Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Mac OS X 10.3 Panther is not the substantial upgrade that 10.2 Jaguar (made "snappier" with Quartz Extreme) and 10.1 Puma (the first Mac OS X usable for the masses) represented. It does, however, add many welcome features and is particularly recommended for notebook (iBook and PowerBook G4) and PowerMac G5 users.
It is difficult to list every new feature (Apple claims 150 new features). I will describe only the major ones (as well as my personal favorites).
The most significant addition is Exposé, which upon a key press or a mouse gesture, shrinks all running windows so you can see them all. Click on one of the windows, it zooms in to a normal size. It is very cool and very effective, possibly the most revolutionary window management technology since the dawn of windowing graphical user interface. Even more impressive, all the windows continue to update themselves even when they shrink, giving you the "control center" view of running applications. Exposé also lets you hide all the windows (so you can see what's on the desktop) or hide all the windows but the active one. This is a huge addition, especially for those with lower resolution display.
The next most significant addition is rewritten Finder. Although many may not appreciate metallic design, it has received a ton of new feature and much faster to boot (multi-threaded). The new Finder resembles iTunes: the right pane shows mounted drives and volumes as well as "favorite directories" that you can customize. Located on the upper right-hand corner is a search function that returns matched files in real-time. Another welcome feature is color labels. You can organize files by marking them with one of many color labels (e.g., red for work stuff, blue for family stuff). And you can create zip files directly from Finder.
At this point, most people will probably list Fast User Switching as the next most significant feature. Since my PowerBook is used by only me, I don't find this feature personally compelling. I've tried it and it works well. If you have multiple users, the menu bar will list your name towards the end. Clicking will list users you can switch to. Select one and after the password authentication, the entire screen rotates in 3D, switching to the new user's desktop. Very snazzy. Those with very long name (e.g., Arnold Schwartznegger), may not welcome his/her name occupying precious menu bar space, however.
For me, 3rd most compelling addition is upgraded Mail. It is significantly faster than before. Significantly! And it adds several welcome additions, such as threaded view of messages, enhanced anti-spam features, enhanced HTML email rendering (thanks to Safari), and enhanced integration with the Address Book (which can now print labels, by the way).
One disappointment is FileVault. While great in concept (it automatically encrypts files upon logout and automatically decrypts upon login), it is not very stable. Many users have reported preferences getting corrupted.
Significant changes are summarized as follows.
Pros:
- Exposé is one the most revolutionary windows management technologies to date
- Faster faster faster -- Preview (with support for latest Acrobat format), Help, Mail, Finder
- Performance enhancements for G5 processor
- Significantly improved Finder and Mail
- Cool Fast User Switching
- Improved anti-aliasing for LCD displays (and you can enable it all the way down to 4 point fonts)
- System Preferences better organized
- Improved, more professional looking Aqua interface
- Significantly improved DVD Player user interface with new bookmark feature
- TextPad supports Word format
- Emphasis on security with many security fixes, secure empty trash can, and FileVault
Cons:
- Expensive considering Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar is only about a year old
- FileVault has many stability issues (do not use it until Apple offers a fix!)
- iChat AV works with only .Mac and AOL (please open it to support MSN and Yahoo!)
- Improved anti aliasing does not apply to older QuickDraw applications (e.g., Microsoft Office v.X)
- Dock gets none of the much needed enhancements
- DVD Player still lacks support for interactive DVD-ROM contents
- You cannot add/remove features after installing Mac OS X Panther
- Keyboard support is still limited (i.e., cannot directly select the menu item)
- Not high DPI displays friendly (Dots/pixels Per Inch), such as 12.1" iBook and PowerBook -- smaller fonts will be difficult to read still
- Apple menu is still not customizable
- Safari gets only a minor update (still incompatible with many web sites)
Click Here to see more reviews about: Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
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