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Panther Released into the Wild
u2fan00 writes "Those fortunate enough to have an Apple Store near them were in for a treat last night -- crowds! Oh, and also Panther. Check out the local reactions, photos and stories from some stores across the nation."
Geeze. I saw the crowd last year at Lenox Mall in Atlanta for the Jaguar release, so I cleverly waited one entire day.
:-)
The Lenox Mall Apple store is a bit of a drive, so I went to the Micro Center not far from where I live. They're sort of a baby Fry's, but more expensive and nowhere near as good. This is, unfortunately, the South, and you take what you can get here. It beats Bosnia.
I walked into the Apple department, grabbed a copy of Panther, and asked if I needed to ring it up there or if I could keep shopping. The salesman put a sticker on it and told me to buy it up front, and then tossed a couple of freebies on the pile... a mousepad and a 64MB USB flash drive.
So I got a much shorter drive, no parking hassles, and a free USB drive in exchange for waiting a day. Calling this a no-brainer seems an understatement.
No impressions yet, I'm backing up before installing. Ok, one impression: the box is cool. Big silver X on a black background. Box upgrades are very important, you know.
... don't give educational discounts. You have to order online for that. So if you're a student, don't go trucking out to the store... you can't get it for $70 there.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
That looked like what happens to distro FTPs when a new release is out. Now they just need a physical equivalent to BitTorrent.
I believe it should be called either FleshTorrent or Orgy.
Real men download their OSs.
I'm quite sure spike lee owns intellectual property in the letter "X". Especially in that font and on a black background, jeez....
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
humorless killjoy pull the wings off any butterflies today?
ELITISM: It's always lonely at the top. Uninvited company is rarely welcome.
if you do an upgrade, you will be in a world of pain.
all the problems I have read about have been from simple upgrades, everyone who has not had problems has done an archive install or an erase install.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The seed 7B85 is slightly different than the retail version. OS9 installer drivers are not on 7B85.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
Some people with in-house AirPort networks have run into difficulties after installing panther. If this is happening to you, Apple has already given a workaround here.
Also, Control-d now selects the dock and allows for keyboard navigation rather than getting sent to the app you want it to be sent to (such as terminal). I haven't figured out how to turn this off, but you can work around it by using the option key in addition to the control key (so Control-Option-d instead of just Control-d).
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Wow Apple fans sure are a rabid lot :-)
You'd have thought from the queues that the shops were giving away free drugs!
How do people get so addicted to a piece of computer software ?
John Carmack writes very, very portable code. You should have no trouble moving to panther for your dev work. However:
Are there any good tutorial sites for gamers like myself who want to switch ?
Note that you WILL NOT be using your mac to play games. The games support just isn't there. You can play a small, random, usually not terribly good selection of the games that were released for the PC six months to a year ago. As a developer, your mac will make you extremely happy. As a gamer it will not.
Panther is cool; I like "Expose" pretty well.
For those unix types I have two issues so far:
1) the cocoa version of emacs I was using is broken by panther
2) the version of x11 I downloaded from apple is not automatically updated. You must update it manually from disc 3. Note that the old one is broken by panther.
I also needed to reinstall Microsoft Office X, but it is working fine now.
I've been trying to get a reliable e-mail program working for months now. MONTHS.
...those Macs sure do look nice...
1) Mozilla randomly forgets where its configuration files are, and of course has NO OPTION TO SET WHERE THEY ARE which means that I have to rebuild my e-mail settings over and over again.
2) Evolution takes over a minute to start.
3) Red Hat corrupts its own RPM database when other e-mail clients are installed, then just hangs.
4) mutt will take four months to configure correctly.
5) Yeah, Outlook Express. Sure thing.
Then I look at Mac OS X mail and I have to ask: why is there, after FIFTEEN YEARS, no reliable, working, nice, up-to-date e-mail client outside of Mac OS X?
