Ten Things I Dig About Panther
by James Duncan Davidson, author of the upcoming Running Mac OS X Panther10/10/2003
Ever since WWDC 2003 in June (has it really been that long?) I've been planning on what articles to write about Panther when it's released. After all, there are zillions of new things to talk about in this release of Mac OS X. However, until we had a release date from Apple, it hasn't been appropriate to talk much about Panther here on the Mac DevCenter. But now that we know the uncaging of Panther has been set for Oct. 24, and a whole lot of information has been posted on Apple's web site, it's time to start taking a look at this latest effort from Apple.
One question I anticipate that I'll be asked quite a bit in the next few months is: "Should I upgrade?" The answer is, from my perspective, a resounding "YES". This is a landmark release of the system. Each version since 10.0 has upped the ante significantly.
Mac OS X 10.0 (internally code named Cheetah) was the stake in the ground. It showed the world that Apple was changing tracks from the old classic Mac OS to a new Unix-based system. Version 10.1 (internally code named Puma) gave us a performance boost and the Carbon updates required to get Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office running. Version 10.2, known to the world as Jaguar, was where the system became real for most people. It gave good performance and a rich experience.
But this next beast, Panther, is where Apple is no longer trying to establish a new operating system -- that job is done as of Jaguar. Panther is where Apple builds on the base of the previous releases and takes the system into territory that Windows folks won't get to until after the release of Longhorn, whenever that is.
As the Beatles sang, "It's getting better all the time. Better. Better. Better."
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Related Reading 
Running Mac OS X Panther |
So, without further ado, here are the 10 things that have been announced (out of the hundreds of new features) about Panther that I think are special, and which I think you'll like too:
1. Exposé: The ability to seamlessly multitask naturally leads to a lot of clutter on the desktop. I know that I usually have upwards of a dozen applications all running at the same time. Many Unix systems have adopted the idea of using virtual desktops -- and there are third party tools that bring this idea to Mac OS X. However, with Panther, Apple has leveraged the insane capabilities of Quartz Extreme to give window management a new twist. A single keystroke and you can make order out of chaos. Even better, you can assign those extra buttons on a multi-button mouse to trigger Exposé, making window navigation a snap. Virtual desktops look downright clunky in comparison.
2. Command-Tab: Sure, previous versions of Mac OS X have given the ability to switch between applications with the Command-Tab keystroke. However, it hasn't worked the way it should. And using the little triangle indicator in the Dock to show which application you are going to switch to isn't enough. Now, when you use Command-Tab, you'll see a list of applications appear semi-transparently across your screen. It's a feature that's long been on Windows and it's about time Mac OS X emulated it.
3. Threading in Mail: I get loads of email -- and amazingly enough -- not all of it is spam or various Windows-based worms at work. Quite a bit of it is mail that I have to deal with. And quite a bit of it comes from the various mailing lists I'm subscribed to. Years ago I used to use Netscape Mail, which had good threading support and I've missed that threading model while using the Mac OS X Mail client. Now, Mail looks like it sports threading every bit as good as I've seen implemented anywhere. And not a moment too soon.
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4. Fast Preview: As part of being an author who writes books for a living, I read and generate PDF files all of the time. The new faster Preview is going to make life on that front so much better. And now that you can search through PDFs quickly, I won't be opening Adobe's Acrobat Reader nearly so often. And the built-in ability to read a PostScript or EPS file is going to make it easy to read through all my archived material that hasn't been upgraded to PDF. The only thing that seems to be missing is the ability to see annotations that people have made using Acrobat Reader.
5. The New Finder: Moving the focus of the finder to the User's home directory instead of the boot disk is a welcome change. Not having to go click-click-click to navigate a new Finder window from the boot disk to the home folder will save me thousands of clicks a year. And the new sidebar means that it'll be easy to keep track of folders that I use all of the time -- for example, I know that a folder giving a direct link to the book I'm working on will live full-time in the sidebar. Even better, the sidebar appears in the Save and Open dialog sheets for all applications.
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6. Safari Rendering: For HTML Safari isn't just a browser, it's also a HTML-rendering component (known as WebKit) that can be used by any application that wants to display HTML. Sure, WebKit has been out for a while know, but it's now showing up everywhere in the system. This means that HTML markup will appear the same way in both Safari and Mail. Even better, the previously laggardly Help application should get quite a welcome speed boost from using WebKit.
7. Font Book: The way that Mac OS X and Quartz display fonts has always been phenomenal, but the tools to organize and use the fonts on your system have been nonexistent. I can deal with organizing fonts manually by copying them in and out of my ~/Library/Fonts folder, but without a way to preview fonts, it's not been easy. Now, with Font Book, it should be cake.
