Comments on this article

Showing messages 1 through 95 of 95.

• Even better...
  2003-12-13 20:02:11  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Command-Tab switching not only displays the running apps, but the display is also mouse interactive. Do a Command-Tab and continue to hold down Command and use your mouse to directly select the running app, rather than continuing to press Tab to cycle through the list.
  
  On the other hand, Expose can be used w/o a mouse. Just tap the F9 or F10 key to activate, then use the arrow keys to cycle through the windows and use Return to select the high-lighted window.

• Things I dig about Jaguar
  2003-10-26 04:13:23  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Let me count backwards, towards the change that worries me most about Panther, six things Jaguar already does for me that you don't seem to have noticed.
  
  6. Virtual desktops, thanks to third-party tools that let me use features Steve Jobs doesn't feel like I'm smart enough to take advantage of. Again, it's a matter of organization. Expose is like a lot of things in Mac OS, it's organized around *programs*. I work on *documents*, and put windows associated with each document or object I'm working on in the same virtual desktop. It never gets a chance to get cluttered.
  
  5. Command tab is unobtrusive and effective. Little triangle indicator in the Dock? What are you talking about... the whole icon grays out and its name pops up. It's clear and obvious. Have you actually used command-tab lately?
  
  4. It's UNIX, it handles things in the background without my needing to have desktop apps chewing up cycles on them over and over again. Threading in mail? I already get that, and it works in every app I use to read mail. How do I do that? UNIX, remember... I just fetch my mail and feed it to a local newsgroup, and read it with a newsreader. The only time I see Mail.app is when I'm replying.
  
  3. PDF rendering is handled by the OS. I read PDF in Safari, thanks to yet another nifty third party app, and it's plenty fast. I just can't convince LaunchServices to let me *permanently* associate PDF with Safari... Steve Jobs doesn't seem to like it if you fiddle with the "This file isn't known to open in this app, so I'll gray it out" settings. But I never use Preview or Acrobat Reader, I don't see the point... the OS has PDF rendering built in, why do I need a special app for it?
  
  2. Finder. It's not perfect, but it's a straightforward extension of the preactical Finder from OS 9, and it doesn't need redesign, just a bit of tweaking.
  
  Finder isn't the center of my life, it's just a really useful tool I've been using effectively under OS 9 and OS X... and dramatically changing it into a Windows Explorer workalike is not something I'm looking forward to.
  
  First, of course, it's in 'Metal'.
  
  Second, where's the win? You write "Not having to go click-click-click to navigate a new Finder window from the boot disk to the home folder will save me thousands of clicks a year."
  
  Hey, man, just drag your home folder into the dock. Old Finder is a tool you can use any way you want. New Finder looks more like a tool you have to use the way Steve Jobs wants. Well, Steve hasn't been exactly batting 1000 lately.
  
  1. I like not having an integrated central HTML-and-HTTP tool in every program. I'm really worried about Webkit: I hope this isn't exactly what it sounds like, because this sounds like the disasterous Microsoft HTML Control, the source of 90% of the viruses and worms on Windows. If you have the same application displaying trusted and untrusted data, you're inevitably going to provide opportunities for the bad boys. I sincerely hope Webkit doesn't make the same mistake of having Webkit perform URL resolution instead of calling back to the application using it to do the job, or we're going to watch OS X fall into the same smelly creek Windows fell into in the '90s.
• Things I dig about Jaguar
  2003-12-09 09:37:25  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I agree with much of what you say.
  
  The Panther Finder has many faults, some added by Apple, and some which remain but should have been fixed by Apple.
  
  To wit: We refer to the Panther Finder as THE NANNY FINDER.
  
  BTW, we are a business, and not a "small shop." So, we are most definitely a "business customer" of Apple Computer. We are the kind of operation that Apple wants very much to seel computers to, but Apple continues to err, in that, Apple believes its product is to blame for low sales, when for the most part, it is Apple's sales plan that is to blame ... but that is another story.
  
  For now, here, I want to address the problems of using Mac OS X - Panther in a business environment, where we produce files, we have many files, we must keep track of our files, and we must back up our files.
  
  We produce many files during the day; hundreds of Microsoft Word, Excel and some other applications' documents.
  
  We visit many, many websites during the day, and we save the webpages and/or bookmark the sites.
  
  We have, all through the day, these files accumulating, and we must keep them organized as they pile up, so to speak.
  
  As it is true for the real paperwork that is produced, additional papers to and from the company, and all other such documentation of the company, we deal with thousands of files in a day --- and it must be organized in almost the same manner on our computers, as it is in our various types of filing cabinets.
  