After watching Mozilla faceplant and Red Hat shit itself (by the way, my first Linux install was Slackware on a 486 WITH NO DOCUMENTATION)
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
I haven't anything like that since people lined up to RETURN Windows ME!
USE THAT FEEDBACK FORM. Submit ALL the bugs you ran across, all the bugs you just told us. If your bug is a dupe of someone elses, that is ok. These bugs may be obvious to you, but they may not be quite so much so to the coders at Apple. They can't fix what they don't have catalogued.
All this over a stupid cat? Maybe I'd wait in a line that long if it was a penguin!
Oh, when will that day arrive....
Well, I saw your article and I immediately ran down to my local Mac place (McDonald's that is... I really wish you guys would not use the short name.). Anyway, I asked them if I could please have the new Panther Burger. They called security and threw me out! Can you believe that?
P.S. Don't bother asking them for any apples either.
... To a Microsoft release. That's a real hardcore user base ;)
Included in the box (what a cool black box it is, too!) is a development environment CD (compilers, APIs, SDKs, and the xcode IDE).
I'm happy to see Apple still giving the development tools away for free.
I'm thinking about buying a 15" PowerBook shortly (probably from MacConnection, since they have good deals). I was going to wait until I could get one with Panther preinstalled, but I'd like to have the PowerBook by Thanksgiving and so it looks like I'll have to order one soon (which will probably still come with Jaguar).
I've been reading various forums and I keep hearing that a clean install for Panther is the way to go. And, since the PowerBook will be brand new, I won't have to back anything up beforehand ;). However, do PowerBooks come with any software that isn't part of the OS by default? For instance, do they come with AppleWorks or other software that I'd lose if I chose to upgrade with a clean install?
Also, I'm still looking for a snug case/sleeve for the PowerBook, if anyone has any suggestions. I'm looking for one that's thin and just big enough to include a mouse and a power supply. I'd also prefer zippers or buttons over velcro (since they tend to be quieter than velcro).
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
The Max OS X Panther 10.3 box includes 4 CDs... three for 10.3 and it's accessories (keep in mind these three CDs include localizations for 12 languages)... and a development environment CD containing compilers, various SDKs, and the feature-filled xCode IDE.
It's a bit alien to those not used to the NeXT way, but it only took my roommate about 15 minutes to find his way around. Both of us have already converted most of our projects to xCode.
Guess you never ran Linux on a Mac.
:)
I've got Yellow Dog Linux 3 running on the original Rev. A Bondi iMac and it is as beautiful a sight as I've been treated to by computers. Very fast, very responsive under Gnome.
OS X on the same machine by contrast is an exercise in futility. The spinning ball never stops spinning. It crashes. It's slow. It's almost completely useless.
I guess that makes me an ass-clown too.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Ehh... Carmack isn't developing Doom3 on MacOS. He has been pretty vocal about his love for Visual Studio 6. However, Doom3 does not make much use of DirectX (all of the gfx use OpenGL, for example) so he has made a few builds on Mac OS X and Linux over the past couple years.
In fact, the first demo of Doom3 (and the first demo of the GeForce 3 too) was on Mac OS X as part of one of Steve Jobs's keynote speeches.
Doom3 will be available for Mac OS X... but it's not being developed on it.
Gotta say I was drooling when they announced the G4 iBooks, lamenting my Applecare isn't up til May, but this has breathed new life into my iBook 500. I backed up to Peerless (hush - they were $50 EOL) and did an upgrade install - no problems so far. Given the backup, I may backup again now and do an erase install...
Everything is much faster. Mail.app has to reindex, Preview will now be my pdf viewer, and the calculator actually remembers which mode you quit it in. Sorry I paid for Koalacalc. The network panel is informative and rather than a clicking party.
Only drawback is without Quartz Extreme my Expose is doing about 3 fps, but it still does what's needed.
