Panther Analysis Getting Underway 463
Durin_Deathless writes "Think Secret has posted their first article analyzing the changes from Mac OS X 10.2 to 10.3. In this first installment, they look at the changes to the Installation, System Requirements, the Finder, and some other things.
They have some nice images available too."
Brushed metal (Score:3, Informative)
Isn't Apple violating it's own HIG by making the Finder metal? I though you could only make programs that emulate physical devices metal.
Brushed Metal window frames (Score:5, Informative)
Article in case of /. (Score:-1, Informative)
Inside Panther: A look at the Finder and System, part one (images)
By Nick dePlume, Publisher and Editor in Chief
June 30, 2003 - This is the first installment of our "Inside Panther" series, covering Mac OS X Version 10.3. Check back frequently for additional Panther coverage. Today, we begin looking at updates to the Finder and System.
Before we begin our first report, one important note -- Panther includes a significant number of changes to the Finder and System. As such, we're splitting the Finder/System portion of our "Inside Panther" series into a number of separate parts. Today's report largely deals with the new Finder window, as well as a few notes about installation, but much, much more is in the pipeline.
One of the most significant changes in Panther is the revised Finder interface. The new Finder features the brushed-metal look from iTunes and a new Places sidebar along the left, with quick links to volumes and removable media at the top; and applications, files, and folders at the bottom. With these shortcuts, the Places sidebar replaces some of the previous functionality of the Finder toolbar.
To be quite clear: The brushed-metal look cannot be removed, and is not an "option" that can be switched with an Aqua Finder. However, the Places sidebar is not a required feature, by any means. By clicking on the widget at the upper right-hand corner of the Finder window, it is immediately removed, along with the toolbar. Additionally, the Finder toolbar can still be hidden from a menu, separately from hiding the Places sidebar.
In our screenshots, we show the three basic Finder views, both with and without the Places sidebar. As with Jaguar, Finder windows remember their appearance settings fairly well. While the format of a Places sidebar won't appeal to everyone, just as column view doesn't appeal to everyone, Apple is providing users with a number of ways to customize the look and function of windows. A user who simply wants a plain window with no toolbar or sidebar, with basic folder icons that open up new windows when clicked, like in Mac OS 9, can still do that.
The Places sidebar scales dynamically when Finder windows are resized. All of the items can be rearranged. Files, folders, and applications can be added to the bottom portion, customizing it individually, and files/folders can be moved or copied into folders and volumes that are on the list. However, files cannot be dragged into listed applications to open them in that application. Removable media are listed with a clickable "eject" button to the right.
The new Finder layout is also present in open/save dialog boxes, providing a consistent interface throughout the system.
The new Action menu is included by default in the Finder toolbar -- it does exactly what control-clicking or right-clicking does, by calling up a contextual menu.
File/folder labels can be added through the Action menu or the File menu, and are displayed as the background for the file name in both icon and column view. Both views have their own way of displaying the labels, which differs when the labeled files/folders are selected. See our collection of images for details.
Preview in Panther's column view now displays expanded information, as compared to Jaguar.
The new file search is indeed "live," similar to searching a library of iTunes music, but its response speed is, of course, less than that of searching an iTunes music library, and depends largely on the system. Searches can be applied to local disks, the Home directory, "everywhere," or just folders that have been selected in the Finder.
Icon selection is considerably different in Panther, giving folder and file names a blue background, and highlighting a square area around the icon instead of just highlighting the icon. This is also used, of course, when copying and moving files and folders.
A few quick notes on installation: As with Jaguar, Panther has two CDs, the second being an optional installation o
Re:Brushed Metal window frames (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Brushed Metal window frames (Score:2, Informative)
XCode Screencaps (Score:5, Informative)
Directory encryption already availiable (Score:5, Informative)
I think in Panther they just made this feature accessible "to the rest of us" with no trickery to make it work. Perhaps they wanted to wait for a journaled file system to make this feature official, lest people accidentally corrupt a whole encrypted directory bundle...
