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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Jaguar is Over 835

Steve Jobs announced the end of Jaguar, and the newness of Panther, today at his WWDC keynote address. Panther is to be available as a preview release now, and by the end of the year retail, for $129.
Mac OS X 10.3 / Panther has 100 major new features, according to Jobs. Lower-level enhancements include NFS file locking, built-in X11, FreeBSD 5.0, IPsec-based VPN, and various SMB and Active Directory enhancements.

The Panther Finder is brand-new, with a new brushed metal appearance, and enhanced column view, with the items used most commonly in the far left column. Searching is "live" and a lot faster, and is more user-centric instead of computer-centric.

The Finder now has labels, and icons can resize with window resizing.

The iDisk now caches itself locally, so it can be used offline, and the user can copy to and from it more efficiently (with the real copies happening in the background).

A new feature called Expose allows minimizing into a smaller window, all open windows, to temporarily move everything out of the way, sort of like workspaces.

File Vault can encrypt a user directory and decrypt it "on the fly."

Faxing is now built-in, and available system-wide.

Pixlet is a new compression codec that does video compression without noticable artifacts, for 48 bits per pixel: at 960x540 and 24 fps, can be decoded on a 1GHz Power Mac.

Preview is significantly faster, with searching, and PS to PDF conversion.

Panther features fast user switching, a feature in Windows XP, allowing under-one-second (on the demo machine) switching between two different users.

FontBook is a new "pro" app for font management.

iChat AV is an update to iChat that does audio and video conferencing in addition to text, that works with any built-in or USB mic, and any DV video camera, connecting using only a user's screen name. It is going to beta today, and will be included in Panther, and will be sold for $29 to Jaguar users. Apple will sell iSight for $149, a small camera that does audio and video over FireWire.

Apple is preparing a new set of developer tools called XCode, which works with GCC 3.3, does distributed compiles (using available resources on the network), and has other cool stuff. It is fast, it has improved searching (like the Finder, and over entire projects), and it looks like an iApp (though it isn't metal). It removes the need to link; onnly link objects you need to launch. It starts compiling while you are editing, cutting the time you need to compile drastically. It can modify the program while it is running.

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Jaguar is Over

Comments Filter:
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:13PM (#6275355)
    Per above "Lower-level enhancements include NFS file locking, built-in X11, FreeBSD 5.0, " Now that is what I call an enhancement! Running an OS inside an OS, hummmm emulation?
  • Very Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ajiva ( 156759 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:14PM (#6275382)
    OSX is definitly very, very impressive. With regular updates (every ~6-9months), Apple will be so far ahead before Longhorn comes out, that MS might actually have to try to compete! All I can say is that as a long time PC fan, way to go Apple
  • by Ciderx ( 524837 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:16PM (#6275434)
    Its insanity to kill off an OS after 1 year. How on earth are you meant to develop the system, deploy and support these OSes if they are forcing upgrades all the time. The only place these have is in home machines where they don't have these enterprise considerations. If Microsoft did this sort of thing, they'd be rightly roasted on here...
  • by Equuleus42 ( 723 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:17PM (#6275440) Homepage
    Steve Jobs just confirmed at the WWDC Keynote [macworld.com] that Apple systems with the PPC970 are a reality! No word yet on availability.
  • It's TRUE !!!! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nether ( 221468 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:18PM (#6275481)
    1.6 Ghz -- 800 Mhz FSB
    1.8 Ghz -- 900 Mhz FSB
    Dual 2.0 Ghz -- 1 Ghz FSB ...

    Straight from his Stevie-ness.
  • by Blue Lozenge ( 444566 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:22PM (#6275542) Homepage
    It's a beautiful thing, because you can still use OS 10.0 if you want to, but they add so many features, bells, whistles and in general cool stuff - people really want to get the newest version of their software.