Only grip is that the new finder windows w/o toolbars have a very subtle facing - then you enable the new finder windows in full regalia, and they get the old brushed metal, which looks rough in comparison.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Atari also had another system which was never released called you guessed it, Panther. Panther was set to come out about the same time as the SNES... had it come out it would have been by far the most superior console for a year or two.
--- I do not moderate.
Dog tags would have been cool, all I got at the SOHO Apple Store (downtown NYC) was some "designer" wrapping paper for Christmas. But then again there was easily over 1000 people trying to get in. I was stupid and tried to get there right at 8:00, but I was met with a line that went around the block.
;)
There were tons of people there, that's for sure. I at least got entered to win a new Mac, but other than that the wrapping paper kinda sucks. I was hoping for free T-shirts as well. I didn't even get a copy of Panther either. That will have to wait until I get a job. Anyone out there looking for a Mac programer in the New York City area?
I did get to play with Panther though, and it is very cool.
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
I've upgraded every time since 10.1, hitting all the revisions in between. I did an upgrade install with Jag and did one again on Panther. Not a problem; everything's working fine.
The people who seem to have problems with upgrades are the ones who install all that unsanity haxie garbage. At least, that seems to be a common denominator among most troubled upgrades.
I am not Herbert.
I received my copy of "Panther" via FedEx at 11AM... so I spent the afternoon backing up and installing Panther on my two laptops (a 15" AlBook and older iBook SE). The install was three disks long (when will they start offering a DVD?) and rather uneventful.
I really dig the new "Expose'" feature, fast user switching and the capability to easily/seamlessly encrypt my home directory. I plan on testing the windows printer share capabilities in a few minutes...
However, my "Night of Panther" was spent watching the BBC's rendition of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... had to test out the updated Apple DVD player, you know? It worked great!
I'm 26, but a significant majority of the folks at the release party I went to were 50+. I guess Apple's youth-oriented marketing hasn't been working in my area. It makes sense though; most of the young kids want to game and hot-rod their boxes--something Apple's not known for.
... Sales of Apple's new OS dubbed "Panther" slowed to a crawl Saturday as 90 percent of Mac owners purchased the software the night before...
I planned on inserting something witty here but never got around to it.
I went to MacDaddy Computers, an Apple Specialist in Modesto, about a 20 minute drive from my house. It's a really small store on one of the main drags through town, and there was literally nobody there at 9:00PM outside of the store employees. I was lucky enough to snag the last copy they had; they had put a "sold out" sign in the window right before I got there. I also got some dog tags with the cool metal X logo and the requisite 10.3 t-shirt.
:-D
As far as the OS goes, it's by far the best one yet. With each new release of OS X, there have been reviewers going on about the massive speed increases over the previous versions... but this is the only upgrade where I have actually felt the massive speed increase. This, along with numerous other interface improvements, make it worth every penny (I paid full price).
For example, I thought I would hate the new Finder, but it's really great, and I find it more usable than the 10.2 Finder. If you don't like the sidebar and/or the brushed metal, you can make them both go away with a click of the toolbar widget. Once they're gone, the Finder behaves pretty much exactly like the OS 9 Finder, a throwback I (and the spatial-finder dude at Ars Technica) really appreciate. Expose's coolness factor is matched only by its utility. The guy who runs MacDaddy said I'd be loving it on a 12" iBook screen, and I really am. The application switcher that pops up in lieu of the Dock is pretty much lifted from Windows and KDE, but is so much cooler because it displays icons in their full 128x128 glory.
Now the only thing I have to wait for is an update to XPostFacto so I can put it on my Beige G4. I don't think I'm ever going to bother with installing 10.2 or below on anything again.
It singlehandedly erased all my negative engrams upon first usage.
I commonly have ten applications and 25 windows open. Expose rocked my freakin' world. When I tied it to the right side button on my Intellimouse, my brain trancended to a spiritual level shared only by archangels and certain select saints. Once I came down from that, I had a full and satisfying orgasm with every subsequent use.
I AM NOT EXAGGERATING!
Well, OK, maybe a little.
