RandomMaccess First Look: A User's Look at Panther
October 24, 2003 | by Ilene Hoffman
I've been using various iterations of Panther now for a couple of months and my impressions are all favorable! The golden master was slipped under my door so I could do the technical editing on some Panther books for your future reading pleasure. You can expect Bob LeVitus's Mac OS X for Dummies (Panther) very soon -- and hopefully include it as a very useful Christmas present.
My impressions of Panther are not as a Mac techie, but as an everyday user; because that's what I did -- just use it in the normal course of my working day. First, it runs much faster than Jaguar on my 500 MHz G4 with only 384 MB of RAM. No more watching the bouncy bouncy icons for close to minutes while applications try and get in the race; no more click on a file and end up daydreaming about the days when computing was a black and white experience.
Unlike beta testers and developers, my use of Panther was anything but glamorous. Commissioned to edit two books for Wiley Publications, my use of the sleek beast was run of the mill: launch, work, launch, work. I upgraded nothing on my system except what came with Panther, which I installed on an empty hard disk partition. My environment consisted of using Microsoft Word (Service Release 1, and part of Office for Mac OS X), Internet Explorer (5.2), Apple's installed iChat AV, DVD Player, Grab, Safari, TextEdit, iPhoto, Terminal, and Font Book. I even cheated and did a little recreational editing in PhotoShop 7 of my new soccer photos. The only application that had a little trouble was, of course, Word. Sometimes my windows got stuck under the toolbars I had open, but that was just an annoyance. I also set up Internet file sharing and networked with a friend in Ohio, and networked with my PowerBook G3 (Pismo), but that's technical nonsense for another day.
The hardware I connected included the HP PSC 2410 photosmart printer, an OWC 120GB drive, and an old Dr. Bott 4-port hub. Everything just worked. (An aside, if you need a firewire drive, buy an Other World Computing drive - they're awesome, but that's a whole 'nother article.)
Unwinding from work included a daily dose of different games from PopCap Games and solitaire from Freeverse Software. Burning Monkey Solitaire and Bejeweled, my favorites, worked just fine. As I've never been a fan of adding system tools, the only utility I loaded was TinkerTool v. 2.32 (021008), because I had to test things mentioned in one of the books. A kind message appeared warning me that all the features might not be compatible when I launched TinkerTool, but the few I tried worked fine.
At the same time I was also beta testing an all-in-one printer from Hewlett-Packard. Panther recognized the printer without any problem. The HP software, which includes all kinds of features for playing with photographs, faxing, scanning and copying also worked flawlessly.
Two new features I'm particularly fond of are the Font Book and the Sidebar. Font Book installs and enables fonts for each user in a snap. Fonts installed are available immediately, so no more quitting applications (as in OS 9) to view new ones. You can also easily preview all the characters in a particular font (choose Repertoire from the Preview menu). The only feature I missed was the ability to copy and paste a font out of the preview into a document.
If you want the features of Key Caps from OS 9, so you can actually see which special character goes with what key, you have to jump through a few small hoops. Apple's Font Help explains the process under the verbose title "Seeing what characters look like in different fonts." Basically, you have to customize a system preference in the International pane, under the Input Menu. Choose Keyboard Viewer, and a Show Keyboard Viewer options appears under your Input Menu on the right side of the menu bar. I think I prefer Jaguar's implementation with a Key Caps application, but oh well, its gone. (Key Caps does seem to still work in Panther, though.)
The Sidebar puts your hard drives,network, iDisk, and often used folders on the left side of the Finder window. You can edit what is shown in the Finder's Sidebar Preferences. The Sidebar also appears in the Open and Save dialogs. I assume (possibly incorrectly) that Apple will allow for users to customize the Sidebar even more in future releases. The Finder window also has a Search field, an Action pop-up menu that contains contextual commands (also still available when you Control click an item.)
Another feature I think users will like is Exposé. Exposé lets you see thumbnails of all your windows at once; so if you've overloaded your screen with too many open windows, it lets you make some sense of the mess! I found it fun to play with, but haven't really adopted it into my daily routine yet. The function keys allow you to do funky things, like using F9 to see all the windows; F10 to see all the windows in one application; F11 to hide your mess; and of course, preferences to change your settings.
My bottom line: YES, buy Panther! It's fast, adds features that make working easier, and seems more elegant to me than Jaguar.
Ilene Hoffman (ileneh@ilenesmachine.com) is a Mac/Internet Consultant and Writer for hire, a Contributing Editor for MacTech Magazine, and is presently editing Panther Mac OS X books for your future reading pleasure. She is also the perpetrator of the Hess Macworld Events List, which is being updated for the next show. You can see her life at www.ilenesmachine.com.
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