    I wish it were that simple. If you want to run the latest applications, then no, you can't use OS 10.0. Most apps require 10.2, and almost all others require 10.1.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:27PM (#6275609)
    Jaguar is not the OS, OS X is the OS. It is not being "killed off after a year," simply upgraded to a new version. No one is being forced to upgrade, nor will developers be forced to optimize for 10.3 (the minimum requirements for new software will probably continue to be 10.2, which was the first Really Stable release).

    Comparing actual improvements and new features to a bundle of bug fixes in an OS that didn't work in the first place is.. well.. missing the point.

    In any case, "enterprise" is clearly not Apple's target market, with the exception of graphics houses and the like. Corporate America can go right on crunching numbers in Excel on the gray boxes.
  • Brushed Metal == ugh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Garthnak ( 110033 ) * on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:27PM (#6275615) Journal
    Am I the only one who doesn't like the iTunes/Safari/etc. "Brushed Metal" look? And now they're doing it to the beautiful Finder? I can't imagine that I'm the only one who thinks it looks significantly less pretty than the simpler white look. The dark gray is just too intrusive and distracting, and it just doesn't LOOK as nice. I mean, here..

    http://www.studio2f.com/misc/images/1946sPanther -1 1-med.jpg

    Why is that better than this?:

    http://www.apple.com/macosx/jaguar/finder.html

    I ask you. Am I alone here?
  • by zulux ( 112259 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:27PM (#6275617) Homepage Journal
    A single fix turnaround in Xcode takes about 3 seconds on average.


    If this works - this may change the way people develope large C++ projects.

    I typically imbed a small parer into all of my large apps so I can quickly tweak the behavoiur of the app without a compile/link cycle.

    IF I can tweak things and compile/like at this speed - who cares?

  • by dochood ( 614876 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:28PM (#6275634)
    I just started using Macs, after using Windows and Linux for years...

    I'll pay the extra, because I don't have to screw around with it to get stuff to work the way I want, like I did Linux and Windows.

    Call it "dumb" if you like, but it works for me. I'm not "dumb", but I'll admit to be "cheap" (hoping for cheaper upgrade this time around...)

    dochood
  • by dubstop ( 136484 ) * on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:34PM (#6275722)
    I agree with you. As a customer of theirs, I don't feel like I've been treated particularly well by them.

    In the last year, I've spent more than $200 in total on an OS upgrade, and a subscription to the email service that was free when I bought my Mac and signed up for it. I might just about be able to think that this was ok, if it weren't for the fact that Apple now seem to be refusing to release a firmware update for my 5-Gig iPod, despite (from what I hear) there being no reason for withholding it, other than to force me into buying a new one. I bought one of the first iPods to be sold in this country and now Apple, in order to milk more money out of me, is punishing me for being an early-adopter.

    I don't think that I'll be buying Panther, and I'm seriously considering not renewing my .mac subscription. Enough is enough.

  • by p0ppe ( 246551 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:50PM (#6275969) Homepage
  • by prockcore ( 543967 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:56PM (#6276065)
    Personally, I see Apple forcing their users to upgrade since they don't make it simple for developers to write their code once and have it run on all their system versions.

    Don't forget about all the software that requires 10.2, like Safari. Those of us who haven't spent the $130 for Jaguar can't run Safari... MS may be evil, but they never forced me to buy a new version of windows to get the latest web browser.
  • by mbourgon ( 186257 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:59PM (#6276098) Homepage
    Hell, several sites are doing running updates. Updates every minute or so. I wish Slashdot was doing that, actually, as all the other sites are, um, "slashdotted".
  • by nate1138 ( 325593 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @02:59PM (#6276100)
    That family license is an awesome idea. I wish I could buy PC software that way (what little proprietary stuff I use, anyway). One purchase covers the whole fam. With multi-computer households becoming incresingly common, how long until this becomes standard?

  • Re:It's TRUE !!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Clock Nova ( 549733 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @03:00PM (#6276104)
    Tell that to gamers. Or anyone who wants a machine they can upgrade. The i and eMacs just don't cut it for anyone but grandma. I need something i can replace my $1499 Quicksilver tower with.