  No business can operate long, and well, without keeping this information so ordered, in both the real cabinets, and aboard the computer systems.
  
  Then comes Panther Finder, where files are seemingly only a button or two or three ... away?
  
  Well, no "one-button rule," and no "two-button rule," and no "three-button rule" that are affected by however Apple re-shuffles the deck of its Finder's features, removes in any way, the requirement that the user of the computer systems must know where all these documents are.
  
  Practically any successful business can relate to this hard fact, that there is No NANNY OPERATING SYSTEM and No NANNY DATA SYSTEM that can replace the human need to constantly monitor it and all the data anyway.
  
  The net of much of this is, that the Jaguar Finder worked good, but Apple has in the new Panther Finder, stripped away some of what worked good in Jaguar --- when they could have well enough let it alone.
  
  Better yet; how about a button: "IF you want to stay with the Jaguar look and feel, click here:"
  
  So that after learning the new Mac OS X, a user who has learned the layout of the files and folders --- and the company has paid a lot of money for all of us to know this --- we might remain very productive.
  
  I cannot say enough about that point, and that, it constantly escapes Apple Computer's sales, marketing, and senior exec's.
  
  Look, Jaguar was a big seller for businesses who understand cutting costs by smoothing workflow --- we use the Mac OS because of this, and we are most definitely not using it as a toy, a game, a music box, a camera, or some other appliance for our entertainment.
  
  We use the Mac in order to cut costs and maintain productivity; again, that which Apple's sales plans cannot grasp.
  
  They, Apple, might finally wake up to having Microsoft Office installed on the Macs in the stores, and having around somebody who actually knows how to use the applications and can demonstrate them, so that when a business customer comes in to see what Apple has to offer, at the door, the customer is greeted with knowledgeable people about what businesses need, in order to work well ... instead of greeted with the useless, "Have you seen iPhoto?"
  
  Our reply, "Have you ever been in the business environment where we must meet productivity requirements? We use Microsoft Office and AppleWorks, but today, we'd like to see a demonstration of Excel on that G5 over there."
  
  To which Apple Computer responds, "We ... uh ... duh ..."
  
  That's it. That's their sales pitch to business customers.
  
  Now, they have dumped in our laps, Panther, wherein, we find that some Jaguar Finder features are gone, in addition to some quirks that do not work, and in addition to Panther Finder features that are counter-productive and exhaust more time than "click - click - click" --- in other words, work flow is being interferred with, by the Panther Finder.
  
  We are wrestling with the Panther Finder's elimination of how the user could sweep over a list of files with the tip of the mouse arrow.
  
  We are wrestling with the failure of the "View Options" for a window, which, when set for "All Windows," does not take effect for all windows.
  
  We almost always use the List View and never the Icon View to read many files. We constantly match up two volume's windows alongside each other in order to compare file names and dates.
  
  We now spend a great amount of time fiddling with Panther's Finder windows because THE SETTINGS DO NOT STICK!
  
  The "View Options" SETTINGS DO NOT STICK!
  
  We adjust the width of windows, but THEY DO NOT STICK!
  
  When changing filenames, the width of the field for the filename, when highlighted, as been shrunk by a few pixels, significant, those few ... by Apple, so that it is more difficult for people to set the cursor down in there at the end of the filename ... and so we must click in the name and then find the Right Arrow button and then click click click or hold it down, when previously we could land right on the end of the filename and add to it, promptly, by simple placing the tip of the arrow there.
  
  All over Panther --- the Finder --- there are many such small instances of Apple Computer driving up the cost of operating a computer in a business environment.
  
  The price tag of Panther, rightly or wrongly set, is nothing compared to, having invested quite a lot of money in new machines and Jaguar, the cost to us, of wrestling with Apple's re-arranging the furniture and obstructing the flow of work.
  
  We understand that Apple might add features, or might move the control of a feature from one Control Device App. to another, but Apple's insistance on removing features that work and worked well, has hurt us.
  
  And it's going to hurt Apple, as they interfere with productivity and ultimately with the cost of backing up data, because their new NANNY FINDER has been designed to "help" users toward dumbing down their proper file system discipline.
  
  The data must be backed up. It must be backed up at least to to separate hard drives.
  
  We use many backup hard drives, attached by SCSI and by FireWire. These drives have many partitions. We have a Mac, 1GHz, running with 38 partitions that occupy 2/5ths of the screen.
  
