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Ars Technica Posts Panther Review
Nexum writes "Today Ars released their latest Mac OS X review, this time for Max OS X 10.3 Panther. It's great to see another tour de force from the Ars guys. They have, as usual, an excellent insight into the new OS release, and they also cover that burning question 'is it worth $129?,' and Panther seems to come out rather well. Certainly worth a read."
It's backward compatible with everything, I think. It also seems to boot slightly faster. But you might find the memory management to be the most noticable aspect.
Basically, lots of little updates that add up.
Most changes are under-the-hood stuff and changes to the user interface, who admittedly may not seem as impressing as new applications and massive feature-additions. Still, these are the things that improves the experience every day and in almost all kind of work on the machine.
And the main thing for me is that now i would be sorry to go back to jaguar, and that almost justifies the nasty price tag (+the company pays!).
One feature that i really miss, though: support for exchange-servers from iCal. Its driving me nuts. And it makes it really hard to justify the use of macs in my department, when everybody else in da houze is using winboxes and outlook - and constantly complaining about me and my close colleagues not using the calendar.
Heh, you want to talk about a steal. I was going to purchase a new computer soon so I signed up to be an Apple Student Developer. It cost $100 per year (they have a free version also) but it comes with all sorts of cool monthly mailings and perks. The best part about it is that you get a one-time, up to 20% discount on a hardware purchase. I bought a brand-new dual 2 gHz G5 and saved $600. The gravy on all of this was they sent out a copy of Panther with the Student Developer kit, another savings of $130. I also got a shirt and a bunch of other cool extras.
So for $100 I saved $730 in hardware and software, not to mention the developer mailings and all the extras. Not bad at all! Apple definitely treats its developers well.
Sapere aude!
I'm running Panther on both my G4 PowerBook and my Dual proc G5.
It's certainly nice. But is it better than Jaguar ? To be honest, not that I notice. Expose is kind of nice - but despite everyone else's raving about it I just can't get excited about it. Very pretty and clever eye-candy to be sure, but the only feature of it I use *at all* is the "clear everything and show me the desktop" f11 function.
People get excited about the coloured labels. Huh? Can't say I have - and I haven't used them at all and I can't see myself using it.
Now one thing I do like is the updated Finder. Do I think it's any faster ? Nope. Although it doesn't suffer from spinny-beach-ball-syndrome at all, which is nice. But then i'd call that a bug fix. The thing I do like about Finder is the list of places to go (Home, Applications, etc) that now appeat in their own panel. Although I am still getting used to it, I like that.
I do use the encrypted home directory on my PB and that makes me feel a bit happier (I can now carry those Confidential and Restricted documents on my laptop ;-)
The Journalling file system was a no brainer and I feel very smug :-)
So overall am I happy with what I got for my 114 (one full copy for 99 and another for 15) ? Yes actually I am - doubly so when I see spot the internet machine at work (secure site, so no-one's "work" machine can be connected direct to the 'net) getting clogged with spyware and crashing just because it's now sharing a connection over a wlan I get this warm feeling :-P
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
For those of you interested in the above, go here, click on "ADC Hardware Purchase Program Store," and drool away.
-Brett
Ok that was some troll. Want more than one button? Get a logitec optical. They are better than most mice you get with PCs standard. Slow? Have you tried panther? OS X contains more open source than Darwin. Apple contributed back to the KHTML source tree after making improvements for their Safari browser and I'm sure they have been involved in the Samba 3.x project and Open Directory.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
If I am not mistaken, DOOM was originally proto'd on NeXT Stations - so this would have some precedent and cultural continuity.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
My biggest complaint about X used to be that it's latent as hell. It just can't stand up to Linux with the preemptible kernel patches. You'd push the "Increase volume" key on the keyboard at it would lag for over a second before popping the volume icon. If you use the visualizer in iTunes and start messing around with other stuff it's choppy as hell. Basically, whatever application you are not currently using has ridiculous latency and choppiness. That particular peeve doesn't happen anymore.
The whole system seems a little more responsive, although with everything sitting on a Mach kernel I don't think MacOS X will ever achieve the low latency that Linux pulls off. Mach's cool but you pay a price.
They are also doing this thing called "prebinding" which I assume is equivalent to "prelinking" in the Linux world -- performing dynamic linking a single time and saving the intermediate results so that applications can launch faster. If you look through the installation logs for Panther you see that it includes a new dynamic linker and there are many log messages of the ilk: "Prebinding xxx application."
If you look at the process list in top or with ps you see that there are FAR fewer system processes than before. I'm not sure whether this is because they really aren't running, or if the OS is somehow hiding them (which would be very un-UNIX-like).
