Apple Computer's New Panther

Tomorrow is the release date for Apple Computer's new operating system, Mac OS X 10.3 or "Panther" as it is also called. David Pogue, computer columnist for the NY Times, James Duncan Davidson, author of the upcoming book "Running Mac OS X Panther" and columnist at O'Reilly's MacDevCenter, and Eugenia Loli-Queru at OS News have written very favorable reviews. The main point they make is that Mac OS X is no longer tentative as an operating system and is the only mature non-Windows alternative available. It is rock stable and, with over 1600 Mac OS X applications and several thousand already in existance for X11 (a Unix operating system that this release now includes).

http://www.apple.com/macosx/
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/23/technology/circuits/23stat.html
http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2003/10/10/panther.html
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4832

The things they are both excited about include Exposé, a new anti-window-clutter screen organizer, a more Windows-like program switcher, User Switching without requiring full logoff, Preview enhanced to better handle PDF files, File Vault, a new feature that can encrypt files or folders for security, Secure Empty Trash to completely overwrite files so they can't be recovered, and 150 other improvements. Both agree that, despite the single digit increment (the previous version was 10.2), that Panther is a real winner.

The main criticism I've seen has to do with the price -- it has been only a year since 10.2 came out, yet Apple is asking a full $130 for this upgrade. As I've installed some LAMP applications on my own Mac, I have to admit I'm a little nervous what this new version may break.

Posted by Tom on October 23, 2003