  We have Mac's and PC's and Linux all networked, thanks to Jaguar 10.2.8, SharePoints 3.2, BatChmod 1.32, settings in the smb.conf file, use of NetInfo, Directory Access, the Network Preferences, etc.
  
  We pump a lot of data.
  
  We are a real business.
  
  We have to know where ALL our data is.
  
  The Panther Finder is not as productive as the Jaguar Finder.
  
  We have put on hold, further purchases of Panther.
  
  We're sticking with Jaguar, because it works very well.
  
  We did not have to try and make the Jaguar Finder work.
  
  We find that we have wasted time trying to make the Panther Finder work.
  
  
  
  
• Things I dig about Jaguar
  2003-10-28 16:46:30  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  have you actually used expose or just basing this on what people are saying about it? if you have then you might want check out the F10 key, which allows you to see just the "documents" associated with the application you're currently in. i don't know if that totally solves your problem, but i think it comes close. command-tab to the app you want, press F10, all docs from that app show up.

• UFS implementation needs to be updated
  2003-10-22 15:37:13  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Here is my story. Got a PB G4/400/256 (Mercury) as
  a hand-me-down about a year and a half ago.
  Installed MacOSX from scratch and being familiar with
  Unix and not with MacOS Classic I picked UFS instead
  of HFS+ . For the past year I have been bitching on how
  slow the system was while people all around me told
  me that Jaguar was 'usable' on a 500Mhz.
  When last week I decided to do a last effort attempt
  before ditching MacOSX in favor of Linux o OpenBSD
  I found some postings that lead me to the ugly
  discovery that the UFS implementation in MacOSX is years old
  and lacks any of the optimizations that are common
  in the BSD world. Now I reinstalled 10.2 with HFS+
  and my G4 works like a charm. I don't know if I should be
  mad at myself for picking the wrong choice or at
  Apple to release such atrociously slow implementation.
  
  Looking forward to 10.3 ...

• Xcode book
  2003-10-22 05:59:41  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  When is there gonna be a developer book for Panther? I'm writing this because I don't know whether to wait to buy or not.
  
  Sincerely Mads E. ;-)

• XCode
  2003-10-21 07:11:25  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Will xCode be free ?
• XCode
  2003-10-21 15:23:31  scottellsworth [View]
  
  
  Yes, it will be free. It replaces ProjectBuilder as Apple's free IDE to do Cocoa (and JBoss and WebObjects and everything else) development.
  
  For those doing Java-specific development, I encourage looking into Eclipse, also free, and IDEA (not free).
  
  Scott

• The "new" Finder performance
  2003-10-20 15:08:12  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  The organizational features you mention in the "new" finder are not nearly as important as stability and speed.
  
  I am hoping that the new Finder is FULLY multi-threaded and doesn't freeze as often as the 10.2x Finder. The spinning beach ball should not be a familiar sight in a Unix-based OS. Rarely does a week go by where I do not have to relaunch the Finder.
  
  As far as speed is concerned, viewing a directory with more than 400 files incurs delays that don't exist in Windows OS's. Listing more than 500 files can be painful. It is time that Apple figures out how to accelerate (or bypass) the handling of HFS+ metadata and file resources. Users who strictly identify file types with suffix useage should not have to suffer performance penalties.
  
  These drawbacks of the current Finder remind me of why (in part) IRIX users ignore the IRIX GUI in favor of the command line. I am hoping that Apple has addressed these issues so more advanced users can rely on, and not be hampered by, the GUI as well.
• The "new" Finder performance
  2003-10-20 20:33:50  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Indeed. Good performance in the Finder is a crucial feature--and one that we don't have information for yet. We'll know more on Friday.

• Mail Threading
  2003-10-19 14:27:27  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I notice that the "Mailboxes" icon is missing from the toolbar in your screen shot. Does that mean that the "Tray" of mail folders has gone away? If so, good riddance! But has it been replaced with a pull-down, or (better) pop-up, or what?
• Mail Threading
  2003-10-20 20:36:48  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  The screenshot is not mine, it's from Apple's Mac OS X page that describes mail. My guess is that the tray of folders is simply not shown in the screenshot to keep it simple.
  
  We'll know more on Friday when we all see the final results.
• Mail Threading
  2003-10-19 14:36:37  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  And, BTW, my Mail Tray has so many items in it that it's a bit of a pain to manage. I need to click on the Tray and then scroll the darn thing to find what I'm after. Is there a better way?

• Mac OS X Font rendering - phenomenal? Hardly!
  2003-10-19 14:01:35  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I have a VERY different opinion about the way Quartz renders fonts. Quite frankly it's a fuzzy eyesore. I STILL think that most fonts looked better and were less strain on the eyes under Mac OS 9.x.
  
