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Yesterday afternoon, Apple announced that Mac OS X version 10.3 “Panther” will ship on October 24 beginning at 8:00 p.m.

Among more than 150 new features are a completely new Finder that provides one-click access to a user’s favorite files and folders, Exposé, a new way to instantly see all open windows at once; and iChat AV, a complete desktop video conferencing solution for business, education and consumers.

Top New Panther Features in brief
• Finder
Find everything you need just a click away.
• Exposé
Quickly tile open windows and reveal files on your desktop.
• iChat AV
Talk face-to-face over the Internet with top-notch video.
• FileVault
Secure your documents with AES-128 encryption.
• Fast User Switching
Change users without logging out of your applications.
• Mail
Follow the thread of any discussion and block junk mail.
• iDisk
Access your iDisk when you’re not connected.
• Preview
Scroll through and search PDFs faster than before.
• Font Book
Find, organize and manage all the fonts on your Mac.
• Based on UNIX
Industrial-strength stability, with X11 and FreeBSD 5.
• Works with Windows
Access your Exchange email and sync your Address Book.
• Xcode
Develop Mac OS X applications with powerful, elegant tools.

Apple says that Panther’s redesigned Finder is up to six times faster than Mac OS X version 10.2 “Jaguar,” which certainly does have plenty of room for improvement in that context. The new Finder provides one-click access by putting a user’s favorite folders, storage, servers and iDisk in one convenient location. I’ll reserve judgment on how convenient that will be until I try it. The new Finder also offers dynamic browsing of the network for Mac, Windows and UNIX file servers.

Panther’s new Exposé feature visually unshuffles overlapping windows on the desktop into an organized thumbnail view so a user can instantly locate and switch to any open window or get to any file on the desktop. Sounds promising, but why not also include a windowshading option? Stubbornness?

Other new features in Panther include:
• Fast User Switching to elegantly switch between active users without having to quit applications or log out (sounds like a great enhancement);
• FileVault, which uses the latest security standards and 128-bit encryption technology to ensure that data in the home directory is kept secure and private at all times (good if you need it, I guess);
• Font Book, a new application that provides system-level font management with double-click font preview, one-click installation and an intuitive interface for managing font collections, and activating or deactivating fonts;
• What is claimed to be the world’s fastest PDF reader in a significantly improved Preview application, with super-fast text searching that builds an instant index of search results in a PDF, text selection and copying, URL support and support for the PDF 1.4 format;
• A fully integrated iDisk that increases productivity by automatically syncing a user’s offline work to their .Mac Internet server storage once they’re online again, so users can work locally on files with hard drive speeds and have them synced automatically back to their iDisk later;
• Enhanced Mail, with advanced spam filtering technology and the ability to organize mail into convenient threads to make it easy to read, file or delete related emails;
• A new Address Book that includes powerful new features for printing labels and easily notifying contacts when a user’s personal information changes;
• Integrated faxing synced with the Address Book so sending and receiving faxes is as easy as printing, and includes support for adding cover pages (this is very welcome news - I’m still booting back into OS 9 and good old GlobalFax for occasional faxing needs);
• Enhanced Windows compatibility that ensures files, printers and network services can easily be shared with Windows users. Support for Microsoft Exchange is built into Mail and Address Book to make it easy to access Exchange email and sync address book entries;
• Advancements to the open-standard UNIX-based foundation, including support for the latest open source libraries, commands and technologies, X11 applications, IPv6, Kerberos integration and a greatly improved NFS file system;
• Xcode, the fastest way to create Mac OS X applications. Xcode combines an easy-to-use interface with proven developer tools such as GCC 3.3 to make it easy for developers to take advantage of the latest technologies from Apple; and
• The latest versions of iSync, iCal, iPhoto, iMovie, the iTunes Music Store and Safari.

Mac OS X version 10.3 “Panther” will sell for a suggested retail price of $129 (US) for a single user license. Visitors to The Apple Store (http://www.apple.com) can pre-order copies of Panther. The Mac OS X Panther Family Pack is a single-residence, five-user license that will be available for a suggested retail price of $199 (US).

A sour note is that while the standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchase a new Mac system on or after October 8, and and customers who purchase the Mac OS X version 10.2 “Jaguar” retail product on or after October 8 for a shipping and handling fee of $19.95 (US), a $19.95 upgrade to Panther is being extended to Power Mac G5 owners regardless of purchase date. So what are all those folks who have taken delivery of the new PowerBooks introduced last month in Paris, long after the G5 rollout -- chopped liver? Hey Steve, isn’t this supposed to be “the year of the laptop? Why does Apple do stuff like this? It smacks of hair-splitting cheapness and is obvious discrimination among different classes of Apple customer.

As Dan Gillmore, who bought a new PowerBook last week, comments:

Yup; that about sums it up.

Note that the October 8 cutoff applies to the invoice date, not the purchase date. So if you purchased a Mac or Apple laptop before October 8, but it hasn’t yet shipped, you should still be abor to get Panther for $19.95.

The Panther Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade program ends on December 26, 2003. Your order must be postmarked or faxed by December 17, 2003.

For more information, visit:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/
http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate/list.html

Panther requires a minimum of 128MB of memory and is designed to run on the following Apple products with built-in USB support: iMac, iBook, Power Macintosh G3, Power Mac G4, Power Mac G4 Cube, Power Mac G5, PowerBook G3, PowerBook G4.

Note that the list of supported Mac models supported by Panther no longer includes G3 Macs that do not have onboard USB (i.e. The PowerBook G3 WallStreet and Beige G3/AIO G3 which were on the supported list for 10.1 and 10.2).

Accelerate Your Mac has a commentary on that issue:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/

The article notes that:

For more information, visit:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Søren Theilgaard of Theilgaard Consult writes:

I have written a guide for Mac OS X Server 10.2, called “Mac OS X Server - The additional guide for some of the UNIX stuff!.”, which has just been updated to version 1.2.1.

The focus of this update is to make the guide even more useful for beginners. It contains a lot of improved descriptions about Open Directory, mail server and many other topics. The guide include topics like DNS server (BIND), Open Directory and NetInfo (and Password Server), Apple Mail Server, File Services (incl. WebDAV), Web Services (Apache, SSL encryption), as well as a new troubleshooting section. The guide contains a detailed index, so that information is easy to find.

It’s available in pdf and new users can register for US $20. Chapter 1-3 is free, and can be downloaded from the Web site below:

http://www.theilgaard.dk/articles/MOSXSconfig/index.html

I hope you will post this information to your readers.

Yours sincerely
Søren Theilgaard
IT-consultant, M.Sc.Eng.

Theilgaard Consult
Toggangen 30
DK-2730 Herlev
Telephone: +45 44 53 01 79 / +45 28 11 01 70
Web site: http://www.theilgaard.dk/

The OS X Odyssey archives may be accessed here:
http://www.applelinks.com/news/odyssey/

CM

Charles W. Moore

Cool Mac Gear