Straight Edge Life

Alright, I’m ready to give a more complete review of Panther. Well, I’m ready to add a few things to my first review of the beta of OS X 10.3 Panther a couple of weeks ago. I’ve been using panther on two machines (an ibook and a powermac desktop) doing all of my programming and design work on it since it came out. I haven’t run it through a battery of benchmark tests or compared it apples to apples with Jaguar. I just worked.

The changes apple has made to the finder are not, in my humble opinion, improvements. At all. In fact, my second most favorite feature of Panther, Expose, is nearly negated by the clumsiness of the new finder. Expose ends up being a necessity if you ask me. And that bums me out. I don’t mind the brushed metal appearance. what bothers me is that it’s less efficient in it’s use of space. If you use Column View, you lose your left most column by default. And adding items to the title bar of a finder window is clumsy and far less responsive than in Jaguar. IE: slower. It took me a while to figure out how make Panther’s Finder behave like Jaguar’s finder and I’m happy for the most part.

One part of the finder, the dock, has been improved. Now, when you command - tab your way through open applications, a icon list displays on your screen to make your target application selection much easier. Remember when you had to watch the dock itself to see which application you were tabbing to? Gone. It’s a nice improvement.

Expose is the bomb. But be careful when you set it up, especially on a laptop, because it will freely screw up function keys in most of your applications. I’m still sorting that problem out. Overall, it’s a good feature though, and I wish it could be made available (hacked) for Jaguar because it is extremely useful on smaller screens.

Mail, as mentioned in my first review of the beta, is vastly improved. Threading is excellent. I can’t believe nobody has brought this feature to an imap / pop3 client before. I think Bare Bones’ email client has some kind of threading, but it lacks even the option of HTML support which is silly. The fact that Safari’s engine has been integrated into the new Mail is nice. It’s fast and matches what I see in Safari exactly.

Ok. Again, fast user switching is nice. Also, for some reason USB printer sharing seems more stable. It actually used to crash the server machine in Jaguar. Hasn’t done it yet in Panther.

Of course, I’m happy with Panther’s speed. Oh my how it has breathed live into my 600mhz iBook. I was about to bump up to a G4 iBook before I got 10.3. I can’t quantify the difference but it feels like the system is optimized all the time. Like I just de fragged my drive, or did my prebindings. Really, it’s faster. Especially on my slower hardware.

And now, my favorite new feature of 10.3: File Vault. In my opinion this is the most significant new feature in Panther. Like most of you, my data is sensitive. In fact, my data is damn sensitive. I don’t keep credit card numbers of my social security number on my machines at all… what I’m talking about is client data. Stuff that can not fall into the wrong hands. Stuff that needs to be physically guarded as well as encrypted, etc. Stuff that I spend 50% of my day working to protect in the applications I build. Not to mention the uncompiled source code of the applications I build. Until Panther I have not found a convenient way of working with data that needs to be encrypted on my laptop. This meant that when I travelled I either brought compiled apps and couldn’t work on source code at all or I didn’t bring any client data period.

I’m not totally “safe” with File Vault, and you aren’t either, and I doubt that I ever will feel totally safe with any solution that I didn’t actually build myself, but it gives me a pretty good sense of peace. It’s a little slower on shutdown because it reclaims space on the drive, and it’s a little slower (marginally) when you are working. But it’s a very, very nice feature to have. Thank you Apple.

Overall, I’m very happy with OS X 10.3 Panther. My default unix shell didn’t change from tcsh to bash unexpectedly as was prediced on rumor sites, ALL of my applications still work. My printer still works. The upgrade was painless, and I definitely advise that anyone who is thinking about it should do it. If you have an older machine, a need for added security, overwhelming amounts of email to sort through, or simply a need to use the best of the best, get OS X 10.3 Panther. I’m a very budget minded, want vs. need, kind of guy and I think it’s worth it. Apple has successfully challenged a number of the worst problems computer users face today. Small screens, email, security, and speed.