I don't personally give a shit about the new bells and whistles such as Expose. But the improvement to latencies and the general snappy feel are enough for me to justify a $130 price tag. The improvements are mainly under the hood but as a developer I really appreciate that (heh, and I don't even develop for Mac).
I'm not familiar with the F11 feature in WindowMaker. However, I can say that it took me about a day of using Expose to realize that I can never go back. Thus, if any other OS developer wants my money ever they better have an expose-ish feature.
I explained expose to a friend of mine, and he couldn't understand out why it was better than ALT-TAB. Several reasons: first, it is a single click, not cycling through a list of windows, as with ALT-TAB. O(1) instead of O(n). Second, Expose shows you your currently open *documents*, rather than applications, and it doesn't show ones that you might have minimized or hidden. Thus it shows you what you are working on right now, not applications that might be running but aren't in active use.
I also use Expose (F11) to access the desktop (similar to minimize all). The difference is, it isn't minimizing, it is just moving them out of the way so I can access my desktop, maybe drag some files to Finder (You can open other documents/applications while Expose has moved the windows off to the side). It is also easy to restore, just click anywhere around the edge of the screen and everything zooms back to normal (or click F11 again obviously). The most important thing to remember is, you aren't minimizing (or hiding) these windows, so restoring has no effect on windows that you might already have minimized or hidden.
I've used linux as my only desktop operating systems for several years, multiple desktops were my primary way of managing multiple open applications and documents for several different tasks simultaneously. Since upgrading my weeks old mac to Panther not quite a month ago, I have totally changed the way I work, now using minimization, hiding, and expose to effectively manage my tasks. I find the new methods of doing things easier and more efficient then before (after the initial adjustment). Like I said, I couldn't imagine going back.
Not that there aren't any improvements to be made (I just can't think of any, but I'm sure someone eventually will). I have to agree that Expose is one of the most significant recent developments in windowed GUIs. Don't knock it until you've spent enough time with it to get used to it.
-Spyky
In Jaguar I could start X11 and the in the terminal do a:
... with Panther ... If u try to start KDE , you see the center KDE box come up .. then all hell breaks loose. Konqueror windows all over, and you cant click on the task bar (kicker)
... the new panther X11 is installed corectly.
$exec startkde &
AND , i would get KDE3.1 ala Fink running.
I couldnt click on icons that i saw on the screen, but the dock worked.
Also i liked the ability to log into on of the linux boxen here with ssh -X -l and do a $exec startkde & on the remote box and use this as a full screen X terminal.
Well
My tempory solution to this is simply not to start KDE either locally or when doing a remote ssh.
I think it is a conflict with Expose, but who knows.
Yes
Oh well it is really a minor bug, and im sure it will be fixed in some update.
Oh, YES! Panther is worth $129.00
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *
I've been quite pleasantly surprised by it.
I certainly understand the history of x86 cloning and developments. The reality is that people wanted home computers, they wanted them relatively cheaply, and they wanted to be able to share apps with friends. Windows 3.1, for all its flaws, gave them this. Win95 made it prettier. Win98 made it (slightly) more stable. Win2K made it much more stable. WinXP dumbed it down so that MS could capture even the biggest dopes (although really, I don't think it's been very successful capturing new users, just retaxing old ones).
Up to XP, Windows (and most of its apps and multimedia) was easy to copy, and ran on cheap hardware. Longhorn sounds like they're eliminating half of what made Windows so popular, its portability. I'd love to see Apple challenge them on the cheap hardware front.
Points all well taken regarding MS' attempts at ubiquity, but notice that they aren't dominating in any of their other markets.
RW
I am just one user here, but after upgrading from 10.2.7 several of the apps that I had working fine before Panther do not want to run any more. For example, I used to be able to hook up my Brother 1440 laser to my airport base station and print just fine. Now that is a no go. Simcity 4 used to play just fine, now it doesn't. Since upgrading, the fancy backlite on my Powerbook's keyboard works sometimes and sometimes not. As a recent convert who was sold on the idea of buying a system that is alleged to be top notch and "stable" (let alone priced near the top of the class) these little incompatibilities are starting to add up to a more and more sour tasting Apple. This combined with the fact that my new Powerbook has a loose lid, and two small dime sized washed out spots in the screen do not do much to build my trust in Apple's Hardware or Software QA.
Now comes the $129/yr upgrade scheme. One reason I decided to go with Apple was to boycott the Gates empire's idea that someday I will pay an annual fee to keep my operating system/applications running, current and supported. All that Apple is doing by implementing this upgrade a year program is repackaging the exact same Microsoft business model in different colors. They are not forcing me to upgrade through a subscription fee but rather through the idea of incompatible systems, software and user conveniences. If any of you are also planning on switching from a wintel system like I just did. I think that is great, but I would also recommend that you not rush blindly into the switch (or even an OS upgrade) thinking that all problems will be solved and you will have a seamless running system. Experience with Apple teaches me that all you really do is replace one flavor of problems and frustrations with another and that though the Apple problems have a sweeter flavor they still result in a pit in your stomach as you try to resolve the technical problems thrown at you.