    I hope to god they're not pricing these machines this high simply to encourage people to buy iMacs.
  • I sincerely hope they didn't. FreeBSD 5.0 was not a production release, it was meant for early adopters only. 5.0 contained many serious bugs which have since been fixed in the 5.x tree (for example, the new DevFS system was still causing kernel panics in many core drivers at the time of release, one of which I fixed myself), and there are still more left to squash. I wonder what the reasoning behind this move was?
  • Strange enough... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by singularity ( 2031 ) * <nowalmart.gmail@com> on Monday June 23, 2003 @03:06PM (#6276204) Homepage Journal
    I am writing this from the Apple Store in Shaumburg, IL. The strangest thing I have seen is that the Apple Store website is currently down. THis is depite the fact that the only addition they have made today that is currently selling is the new video camera (so far... They just got done releasing the new G5 computers).

    Maybe that is just to make sure no rumors start circulating. I am not sure.

    The keynote has been great so far.

    Seeing the dual Xeon stutter on things that the dual G5 is able to handle without sweating is great.

    iChat AV looks nice. It will work really well when combined with Rendevous.

    He just said that Safari is going 1.0 today.

    8GB of RAM supported? Serial ATA? USB 2.0? 1 GHZ frontside bus? I said these things were too fantastical to be real. Apparently I was wrong... Glad to be wrong for once.

    Keynote just ended, nothing new for sale.

    About 120 people here watching. The most amazing thing? I got told that I could not take pictures with my camera. Weird...
  • by Pay The Fuck Up! ( 563397 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @03:14PM (#6276317) Homepage
    New G5 Power Macs "Fastest Desktop In The World"
    Desktops (Apple)
    Hardware
    Posted by pudge on 06-23-03 12:18
    from the want dept.
    In the hardware part of his keynote address at WWDC, Jobs officially introduced the G5-based computers previously leaked on the Apple store.

    See any serious problems with this story? Email our on-duty editor.

    The new G5 machines, with the IBM 970 processor, use the "world's first 64-bit desktop processor" (and the "fastest 64-bit processor ever") but run both 64-bit and 32-bit apps natively, and run up to 2GHz. The bus is 1GHz ("fastest ever") and it is designed for dual processing and full symmetric processing.

    Beyond the many numbers, the bottom line is that the new machines have a new architecture, and that the memory speed is now the bottleneck, not the processor or bandwidth speeds. So they can have up to 8GB of 128-bit DDR RAM, as it is efficient to keep data in memory. The memory bandwidth is one of the most talked-about features of the new architecture.

    USB 2.0 is now included, as are FireWire 400 and 800, Bluetooth, AirPort Extreme, and digital audio in and out. The 4x SuperDrive is now standard, and it can house up to 500GB of internal storage.

    For video, the GeForce FX5200 is standard on low-end models, Radeon 9600 Pro on high-end models.

    The case of the new machines is redesigned too, from the ground up, focusing on decreasing noise and heat. It is an aluminum enclosure, with ports for FireWire and USB on the front, and a door on the side to get into the box. It has four distinct "thermal zones" with computer-controlled cooling with its nine (yes, nine) independent fans. And it is much quieter than its predecessor.

    The G5 is 10 percent slower than the P4 and Xeon in SPEC int scores in single-proc units, but 20 percent faster in FPU scores, and the dual-proc G5 beats the dual-proc Xeon in all SPEC scores.

    The models are a single 1.6 GHz ($1999), single 1.8GHz ($2399), and dual 2GHz ($2999). They will ship in August. A 3GHz processor will be available from IBM in 12 months.

    Apple notes that recompiling apps for the 64-bit architecture is easy, and in some cases can be done in minutes.