8. File Vault: For a long time I've been running around with semi-sensitive data on my laptop, including my bank records and credit card statements. I've used several schemes to keep this data private, but none has been quite right. Now, with FileVault, the data on my laptop can be locked down when I'm not logged in. With my frequent habit of synchronizing data with my server at home, this means that if I happen to lose my laptop, I'm only out the price of the laptop -- and not worried about my bank account getting cleaned out.
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9. Secure Erase Trash: For when you need to be paranoid about your data -- or making sure that the data is really gone when you delete it -- Panther provides the ability to not only empty the trash as normal, but to write random data over the file contents so that it can't be resurrected by people who know how to look at the raw contents of a hard drive.
10. Active Directory Integration: OK, so I know that those of you who live in a Mac-only world couldn't care about this one, but Panther's new ability to use Active Directory as a password authentication system and the ability to store a home directory on a remote Windows server is going to be key to the continued movement of Mac OS X into the corporate environment. I think this one feature is going to enable a huge upswing of Mac sales into corporate environments.
I know the title of this article promises 10 things, but there's one more thing about Panther that I really dig:
11. Xcode: I've always loved that the development tools for Mac OS X have shipped for free. Apple is very wise to realize that the more applications that are out there for Mac OS X, the better the platform does and the best way to encourage developers to write those applications is to provide the tools, as well as great frameworks like Cocoa. The new Xcode IDE looks to take the way that we do development and give it a swift kick in the butt. Instead of making you think about files, it takes care of a lot of things under the covers and lets you concentrate on just writing code. It's a big enough of a switch that I think it's going to take developers a bit of time to get used to, but Apple's putting their user-interface expertise to work in the development space, and we'll all benefit from it.
And the fact that Xcode will be able to use Rendezvous to use all of the machines on a network to help compile code … that's just so cool.
So, that's the 10, er 11, things that I dig about the Panther release of Mac OS X. I know these are the features that I've been excited about for awhile and I think that they'll be some of the features that most people are going to be really glad to have. And it's all these features and more that are going to make this the most significant upgrade to the Mac OS that we've seen yet.
Yes, it's worth the price. I've already got my copy on order. Now, if you'll pardon me, I've got a book to finish up.
James Duncan Davidson is a freelance author, software developer, and consultant focusing on Mac OS X, Java, XML, and open source technologies. He currently resides in San Francisco, California.
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Showing messages 1 through 25 of 25.
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Things I dig about Jaguar
2003-10-26 04:13:23 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Let me count backwards, towards the change that worries me most about Panther, six things Jaguar already does for me that you don't seem to have noticed.
6. Virtual desktops, thanks to third-party tools that let me use features Steve Jobs doesn't feel like I'm smart enough to take advantage of. Again, it's a matter of organization. Expose is like a lot of things in Mac OS, it's organized around *programs*. I work on *documents*, and put windows associated with each document or object I'm working on in the same virtual desktop. It never gets a chance to get cluttered.
5. Command tab is unobtrusive and effective. Little triangle indicator in the Dock? What are you talking about... the whole icon grays out and its name pops up. It's clear and obvious. Have you actually used command-tab lately?
4. It's UNIX, it handles things in the background without my needing to have desktop apps chewing up cycles on them over and over again. Threading in mail? I already get that, and it works in every app I use to read mail. How do I do that? UNIX, remember... I just fetch my mail and feed it to a local newsgroup, and read it with a newsreader. The only time I see Mail.app is when I'm replying.
3. PDF rendering is handled by the OS. I read PDF in Safari, thanks to yet another nifty third party app, and it's plenty fast. I just can't convince LaunchServices to let me *permanently* associate PDF with Safari... Steve Jobs doesn't seem to like it if you fiddle with the "This file isn't known to open in this app, so I'll gray it out" settings. But I never use Preview or Acrobat Reader, I don't see the point... the OS has PDF rendering built in, why do I need a special app for it?
2. Finder. It's not perfect, but it's a straightforward extension of the preactical Finder from OS 9, and it doesn't need redesign, just a bit of tweaking.
Finder isn't the center of my life, it's just a really useful tool I've been using effectively under OS 9 and OS X... and dramatically changing it into a Windows Explorer workalike is not something I'm looking forward to.
First, of course, it's in 'Metal'.
Second, where's the win? You write "Not having to go click-click-click to navigate a new Finder window from the boot disk to the home folder will save me thousands of clicks a year."
