Mac OS X 'Panther': User at the Center 550
MatthewRothenberg writes "Over at eWEEK, we believe we've got the drop on the much-discussed interface enhancements to Mac OS X 10.3, a k a Panther: The theme of this September release will be 'User at the Center,' an umbrella term for a variety of new features aimed at leapfrogging Microsoft when it comes to pervasive, user-focused computing. Niceties include user-configurable 'piles,' a fast-user-switching-type feature, and easy transferral of home directories among devices and the Web. Oh, and it's mo' definitely 64-bit-complete, too."
Re:Will Font Smoothing be less horrid? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Piles? (Score:5, Informative)
http://homepage.mac.com/rdas7/piles.html
New Journaling System (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Piles system (Score:5, Informative)
I actually think Apple's switched to a new version numbering sceme: 10.x.x. The 10 is constant (a marketing number basically), and the x.x is the 'real' version number.
So basically the current version is 2.5, and Panther is version 3.0.
Re:Piles (Score:5, Informative)
"Apple holds a patent on this one. Developed by Gitta Salomon and her team close to a decade ago, a pile is a loose grouping of documents. Its visual representation is an overlay of all the documents within the pile, one on top of the other, rotated to varying degrees. In other words, a pile on the desktop looked just like a pile on your real desktop.
To view the documents within the pile, you clicked on the top of the pile and drew the mouse up the screen. As you did so, one document after another would appear as a thumbnail next to the pile. When you found the one you were looking for, you would release the mouse and the current document would open.
Piles, unlike today's folders, gave you a lot of hints as to their contents. You could judge the number of documents in the pile by its height. You could judge its composition very rapidly by pulling through it."
Re:New Journaling System (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Piles (Score:5, Informative)
My understanding is that piles don't... (Score:5, Informative)
replace folders - they are strictly an organizational metaphor, nothing to do with how files are actaully stashed away.
mirror (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, dear. Looks like I'll have to mirror the original [virginia.edu].
heh.
Re:hm? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, the reason /. is reporting Apple news a lot is that all the /. crew bought powerbooks and have become born-again Mac users ;-)
Re:The question I can't find an answer to anywhere (Score:1, Informative)
http://store.apple.com/AppleStore/WebObjects/Bi
Re:Doesn't matter do your research (Score:2, Informative)
Here is the scoop on Apple Laptops [oscast.com]
Orthogonal, baby! (Score:4, Informative)
Also, you can browse through your pile effectively, and you can tell by looking at the pile roughly how much stuff is in it, and possibly (it's been talked about) how old it is or how long since it's been touched by how much dust and spider web it's collected.
A lot of people are excited by this and have talked about it for a long time, so I hope it will be good. Only actual use will tell though.
Re:What should be improved to beat others (Score:3, Informative)
Drag your "Applications" folder into the dock.
Click-and-hold for a second
Blammo, instant "Start Menu"...and you can do it for any folder you want.
Re:Will Font Smoothing be less horrid? (Score:4, Informative)
1. Add RAM.
2. Newer, faster HDD.
3. Add RAM.
4. The dock settings:
Shrink the dock down as small as you can, and still use it.
Magnification off
Possition whatever you like.
Minimize using Scale Effect.
Uncheck Animate opening applications.
Uncheck Automaticly hide and show the dock.
5. Did I mention add RAM.
This is what I did to my 266Mhz Wallstreet, 192Meg RAM, 20 Gig HDD, and it is quite useable. A little slow opening apps, but quite useable otherwise.
With all the Dock eye candy turned on, it was unusable.
Re:What should be improved to beat others (Score:2, Informative)
Jaguar did a lot to help with this problem. Apple added conditional macros to allow compiling for specific versions, and they added weak linking so you use new features on new versions of the OS but still run on older versions.
The solutions are nowhere near as easy to use as they were in CFM (starting with the first PowerPCs), but at least they've added the capability to MachO.
Mark
Re:Piles? (Score:2, Informative)
No, they're raster images. But here's the thing. Icons under Quartz Extreme are implemented as geometry. That is, they're OpenGL squares with the icon image projected on them as textures. Under Jaguar, icons are implemented as billboards; they scale, but they don't rotate. In Panther, they may-- MAY-- be implemented as full-fledged OpenGL geometry objects, spinning and flipping around and whatnot.
Re:Fast User Switching? (Score:2, Informative)
Not to mention the security issues with Windows Terminal Services, which is a prerequisite for the FUS service. Now I'm aware that XP's security is not OS X's problem, but the fundamental things I dislike about the whole Fast Switching concept will remain.
Re:New Journaling System (Score:4, Informative)
Replace "/" with other volumes (/Volumes/foo/ and /Volumes/bar/ for example) if you have them on your system.
Easy (Score:3, Informative)
One word: rsync [anu.edu.au].