Yes, but "its'" is not. Note the trailing apostrophe. That is the non-word the parent was complaining about. Now, read before you critiqe.
I admit, the apostrophe is hard to see amongst all the qotation marks.
That is all.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Okay.. so last spring, I got my first mac. It was a leap of faith.. for sure. I've always been a low-level systems guy; I like linux, I don't like windows... like most here I guess.
Now, I'm a mac freak. IT's really that good.
Is it worth $129? My first reaction was one of feeling ripped off.. I mean, I just bought this not even a year ago.. shouldn't I get a cheap or even free upgrade?
Well, I bought it. I installed it. Yes, I read about a few quirks, like with firewire, and a warning about filevault.. both of which are not currently things I need.
Panther is better. It's not a quantum leap, it's not Windows 95 -vs- Windows XP, it's still OS X.. it just has some nice improvements, that I'm sure you've all heard about. More than that, it's smoother, works better.. the eyecandy is just the surface. All the unix stuff I have still works fine too.. I had zero adjustment time in getting to use panther. After the install, I just kept working.. "Oh gee, finder looks different". "Hey, Mail is better!". The odd dialog box from the keychain (which mac apps use to store perseonal information, usually passwords), stating that an application that requested access had changed.. that's it.
I've come to realize that macs are not cheap. I didn't keep using OS X, or fall for mac stuff because it was the fastest, or the cheapest.. I did it because it's provided me with a work environment like none I've ever used... and if that means paying apple a couple hundred bucks a year for them to keep churning out stuff like this, I'm all for it.
This one surpised me, and is a *great* improvement if you run X-programs:
X autolauches now.
No more opening up X, and starting a program from a terminal window, just start it from its icon like normal and X starts right up.
The only problem with that reasoning is that Apple already has a subscription service that gets about $100/year out of many Mac users. Since much of .mac functionality is part of the Mac OS interface and design now, it seems like Apple is now charging $229 a year for full functionality, almost like that other company in Redmond.
Personally, I just upgraded to Jaguar to take advantage of the fire-sale pricing, and I let my .mac subscription lapse after the "50% off" first year. Part of my decision to use Macs in the first place was because, for the longest time, the OS upgrades were free. But that ended with System 7.1... (Prior to Microsoft's IP model for DOS, it was traditional to cover OS R&D using hardware revenues, and I thought an integrated "whole widget" approach would continue to use such a model.)
Those who complain about affect & effect on
I installed Panther on my alBook and on my Cube. Using Xbench to run a series of benchmarks on the Cube before the install and after, taking the averages Panther system-wide is 21% faster*.
21% faster for an OS-upgrade. When is the last time that happened?
* The percentage speed faster was much less on the new alBook.
--- I do not moderate.
They *are* aleady stealing his ideas. He *is* already working for apple. He's *not* a rocket scientist, and posts at /. by the nickname spankalee.
As anyone ordered Panthor through Amazon.com?
It's only $106.99 there.
Why is it cheaper at Amazon?
Mac OS 9 was a fast, strong OS
Umm...as long as you only needed to run one application at a time; were comfortable hand-setting memory sizes for your important programs; had the skill to sort through system extensions and control panels to find problems; had no use for a command line; and didn't need multiple users or serious security on your machine.
Given all those conditions, yes, 9 rocked.
"Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible" -Jacob Bronowski
Anyone who posts this statement has not seen Expose. Or you are willfully ignorant.
Expose performs a vector transform on all your bitmap windows. It animates and scales them using nearest-neighbour interpolation (I'm sure Bicubic is coming in.. er, Ocelot?) and parks them in an arbitrary, non-overlapping arrangement on the screen. Do you get this?
Imagine a stack of photos on your desk hovering up 1 inch and flying out in a neat arrangement, then back again. 1 click.
Tile All Windows is a pale, pale shadow of this functionality.
One of the other perks I love about Expose is you can leave it turned 'on'... if I want to monitor a bunch of webcams, I don't have to laboriously arrange them, I click my thumb mouse button. All windows update live, including quicktimes and DVDs with virtually no lag. I could never go back.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Mac OS has always been evolutionary, yes, but 10.3 is a huge step from 10.2. Apple just uses that goofy naming scheme because they want to keep the roman numeral "X".
