Mac OS X 10.3 Panther [OLD VERSION]

To answer that question I always ask myself, "How will this upgrade affect my daily use of the Mac?" I primarily use my Mac for email, Internet, iApps, Office v.X, Photoshop and Dreamweaver. Pretty basic stuff.

I use Expose daily and it has made my life so much easier. No more minimizing and rearranging of windows, just one click and - BOOM - instant desktop. The combination of Fire Vault and Fast User Switching has finally convinced me to set up accounts for family members and it's been working out beautifully. The updated Finder not only makes the Mac more customized (for each user no less), but has made finding and saving files a breeze. The ability to print address labels and mailing lists from Address Book is a much welcomed addition that I will be using frequently. Having drag and drop email addresses and the sorting of messages by thread added to Mail has greatly improved its use. I couldn't be happier that iChat AV is included, as it's become an integral part of my keeping in touch with friends and family across the nation. The Mac turns on faster and everything (especially Finder, Help and Safari) runs much faster than in Jaguar.

As others have noted, installation is very easy and usually painless. My installation went off without a hitch and took about 45 minutes total. However, I have run into two minor problems since installation. My Visor PDA no longer syncs (I understand this has to do with the Hot Sync application not being updated for Panther) and I really can't stand that brushed metal look of the finder (luckily I found shareware (whiteout) that takes care of that).

So how has the Panther upgrade affected the daily use of my Mac? Panther has boosted my performance, given me enhancements that I now can't live without and somehow, I enjoy my Mac even more than before. I didn't think that was possible. Leave it to Apple to deliver the impossible.

I've been using 10.3 for about three weeks, and I am very pleased. Prior to installation, I experienced frequent crashes, sometimes several a day. Now they are very rare (two in the last three weeks). I find that the Safari browser is faster and more reliable than Internet Explorer. Sometimes IE gets hung up on displaying a web page. I switch to Safari, and the page comes up in a snap.

The new version of Sherlock is very slick, but I can't figure out how to do something that was very simple with the older Sherlock 2, namely locate a file on my hard drive. There must be a way to do it in the new Sherlock, but it's not obvious. The online Help was of no help in figuring this out. So I just use the old Sherlock 2 in "Classic" mode when I need to locate a file on my hard drive.

Certain features that had ceased to work with 9.2 now work just fine with 10.3. For example, before installing 10.3, I couldn't get my CD ROM to recognize and play music CD's. Now, through iTunes, it works just fine.

One complaint: Apple recommends that you install the latest version of OS 9 for "Classic" mode. I had 9.1, but the latest version is 9.2. I had to pay $20 for this upgrade. I think this upgrade should be included with OS 10.3.

Overall, I'm quite happy with my new Panther.

It is a clear (even if incremental) improvement from OS 10.2, and at least one friend who is a Mac user told me that an upgrade to OS 10.3 from OS 10.2 eliminated what had been an annoying software conflict. But I think that anyone who is comfortable with OS 10.2 might be better off sticking with what they have and waiting for OS 10.4 or 10.5 before making the leap.

But for users still using OS10.1 or something older, I think this would be a great investment, adding stability (when I used it OS 10.1's stability was undermined by a lot of bugs that were worked out in the following generations), slick new features like Esposé, and an interface that's easy on the eyes and more intuitive than previous versions.

After carefully reviewing many forum posts, I decided that I would do an "archive and install." Having done some simple disk maintenance (ran repair disk permissions on the disk utility) and backed up all important files the night before, I awoke at 5:30 this morning ready to install. Trembling with both anticipation and fear, I turned on the computer and inserted the first installation disc. Following all directions onscreen, I was amazed and delighted with the ease of installation. Still not convinced of my success, I held off jumping for joy until the computer had been restarted and I had the chance to check everything out. Because of the archive and install, all my preferences were saved, I lost nothing, and didn't even have to reconfigure my comuter for the wireless connection at home.

Internet Explorer, which I rarely use, loaded more quickly, and Safari, which I use 99% of the time, was even faster than before. I had a look at a WebQuest page I had made, and all the animated graphics were working very well, whereas before in Safari, only one was animated. I did have to re-install Norton Anti-Virus, but the installer was still on the computer, so that was very simple as well. I've downloaded all available updates, and the OS is very stable thus far. To print, I didn't have to do any reinstalls, rather I just plugged the printer cable into the USB port, and voila, successful printing!

Panther appears to be a great operating system, so much better than Windows XP, which I use (and regularly curse) on the machines at school. If you are thinking of making the switch, by all means go for it!