Re:Some interesting questions (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
1 WEEK WITH PANTHER (Score:5, Informative)
1. File browser (a la windows) is fast and can be changed back to a "normal" window.
2. Expose is brilliant. Though it may conflict with the screensaver settings when corners are used. I personally like using the f-keys for expose and the corners for the screensaver (activation and deactivation).
3. Faxing is as easy as printing and saving as PDF. You can also have received faxes mailed or printed. Faxing is very very easy in 10.3.
4. Preview.app is faster and works in a similar fashion as Acrobat Reader. Nice.
5. Fast user switching is just brilliant (graphically). It will be very useful when you have a shared machine.
6. Secure "Empty Trash" is a nice feature. I am not sure if I will use it...but someone in my office thinks it is the Holy Grail. I am not that excited about it...but it is probably useful.
7. Color Coded Folders/Files (the text is color coded in actuality) is nice and saves me time when digging for a file or group of files.
8. The "eject" menu icon in the right hand side of the menu bar is interesting. But it only worked with the drive tray. It would be nice if it would eject mounted items and servers.
9. User customization of desktop pics and colors is refined and much friendlier.
10. The print center is much improved.
This is the bad stuff...
1. The fax feature did not integrate well with the address book. BUT...you can have one machine as the dedicated fax machine and all other computers in the office can fax through it.
2. Some photoshop filter controls did not draw correctly on the screen or didn't show up at all.
3. There seemed to be some cut and paste clipboard errors. It seemed to show up in Safari and the Address Book.
4. Quicken 2003 seems to have strange behavior when used in 10.3. But it is usable.
Features that will hopefully show up in the actual release:
1. Piles. I know they seem trivial. But I would like it.
2. Themes. I really like the idea of customizing my OS and maybe tone down Aqua a bit.
3. Multiple docks. One for office apps. One for games. One for graphical/web apps. And in the darkness bind them...
I know this is a preview release...but it is very stable and usable. I cannot wait until the actual release. The fax sharing and abilities are worth the price of the upgrade. The rest is just gravy. My $.02.
Re:Brushed Metal window frames (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Expose! (Score:3, Informative)
First thoughts on Panther (Score:5, Informative)
* Expose rocks. It's awesome. I couldn't imagine working without it again.
* Mail.app has been made a little bit prettier, and a little bit more functional.
* Terminal.app has become usable as my primary terminal. You can now configure it to send Page-Down and Page-Up to the session instead of to Terminal.app's scrollbars.
* I don't like the milky look. I want the pinstripes back.
* The new finder is 2048X better. It's great.
* I really wish they would either go with all brushed metal or all not - at least for the instances that go against the user interface guidelines. Either way, give me back the pinstripes.
* The activity monitor is cool. You can change the colors on those graphs we saw - why they default it with those colors that look like ass, I don't know.
* iTunes rocks. I don't know that much has changed, but that just had to be thrown out there.
* Safari 1.0 (also available for Jaguar, I know) is the best browser I've ever used. They've made some great speed improvements.
* The OS in general just feels a little bit snappier. With my aging iBook, any speed improvements get huge ++'s from me.
Reads NTFS formatted drives (Score:5, Informative)
I have a lot of drives that have been formatted as NTFS. If a computer pukes and dies, it's great to be able to back up the data to my laptop (mac) rather than having to take the drive to a PC to pull the data off.
As of yet the drives are read only, although it does have a non-functional (as of yet) authentication option so who knows.
Xcode info and discussion.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Expose! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Brushed metal and laptops (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Piles? (Score:4, Informative)
It seems that someone missed this, and that "piles" is actually the "Expose" feature in Panther. I got to play with this last night, and it is pretty cool even though it ran like shit (and was expected to) on my spare G4/350 with a feeble video card.
