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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 $130 price tag and the (somewhat) lack of backward compatibility."
. It finds the new Expose feature and other security features
it also rubs the lotion on its skin....
xao
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
M$'s service packs patch hundreds of holes. Panther offers 150 new *features*. I'd pay for features.
Plant a tree in a developing country.
Since when do we trust newspapers for a review of an operating system? Sort of:"Look at all the new features!!"
Your yearly Mac Tax is due. Why else would we call it FeeBSD.
Not sure if you're trolling or not, but here ya go.
Debian on my desktop, OS X on my laptop, life has achieved perfection.
El riesgo vive siempre!
I dont know about that, but gentoo is working on a version of its portage... http://www.gentoo.org/news/20030620-metapkg.xml
that, and there is always fink for osx... which Im pretty sure uses apt-get anyways...
http://fink.sourceforge.net/
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
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.
much as i hate random GUI improvements being given their own name, the expose concept is damn cool and damn useful. i expect that the KDE folks ought to be able to manage to slip it under the approaching-beta 3.2 release, thanks guys ;-) seriously, this is one feature that apple has really gotten right.
ps: there's really something to be said about incorporating the rendering power of modern graphics cards for eye candy and lightening the load of the CPU.
pps: i find the fast user switching animation a bit gratuitous though.
Hackers and academics have uncovered one Windows security hole after another, turning Microsoft into a frantic little Dutch boy at the dike without enough fingers
I don't know about you, but the image I got in my head was definitely not G-rated.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
It's only 69.99 with the educational discount for those in high school, college, etc. That's how much I paid for it.
Since I heard Apple offers discounts to government employees and my dad works for the state govt, I looked at the "government employee discounted" version of Apple's online store. OS X Panther can be had for $65 bucks by state govt. employees! Hardware discounts are much more modest, however.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
As with any complex system, continuous updates will always leave tiny bits and pieces behind that eventually compromise the stability of the whole thing.
That said, there's a middle ground 'archive and install' option that preserves your users and network preferences while avoiding most if not all of the trouble that might come from updating. It's also faster as it doesn't need to check each and every file for updating and just writes everything while storing the old system folder in another place. Works mightily fine.
If you're a student or teacher it's only $69. And if you recently renewed your .Mac subscription, you could have chosen a $20 gift certificate to the Apple Store.
So, $49 is the perfect price for me.
And if you're still using a Beige box G3, you can't gripe about not being compatible. You should sell it or give it away and buy a new G5 or a G4 on clearance.
Shame on you for missing the obligatory cat-fight reference....
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
That $130 cost won't matter to those people whose systems the new version won't run on.
Seriously though - and I've lost track of the number of times I've said this - if you don't want the new features then you don't have to pay for them. And, if you don't pay for them, you're existing system doesn't become any less productive or user-friendly.
It really amazes me that people act as if their computing experience has somehow been crippled just because they don't have the very latest thing, even though their own machine hasn't regressed in anyway and is just as useful as it was the day before.
Watch how this story will generate countless posts that proclaim that Apple has somehow stabbed its users in the back by releasing a significant upgrade packed with both new and improved features and (shock, horror) daring to charge for it.
Newsflash people: software costs time and money to develop. So either pay up or shut up. Apple is a business, not a charity.
And to those of you who just fail to qualify for a free upgrade (if there is such a thing), please, get over it. Life is full of upsets, big and small. In the end, it's an upgrade you're missing out on, not a heart-bypass operation.
Anyone else think that upgrade envy is becoming way too common, on computing platforms and elsewhere in life?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
It worked beautifully, and most apps simply regenerated their system folder files so only a few required a reinstall.
To reign is to serve.
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!
I've been using Panther in a mixed environment with Jaguar, Cheeta and Puma releases with no fights.
I think there's a job opening for you at the Mirage...
Because the update scripts can't always plan for the havoc that a personal computer user has wreaked on the OS. They can't test to see what every little poorly coded application changed, and how it is affected by the update (and more importantly, how it affects the update).
This doesn't just go for Apple. Given the choice between a fresh install of an OS and a dist upgrade, I'll always take the fresh install (when it's really an option). Why not eliminate the variables? Regardless of the elegance of the OS, PC OS'es are usually made pretty ugly once an end user gets through with it.
-Turkey
Although it is quite popular with hackers, the "works for me" answer simply doesn't solve anybody's problems. The author of the article is referring to third-party applications (mentioning QuickKeys addon specifically), which stopped working. That most likely happened because it was using some undocumented API that got removed.
Actually Fink, Gentoo and Darwinports have combined forces. If anyone has run a beta release of 10.3, they've seen a very early build of the app that these groups have produced. Think finkcommander done with apple elegance.