    There was no word about the heavily anticipated redesign of the 15" PowerBooks.
  • Re:Very Impressive (Score:5, Interesting)

    by RocketScientist ( 15198 ) * on Monday June 23, 2003 @03:18PM (#6276371)
    Yeah. Because, you know, Apple never puts out service packs. Let's see....I'm running OS X version 10.2.6. That'd be 6--count 'em--6 major upgrade points since release, plus security updates periodically. That averages out to one every couple of months. Windows 2000, on the other hand, is up to a whopping service pack 4 and it's been out for nearly 3 years. And it's probably needed more service packs than that. Last time I did an install of Win2k I spent more time downloading patches than I spent installing the OS. If they'd roll them into SP's more often it would take me less time to get boxes up and running.

    I'm more concerned on my MS boxes that MS only puts out one paid upgrade every 3-5 years. What's wrong with their R&D that it takes 3 to 5 years to put out an upgrade of any significance. I remember in the NT 3.5/3.51 days that MS said they'd be on an annual OS update schedule. That sure didn't last long.

  • by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @04:36PM (#6277138)
    Write a Carbon app instead of a Cocoa app and it will run on every MacOS from 8.1 thru X. If you want your app to run on every mac every made, you build a classic "fat binary".

    Yah, that's one solution, but then your users don't like you anymore because somehow they can tell when an app is Cocoa and when it's Carbon. I dunno why, but details of the APIs used are allowed to leak into the UI.

    The main problem that the original poster was referring to btw is the fact that MacOS has no real upgrade management. The way it works is this:

    On Windows, you have installers, which check your system for the components they need. Typical components are, ActiveX, DirectX, MDAC, Internet Explorer, Shell32 etc. If the version is too old, it is upgraded. This sometimes breaks things, but generally people prefer it to having apps require XP for instance.

    On Linux you have ELF (symbol) versioning. When you compile an app, you can control which set of libraries (and for glibc, symbols) it links against. Then you can install sideloaded libraries if the versions on the system are too old or two new, and glibc never breaks backwards compat so that's OK.

    Apple generally doesn't make large core upgrades available for free, so application authors have a problem. Not all their users will be on the latest version, so they have to cleanly disable code that needs the new features. Unfortunately, MachO wierdness means that isn't always as simple as dlopen()ing a library like what you'd do on Linux or Windows, so they use something called "weak references". Basically if a symbol is missing, when run instead of failing to start, the app will run but with the missing symbol set to NULL. If it's used, the app will crash, but you can check if it's NULL before use.

    Sounds great right? Well, it would be, but weak symbols were only introduced with 10.2, and API coverage was not complete. In fact, it wasn't even mostly complete. IIRC not even all of Cocoa was covered. So, in the absence of any easy way to cleanly fail features, and no way to upgrade the OS legally, apps end up having hard dependancies on the latest version of the OS.

    That fulfills Apples goal of getting more upgrade sales because suddenly all your apps need the latest version (or the developers must be careful to code things and compile on separate copies of the OS etc), but makes life harder for the user and developer. Hopefully they will get weak symbols sorted out soon. It's still lame compared to Windows because you have to switch off features, but at least it's an acceptable compromise.

  • by justMichael ( 606509 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @05:39PM (#6277938) Homepage
    When are they going to fix the fact that it takes forever for it to handle redirects??

    Friggin annoying.
  • by green pizza ( 159161 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @06:03PM (#6278217) Homepage
    MS may be evil, but they never forced me to buy a new version of windows to get the latest web browser.

    You will now. MSIE 6.0 SP1 was the last release for Win98/Me/2K. Future versions will require a full OS update.

    Also, there's nothing keeping you from running Firebird or Camino on your Mac.
  • by MacGod ( 320762 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @01:07AM (#6281558)
    That family license is an awesome idea. I wish I could buy PC software that way (what little proprietary stuff I use, anyway). One purchase covers the whole fam. With multi-computer households becoming incresingly common, how long until this becomes standard?

    Sadly, probably a while yet. Apple's family license basically works on the honour system. There are no serial numbers or anything like that. It's to keep honest people honest, just like the quasi-DRM on the Apple Music Store.

    Sadly, though, very few software companies are willing to put that faith in people.

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