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My wife is resigned to the fact that she's a bit of a computer widow. Sometimes more than a bit, but I do make time for her on occasion. Anyhow, it was no surprise to her that I wanted to go off to the Apple Store at the Glendale Galleria (in California) last Friday to wait for Panther's release. My son had a potluck to go to and my wife wasn't all that interested, so I went off by myself.

The store is normally open to 9p.m. on Friday nights, but on this night they were going to shut the doors at about 7:30 to "set things up." I got to the mall early, went to the Apple store, looked around, and then went downstairs to the food court and had dinner. About 6:45, or so, I went to see how long the line was. It was short, only some six people. I had a book with me (Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them—great book, by the way)—so I sat on the floor and wished I had brought up my lawn chair like the person two people ahead of me did. Since I'm a soccer dad, I always have one of those things in the back of my car. I consoled myself that, as I didn't have it with me, I wouldn't have to lug it around the store once we were let in. As it turned out, that was a good thing. I sat on the floor and read.

Occasionally strangers would walk up to our line and ask what we were doing and someone would state "The new OS is coming out tonight," or something to that effect. This was greeted with an even more confused expression until someone said it was new software for operating the Macintosh. This person would then nod as if that meant something important and walked away with a bit of an extra rush in his step.

In these people's defense, a surprisingly large number of Mac users didn't even bother to show up Friday night. At least most of the Mac users would have known what an OS is. Well, I'd like to think so.

By 7:50 there were over a hundred people in line and the anticipation was...well, we were all ready. At this point, some Apple employees were handing out raffle cards (to win an iMac) for us to fill out our contact information. I had a pen and filled out my card. The guy in front of me asked if he could borrow my pen. "Sure," I said. "Go ahead." When he was done, the guy behind me asked if he could borrow my pen. "No problem," I said. The he handed my pen to his son who then handed my pen to his uncle, the brother of the guy who originally asked me.

Such is life. Here I was, being a nice guy letting strangers borrow my pen, but, at the same time, I was decreasing my chances of winning the raffle. I'm such a nice guy. If I wasn't so nice, I would have said, "No, you can't because you will decrease my chances of wining!!" But I'm a nice guy, so I didn't say that. But, if I ever find out that one of these people won the iMac, I'll never lend out my pen again.

By 7:59, an employee from the store called out asking if we were "...ready to get Panther." This was greeted by a bunch of nods from the line. She called out, "I can't hear you!"

"Yeah," a few finally answered back.

"What?!" she called out again.

"Yeah!" more called out, realizing the employee was trying to build excitement.

"Are you ready for Panther!?!" she called out one last time.

"Yessss!!!!" the line finally roared back.

We could now pass into the store.

As we walked into the store, the first thing you are greeted with (after you pass through the gauntlet of employees cheering you on past them) was the cash register. Two people got in line and although I hadn't thought of it, I also got in line after them. Since there were over a hundred people coming into the store, this was probably going to be the shortest line I was going to see that night. This proved to be a wise decision.

I observed one interesting thing while waiting in line. There is constant debate of who pirates software more: Mac users or PC users. Of course the numbers say that PC users do—there are more of them to start out with. But I'm talking about a percentage basis. I don't have any way to say one way or the other, but I observed the two people in front of me purchased the Panther OS family pack. One of the two purchased one family pack and one regular pack. (For those of you who don't know, a regular pack ($129) and is good for one OS to be placed on one computer. It would be computer piracy to place a regular package on more than one computer. A family pack ($199) is good for up to 5 computers.) I also bought a family pack. There is nothing beyond honesty stopping someone from installing Panther in more than one computer. That meant that the first three people in the store's line were willing to spend the extra $70 and be good citizens. I was impressed. This is not scientific, but it is interesting.

As I went to pay for my purchase I had my big disappointment for the night: no t-shirts. Everyone who came into the store got a set of dog tags. That's it, just some dog tags. Those of us who bought Panther got an Apple bag to take it home. As I did get a very expensive t-shirt when I bought my son his iPod (and he got the free iPod that came with the very expensive t-shirt), when you bought Panther, you got a bag. Wait a minute, when I bought the iPod, I got a t-shirt and an Apple bag. Hummm.

Well, now that that was over, I walked around the store to see what had changed from my earlier look-see. One of the things I was expecting to see was where the stacks of Jaguar (X.2) had been now had stacks of Panther (X.3). In the back of the store a presentation was just starting to show the nifty benefits of Panther. I was wondering where the moderator was going to go with his presentation when he said that the benefits of Panther made this a bigger OS change for Mac users than any other upgrade ever—even bigger than the switch to OS X! I was eager to see this.

The presenter showed us the differences with windows in the new Finder (sort of a left-sided Dock), demonstrated Exposé (without a doubt, the biggest nifty thing in Panther for many users), and switching between various users (nifty, cool looking and wonderful for those with multiple users, but not of much use to those of us who are alone on our machines). He showed us iChat, also cool, and talked about the encryption features (important), and a few other things, and then said that's about it. Well, I had already purchased my copy so I was sold before I came in. I'm not sure if any of the people who came into the store with the intent to purchase might have been dissuaded not to purchase after the presentation, but it probably wasn't too many. I doubt any.

I looked around some more and saw people looking and buying. Apple did have a sale Friday evening in which any Mac was 10% off that night. If you bought Panther, anything in the store was 10% off. I still wanted my t-shirt, but went home and installed Panther. It's working just fine thank you.

By the way, if you have OS X on your computer and want the least amount of potential problems, do this (as you should with any system update):

1. Repair permissions (go into your Applications folder -> then into your Utilities folder, find Disk Utility and click on the First Aid tab and run Repair Permissions).
2. Run DiskWarrior (read review) - You have a copy, no?
3. Run Norton (read review) - If you have a copy.
4. Do a final back up of everything that's important on your hard drive. Of course you do this all the time, right?
5. Install Panther.

If you are starting your OS X trek with Panther and are leaving OS 9, do everything above, but leave out step one.

Lastly, if you use Default Folder and do not have the latest version (v1.9.1), go to St. Clair Software and download the new version. Previous versions of Default Folder and Panther do not get along. In fact, it may be a good idea to check the websites of your important apps to see if they're Panther ready.

Happy f9-ing everyone.

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