  Yes, routinely turn off font smoothing (in the System Preferences > General menu, for fonts size 12 and smaller but I'd like to be able to do it for even larger ones.
  
  As it is, I can't hack text for more than 2 or 3 hours at a stretch, but I routinely need to make a full day of it. Thankfully my employer still uses that "other" operating system.
  
  I suspect that Apple could make text anti-aliasing an option for fonts of ANY size. So why impose its "experts'" value judgements on the rest of us. If some of us are just weird, so be it!
• Mac OS X Font rendering - phenomenal? Hardly!
  2003-11-13 00:15:33  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  not being able to turn off anti aliasing is stupid. i am a designer and i need to a screenshot of a user interface with the text aliased... but that is impossible. sometimes i wonder if the people at apple use their damn operating system.
• Mac OS X Font rendering can be crappy too!
  2003-11-04 19:03:09  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I know I'm replying to a message that is a couple weeks old, but no one mentioned Tinkertool. I'm surprised you haven't discovered it. Tinkertool allows you to turn off anti-aliasing. It even (used to ?) lets you turn off font smoothing in Cocoa programs.
  
  I think it's silly to talk about how much better some "other" system's crappy fonts are before doing some simple web research. OS X fonts can look just as crappy, if not crappier--if that's what you want.
  
  Doug
• Mac OS X Font rendering can be crappy too!
  2003-11-25 08:54:25  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Tinkertool's site says the fonts cannot be adjusted in v10.2 and v10.3
  
  reference: http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html
• Mac OS X Font rendering - phenomenal? Hardly!
  2003-10-20 20:44:54  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Definitly a case of different strokes for different folks. I hate looking at not anti-aliased fonts. Turning off font smoothing is one thing that can be done. Another is to tweak the Font Smoothing Style so that you can control the algorithm a bit.
  
  One thing you might try is to tweak your defaults. Try:
  
  defaults write -g AppleAntiAliasingThreshold 128
  
  where 128 is the point size you want. Log out and back in (a required step) and you should have non aliased fonts.

• Avery Label Support
  2003-10-16 10:56:26  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  It's the little things that count and the ability to print avery labels from Address Book is a huge advantage for me.
• Avery Label Support
  2004-01-03 11:44:28  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Try Worldlabel.com, they have experts who can help you.
• Avery Label Support
  2004-01-03 11:42:08  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Try Worldlabel.com, they have experts who can help you.
• Avery Label Support
  2003-10-20 21:04:39  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Oooo! I didn't see that one. Nice catch. Definitly a very nice feature and one that will be handy come Christmas!

• FAX
  2003-10-14 17:02:24  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  as a home business owner i love the ability to send and recieve fax without the need to get another apps to get it done.
• FAX
  2003-11-09 15:06:49  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  While I like the logical placement of the fax features in the Print Center controls, I still wished that Apple took the Enterprise market seriously. I looked for a Network fax product for several years for my office. I finally found a product called One World at a MacWorld several years ago. 3 months later... they were out of business. I would love to see in 10.4 (or before), Apple look at a network fax option that can work with fax servers like Biscom (www.biscom.com) or Rightfax
• FAX
  2004-02-23 15:49:56  daeran [View]
  
  
  check out page sender. very good, actually the best i have ever used.
• FAX
  2003-10-15 12:44:58  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  yes, this is the new feature that i've been waiting for

• While not cool...
  2003-10-14 07:15:46  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  ...or uber-geeky, color-coding is #1 on my list. It's long been the #1 way to make PC folks jealous, and an incredible way to sort, find, archive, and manage data.
• While not cool...
  2003-10-14 12:12:09  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Yeah. The color coding in the finder is a great new (er, back to the future from OS 9) feature.

• Vs. KDE
  2003-10-13 11:50:02  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Command-Tab has already been available in KDE for a long time, so please give it credit along with Windows. I'm also glad to see Apple is working on Finder because every version of Finder I have used falls far short of Konqueror.
  
  Personally, I still prefer KDE on Linux over OS X, but OS X is better than any version of Windows in most ways.
• Vs. KDE
  2003-10-26 20:35:01  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Alt-Tab switching has been a feature of just about every multitasking window manager since the '80s.
  