-Waldo Jaquith
Re:OS X font smoothing kicks `Cleartype`s ass (Score:3, Informative)
OS X Icons (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Leapfrogging? (Score:5, Informative)
To have a roaming profile, what MS calls roaming home directory, you must authenticate into a domain and have a domain controller available. This is fine in a corporate environment, but most Windows users (other than my esteemed colleagues here on Slashdot) wouldn't know what those terms mean, let alone how to implement them. Then there is the matter of how roaming profiles are actually implemented. When you log onto a system, your home directory, preferences, registry settings, and everything else that makes up your profile is copied from a Windows share to your local host. And when you log off, it is copied back to that share. Notice, I didn't say changes were copied. That's right Sparky, the WHOLE thing gets copied back to the server. And the next time you log on, it does it all over again. Now considering how things like Outlook OST files tend to get large, or as we in the industry like to say, "F*$&@%G HUGE", that means that you get to slog this data back and forth across your network each time a user logs on/off their system. Now, do that for a 5000 user company. Have fun.
So, apple has the opportunity here to do it MUCH better. After all, when you only have to aim as high as "I think I'll just copy everything on my computer every time I log on/off", its pretty easy. So yeah, maybe they will "leapfrog".
- Peace
No wonder it's horrid... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That stuff about the home folder (Score:3, Informative)
> switch our home folder to a different partition or disk.
That's already easy... simplistic even. It's the first thing I did when I switched to OS X, actually. Two commands in the terminal, and you're all set:
mv
ln -s
I don't remember if you have to log out and back in for this to take. I did it as root from the console just to be sure. But in any event, you're all set. If you want to be extra careful, you could ditto the directories over and double check that they made it before rm'ing the originals and making the symlink, I suppose.
I have my own Macintosh set up with a 7200rpm 20GB hard drive for the OS, swap space, applications, and the like; plus a slower (cheaper) 5200rpm 100GB drive on which all my files, including home directories, live. Works quite nicely.
And it does have the advantage that, if I seriously fsck up the system (I haven't met an OS yet (well, except for OS/390... but I never really got to mess with it very much.) that I haven't hosed at SOME point), I can just blast that drive clean and start over without having to worry about recovering my files and data!
cya,
john
Changes to the iBook line today, too. (Score:1, Informative)
(Not Whoring)
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:2, Informative)
Not that there's anything wrong with Klipsches, but it should be pointed out that the sound systems on most current Apple models were designed by the good folks of Harmon Kardon.
The first two (much larger) ones [CPU, Motherboard] are an unavoidable effect of having a non-standard hardware platform.
Apples use PowerPC CPU's, which are also used by Motorola in a lot of embedded applications, and by IBM in their servers. If a chip design is being heavilly used by more than three major NASDAQ players, is it really still "proprietary" just because you can't use it in your home-brew budget Windows box?
Also, the motherboards, while not designed to cram into ATX cases, are made up almost entirely of very standard components and design concepts. The only major difference is Apple's boot ROM's. The ATA connections for the drives, the memory bus, the PCI and AGP connections, the USB and Firewire ports... all very similar to the parts you would see on your better Pentium and Athlon motherboards. I find it hard to believe that the motherboards that Apple makes are that much more expensive than the ones that go into Dells.
The real cost of Apples is the markup to finance their R&D, QA, etc. Plus, their higher profit margin per machine allows them to thrive and survive as a niche player.
Re:The question I can't find an answer to anywhere (Score:1, Informative)
Sorry to burst your bubble! I got the same kind of thing with my iBook (shipped with 10.2) and I expect they won't be valid for 10.3. Hell, I don't think I even saved them.
Re:If so, that's really bad. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The question I can't find an answer to anywhere (Score:3, Informative)
10% speed improvement. It's also 10% faster than the almost identical code running
on Windows and Mac OS9. Again, this was free for the download. Plus, nothing
(at least for me) broke after the upgrade unlike countless Windows updates I've
done through the years. It's also packaged cleanly; a couple clicks, wait a little bit,
and everything works better. Paying $120 a year for Apple's diligence is a bargain.
It also appears that Apple has developers working on improving things beyond just
fixing bugs and adding features to leverage market share. From my point of view,
if a developer at Apple owns a piece of code, he continually works to make it as good
as it can be, as a commitment to excellence. With all of the Windows I've bought and
installed over the years, that seems to be the last thing on the list, by corporate edict.
With Linux, it seems like the effort is mainly just to put out something and
they are still playing catchup to Sun and SGI, with a small touch of Windows envy.
At $100 a year, even if Apple saves you 10 hours of trouble and distraction over that
year, isn't your time worth at least $10 an hour?
OS X is not only a bargain, it's downright cheap!
Re:Will Font Smoothing be less horrid? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:os x is user-unfriendly (Score:1, Informative)
Clue: It's ALWAYS the first (leftmost) word in the menu bar.