Panther Is A Cat By Any Other Name
Apple is exploiting you. Anyone who has visited the Apple.com website within the last few days have noticed the countdown to the release of Panther, Apple’s latest update to the operating system. Ooh, Panther is coming. Panther is coming. Let’s all just bow down to Steve Jobs because he is making my life even easier. Please! This is another one of Apple’s attempts to hype the latest and greatest so that all of you die-hards will go and buy it immediately only to find out that it’s buggy, not anything special, and certainly not worth the new cat-name. If you ask me, this is worthy only of the OSX 10.2.5 And to top it off Apple is inviting you to the “Night of the Panther” events at your local Apple Store. In other words, Mr. Jobs is saying, “Come and celebrate so we can dazzle you with demonstrations and sucker you into buying more stuff.” We see right through that Mr. Jobs. You crafty fellow. And what’s with the Panther box? Is Denzel endorsing Panther. IS Panther “another Spike Lee Joint”?
Let’s break the new features down shall we?
Finder
Find everything you need just a click away.
Just when we got used to the Finder hierarchy with OSX they go and pull this.
Expose
Quickly tile open windows and reveal files on your desktop.
OK. This is cool.
iChat AV
Talk face-to-face over the Internet with top-notch video.
OK this is cool too.
FileVault
Secure your documents with AES-128 encryption.
Could be handy.
Fast User Switching
Change users without logging out of your applications.
Convenient when your entire family is sharing one computer. Ok that’s neat.
Mail
Follow the thread of any discussion and block junk mail.
Useful. Ok I’ll give you that one.
iDisk
Access your iDisk when you’re not connected.
Very convenient. I’m starting to sweat.
Preview
Scroll through and search PDFs faster than before.
Making doing business more efficient. That’s a plus.
Font Book
Find, organize and manage all the fonts on your Mac.
Finally.
Based on UNIX
Industrial-strength stability, with X11 and FreeBSD 5.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, UNIX. Enough already.
Works with Windows
Access your Exchange email and sync your Address Book.
Who needs Windows?
Xcode
Develop Mac OS X applications with powerful, elegant tools.
Bonus.
Ok. I’ve changed my mind. I will see you at the Apple Store on October 24th.
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Comments
hee hee… I was so ready to write a scathing reply until I started reading the itemized list.
Very much to the point and funny as well. There is a lot of hype. I have tried Panther for a little while, once you move back to 10.2 then you really miss the new Finder which is the best addition.
The rest as you rightly said is nice but overall this is not a tremendous ‘jump’.
I just hope it will be a bit faster!
Very Funny, you had me going for a minute. That makes me even more excited for the new release. I’m buying after G5 when it comes loaded on it.
I’ve been using Panther for just a week now, and WOW does it suck going back to 10.2 (which, unfortunately, I must return to every time I use Pagemaker - it’s somehow not compatible with 10.3).
It’s like moving from quicksilver to molasses…
I have a G-4 yikes maxed out with a gig of ram and almost every app is significantly FASTER! Launching, scrolling, copying files is MUCH faster. Emptying the trash of tons of files has to be almost 10 times faster, maybe more! So it’s much much more than just the more convenient Finder…
Jaguar seems downright primitive now…. Functional, kinda poky, and limited, though still effective. Amazing what a mere “upgrade” can do. There’s gonna be a lot of happy mac folks out there when Panther stalks into town, rest assured…
my favorite bug fix is the “Automatic Location” and related to that - the slick redesigned Network Preferences.
I go in and out of different networks all the time, Airports to Ethernet to LANs. And all I need to do is set up Location to “Automatic” and by golly Panther really does automatically connect properly. In fact - if I have an internet connection via Airport and Ethernet: Panther automatically uses the Ethernet which is the faster network. If i unplug the Ethernet to make a LAN with another Mac, then Panther automagically switches my Internet connection to the Airport, and allows me to connect to LAN with Ethernet.
This alone is worth $129 for me, for the time I save.
Well, I’ve been using Panther since Saturday (10/25). I love it. It’s amazing.
I have a 400 MHz G3 iMac DVse and so much seems faster in 10.3. I love some of the changes to Mail, but I’m currently tackling a strange duplicated email issue. Hmm.
Exposé and the Finder, together with the seemingly random speed improvements make Panther worth it. Absolutely.
I have friends and co-workers drooling over Panther. One just installed it on his G5 and says it’s simply breath taking. He loves how his 1+ GHz P4 Wintel box with iTunes for Windows can only rip MP3s at about 6x. His Dual 2 GHz G5, with Panther, enjoys a healthy 24x. Nice. (My unspoken comment, “Why MP3s?! Why not AAC?”)
Even my fiance, only really a casual computer user outside of her job (which is just office work on a PC), browsed the features booklet that comes in the box for Panther and said, “Ooh, I want this!”
And to all who bash the brushed metal look and the “lack” of Aqua, I say, “Shut the hell up and start realizing how amazing all of this is.” Brushed metal, or textured windows, is a feature of Aqau. So ha.
Oh, and Xcode and the new IB… Wow.