  But, you know, if Apple was going to emulate something from windows, how about the uniform and consistent key bindings, so you can use the whole user interface from the kyboard *or* the mouse without having to keep one hand on both? Oh, Microsoft isn't perfect there, but it's close enough that you can still use Windows mouseless or almost get away with a keyboardless environment.
• Vs. KDE and keeping BOTH HANDS on the keyboard
  2003-11-04 19:06:58  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Have you tried turning on full keyboard access (under Keyboard & Mouse pref. pane in System Preferences?
  
  Doug
• Vs. KDE
  2003-10-25 13:35:16  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Actually, command-tab application switching has been a feature of the Mac OS since at least Mac OS 8.5 (released October 1998).
• Vs. KDE
  2003-10-19 07:35:24  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Command-Tab for application switching has been availabe in OS X since, well, 10.0. The big deal here is the interface for providing the switch.
  
  Up to now, command-tab would just darken the Dock icon and display the name of the app you were switching to. In Panther however, the icons of only the open (and thus available) apps are overlayed upon the entire darkened screen so an app can be selected to switch to.
  
  Just one of the cool details of the GUI that Apple is working on addressing.
• Vs. KDE
  2003-10-19 01:24:55  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Personally, you still prefer KDE on Linux over Aqua on OS X, you mean.
  "But OS X is better than any version of Windows in most ways."
  
  What is your point here? You suck up to Linux because you cannot afford a Mac? You do have my pity.

• yep
  2003-10-13 11:43:20  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I agree, I would like a more seamless integration of X11 into the desktop environment.
  
  Also...O'Reilly, why in the world would you pick a German Shepard for the cover of this book? It's pretty clear that the Panther is already an animal. Why not um...use a Panther for the cover? I bet someone in your editorial department spent hours deciding on the German Shepard.
• yep
  2003-10-14 12:15:48  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Each O'Reilly series has a theme. For example, the Java books are cats, the Oracle books are bugs, and the Mac books are dogs--for loyalty, not for "running like a dog". The animal theme for Mac was set long before Jaguar made it clear that Apple was moving to the cat codenames.
  
  Ah well, I'd love to have a running panther on the cover of my next book. But, that's not my choice. :)
• nope
  2003-10-16 12:35:13  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  While this *might* be true for the core books (Learning X, Programming X), it in no way is true in general - Java Cookbook has a chicken on the cover for instance.
• nope
  2003-10-20 21:07:13  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Actually, the Cookbook series as a whole is considered to be different than the Java or Perl series. The rules aren't concrete. (grin)
• yep
  2003-10-13 12:26:44  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Because the "Advanced Perl Programming" book is already deemed the Panther....
  
  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/advperl/

• Debate at Ars Technica
  2003-10-12 06:26:41  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Hi, Duncan, I have created a thread about Panther based on this article at Ars Technica. I hope you don't mind.
  
  In the usual Ars style, the debate has quickly descended into a chaos mainly due to Wintel users, but there are some interesting points.
  
  Ars has been a longtime Wintel geek site, but in a recent OS poll, Mac users appear to outnumber Windows (all version combined) users!
• Debate at Ars Technica
  2003-10-14 12:10:43  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Don't mind at all. Though you are right. It's really a Wintel thread. One point: A lot of people over there are referring to this article as a "Review". It's not. It's just a personal top 10/11 list. :)

• Type-O: now not know
  2003-10-12 05:49:27  roykoch [View]
  
  
  6. Safari Rendering: For HTML Safari isn't just a browser, it's also a HTML-rendering component (known as WebKit) that can be used by any application that wants to display HTML. Sure, WebKit has been out for a while know, but it's now showing up everywhere in the system.
  
  Forgive me I don't know how I find them I am dyslexic.
  
  
• Type-O: now not know
  2003-10-14 12:19:31  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Yep. Typo. Oops. Ya got us (me and the copyeditor)! :)
• Type-O: now not know
  2003-10-13 12:08:25  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  or it could be that he left out the word/letter "I", as in "WebKit has been out for a while I know, but it's now showing..."
  
  or maybe not. a typo is a typo...

• Is Safari printing improved in Panther?
  2003-10-12 05:45:53  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  My pet peeve is the crappy printing of Safari pages. When will Safari printing be as good as Internet Explorer's. Pagination? Date? URL printing?
• Is Safari printing improved in Panther?
  2003-10-14 12:20:18  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Those features aren't discussed on the public website. We'll have to wait to the 24th to see.
• Is Safari printing improved in Panther?
  2003-10-22 06:37:17  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  safari printing is still crap compared to IE, no changes. Overall, printing is better, because Panther now has many drivers built in.

