Wait-and-see

[mmcirvin]

I'm not a cultish enough Mac person to go to things like the Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) release party last night (I think the crowds were so huge this time mostly because everyone heard that last time, they were offering unannounced discounts in-store—and apparently they did it again). But I did get my copy of 10.2 (Jaguar) pretty soon after it was released.

I might do the same thing this time around, but I'll be a bit wary about it. For my money, Jaguar was the release that really finished Mac OS X. I had my own reasons for using it ever since 10.0.1 (mostly having to do with the Unix underpinnings), and the egregious UI sluggishness was about half-removed by 10.1 (which Apple graciously offered as a more-or-less-free upgrade). But 10.2 gave it considerable fit-and-finish improvement, toned down some of the gratuitous visual candy that made the early OS X releases better as demos than as usable software, and made it speedy enough not to complain about (if only on modern Macs).

That makes Panther the first one that's really primarily a big feature release, and since my system is in a pretty good working groove right now, I'm reluctant to do a massive overhaul. I've heard early reports of still more big UI-speed gains on hardware like mine, though, and that's a major temptation. I'll keep an eye on the early bug complaints and maybe wait for 10.3.1.

Comments

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

My best friend David just installed Panther, and found that it was indeed buggy. iTunes crashed or hung several times, for example, and there were some other things he didn't bother telling me, but waiting for 10.3.1 or 10.3.2 is a must. I certainly won't recommend the 5-pack for the office until it matures a little.

When Apple finally condescended to give us Java 1.4.1, I was very, very happy. I just wish they'd give us Java 3D, and be a bit faster about their openSSH/openSSL updates, and bring their own X11 client up to speed with OroborOSX/XDarwin.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

I never tried Apple X11 because I was and am quite happy with OroborOSX. Those Helper Scripts are wonderful things, much cleaner than my previous jury-rigged solution for launching GIMP from inside iPhoto.

[chicken-cem.livejournal.com]

Yep -- I also only use OroborOSX -- OpenOffice launches without a problem. Some co-workers use X11, but I personally stick to OroborOSX.

I think I had some problems with installing GIMP on my work computer, and gave up. I had it installed at home, once, but was never able to get it to install at work. If I ever feel like trying again, may I ping you for help if I get stuck?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Sure... I just used Fink, which was how I had installed XDarwin too. I think I did it once by compiling everything and once with the thing that gets precompiled packages. But it was a long time ago, so I may not be terribly helpful. GIMP is a great thing to get for free; it's not as full-featured as a modern version of Photoshop, but it's a capable enough photo editor for most uses, way better for that purpose than Graphic Converter (though Graphic Converter is better at converting graphics).