Oh, and the new customizable finder bar in conjunction with the dock makes life good.
And for the first time I find labels cool. I never even used those back in the ghastly pre-OSX days.
--- Ban humanity.
Well, I feel like an idiot. My friend paid for the upgrade version. I bought the full version. In the past, the upgrade versions required a prior version of MacOS already on the hard drive. I really hate having to install my original 10.0 discs, then go through my 10.1 and 10.2 upgrade CDs on a new clean hard drive install. And I wanted to be able to install Panther from scratch.
I was quite surprised to compare my box to his. Same bar code, same product number, same CDs.
Guess I could have saved $60.
"Population 1,656"
What was the last version of OS X you ran on your iMac? The first couple point releases were dogs on older machines, but Jaguar made great strides in that area, and from what I hear, Panther goes even further. However, I think the grandparent was talking about the UI, not the performance. You have to admit, the Jaguar UI is far better than Gnome, KDE, or any other Linux UI.
Note that you WILL NOT be using your mac to play games. The games support just isn't there. You can play a small, random, usually not terribly good selection of the games that were released for the PC six months to a year ago. As a developer, your mac will make you extremely happy. As a gamer it will not.
the selection of games available on the mac isn't random, actually. other than the small smattering of games that are released simultaneously on Mac and PC, the others are games that make it over because they were profitable.
it doesn't matter how cool a game is, how many copies it's sold on the PC... if it's not profitable, it will not be ported. period.
woof!
Apple moves their release numbers long like this:
- 7AXX
- 7BXX
We are now on 7CXX (10.3.1). Jaguar was released at 7C115. So no, there is no name attached to the number. Maybe its a feline food?
I upgraded and just everything works fine.
There is a problem with Toast 6 and how bootable disk burning is handled in Panther, but as long as you don't want to make a bootable disk in Toast, it works fine from my experience. Just burn the bootables with Disk Utility. I'm sure Roxio has an update for Panther in the works.
It should be noted that I don't run any system hack widgets off someshadysite.com. I'm thinking the problem children with upgrade issues are running hack widgets that need updating for Panther.
Solution: Remove widgets before upgrading. That should be obvious anyways.
would life crumple if one were to avoid the crowds and pick it up the next time you happen to be near the electronic store?
Life would crumple, because it wouldn't be as much fun.
These people aren't lining up and throwing parties because expose and fast user switching are going to change their lives. They're throwing parties because they want to throw parties, and the release is a good excuse to get all the mac users out there for some fun.
The guys who wait in line for an hour are not spending an hour of their lives to get OS X a day earlier, they're spending that hour hanging out with friends, making new friends (they all have something in common-being fans of the os-so it's a good way to meet people), and enjoying themselves.
The "cult of consumerism" is a real problem only insofar as consumers allow themselves to be exploited. Some may argue that Apple's policy of charging full price for annual upgrades is exploitative, but there are many who feel the pricing isn't unfair. Do the math, and it actually beats the cost per year of Microsoft's professional (ie, no product activiation) versions of windows. Apple is not a designer clothes brand selling the same materials from the same foreign country with a more famous label and a tripled price. Neither is Apple a monopoly gouging consumers without alternatives. The consumers in this picture are lining up like partiers outside a club. Look elsewhere if you want to find cattle.
For a hint as to where to look, try Keenan's recent paper, "Modern Dynamics in Consumerism: The Brand as a Proxy for Tribal Identity." It's an intriguing look at the effect of corporate branding on individuals' social lives. Certain social circles share a disturbing number of characteristics with cults, and the cult paradigm is a useful tool in analyzing how the most materialistic among us operate.
But getting back to the party at the Apple store, it worked really well for me, Panther wasnt the only cat I picked up. While we were hanging out waiting for the release, I ran into a girl who was touching up the digital version of her latest painting on her powerbook, and we ended up, um playing with our new kitties together after the party. You have no idea how hard it is to meet other lesbians who aren't raving, battle-axe-wielding, death-to-all-men feminists these days.