• Type-O: now not know
  2003-10-12 05:42:49  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  6. Safari Rendering: For HTML Safari isn't just a browser, it's also a HTML-rendering component (known as WebKit) that can be used by any application that wants to display HTML. Sure, WebKit has been out for a while know, but it's now showing up everywhere in the system.
  
  Forgive me I don't know how I find them I am dyslexic.
  
  Roy Koch
  r.koch@comcast.net

• Please Don't Post about NDA Material
  2003-10-11 11:56:09  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  There are several comments here that are breaking NDA with Apple about Panther (such as talking about how Panther performs on older hardware and such). Please refrain from posting comments that cover topics that are still under NDA.
  
  This article was crafted from information available on the public Apple website. Please keep discussion to the items that have been already announced and posted.

• The "new" Finder
  2003-10-11 05:44:44  gwostrel [View]
  
  
  James, just amazing to me that you are writing an article about MacOSX and, seemingly, are not aware of something as basic as the "preferences" setting in the Finder that allows you to change the "focus", as you call it, of a new Finder window. Just as amazing is that it makes your list of the 10 (no, 11) things that make Panther worth the $129. Excuse me, but that is a bit lame. I would say that the improved organization of the Finder windows and the Open/Save dialog boxes are a big deal that is worth mentioning - not something that was there all along since 10.0.4 (maybe earlier, that's just when I started using OSX)
• The "new" Finder
  2003-10-11 11:59:53  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Sure, you can open existing Finder windows open to the Home directory, but I think that moving things to the sidebar and letting you see more roots than just the home folder is a big deal. If I'm lame for that, then so be it. :)
  
  And yes, the fact that Open/Save has 'em is the coolest part of it.
• The "new" Finder
  2003-10-11 12:35:18  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  And how is the sidebar any different from the icon bar that is already existant in 10.2 ? Drag any folder into the iconbar, and voila you have a new 'root' as you call it...
• The "new" Finder
  2003-10-14 12:30:10  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  No, not a new root. In 10.2 the toolbar gave you a place to click and drill fast to a part of the tree. As demoed by Steve at WWDC (the video of which is available here--go to 10:50 in the stream), having it on the side means that when you click on a sidebar item, it's the root of a "virtual tree". Plus, you can put more stuff over there, have it show up in Open and Save dialogs, and more.
  
  Watch the video and get a feel for it and how it works. It's better than the toolbar. :)
• The "new" Finder
  2003-10-11 16:12:50  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Because the top of the sidebar depicts your (removable) media and the icons scale to fit so you can put a lot more aliasses in it
• The "new" Finder
  2003-10-11 08:14:19  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  its a big deal....
  
  

• Access rights on some files
  2003-10-11 02:23:34  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I noticed two security flaws in Jaguar and would like to know if they are corrected in Panther.
  - If you use the finder to duplicate a folder (Cmd-D) the copy is world-writable. It should have the same access rights as the original.
  - When you print a file and you choose to make a preview, the resulting PDF file is world readable in a public directory in /tmp/printing.xxx.
• Access rights on some files
  2003-10-19 07:46:45  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I'll address the first part of this post. The duplicating of a folder does result in world-writable permissions, bt my question is- where are you duplicating folders? I would suspect that most user's may duplicate a folder somewhere within their home directory, say the Desktop or Documents folder (where the user's files and folders should be kept for security reasons anyway). The duplicated file or folder may have world-writable permissions, but the enclosing folders do not. So the files would be protected.
  
  With regard to the second question of your post, how long does the temp file remain? I agree that the best way to create a temp file would be to make it somewhere in the user's home/library/tmp folder (or something like that), but I suspect that the temp file is deleted shortly after it's creation. I have previewed PDF's in the past, but my /tmp directory has no printing.xxx files curenty in it.
• Access rights on some files
  2003-10-11 10:19:24  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  That isn't part of the information currently available on the Apple.com webiste. Ask those questions again after the system has been released.

• selecting text in PDFs
  2003-10-10 20:13:27  maarky [View]
  
  
  Maybe I'm just missing something, but in the current 10.2 version of Preview I cannot select and copy text in PDF files. Has this been fixed in 10.3?
• selecting text in PDFs
  2003-10-11 04:23:18  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  yes it has
  http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/preview/

• An alternative to excessive clicking
  2003-10-10 19:19:31  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  "Moving the focus of the finder to the User's home directory instead of the boot disk is a welcome change. Not having to go click-click-click to navigate a new Finder window from the boot disk to the home folder will save me thousands of clicks a year."
  