Hey, man, just drag your home folder into the dock. Old Finder is a tool you can use any way you want. New Finder looks more like a tool you have to use the way Steve Jobs wants. Well, Steve hasn't been exactly batting 1000 lately.
1. I like not having an integrated central HTML-and-HTTP tool in every program. I'm really worried about Webkit: I hope this isn't exactly what it sounds like, because this sounds like the disasterous Microsoft HTML Control, the source of 90% of the viruses and worms on Windows. If you have the same application displaying trusted and untrusted data, you're inevitably going to provide opportunities for the bad boys. I sincerely hope Webkit doesn't make the same mistake of having Webkit perform URL resolution instead of calling back to the application using it to do the job, or we're going to watch OS X fall into the same smelly creek Windows fell into in the '90s.
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UFS implementation needs to be updated
2003-10-22 15:37:13 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Here is my story. Got a PB G4/400/256 (Mercury) as
a hand-me-down about a year and a half ago.
Installed MacOSX from scratch and being familiar with
Unix and not with MacOS Classic I picked UFS instead
of HFS+ . For the past year I have been bitching on how
slow the system was while people all around me told
me that Jaguar was 'usable' on a 500Mhz.
When last week I decided to do a last effort attempt
before ditching MacOSX in favor of Linux o OpenBSD
I found some postings that lead me to the ugly
discovery that the UFS implementation in MacOSX is years old
and lacks any of the optimizations that are common
in the BSD world. Now I reinstalled 10.2 with HFS+
and my G4 works like a charm. I don't know if I should be
mad at myself for picking the wrong choice or at
Apple to release such atrociously slow implementation.
Looking forward to 10.3 ...
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Xcode book
2003-10-22 05:59:41 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
When is there gonna be a developer book for Panther? I'm writing this because I don't know whether to wait to buy or not.
Sincerely Mads E. ;-)
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The "new" Finder performance
2003-10-20 15:08:12 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
The organizational features you mention in the "new" finder are not nearly as important as stability and speed.
I am hoping that the new Finder is FULLY multi-threaded and doesn't freeze as often as the 10.2x Finder. The spinning beach ball should not be a familiar sight in a Unix-based OS. Rarely does a week go by where I do not have to relaunch the Finder.
As far as speed is concerned, viewing a directory with more than 400 files incurs delays that don't exist in Windows OS's. Listing more than 500 files can be painful. It is time that Apple figures out how to accelerate (or bypass) the handling of HFS+ metadata and file resources. Users who strictly identify file types with suffix useage should not have to suffer performance penalties.
These drawbacks of the current Finder remind me of why (in part) IRIX users ignore the IRIX GUI in favor of the command line. I am hoping that Apple has addressed these issues so more advanced users can rely on, and not be hampered by, the GUI as well.
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Mail Threading
2003-10-19 14:27:27 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I notice that the "Mailboxes" icon is missing from the toolbar in your screen shot. Does that mean that the "Tray" of mail folders has gone away? If so, good riddance! But has it been replaced with a pull-down, or (better) pop-up, or what?
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Mac OS X Font rendering - phenomenal? Hardly!
2003-10-19 14:01:35 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I have a VERY different opinion about the way Quartz renders fonts. Quite frankly it's a fuzzy eyesore. I STILL think that most fonts looked better and were less strain on the eyes under Mac OS 9.x.
Yes, routinely turn off font smoothing (in the System Preferences > General menu, for fonts size 12 and smaller but I'd like to be able to do it for even larger ones.
As it is, I can't hack text for more than 2 or 3 hours at a stretch, but I routinely need to make a full day of it. Thankfully my employer still uses that "other" operating system.
I suspect that Apple could make text anti-aliasing an option for fonts of ANY size. So why impose its "experts'" value judgements on the rest of us. If some of us are just weird, so be it!
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Avery Label Support
2003-10-16 10:56:26 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
It's the little things that count and the ability to print avery labels from Address Book is a huge advantage for me.
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FAX
2003-10-14 17:02:24 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
as a home business owner i love the ability to send and recieve fax without the need to get another apps to get it done.
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While not cool...
2003-10-14 07:15:46 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
...or uber-geeky, color-coding is #1 on my list. It's long been the #1 way to make PC folks jealous, and an incredible way to sort, find, archive, and manage data.
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Vs. KDE
2003-10-13 11:50:02 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Command-Tab has already been available in KDE for a long time, so please give it credit along with Windows. I'm also glad to see Apple is working on Finder because every version of Finder I have used falls far short of Konqueror.
Personally, I still prefer KDE on Linux over OS X, but OS X is better than any version of Windows in most ways.
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yep
2003-10-13 11:43:20 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I agree, I would like a more seamless integration of X11 into the desktop environment.
