First Impressions--Apple's New Panther (Mac OS X 10.3)

Our copies arrived yesterday afternoon and we installed Panther on serveral Macs right away. Here are our first impressions.

What's In The Box? Panther, including the developer tools now called Xcode Tools, is contained on four CDs. Five documents are also included: "Welcome to Panther," "Mac OS X Panther v10.3 Installation and Setup Guide," Apple Software Proof-of-Purchase Coupons, a license statement and an "AppleCare Service and Support Guide."

Installation was seamless if not quick. Panther's installer chose the Upgrade option in all cases since we were already running Mac OS X 10.2.8 and that is what we used. The alternatives were Archive & Install or Erase & Install. The former is like a Classic Mac OS clean install that basically replaces the system folders. It will require that you reinstall any applications that placed items in Mac OS X's system folders but your home folder and network preferences will be saved. We recommend the Archive & Install option for maximum safety, especially if you have installed any haxies or applications that modify the Library or System folders.--Desktop Folder X 1.8 and APE 1.3 are known problems and should be uninstalled first. Desktop Folder X 1.9 and APE 1.4.1 are fine.

Here are some initial salient observations:

Finder: We really like the new Finder. It is much more efficiently designed and, best of all, it is significantly faster.

Exposé: This new included function is really cool. It works great but we will have to get used to the hot corners. We keep blasting our windows off the screen inadvertently.

Mail: This application wins our most significantly improved app award, beating out the Finder in our opinion. The new v1.3 (Build 606) version of Mail is fast, very fast compared the previous versions.