  How about this? Apple+shift+H in the Finder will open a new Finder window with your home directory. It's an awkward key combo, but you can also drag your home directory into the Dock and click it to get the same.
• An alternative to excessive clicking
  2003-10-14 12:31:26  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Yes, Apple-Shift-H works, but it's clunky. Having things that work smoothly and well is important--and worthy of mention.
• An alternative to excessive clicking
  2003-10-19 07:50:16  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  There is also a finder preference that addresses this:
  
  New Finder Window shows:
  -Home
  -Computer
  
  Maybe Jaguar should have been set by default to open to the home directory. I change that preference on all of my client's new OS X installs.
• An alternative to excessive clicking
  2003-10-14 15:20:07  adamrice [View]
  
  
  You can also hit command-up arrow to go Home. Doesn't work in all contexts, but very handy.
• An alternative to excessive clicking
  2003-10-10 20:06:37  maarky [View]
  
  
  If you want new finder windows to open up in the home directory using 10.2 go to the Finder, then go to Preferences (in the Finder menu, not system preferences), under "New Finder Window Shows:" select Home.
• An alternative to excessive clicking
  2003-10-11 13:51:20  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  To many old-time mac users, this feature may not seem very noteworthy, but for beginnner mac users it is a god-send. The pre-Panther Finder is very computer-centric, requiring users to know about where the file paths of the Application and home directories. The Panther Finder is much more user-centric, hiding the system details from the user, if wanted. All a beginner user needs to know is that Apps are found by clicking the Applications folder, Documents should be stored in the Documents folder (with subfolders), etc. It is a much more straight-forward, coherent ideology.
  
  Keep in mind that the people reading the O'Reilly articles are likely power users, who understand the file hierarchy in detail, but the average user isn't concerned. He/She just wants to store their documents and open them easily later.

• Syncronize?
  2003-10-10 18:38:46  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-10 18:43:46  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  (Darned web interface! Darned typos!)
  
  In point #8 you mention that you synchronize your laptop and desktop. How? Something built into Panther? I haven't seen such a feature listed at Apple's Panther Preview web pages. Given Apple's insistence that this is the "Year of the Laptop," I would have expected them to do more to integrate things like file synchronization, but as far as I can tell they have not.
  
  Rant over, I still would like to know which software you use (and/or recommend) for synchronizing across Macs. (I hope you don't say an iDisk -- while it may work for some people, that is not feasible for my situation.)
  
  Thanks in advance.
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-12 16:44:54  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  ChronoSync works well.
  http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/Pages/chrono_overview.html
• Rename Sync
  2003-10-23 17:47:01  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I just tried 2 Sync Apps, and ChronoSync is a Beautiful program, but it did not sync a renamed file. However another application did.
  
  Synchronize! Pro 3.0.1 X
  http://www.qdea.com/pages/downloads1.html
  
  Seemed to work Much Better. Anybody use either for an extended period of time?
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-12 02:21:40  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  The following page on the Apple site mentions file synchronisation but there are few details...
  
  http://www.apple.com.au/macosx/features/mobility/
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-11 10:23:07  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  I synchronize my data using a combination of CVS and rysnc.
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-14 12:33:40  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  In fact, you can see how I do it in this O'Reilly Network article.
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-11 01:28:03  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  use rsync + ssh + rendezvous. imagine you have two machines, laptop.local and desktop.local, from laptop you can synch with desktop while on the same link:
  
  rsync -e ssh -r /Users/name/ desktop.local:/Users/name
  rsync -e ssh -r desktop.local:/Users/name/ /Users/name
  
  or from desktop while laptop is on the same link:
  
  rsync -e ssh -r /Users/name/ laptop.local:/Users/name
  rsync -e ssh -r laptop.local:/Users/name/ /Users/name
  
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-11 08:54:28  mike3k [View]
  
  
  Does rsync handle resource forks?
  
  Right now I use Synchronize Plus or SilverKeeper and I'm not really happy with either one of them.
  
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-26 08:37:18  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  rsync-x is a replacement for rsync. It hand;es resource forks and all of the other intricacies of HFS+
  
  You install it and it replaces rsync, so you use the same command "rsync" in the terminal.
  
  haven't tested it with Panther but since it is the backbone of my backup system, you better believe I will be testing it shortly.
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-26 20:40:36  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  rsyncx handles resource forks in a really kludgy way, though. It's not compatible with standard rsync so you can't use it to integrate Mac OS X with other UNIX systems.
  