So, while the "cult of consumerism" is a real force in modern American society, the Panther release is a very poor example to use. It's just a case of people using a convenient excuse to have a little fun.
p.s. pickup games of medal of honor over airport with the rest of the line rock!
It's kind of sad that this is the only place where you get that same kind of ...release buzz...that you used to get back in the late 80's or early 90's almost regularly.
The industry just plain sucks nowadays. The shrinkwrap software market is dead. I walk into computer stores and find no one at shelves. No one is really buying anything. Computer shows are pretty much dead, even the swap meet kind. Building your own system is only for old geezers like me. The old local geek meetings like computer clubs pretty much barely exist. The onset of the net killed BBS's dead, eliminating that 'local' link.
This was ultimately the result of Microsoft's dominance. I curse everything I ever did to facilitate it. Sadly, with every day I got up during the 90's to go to work, I helped in many ways, along with thousands of others.
Stupid.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you PC fanatics? I have recently upgraded from a Dell Dimension desktop running at 500 MHz to a new P4 3.3 GHz running WinXP and Red Hat to help me at my freelance gig where I copy a 17 MB stick of butter
from one folder on the hard drive to another folder, over and over, all day long, day in and day out, for no reason whatsoever. On the P4 I spent about 6 millennia trying to install Leisure Suit Larry 3. 6 millennia. At home, on my Vic-20 running on a gigantic steam-based generator, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this P4, the same operation would take about 2 nanoseconds. If that.
In addition, during this butter transfer, my PocketPC will not work. KaZaa has ground to a halt. Even Explorer is straining to keep up as I type this. Beyond that, I've been left impotent, crying on the floor as passersby on the street below point, laugh, and deride my choice of computing platform.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various PCs, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a PC that has run faster than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, despite the P4's higher protein content. My TI-80 with 8kb of RAM running a poorly coded, bug-ridden, home-brewed OS that has a broken leg and no input method runs faster than this P4 machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that WinTel is a superior platform.
PC weenies, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a PC over scribbling with invisible ink on homemade parchment.
Hey grandpa, they let you have laptops at the nursing home?
Hehe! But seriously, you must not have any experience with crazy numeric meteorology folks. In a lot of similar textbooks you'll find FORTRAN listings for many of their most efficent algorithms. Many of which would be a complete bear to reproduce in C.
After using 10.0 for a few months, my mind started melting away and Apple released 10.1. Yay.
After using 10.1 for almost a year, my sanity for a sane user experience started wearing thin. Finally Apple released 10.2, which was also much snappier. And it was something to rival OS 9 in a give-or-take competition for usability vs. stability, with Jaguar clearly winning.
But Panther just blows the doors off of.., um, not sure which doors I'm talking about. Let's put it this way in terms of performance. I used xbench to measure before and after the upgrade.
10.2.8 scores
CPU: 65.14
Thread Test: 35.3
Memory: 63.7
Quartz: 66
OpenGL: 60.5
UI (aqua controls): 57.87 (18.51 refresh/sec)
10.3.0 scores
CPU: 78.87
Thread Test: 60.95
Memory: 103.96
Quartz: 102.62
OpenGL: 78.6
UI (aqua controls): 141.58 (45.54 refresh/sec)
Totals:
10.2: 57.75
10.3: 85.19
Yes, HOLY CRAP this Mac is faster! My Q3A framerate jumped 15 fps (using the Q3 G4 beta). And the UI experience is much much smoother now, really the way OS X should be. Most notably, sheets and other window animation is VERY fast, and they now properly supplement the user experience, instead of just being eye candy. The Dock still sucks, but you can finally hide apps from the Dock contextual menu.
So, if you're sitting on the fence, jump off. If you thought Macs were slow, they just got a bit faster.
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
when was the last time an MS OS gave you a free IDE?
