Panther Notes

I’ll skip the detailed Panther observations — plenty of excellent overviews and reviews out there. A few scattered notes after working with it for a few days:

– Move over sliced bread – Expose’ is even cooler.

– Finally, Cmd-Tab works exactly like Windows Alt-Tab, not just kinda.

– Everything is snappier. Boots faster. Probably a result of the fact that journaling is now on by default.

– The new Finder took a bit of getting used to, but I’m down with it. Glad it’s finally switched from aqua to metal. The layout is great, and improves with tweaking. But I have no idea what they’re thinking with network vols accessed via browse not mounting on the desktop (they still do when accessed via Connect to Server). Inconsistent, weird, not helpful. There must have been some logic there, but I’m not sure what it is. And I still can’t get links to network vols to work across boots without breaking, so I still have to mount shares manually after each boot. Not sure what I expected when they bragged about improved networking. There’s more compatibility, but less usability. Feh. I’ll live.

– Something no one seems to mention in reviews is the addition of a “Create Archive” option on context menus – zip anything in place, no need for 3rd party stuff. I’ve missed this from BeOS.

– Open/Save panels are just dynamite now. Switching today between Mac and PC, doing a task that required a lot of open/save operations, and the difference was almost painful.

– Dedicated panel for keyboard shortcuts. Set any shortcut for any system-wide or application specific action. A world of possibilities here.

A lot of cool stuff I’ll seldom use, but will be glad for when I need them: Built-in faxing. Fast user switching (apps aren’t quit when logging out); cool rotating cube effect while switching users. Color labels in the Finder. iChat AV (still gotta clear time to play with that one).

All told, totally worth it.

Music: The Mekons :: Poxy Lips

5 Replies to “Panther Notes”

  1. You’re one of a very few people who said that they’re welcoming the metal Finder. :)

    I have to say that while I was braced to dislike it, in practice it works much better than I’d have expected it to. The sidebar is pretty useful.

  2. I *really* don’t get what people don’t like about metal. To my eye, it looks way better than stripes. In fact, I’m sick to death of the damned stripes. Sometimes I think people just like to kvetch.

  3. I agree, new Finder is terrific. Panther toned down the stripes in a nice way. About time.

    If I could only train myself not hide apps (been doing so for a long time) I’d be using the all-windows feature of Exposé more. I’m really just looking for excuses to do so, it’s so satisfyin’. ; )

  4. Of course people like to kvetch. :)

    I suppose part of it may come from too much exposure to poorly designed “cool” skins for window managers like Enlightenment. And, there’s a bit of an irritation on purely philosophic grounds that Apple seems to be violating their own human interface guidelines with the way they’ve been using brushed metal recently. For practical purposes, I suppose it’s something I’m already used to, though, since I’ve been using Safari almost exclusively since it came out.

    Incidentally, I sure won’t defend the stripes. :) I ran Jaguar with a new “theme” which was essentially just Aqua with the stripes removed, so I’m not at all sorry to see them toned down to the point of near disappearance in Panther.

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