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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."
Frankly I think it's worth it. I almost see it as a "montly" subscription to using an OS. It came with the Mac and every year you shell out $129 to keep using the latest and greatest version. Mac OS is steadily improving and improvment costs money. I almost feel like it's payment for a MMORPG where new content is release all the time in the form of patches and free additional features.
Google Toolbar is SPYWARE!
This seems to me like Microsofts strategy. It's another year, get another 'major release' out of the door so we can get everyone to chip in another hundred dollars.
Hey but as long as you pay Apple befor Microsoft
*DrugCheese rants*
Anyway, more important to my mind than "Panther r0x0rs/sux0rs!" is this: what's up with Apple's quality control? They've had quite a few releases lately that have completely screwed their users. They've been on the order of the iTunes installer issue a few years ago, which at least had the excuse that they were new to Unix. When I pay them large amounts of money, I expect something that at a minimum doesn't break my system.
(As opposed to, say, apt-get upgrading Yellow Dog from 3.0 to 3.1. That I *do* expect to potentially break my system but I can try it for free and send them money when it works.)
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Okay. I'll post it this round...
Apple doesn't make money selling software. They make money selling hardware. They don't want you paying $130 for their software.. that's just a little bonus. They want you dropping $2,000 on a new Apple computer. That's where their money comes from.
If they ported it, they'd lose their primary revenue stream.
Got it?
Why should Apple port OS-X to i386, or any other platform? Apple is a hardware company that makes their software to facilitate the purchase and use of their hardware. They have nothing to gain from porting to another platform, especially one as open and varied as the i386 platform, except the mother of all support headaches.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
A friend of mine was raving about expose the other day, saying it was the next big thing in UI design, but can anyone explain to me how it's any better than pressing F11 in WindowMaker, to get the Window List? I know it can do the "minimize all open windows" thing too, but that can already be done in X anyway.
I'm not knocking it (too much), I'm sure it looks very pretty, but I just can't see it as being that much of a breakthrough.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
It won't happen. Apple doesn't make money from software development. They make money from selling the hardware that their software runs on. It's pretty much that simple.
If you want the cool OS, iWhatever, etc., buy our slightly expensive, but worth every cent, hardware.
Why even ask for an x86 port? If you want the OS, there isn't anything very bad about Apple's hardware. I could see you asking for a port to x86 if x86 hardware was vastly superior, but it aint.
Although I agree with the conclusions taken, I thik that the real review is always made by the users. And I, as a user, find that Panther is, by far, the best OS X version of them all to date. And yes, I'm happy that the OS has evolved so well.
Personally, I still haven't really understood how connecting to servers now works and I don't really like the fact that some apps got quite unstable with the transition, but that's ok, somethings need time... I find this OS to be more usable than jaguar, with expose being, sometimes, a life-savior from the evil million windows from hell that insist in populate my desktop...
Multi-user switch is also great, and I'm even getting used to the brushed metal look if the finder (that makes it quite odd, compared to any other OSX vers. but that also happened with the transition from OS9 to X, i guess)...
Yet, the best and greatest thing is that the OS is now FAST, I mean, finally it's FAST AND SNAPPY, even on older hardware (400MHz iMac DV w/384M RAM), when compared to any other OSX version or even OS9 (with VM on, of course) and I can say that this thing alone makes the upgrade totally worth.
So, I like it, a LOT... oh and as an apple user, I don't really give a dam about having the fastest hardware on earth if I can't be PRODUCTIVE with it (sometime SOME people DO try to produce *WORK* using computers, it's not all games, code, pr0n, or hacking your system! hehehe).
What I want in a computer is that it works for me and does the thing I want easily and without any crashers or "bad moods". Mac's work for me and Panther is a very enjoyable OS, what more would I want from a computer?
There are gobs of email clients for OS X for every taste... for home users, corporate users, techincal users, unix users...
"It's like buying a whole new Mac for only $129"
:-)
Man... When I hear that I just fall on to my knees with laughter. Worse though is that with Panther, it's basically true!
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
Well you're misrepresenting his argument. His propsed alternative to the current way the OS X Finder is organized -- he wants to 'separate' the browser and the 'spatial Finder' -- would sacrifice none of the functionality or advantages that the OS X Finder provides. But it would allow for a more consistent and productive user experience, regardless of whether the user is aware of the advantages of the OS 9 'spatial Finder' approach. His proposal is dead-on, and I hope Apple sees fit to adopt it.
"He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once." - Steve Jobs on Bill Gates
I don't think I will move just yet. I would like too but $$ holding me back right now. I have iBook 400 MHZ and have been stuck at 10.1.5 because I can't afford to pop the 129 bucks. My wife has a Ti G4 notebook and daughter has a iMac 350 Mhz. Both still on OS 9. I have been happily using OS X to record music with a MOTU 828 interface, remotly administer Oracle dbs at work (HP and solaris hosts) from home using VNC, ssh and rdesktop after a VPN connection is established....AND I have been publishing a skateboarding zine with digital photos using iPhoto with Photoshop and Quark running in classic mode. Plug into the network at work and print to the copier, scanner, laser printer combo to create copies of my zine. I close the iBook it sleeps. I open it it wakes up. I think I rebooted it a few weeks ago. I have a hard time justifying spending more money when I already have everything I need. (except a external 30 gig firewire drive)
I use my computer about 3,000 hours per year. Even with shipping, that makes Panther cost less than 5 cents per hour. That seems like an amazing deal to me.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Regarding 10.3, I didn't notice a speed increase from 10.2.8. XBench reported increased scores in text scrolling (definitely a plus) but that's about it. The killer feature of 10.3 is definitely expose - worth my $69 (academic), for sure. The new mail client is nice, too.
Yep, you've never used it, or you wouldn't be making the comparisons you are.
development.lombardi.com
To clarify: MacOS before OS X was pure crap, and there are a whole lot of current mac users out there who feel the same way - and have, since well before OS X. The others are still somehow stuck in Steve Jobs' reality distortion field.
i disagree.
the OS is more complex, but machines have evolved as the OS'es have.
if you were to try to run Win XP on the same machine you ran 3.1 on, you're right, XP is slower. however, with a few moderate upgrades every once in a while (ram), and new systems every 2.5-3 years, you can keep up with the joneses. my p4 1.8GHz w/ 512MB of ram running XP Pro is quicker than my 866MHz w/ 512 MB of RAM running NT.
ms is taking advantage of faster hardware and increased hard disc capacity by allowing their OS to grow bigger and more complex. i know this may be a nusince for the beginner, or intermediate user, but i upgrade every so often because i choose so, not for the benefit of the maker of my OS.
I couldn't agree more about the functionality of expose. Most people that criticize it have never even seen it. I'd like to add that it completely changes the way you can drag and drop files. You can drag a file, activate expose, and drag it into the window you want.
"John Siracusa, professional nagger and user-interface-purist, attends to Panther and disects it in the usual Arstechnica manner. On 14 long, eye-cancer causing white-on-black pages (why does he never get aroused over that?) [...]" (my translation). ;-)
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck