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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.
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.
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 haven't anything like that since people lined up to RETURN Windows ME!
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....
I think it might be tied to how many upgrades people have done.
all I know is that the only people having trouble are those who did the upgrade.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Real men download their OSs.
No, real men upload their new OS for backup purposes.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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!
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!
Maybe your thinking of a windows upgrade?
seSales, Point of Sale software for OS X.
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.
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.
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).
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....)