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
So, does mail.app actually check ALL imap folders now and not just the inbox? If you use procmail to move messages around server side, mail.app never seems to find new messages.
Even just a subcribed list of folders would help the situation.
So it's too good for a 0.1 release, but not good enough for $130. Hmm...
How about a 0.2 release, and $99? Or we could leave the price, and bump the numbering up to 10.5 - that would be worth $130 of anyone's money!
Cheers, Paul
Where do they keep the key?
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.
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 <many many bit> key required to decrypt the data.
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.
However using the key that is held on your Mac to encrypt data that is on your iPad would be cool, as then it really can only be read where they key is available (home & work & wherever else).
Beep beep.
Wrong. I don't remember enabling anything crypto related in my kernel, but I use losetup with encryption to (wouldn't you know it) Encrypt my home directory.
.bashrc runs losetup, which prompts me for my passphrase, then mounts the encrypted home directory over the real one. Works flawlessly, and because the encrypted file is referenced by inode (not path), the kernel doesnt give a shit. When I logout it is simply unmounted and all is well.
In my physical home directory, there is a file containing the encrypted version. My
Microsoft, at least, has the decency to wait a few years between upgrades.
I know lame comments like these are essential to journalism and aren't meant to be taken seriously, but I'll bite --
What is indecent about releasing a major upgrade to your operating system after a year?
Should Apple sit on these changes for 2 more years?
If you don't want to buy the upgrade, don't. If you want to wait 2 more years, you'll likely get 10.5 with many more changes. You pay a premium to be a geek with the latest gadgets.
When the new iPod was released, I didn't expect Apple to give me a new one just because mine was only 6 months old. I sold mine on eBay and paid a substantial upgrade fee.
Cars are "upgraded" every year and most people don't drive the latest release because it's too expensive for them to upgrade. In fact, sometimes they only involve very minor cosmetic changes! And often they raise the price! Unbelievable!
Oh, but this is software and no physical manufacturing analogies apply.
It might be worth doing the Select developer program for a lot of people here on Slashdot. For $500/year you get both prerelease and current versions of OSes and dev tools, PLUS you get one system a year at 10-20% off list.
Not such a bad deal... =)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
I have heard that Panther has X11 support built in. Does this mean (for example) run OpenOffice without having to first start up X11?
That would make running "ported/recompiled" X11 apps much simpler.
Can someone with the developer version comment on how this works?
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
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? --
So let's see. This release is faster, more secure and contains many significant UI and system improvements - encryption, Expose, power on/off scheduling. Also improvements to the apps included as well - TextEdit, Mail etc.
Just because Apple is being modest and only calling it a 0.1 increase doesn't mean it's only a minor upgrade.
This view can only be supported by having a very static view of how software is used. I was using OSX 10.1 when 10.2 was released. I suddenly began running into many commercial and open source products that required 10.2. For example, virtually everything on osxgnu.org now requires 10.2, and this is not because these projects are using 10.2 specific features; they're binary compatibility requirements. Fink is another example, and they already note on their page that 10.3 will require a new install from them. I also encountered this in a substantial number of commercial apps and drivers. Apple itself removed the 10.1 dev tools from their page by the time I went to get them.
For some people, myself included, software is a living, dynamic thing. I don't want 10.3 because of whatever assortment of new features it has; I want it because I'm afraid of being cut off from a bunch of things on which I depend. And if I get it, it's going to force some painful transition choices on me by breaking some 10.2-dependent stuff. In some ways the transitions between these 10.x versions is more jarring than that from 9.x to osx; at least when 9.x was left behind, dual boot and emulation support was provided.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
If you like, you can check the SourceForge page, where the LifeSpan stats show that it's been downloaded 1,204,740 times.
El riesgo vive siempre!
The biggest improvement in Panther is simply the speed. On an oldish G3 or G4 the performance increase in doing everything is incredible. After this Expose has to be next best improvement. This really makes managing windows a whole magnitude easier. I've simply never seen a nicer way of doing this. I've set it to activate on the click of mouse button 4.
My advice: wait. Apple is trying to get new versions of the G5s released in a couple months, including a dual 2.4 GHz model, and eventually a dual 3.0. When that happens, expect retailers to drop the cost of the dual 2.0 model signifigantly.
(I don't often advise waiting to purchase a computer because "something better is just around the corner," since this is IT we're talking about, and that's always the case. But reviews I've read place the power/performance ratio for the top of the line G5 at higher than its little brothers, a distinction usually reserved for one of the cheaper models. So here, it seems worthwhile to bide your time.)
