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Published On: Dec 09, 2003 10:42 AM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Dec 09, 2003 10:42 AM
Panther first reactions
Wow, I sure did enjoy that extra hour from Daylight
Saving Time. Half of it was spent enjoying some extended sleep time (since it
felt like a gift it just seemed so much more enjoyable!) and the rest of the
time was spent tuning my Powermac with its new
OS X 10.3
Panther operating system. There have been a few
noticeable bugs that made it not quite the smoothest installation, but I'd
rather have it now and let Apple finish polishing it than to wait until December
or later. A couple of reactions:
Wow, I sure did enjoy that extra hour from Daylight
Saving Time. Half of it was spent enjoying some extended sleep time (since it
felt like a gift it just seemed so much more enjoyable!) and the rest of the
time was spent tuning my Powermac with its new OS X 10.3 Panther
operating system.
There have been a few noticeable bugs that made it not quite the smoothest installation, but I'd rather have it now and let Apple finish polishing it than to wait until December or later. A couple of reactions:
Exposé is indeed great. It is the most noticeable improvement to the user interface and it is wonderful. Expect Microsoft to clone this feature in their next iteration of Windows. It's just too great to be ignored! Even cooler: I had bought a Microsoft optical mouse for my Mac a long time age. (Intellimouse Explorer USB to be specific.) This mouse has the typical three buttons on top (the middle button doubling as a scroll wheel) and two additional buttons on the side where your thumb curls around. So I've always wondered what a person would want with a 5-button mouse. Guess what! You can easily set up the three Exposé buttons to activate with buttons 3, 4 and 5 (the middle and two side buttons). Suddenly navigating among all your windows is a snap! Everyone should go get a 5-button mouse for their Macs right away!
Scheduled Power-up is a feature nobody has written about, but it rocks! This falls under the "How the Hell do they do it?" and "Let's see your PC do THAT!" categories. In a nutshell, you can setup your Mac to automatically turn itself on (and off) at scheduled times! I have my Powermac set to turn on at 7am. I powered down completely last night. Guess what? My computer was up and running when I opened my groggy eyes this morning! How the Hell did they manage that? It's magic!
Windows Networking (SAMBA) integration still needs work. There's a Network navigation icon on the new Finder's sidebar that makes it easier to access folders/shares on network computers. You no longer have to formally "mount" the folder. I keep my iTunes (mp3) library on a big Samba share on my Linux server and access it from all four other computers in my apartment. The iTunes application is decent about indexing music files that are stored on the network, but before iTunes can actually access those files I have to manually pull up the Finder and click over to the music folder so OS X will quietly mount the volume. There's no way to automatically mount a networking volume upon login.
Another glitch: if you mount a Windows (SAMBA) network folder in one account, you can't access that same share from another account unless you completely reboot the computer! I can understand given the whole UNIX underpinnings what's going on with automount and why it's not a non-trivial problem to solve, but this is still lame.
There were a few buggy behaviors I encountered. Exposé kinda wigged out when I was setting the mouse buttons, although it behaved perfectly once I logged out and into my account. The login screen for some reason turns the mouse pointer the same blue shade as the background so it's easy to lose. It turns back to normal the moment I click on something. There are things like that.
Well, that's enough about Panther for now. I've got to get some work done on that master's paper today. I might as well be lurking in my apartment because it's still hot as Hell outside. Who said it could be pushing 100 degrees in late October? That's simply wrong. Mix that with all the ash in the air from the huge raging fires and it combines to make an unpleasant week here in Los Angeles! Ick!
There have been a few noticeable bugs that made it not quite the smoothest installation, but I'd rather have it now and let Apple finish polishing it than to wait until December or later. A couple of reactions:
Exposé is indeed great. It is the most noticeable improvement to the user interface and it is wonderful. Expect Microsoft to clone this feature in their next iteration of Windows. It's just too great to be ignored! Even cooler: I had bought a Microsoft optical mouse for my Mac a long time age. (Intellimouse Explorer USB to be specific.) This mouse has the typical three buttons on top (the middle button doubling as a scroll wheel) and two additional buttons on the side where your thumb curls around. So I've always wondered what a person would want with a 5-button mouse. Guess what! You can easily set up the three Exposé buttons to activate with buttons 3, 4 and 5 (the middle and two side buttons). Suddenly navigating among all your windows is a snap! Everyone should go get a 5-button mouse for their Macs right away!
Scheduled Power-up is a feature nobody has written about, but it rocks! This falls under the "How the Hell do they do it?" and "Let's see your PC do THAT!" categories. In a nutshell, you can setup your Mac to automatically turn itself on (and off) at scheduled times! I have my Powermac set to turn on at 7am. I powered down completely last night. Guess what? My computer was up and running when I opened my groggy eyes this morning! How the Hell did they manage that? It's magic!
Windows Networking (SAMBA) integration still needs work. There's a Network navigation icon on the new Finder's sidebar that makes it easier to access folders/shares on network computers. You no longer have to formally "mount" the folder. I keep my iTunes (mp3) library on a big Samba share on my Linux server and access it from all four other computers in my apartment. The iTunes application is decent about indexing music files that are stored on the network, but before iTunes can actually access those files I have to manually pull up the Finder and click over to the music folder so OS X will quietly mount the volume. There's no way to automatically mount a networking volume upon login.
Another glitch: if you mount a Windows (SAMBA) network folder in one account, you can't access that same share from another account unless you completely reboot the computer! I can understand given the whole UNIX underpinnings what's going on with automount and why it's not a non-trivial problem to solve, but this is still lame.
There were a few buggy behaviors I encountered. Exposé kinda wigged out when I was setting the mouse buttons, although it behaved perfectly once I logged out and into my account. The login screen for some reason turns the mouse pointer the same blue shade as the background so it's easy to lose. It turns back to normal the moment I click on something. There are things like that.
Well, that's enough about Panther for now. I've got to get some work done on that master's paper today. I might as well be lurking in my apartment because it's still hot as Hell outside. Who said it could be pushing 100 degrees in late October? That's simply wrong. Mix that with all the ash in the air from the huge raging fires and it combines to make an unpleasant week here in Los Angeles! Ick!
Posted: Sun - October 26, 2003 at 12:56 PM