Also...O'Reilly, why in the world would you pick a German Shepard for the cover of this book? It's pretty clear that the Panther is already an animal. Why not um...use a Panther for the cover? I bet someone in your editorial department spent hours deciding on the German Shepard.
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Debate at Ars Technica
2003-10-12 06:26:41 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Hi, Duncan, I have created a thread about Panther based on this article at Ars Technica. I hope you don't mind.
In the usual Ars style, the debate has quickly descended into a chaos mainly due to Wintel users, but there are some interesting points.
Ars has been a longtime Wintel geek site, but in a recent OS poll, Mac users appear to outnumber Windows (all version combined) users!
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Type-O: now not know
2003-10-12 05:49:27 roykoch [Reply | View]
6. Safari Rendering: For HTML Safari isn't just a browser, it's also a HTML-rendering component (known as WebKit) that can be used by any application that wants to display HTML. Sure, WebKit has been out for a while know, but it's now showing up everywhere in the system.
Forgive me I don't know how I find them I am dyslexic.
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Is Safari printing improved in Panther?
2003-10-12 05:45:53 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
My pet peeve is the crappy printing of Safari pages. When will Safari printing be as good as Internet Explorer's. Pagination? Date? URL printing?
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Type-O: now not know
2003-10-12 05:42:49 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
6. Safari Rendering: For HTML Safari isn't just a browser, it's also a HTML-rendering component (known as WebKit) that can be used by any application that wants to display HTML. Sure, WebKit has been out for a while know, but it's now showing up everywhere in the system.
Forgive me I don't know how I find them I am dyslexic.
Roy Koch
r.koch@comcast.net
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Please Don't Post about NDA Material
2003-10-11 11:56:09 James Duncan Davidson |
[Reply | View]
There are several comments here that are breaking NDA with Apple about Panther (such as talking about how Panther performs on older hardware and such). Please refrain from posting comments that cover topics that are still under NDA.
This article was crafted from information available on the public Apple website. Please keep discussion to the items that have been already announced and posted.
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The "new" Finder
2003-10-11 05:44:44 gwostrel [Reply | View]
James, just amazing to me that you are writing an article about MacOSX and, seemingly, are not aware of something as basic as the "preferences" setting in the Finder that allows you to change the "focus", as you call it, of a new Finder window. Just as amazing is that it makes your list of the 10 (no, 11) things that make Panther worth the $129. Excuse me, but that is a bit lame. I would say that the improved organization of the Finder windows and the Open/Save dialog boxes are a big deal that is worth mentioning - not something that was there all along since 10.0.4 (maybe earlier, that's just when I started using OSX)
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Access rights on some files
2003-10-11 02:23:34 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
I noticed two security flaws in Jaguar and would like to know if they are corrected in Panther.
- If you use the finder to duplicate a folder (Cmd-D) the copy is world-writable. It should have the same access rights as the original.
- When you print a file and you choose to make a preview, the resulting PDF file is world readable in a public directory in /tmp/printing.xxx.
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selecting text in PDFs
2003-10-10 20:13:27 maarky [Reply | View]
Maybe I'm just missing something, but in the current 10.2 version of Preview I cannot select and copy text in PDF files. Has this been fixed in 10.3?
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An alternative to excessive clicking
2003-10-10 19:19:31 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
"Moving the focus of the finder to the User's home directory instead of the boot disk is a welcome change. Not having to go click-click-click to navigate a new Finder window from the boot disk to the home folder will save me thousands of clicks a year."
How about this? Apple+shift+H in the Finder will open a new Finder window with your home directory. It's an awkward key combo, but you can also drag your home directory into the Dock and click it to get the same.
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X11 Integration
2003-10-10 17:26:25 anonymous2 [Reply | View]
Beeing a switcher from Solaris (NOT from Windows) I can't wait to have a seamless integration of X11 into OS X.
Ahh those preferences... As different as the users are... :-)
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no quartz extreem
2003-10-10 16:59:32 maarky [Reply | View]
I've got one of those old 500mhz TiBooks with only 8mb video ram. It does not have quartz extreme. Panther seems to rely heavily on quartz extreme, so I was wondering if the graphics stuff would be damn slow on my computer. In short, is it worth upgrading to Panther if you don't have quartz extreme?
And to anybody who suggests I get a new computer I would like to say that I will not be able to afford a new computer after you send me a $3000 check. (the cost of a 17" powerbook)
On the other hand, Expose can be used w/o a mouse. Just tap the F9 or F10 key to activate, then use the arrow keys to cycle through the windows and use Return to select the high-lighted window.