Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther): First Impressions

[Aeolius]

I got my Panther multi-pack on Friday and spent the evening upgrading a few Macs around the house (2 dual G4 towers, 1 flat-panel iMac, 1 iBook).

10.3 is MUCH faster (apps launching, screens responding) than 10.2

10.3 seems to have fixed some issues I was having with Safari.

Now that 10.3 is out, iChat AV is out of public beta. Jaguar users will either have to upgrade to 10.3, or pay $30 for iChat AV.

ProTools LE will not work with 10.3 until Digidesign releases a patch in mid-November.

 

[Steve Jung]

Sounds good. How's the feature that lets you see all open windows at once (blanking on the name)? But I'll probably wait until I get a new machine, maybe next year.

 

[RyanL]

Have they improved the interoperability with Windows shares? Specifically, does the Finder still poop out .ds_store files all over the place, and does it still die a horrible, excruciating death if a share becomes unreachable before you have a chance to unmount it?

These are my only serious complaints about MacOS X since I switched.

-Ryan

 

[RyanL]

This has nothing to do with my previous grievances, as I haven't tested all that serious stuff yet. But ... I upgraded to 10.3 tonight, and boy am I impressed.

Love the fast user switching. Love Exposé. Love the new Command+Tab doodad. Everything is smoother. Quake3 is 20% faster*. I don't know what Apple did, but they did something right.

* Edit: Actually, it looks more like 40% faster. They must have included a new video driver, because that's just crazy.

-Ryan

 

[Dimwhit]

Has anyone experienced any of the gliches? Like wiping out an external firewire drive or File Vault messing things up? I've heard that those issues still have to be worked out.

I can't wait to get a copy of Panther. Hopefully in a week or so.