Panther part 2
I’ve had a couple of days of living with Panther now, and I’m almost totally impressed. My few quibbles so far are to do with Apple not quite going far enough along the line they seem to be pursuing. I still don’t think that I’ve found all the new features and enhancements, but here are the highlights:
- Interface changesâMany people have complained about the changes to widgets and the apple on the login screen, but I think that they are mostly an improvement. The newâslightly greyerâwindows and menus seem to make aqua and metal windows sit together rather more harmoniously. Controls which are grouped together now sit in slightly inset boxes with rounded corners, which are quite pretty, and make the groupings more obvious. The flatter, less ribbed texture to the windows looks better on LCD screens, too.
- Menu navigationâAt last, keyboard navigation works properly. You can move around in windows, dialogue boxes, menus and even Exposé minimized windows with the keyboard. Even navigating around the Finder and in open and save dialogue boxes now works properly.
- Command-tabâThere’s a new application switching graphic which is light years away from the Dock switching method which they used before. But Proteron, who had a lovely little utility called LiteSwitch (which I used to use) are understandably not happy about the similarities between their product and the Panther switcher. I personally think that they deserve some acknowledgement from Apple, but I imagine that if LiteSwitch didn’t exist, Apple would have built their switcher in exactly the same way. After all, the semi-transparent background was theirs in the first place.
- PreviewâThis is exactly what I wanted; a quick, no-nonsense PDF viewer. It’s very fast, even with big files, and searching the text is very nippy. I’ve had to put up with the slow amd clunky Adobe Reader for too long now, so it was with some glee that I set Preview as the default app for PDFs.
- Image CaptureâI have an Epson scanner, and was about to try and trudge through the Epson site looking for the latest drivers. Before I did so, I decidedâas an experimentâto just try plugging the scanner in. Bingo! Image capture opened, and it did a preview scan. It may not have all the features of the built in scanning software, but it’s just fine for me, and very simple to use. Even better, you can share a scanner between two computers, so you don’t even have to switch the USB cable between machines. Perfect!
- FinderâI really like the new Finder, and the sidebar is certainly going in the right direction. But I wish that they had gone further. The sidebar looks so much like the playlist window in iTunes, that I wonder why they didn’t implement similar functionality. Imagine if you could make a file ‘playlist’ which would dynamically contain files matching a queryâyou could have all files modified today in my Documents folder, all files with the label “Urgent”, or all movies with the word “holiday” in the file name. Now that would really be cool. I’m even wondering if it might not be possible to implement something similar with Perl or Applescript. I might have to do some work on that.
Overall, the general speed increase probably makes the most difference. All applications and operations are so much more responsive, which makes Panther a joy to use. The upgrade was very painless, and almost all of my applications (except some of those which are in the form of Preference Panes, like GeekTool) work fine. If you haven’t upgraded to Panther yet, it’s certainly worth the money.
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One other nice surprise was that the itty-bitty TextEdit app will read and write MS Word docs (at least, until MS mangles the format again).
I've been very happy with it so far, too.----- I haven't upgraded yet - on the basis that I don't have time to sort it out (I will get around to it). Do you happen to know what's happened with Sendmail - I hear it's been replaced? I use it as my SMTP server and - as it was such a nightmare to get running - I'm loathe to make the switch. Perhaps I'm just getting old and can't handle too much change
by Dave @ 26/10/2003 10:10 pm • Permalink •
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You beta testers are very brave! Thank you!
I read good things on your site, then read about disasters on other sites eg . Destroying FireWire drives is not what I want to hear right now, after my hard disk crash in September...
I ordered Panther but will - as ever - wait for the dust to settle for a few days before installing.
by pete @ 27/10/2003 11:11 am • Permalink •
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On the subject of "smart playlist" functionality in the Finder, I'm often left thinking the same thing of ANY program that implements the 'sidebar'. Why iPhoto doesn't sport "smart albums" --where you can store all the photos from a particular event, or all the photos you have of a particular person-- is beyond me. Better use needs to be made of metadata, it's a wonderful thing.
by Chris Clark @ 27/10/2003 11:11 am • Permalink •
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P Z Myers: Ooo, yes -- I forgot to talk about that. It's a great improvement.
Dave: sendmail still seems to be there (/usr/sbin/sendmail), but I don't run it, so can't tell you how easy it is to set it up again in Panther. I gather that Panther also has postfix, which is supposed to be a bit easier to administer ( http://www.postfix.org/docs.html ).
pete: You are probably very wise! I must admit that after hearing about Firewire drive corruption, I haven't had the courage to plug mine in. I don't think that people have universally found it to be a problem.
Chris Clark: I agree completely! I really don't understand why they haven't done it, especially in the Finder, as all the searching functionality is there.
by bsag @ 27/10/2003 7:11 pm • Permalink •
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Jaguar Bites [âbitesâ as in âsmall news itemsâ not as in âbites the big oneâ â Ed.] Well, Jaguarâs out of the...
by bitweever.com @ 27/10/2003 10:11 pm • Permalink •
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Just ran into my first major problem with Panther.
I enabled FileVault right away. I have a great deal of sensitive data from prior clients that I keep on my hard drive, and I want to keep it encrypted in case I lose my laptop. At first, FileVault worked wonderfully.
Then, after about two weeks (I got Panther early: ADC) I began to have stability issues. At first, I'd log in and get the default (new) desktop. Logging out and back in would restore my own. Now, I'm losing my preferences left and right. I've heard stories about file corruption, and am afraid that it's starting to happen to me; already my mail file is starting to get corrupted.
One warning about FileVault: you can only disable it if you have enough free space equal to what's in your home directory. As it sits at 6.5GB right now, I only have 3GB left. I can't disable it.
On a brighter note, I'm about to pick up a 60GB hard drive this afternoon (I'm running on only 20GB now), so I'll be reinstalling from scratch on the new drive this afternoon. I'll make sure not to enable FileVault this time around until it's been heavily patched.
by Nathan Ladd @ 31/10/2003 6:10 pm • Permalink •
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Nathan: Without wishing to appear smug, I was a bit leery of FileVault. Anything which manipulates the whole home directory has almost limitless possibilities for total disaster, in my opinion. I've left it switched off until they sort it out. I've heard of others having problems with it, so you're certainly not alone.
by bsag @ 01/11/2003 7:11 pm • Permalink •
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Mac OS X, Stored Searches, Limited Every since reading bsag (But She's a Girl), comments about Mac OS X's new finder, I've been intrigued by the idea of "stored finds." Now I should state up front, that technically speaking a "stored find" may be less ...
by Wide-eyed & Laughing @ 25/03/2004 4:03 pm • Permalink •
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