  I've got a patched rsync that handles resource forks, but not finder info, but it does it by syncing the file as two files, one with a .rsrc extension (it's tricky, because both files start out with the same inode number, you have to cheat). I need to come up with a clean compatible mapping for the finder info and add a ".info" third fork. But right now it works well enough.
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-14 12:34:35  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Nope. rsync and cvs both clobber resource forks. Not a big deal for many file formats, but for a few, it's a huge deal. Luckily, all of the file formats that I work with don't suffer when their resource forks are stripped.
• Synchronize?
  2003-10-11 05:18:40  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Another nice tool is:
  
  Unison File Synchronizer
  http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison
  
  The top FAQ deals with unison on OSX -- it works
  with a few caveats but you have to build from
  scratch. At work I use unison on SGI Irix, which also must be compiled from scratch, but the build process was well documented and went smoothly.
  
  

• X11 Integration
  2003-10-10 17:26:25  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Beeing a switcher from Solaris (NOT from Windows) I can't wait to have a seamless integration of X11 into OS X.
  
  Ahh those preferences... As different as the users are... :-)
• X11 Integration
  2003-10-11 11:51:39  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  Oh yea. X11 is nice to have on the install books. :)

• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-10 16:59:32  maarky [View]
  
  
  I've got one of those old 500mhz TiBooks with only 8mb video ram. It does not have quartz extreme. Panther seems to rely heavily on quartz extreme, so I was wondering if the graphics stuff would be damn slow on my computer. In short, is it worth upgrading to Panther if you don't have quartz extreme?
  
  And to anybody who suggests I get a new computer I would like to say that I will not be able to afford a new computer after you send me a $3000 check. (the cost of a 17" powerbook)
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-11 19:16:23  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Two of my coworkers have been running Panther on an original TiBook and a white 12" iBook, and they've both said that it's faster than Jaguar.
• no quartz extreme
  2003-10-11 17:02:01  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  No biggie. Performance on non-Quartz Extreme boxes have a major performance boost over Jaguar.
• Jaguar
  2003-10-11 12:18:06  mcritz [View]
  
  
  10.3 is at least as fast as 10.2, and in many cases faster on G3s. My iMac 500se is considerably faster on 10.3 compaired to previous systems.
• Jaguar
  2003-10-13 06:15:04  dougadams [View]
  
  
  Agreed. Panther on my iMac Rev C (with HARMONi 500mHz and without QE) is perceptibly faster and "cleaner". Amazingly so, I would say. Get psyched.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-11 10:31:01  James Duncan Davidson | [View]
  
  
  The only way to know for sure how it will work is when Panther shows up on shelves and people have experience with it.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-11 10:04:23  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I have a revision A, 400 MHz tibook with 640 megs RAM and Panther has added new life to my machine.
  
  Fast User Switching does not employ any fancy visual stuff, but Expose does and it's very smooth.
  
  By all means get Panther, you'll add another year to the life of your tibook.
  
  All of this and I only have the WWDC build of Panther, and it has since become faster.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-11 04:32:26  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  If you do not have Quartz Extreme, those heavy aqua effects (cube effect when switching user, zooming when you open a file, windows moving when using exposé, etc.) are just disabled.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-11 00:44:36  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I have a 350mhz G3 tower that does not have quartz extreme. I have become accustomed to the speed at which 10.2 runs at. However I have access to pre-release versions of 10.3 and let me tell you that it is MUCH faster then 10.2.
  
  Apple really took the time to optimize the OS. It's really awesome.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-10 23:48:52  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  I am in the same situation as yours. Actually I have a G4/400Mhz (Mercury), the very first series. I find Jaguar slow and if Panther does not speed up things a little bit I plan to ditch MacOS X and move to OpenBSD or Linux.
  Before I resort to that are there any tricks to gain some speed ? Disabling transparencies, disabling animations ... what else ?
  
  thanks
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-11 02:37:08  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Add an new PCI video card, and put in some memory
  
  512MB is minium for an fast OS, and put in an Nvidea card.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-11 12:59:58  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Um, they said they had the G4/400 PowerBook... No adding PCI graphics cards or AGP graphics cards to them (w/o a good soldering iron)
  
  512MB+ ram will help tho.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-20 13:04:02  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Also - a good thing to go is to defrag the HD often to improve performance. I noticed this when I installed Jaguar on my 400 MHz TiBook. This helped a lot. I wish Panther had Defrag built in.
• no quartz extreem
  2003-10-10 19:46:17  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  IMHO, Panther is very usable on a 500MHz Powerbook G4. Your mileage may vary, but it feels at least as snappy, if not more so, than any previous version of OS X.