Panther...First Impressions
I did pick up a Panther Family Pack at the local Apple Store and stayed up until about 1:30 a.m. loading Panther on my wife’s 800 Ghz G4 (flat panel) iMac and on my Dual 1 Ghz G4 Quicksilver PowerMac. Here are my first impressions and observations about running the new OS.
Installation: So far, installing Panther has been a breeze though not necessarily fast. The installer detects that this is an upgrade by scanning the disk you tell it to install on. If it detects an older operating system, it tells you it’s going to install as an upgrade and gives you a radio button that lets you confirm that’s what you want it to do. Installing Panther has taken between 1.3 and 1.5 GB of additional space on my hard disks than Jaguar. You can knock that down quite a bit by selecting “Customize” (It appears right after you select the hard disk you want to install on during the Installation Type portion of the installation.) and deselecting printer drivers and language translators you don’t want or need. ( I knocked down the installation requirements on one machine by 500MB by doing this.)
Compatibility: I’ve done just preliminary testing; but, so far, Panther doesn’t appear to have “broken” any of my existing applications. I was most worried about Photoshop, but I’ve seen no problems with it. My PowerMate still works as do the Microsoft Intellipoint Drivers I’m using with my mouse.
Speed: Faster. Not breathtakingly faster, but noticeably faster. Just seems snappier than Jaguar. Certainly, boots and shuts down noticeably quicker.
Interface:
Coloring: The silver stripes are more subtle and have blended together to give the background menus and borders a muddy silver look. Apple needs to be VERY CAREFUL here. They are in danger of ruining the Aqua interface’s attractiveness. Looks like a kid ran a silver crayon over the menus and couldn’t get them as dark as he wanted. The continuing addition of grey and silver is making Aqua look more and more mechanistic and boring like Windows has always looked. If Apple doesn’t think that has an emotional impact on the user, they don’t understand human interface design. Along these lines, the light/dark shading used in System Preferences looks amateurish; the large spacing of the icons makes the attempt at differentiation by shading unnecessary. Frankly, I’m hoping someone will produce a haxie I can install that will restore Aqua’s borders and menus to its Jaguar look, though Panther’s is growing on me slowly so it might be more likeable after a while. It’s the darkness of it that bothers me.
New Finder Window: I like. It makes moving around the system a lot easier.
Fonts: Font crispness seems slightly better. I haven’t used Font Book yet.
Coolest Feature: Exposé, without a doubt!
Installation: So far, installing Panther has been a breeze though not necessarily fast. The installer detects that this is an upgrade by scanning the disk you tell it to install on. If it detects an older operating system, it tells you it’s going to install as an upgrade and gives you a radio button that lets you confirm that’s what you want it to do. Installing Panther has taken between 1.3 and 1.5 GB of additional space on my hard disks than Jaguar. You can knock that down quite a bit by selecting “Customize” (It appears right after you select the hard disk you want to install on during the Installation Type portion of the installation.) and deselecting printer drivers and language translators you don’t want or need. ( I knocked down the installation requirements on one machine by 500MB by doing this.)
Compatibility: I’ve done just preliminary testing; but, so far, Panther doesn’t appear to have “broken” any of my existing applications. I was most worried about Photoshop, but I’ve seen no problems with it. My PowerMate still works as do the Microsoft Intellipoint Drivers I’m using with my mouse.
Speed: Faster. Not breathtakingly faster, but noticeably faster. Just seems snappier than Jaguar. Certainly, boots and shuts down noticeably quicker.
Interface:
Coloring: The silver stripes are more subtle and have blended together to give the background menus and borders a muddy silver look. Apple needs to be VERY CAREFUL here. They are in danger of ruining the Aqua interface’s attractiveness. Looks like a kid ran a silver crayon over the menus and couldn’t get them as dark as he wanted. The continuing addition of grey and silver is making Aqua look more and more mechanistic and boring like Windows has always looked. If Apple doesn’t think that has an emotional impact on the user, they don’t understand human interface design. Along these lines, the light/dark shading used in System Preferences looks amateurish; the large spacing of the icons makes the attempt at differentiation by shading unnecessary. Frankly, I’m hoping someone will produce a haxie I can install that will restore Aqua’s borders and menus to its Jaguar look, though Panther’s is growing on me slowly so it might be more likeable after a while. It’s the darkness of it that bothers me.
New Finder Window: I like. It makes moving around the system a lot easier.
Fonts: Font crispness seems slightly better. I haven’t used Font Book yet.
Coolest Feature: Exposé, without a doubt!
posted by Andy Foster at
8:57 AM
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