That was actually PortsManager, and it's part of the OpenDarwin project. OpenDarwin are the people creating DarwinPorts.
I've briefly babble about PortsManager before over at MacSlash.
Install DarwinPorts, then use it to install PortsManager. Simple!
Here's a shiny image of PortsManager, in all its Aqua goodness.
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!
So, "Tile Windows Horizontally" is the same as:
Shrink all visible applications to tiles on the desktop, allow the user to choose one, and then expand the applications back to their original sizes with the user chosen one on top?
Also, Expose doesn't resize windows, it scales them. In other words, the windows don't receive resize events because the aren't being resized. Instead, their presentation is being scaled by the vector graphics system in Quartz Extreme.
Have you ever actually used Tile Windows Horizontally? If so, have you ever actually seen or used Expose?
Justin Dubs
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
You're absolutely right about Linux package installation. The idea of building Mplayer from source makes be break out in a sweat and start looking for an afternoon I can clear.
.dll hell. .dll hell does not refer to the proliferation of libraries and dependencies. It refers to the lack of version awareness in Windows allowing an app to install a different version of a library over and existing version, thus breaking who knows what and making it difficult to even track down the problem, let alone cure it.
.dll hell.
For the most part installing a DVD player on Windows means popping in the CD and clicking on install.
However, doing so may mean invoking
Dependency Hell in Linux is, in fact, the cure for
Would you like Peche a la Frog, or Frog a la Peche?
Or I suppose you could have a pomme flavored frog.
The world is complex. There is no really good answer.
KFG
It's funny (strange) that Mr. Pogue makes such a big deal ("Now the big one:...") about the $130 upgrade price. I'm willing to bet that his copy of Panther didn't cost him even $0.01. He probably got a "review copy" or a "not for resale copy" or somesuch.
If you're the kind of guy who wants to get a lot of free stuff - books, gadgets, hardware, etc. - you can hardly do better than to become an author and reviewer. Write one or two books, and suddenly every other author in that field wants your name and a quote on the back of their book. I believe Dave Barry has written on this subject, and he's a lot funnier than I am, so I'll leave it to him.
Anyway, the upshot is that you should pretty much ignore anything that any hardware or software reviewer says about money, because they likely haven't spent any of theirs on hardware or software in quite a while.
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.
"Software should be free," is not a double-standard. It's an ideal.
When you hear people griping about spending tons of money on MS products, it's because they are overpriced, bloated, insecure hacks from a corporate megalith that hates innovation because it means they might miss the Next Big Thing. Like the music industry, they don't want surprise hits; they want engineered hits.
Apple, on the other hand, has a corporate philosophy that respest, even *loves*, the computer. I believe this is Wozniak's biggest legacy: the love of the computer. So when Apple makes a product, it is often well worth the admission price.
You are confusing two orthogonal issues: the ideal of free software, and the judgements of the current state of corporate, commercial software. Just because some of us hold the Free Software ideal does not mean we don't hold valid opinions about the commercial software industry.
I hope this helps clarify the issue.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
If you checked his bibliography, you'll see that David Pogue has also written several books for Windows, such as The Missing Manual series for Windows XP and Windows Me.
Pogue might enjoy Macs, but he's hardly a Microsoft-bashing zealot.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I know Windows pretty well. I work with it professionally and have an MCSE in Win2k (I'm not bragging, I swear). I wouldn't use it at home though. Product activation? Trustworthy computing? Please. And if that doesn't change your mind like a bolt of lightning, well I guess you're just a stupid head.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
The article states that the 10.1 upgrade was $130.
The 10.1 upgrade was free. If you made an image of the CD, then removed one particular file of the image, and reburned the disc, you had a bonafide 10.1 full install.
But the discs were free. You could even get more than one if you asked nicely enough at the Apple store.
Vonal Declosion
Not only does Command-Backtick snd the front window to the back but Command-Shift-Backtick brings the rear window to the front.
-- thinkyhead software and media
This response was e-mailed to David Pogue in reply to his New York Times article":
> "..that far more software is available for Windows (true; "only"
> 6,500 programs are available for Mac OS X).."
I'm afraid I'm going to have to take exception to the above statement. While it's true that there are more native Windows applications, I think that this is a misleading metric.
The Macintosh is by far the most compatible platform. It runs Classic applications, Mac OS X applications, BSD applications, Linux applications, and X11 applications. As surely you know, the Mac will even run Windows applications via Virtual PC.
This being the case, it's a reasonable conclusion that "far more software is available for Windows" is a false statement. I thank you kindly for an otherwise excellent article.
--- Fox