10.3 kernel is significantly different from 10.2. They even upped the Darwin kernel number from 6.x to 7.0 for this release. Large parts of the kernel and most of the userland has been synced up with FreeBSD 5.x. Perl has been upgraded to 5.8. Gimp-Print has been rolled in. Sendmail was replaced with Postfix. The whole OS is faster, especially the GUI. The GUI widgets have been tweaked, most of the pinstripes are gone or made more subtle. Quartz has been totally overhauled. PDF rendering (the whole GUI is displayPDF based) is more than 3x faster (try it, open a large PDF in Preview). Features like Expose are now possible. Fast user switching is now possible for other reasons. Lots of changes, both obvious and under the hood.
There's even a new developer suite included in the box!
It's not "OS 11" but it is still is a huge leap forward.
But you are missing my point, OS X is also gaining functionality, and taking advantage of the hardware (Expose is a prime example of this), yet the operating system runs FASTER than previous versions on the same machine. XP is way slower than 2000, which was slower than 98, etc. on the same machine. Obviously it is possible to improve the OS while also making it go faster (Apple can do it) but Microsoft has never done this.
This also is part of the reason why Apple is not obsessed with MHz. For the vast majority of users (assuming you are not sequencing genes or rendering 3D all the time) it doesn't matter. My 800 MHz iMac has displayed even BETTER performance with each point release of OS X. My 1.2 GHz laptop gets worse with each new verion of windows. While it is entirely subjective, I feel the iMac runs a lot faster (both have 1GB of ram)
I don't want to have to spend $1000+ on a machine every 2-3 years if I do not have to. I would rather spend more up front and know that it will be usable for a much longer period of time.
Finkployd
Nevermind the fact that X has had multiple desktops for years
And just to add to what everyone else is saying, Expose has nothing to do with multiple desktops. Multiple desktops are a pain in the arse. Got them on my linux box, got them on W2k (via my Nvidia card). Never use them on either, because they're shit. They simply spread the problem over multiple desktops.
I want immediate access to all my windows so I can find the window I'm looking for, when I've got eight or ten open on-screen. single keyboard click. Expose gives me that with a single key press. Multiple desktops and tile all windows doesn't come close.
But hey, thanks for playing. Better luck next time...
Expose provides different functionality to the features you've mentioned above. Tiling and "clean up windows" functions generally permanently resize and move windows. with Expose nothing moves except what is brought to the foreground. To perform the same functionality with tiling as with Expose you'd have to tile and then resize and reposition your window of choice.
So in actuality this is not a feature that people have enjoyed for years. You can use both in a similar way, but this is more efficient for bringing things to the foreground.
Hit F9, click on desired window, desired window comes to the front. Easier to get what you want than Alt-Tab (what if I don't want to tab through a long list of apps). Faster than selecting a menu option to tile, finding the window you want to work in, resizing that window, moving that window into position.
(And yes, i used the word "Expose" a lot in there. It's easy to add accents on a mac.. option-e e)
I've run into the same problems. Using RHL 9 as the server and Mac OS X 10.2.8 as a client, I had persistent problems with the mac client. It could mount the smb shares in the Finder->Connect->smb://server, but then the mount would time out after about 10 minutes and I couldn't reconnect (-1 error, or something, I forget now.)
/etc/hosts.allow to enforce a local-net-only connect policy WRT samba:
/etc/hosts.deny is ALL:ALL.
So, I thought I'd upgrade the server to RH 10 oops Fedora Core 1, and the client to Mac OS X 10.3. Since they are both using the same verison of samba, I thought that might help.
On the RHL/Fedora boxes, you have to punch a hole through the firewall for smb traffic in iptables. Here's a way to do that:
iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 137:139 -j ACCEPT
I relize this isn't super cool from a security standpoint, but I use this line in
smb: 192.168.1
Where, of course,
Anyway. After this, I've had not problems with either linux or mac os clients. This stuff just works, solid as can be. None of the odd timeout/reconnect failures on the mac side.
Actually, Ars can handle a thorough slashdotting without even blinking, due to the fact that we serve static HTML--no CMS, database, etc. for the articles.
/. effect since about early 1999), with almost all of the Mac users and Mac watchers on the 'net, then the server starts to choke.
The problem isn't slashdot, but the fact that the entire Mac community shows up to read major OS X articles like this. So when you add in the slashdot crowd, which normally doesn't even cause the server to flinch (we haven't choked due to the
Senior CPU Editor | Ars Technica | http://arstechnica.com/
No, the X doesn't stand for uniX. The X is a roman numeral ten. Apple have been very clear about this from the earliest developer preview days. Which is why Steve Jobs, and everyone else at Apple, pronounces, and have always pronounced, Mac OS X as "Mac OS Ten, " *never* as "Mac OS Ecks."
Not according to the EULA you can't. It clearly states one machine per copy.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
Actually no. But you can get the $199 "Family Pack" and install on 5 boxes in the same "household"
The point of Expose is so that you don't have to minimize windows. It's easy to find what you're looking for without minimizing anything.