Not to mention the best one. Of course I'm biased, but IMO Xcode is 10 times better than VS. Things like fix and continue, pure genius.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I wouldn't be too sad. I got the dog tags and thought "Hell, I'll wear them for good luck while installing Panther!". Oops, airport on Powerbook stopped working.
Then I tried to install on someone else's computer (I bought the family pack, and am stretching the license slightly by spreading it out across a few family members). I accidentally slipped on the dog tags again (What compelled me? I know not. I had stored them in the Panther case and just slipped them on absent-mindedly while pulling out the install CD's). Helllo, a computer trying to go from 9.0 to OS X - no more classic and no more booting back to OS 9 for YOU son!
Sure, I managed to resolve each of these issues after a few hours investigation. But I might point out only AFTER I removed the dog tags from around my neck.
At least the wrapping paper looks cool, and didn't cause you hours of annoyance.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You have to bootstrap the 0.6 release yourself.
I compiled it today, and it works perfectly. Just finished installing MySQL from fink, no problems whatsoever.
Having installed Panther today, I'd say it's a nice improvement.
Upon installation, one interesting thing happened: the machine happened to kick into sleep mode, because I was away while it asked for disc 2. That's the first time I've ever seen an OS installer ever do that. Sure, they just boot to OS X from CD and then do an installation, but still pretty cool. Also, my machine didn't reboot after install, it was ready to use immediately, and no required reboot after doing Software Updates for iTunes and iSync. Expose is probably my favorite new feature, overall, though. The speed improvement is quite noticable on my upgraded G4 1.2Ghz (used to be a G4 400Mhz).
Not true.
You have to turn it on using the info window for your project if you want it to happen automatically. It's a performance thing.
Otherwise, to invoke completion -- in any Cocoa text view, not just the Xcode editor -- you just hit option-escape.
Umm.... I would hardly describe the current Mac game situartion as "a small, random, usually not terribly good selection"!
Let's see.... Unreal Tournament 2003, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 and 4, Wolfenstein 3D, Quake 3 Arena, Kelly Slater Pro Surfer, Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf from EA Sports, Warcraft 3 + Frozen Throne expansion set, Warrior Kings, Stronghold, Dungeon Seige, Age of Mythology, Age of Empires 2, Halo (due out before Xmas), James Bond: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way, Medal of Honor + expansion pack, Jedi Knight II, Soldier of Fortune II..... not to mention some really teriffic stuff put out by the little guys/shareware authors, like Enigmo.
I'd say things in the Mac gaming world are looking better now than they have in years - and it damn sure looks better than my Linux gaming selection. No, they still don't have anywhere near the number of titles available for the PC, but so many PC titles are a waste of money. It seems to me they only take the time to port the "cream of the crop" of what's already out for PC, and that's fine with me. Unless you pirate everything, you're not really going to be able to buy all the new game titles they crank out for the PC, anyway.
(Well, I could live without that port of Bloodrayne for the Mac, but hey - I've seen worse....)
Not to rain on your parade but VS had that for a while now. I use both XCode/ProjectBuilder and VC6/VC7 on regular basis and I still think VS does a way better job (MFC/.NET versus Cocoa is another story - Apple is better, Win32 is just huge pile of mess). BTW, this is coming from a guy that is privately a Mac user. Give credit where credit is due...
Several tribesmen slaugtered.
I must be the only one in the world who hates the Dock with a passion. "Hey, lets mix running application icons with non-running application icons! How intuitive!"
You must be the only one in the world who has Dock that does not distinguish running an non-running apps. The rest of us use Dock that differentiates them by means of a bold black triangle (running) or a lack of it (non running).
Encountered only two problems.
First, CodeTek Virtual Desktop seems to be incompatable with Panther; it crashes every open app when running.
Second, Duality (a skin changer) fails. However, Panther's UI is somewhat similar to the UI I had the system skinned to, anyhow (Milk).
Read several places on the net that the educational discount for Panther is ONLY available from Apple on the network Apple store. I think such educational discounts have been handled thios way for some time.