate to edit the article like you have. While the edits are obvious (at least some of them) who knows what else you subtly changed without reading both versions as closely as possible. While you're not bound in anyway to provide the exact text, I think you should treat the
here's the lines that I noticed
When you use Mac OS X, you feel like sodomy; should be When you use Mac OS X, you feel like it's yours; when you use Windows, you feel as though you're using someone else's toys,
and
You can have incoming faxes automatically printed out, saved into a folder, smeared with diarrhea, sent to yourself by e-mail, or any combination of those.should be You can have incoming faxes automatically printed out, saved into a folder, sent to yourself by e-mail, or any combination of those.
Overall, I'm quite happy with it, but I've found a few bugs. yes, I've reported at least one to apple
1) iChatAV and a AD account - If I try to opena video chat to a person, and I am logged in via my Active directory account (i.e. authenticated to the AD domain), the video connection fails. Audio is fine, jsut video
2) If I open a chat to one particular friend, it causes my cpu to pegged. Fortunately the process is niced (iChat, that is) and so it's not particularly disruptive, but it's a very ahrd problem to diagnose (it's only him, other people with the same setup work fine)
3) using Mail.app to access an exchange server with an exchange mail account (i.e. you select "exchange account" when you set up your mail, different than the imap one), you cannot make rules that filter to subdirectories of Inbox. Very odd.
Otherwise, I'm pretty happy. You can't encrypt home directories of "network accounts" (read: AD accounts), even if you tell it to create a local home directory, but the home directory encryption is pretty slick. Expose, of course, is unique, and I've still not used it extensively. The asking for a password when coming back from sleep is a much needed repair.
As a whole I find that it's quite a lot faster than the previous version, and all the subtle tweaks are a good add. I didn't know about the command-tab switching. I use that a lot in windows.
Probably worth the $130
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
As a word of warning however, the fink project hasn't yet been updated to work in 10.3. Check their sourceforge page for more info here.
I would just like to note for the sake of doing so that if you install Panther over a Mac that can boot into OS 9 (alongside jaguar or something), you can still boot into OS 9 afterwards.
Also, the fast user switching is awesome!
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
... double-click an X11 app in Finder, and X11 automatically starts up, then opens your app. And yes, X11 is installed by default when you install Panther. Check it out here!
I posted this elsewhere, in a deeper comment, but I think it is worthwhile to address this to your original comment to stop the confusion that your comment might have caused.
2048 bit encryption is useless if the key is protected by a short, english passphrase - you may as well just have the short english passphrase as the key. You have to separate key and data to make it worthwhile. [newline] Unless the keys can be held on removable USB pen drives or similar then a simple brute force attack against the passphrase will give you the key required to decrypt the data. [newline] This is the problem with many CD encryption programms - sure the disc is encrypted, but the encryption/decryption algorythm is on the disk as well, and so is the key - just obfusicated a little using a simple function that is keyed with a short passphrase that can easily (at least compared to finding the long key) be found.
You are making a common mistake that many people not involved in crypto/security make regarding passwords and encryption. You believe that the AES key is stored somewhere, unlocked by a passphrase. It is not. The AES key is algorithmically derived from the passphrase.
When you enter your passphrase, that passphrase essentially acts as a source for a strong cryptographic hash function. The result of the cryptographic hash is the encryption key. There is never a time that your passphrase, your key or anything related to either is ever stored on the hard-drive.
Brute force against such hash functions with variable-length passphrases is VERY VERY HARD. In fact, there are very few techniques that provide better key retrieval security.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
If OSX was "100% virus free", why would they have Virex, which has updates once a month?
Mostly to kill Windows viruses that will affect Windows users if you mistakenly forward an infected email to one, or you if you're using a version of Office that can run VB viruses. There are some rare UNIX-based viruses, and probably, every once in a while, a genuine OS X virus, but I'd be surprised if the number of viruses that can do any harm on an OS X system without any MS products installed is more than 20.