~Philly
Not Violating the HIG (Score:4, Informative)
- Are part of the digital hub
- Emulate a real world device
- Use the "playlist paradigm"
Therefore, Panther is #3, as it has the new sidebar.Re:Because, As We All Know... (Score:4, Informative)
Sure, QuickTime 4's UI was kind of bad, but have youy checked out Windows Media Player 9 lately? Talk about bad interface -- they didn't even include the ability to fast forward or rewind!
~jeff
Re:Brushed metal and laptops (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Open/save dialog boxes vs Finder? (Score:4, Informative)
fix your Safari (Score:4, Informative)
A very useful "no need for getting under the hood" app and worth the donation just for the Aqua.
Re:interesting (Score:4, Informative)
Based on your post, I am assuming you are new to the techie side of things, so I hope I don't offend.
However, it doesn't work like this, a 64bit CPU is not two 32bit CPUS. Besides, running multiple copies of Jaguar would gain you what exactly?
The architecture of OSX allows for multiple process and applications already, running OSX twice would be silly and redundant.
Warning with Macintosh Manager/networking/RAID (Score:3, Informative)
I'm posting this for posterity, not to be critical. Hopefully this will be modded "informative" if anything.
Running a PowerMac G4 450MHz/1GB/2x78GB+1x28GB. The (2) 78GB drives were RAIDed to a single partition with 10.2.6 running smoothly even with heavy Classic operation. Some admin duties include Macintosh Manager and Workgroup Manager.
Installed Panther on the 28GB drive and booted onto that OS. Things were running very smoothly and fast(!). Logged into Workgroup Manager and exited. Logged into Macintosh Manager and this is when trouble started.
My theory is that, because Macintosh Manager auto-mounts the shared volume of the server you are connecting to, this set up a peculiar scenario that Panther was unfamilar with. The next action that I performed was to access a different shared volume (which had been previously mounted and operating fine). That is when I got the wheel of death.
Thinking it was Just Another Wheel, I continued working (Excel, Classic apps, and more) with little trouble. After waiting long enough, I began Force Quitting apps (including the Finder) until all that remained was the Wheel.
Rebooting didn't help, nor did Shutting Down, zapping PRAM, or Disk Utility (which consistently responded with Unknown Error (-9998).
Various efforts were fruitless. Ended up reinstalling 10.2.2, upgrading to 10.2.6. Things are back to normal less data loss.
My bad. I should be more careful.
Well, uh no. (Score:2, Informative)
still occupy contiguous bytes in memory, so there is no provision for multiple instances. Now, the OS may provide as many instances of itself as it wants providing that the OS is written to do this.
Oh, and Boromir was Faramir's Brother. Not his son.
Denethor was their father.
Re:Some interesting questions (Score:3, Informative)
Disk Copy has supported encrypted partitions (eg: files that mount as drives when you open them) since 10.1, which is what I've been using.
I have not noticed performance issues with using them, except for when I occasionally copy a 20-50 megabyte movie onto them. Then I go "oh yeah, that's encrypted"
I'd prefer more than AES 128, and hopefully the keychain will be removable (Eg: you can put it on a flash USB device so that absent of it, the computer has no keys) in Panther.
Security in OS X is pretty good yet still conveneint, even in Jaguar.
Re:Brushed metal and laptops (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My unanswered questions. (mail) (Score:3, Informative)
X11 was a seperate install just like it is now. How well it is intigrated is a different thing which I didnt get a chance to play with.
Re:New interface + speed (Score:2, Informative)
- The text display system has been optimized to hell.
- The Quartz graphics engine has also taken truckloads of optimizations (finally it doesn't invalidate the union of all invalidated rectangles. That was Evil).
Some other things might have also gotten a speed check, but those two should make using Panther a better deal than Jaguar for most mac people (particularly those with older machines).
Hope that helps...
Re:I love the Places sidebar! - the Shelf! (Score:3, Informative)