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Ars Technica Posts Panther Review

Posted by pudge on from the it-both-sucks-and-blows dept.

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."

9 of 420 comments (clear)

  1. $129= $10/Month by BadCable · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    Google Toolbar is SPYWARE!
    1. Re:$129= $10/Month by pherris · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Mac OS is steadily improving and improvment costs money.

      Let's not forget the bandwidth cost of offering "one click" updates (no hunting around for a patch). I use RHN with Redhat 9 and pay, I think, about $60USD per year. With that said, IMO, this makes spending $129 a little easier.

      I really think most of the people that complain about the cost of Mac OS updates are those (like me) that remember a time when they were basicly free. Starting with (I think) Mac OS 7.1 Pro Apple started charging and people freaked. Well, the days of Apple's ultra high profit margin on hardware is mostly gone and users need to pay for new features on the software end instead.

      Macs cost a bit of money for feeding and care like updates, hardware and service parts but you do IMO get a lot more functionality (or "bang for the buck") than other OSs especially if you do AV stuff.

      Long story short: Get the update and enjoy the new toys.

      BTW, I use an eMac for video work and Linux for everything else ...

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      "And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
  2. Re:Port it, you mofos! by XaXXon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  3. Why should they? by RatBastard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
  4. Re:$129 for 0.1 by CountBrass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The difference is that Apple's point releases actually *improve* the OS and make it *faster*.

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    Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
  5. OS X Email Clients by green+pizza · · Score: 4, Insightful
    For example, I used Pegasus while my wife was using Outlook. With my Mac, we'll both use the same mail prog, whatever it is. Does this cut down on variety? Does it cut down on experimentation? I think so.

    There are gobs of email clients for OS X for every taste... for home users, corporate users, techincal users, unix users...
  6. Re:$129 for 0.1 by Graff · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    Everyone seems to think that these ".1" releases of Mac OS X are not really major releases. In fact, they are pretty much whole version releases, it's just that Apple doesn't want to have to call their new baby Mac OS XI, Mac OS XII, Mac OS XIII, etc.

    The amount of new features, better ways of doing things, corrections to problems, additions to the user interface make each one of the .1 releases to Mac OS X worth being treated as a full version. Take a look at how many reviewers and users are saying that this upgrade is well worth the $130, that alone should tell you that it really is a full version and not some minor update.
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    Sapere aude!
  7. Pennies per hour by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
  8. Re:The speed... the speed by 0rbit4l · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Regarding "booting back into 9" - you're comparing apples (no pun intended) & oranges. Booting back into 9 is a great reminder as to how AWFUL 9 was. I booted my tibook 867 into 9 not long ago to do some disk maintenance. Yeah, 9 is super-fast - as long as you only ever want to do one thing at a time (I'm not talking about disk-only utilities - we're talking anything here) and don't mind the occasional crash. Face it, running 9 on a modern mac is like running Win 3.1 on a p4 with a gig of ram. It sure is speedy without that annoying overhead of real virtual memory or a useful scheduler, right? - thanks, but no thanks. All the speed in the world is useless if it's an insecure, cobbled-together OS that can't multitask without barfing.

    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.