[kpne1home]

Is Panther worth the $130 for the average guy? Just wondering if its worth buying.

[sodamnregistered2]

I'm about to go get a copy.

I "hear" it's quite a bit faster, especially in terms of the big weakness of OSX to this point - the sluggish UI.

Also, Windows networking seems more integrated. PC computers show up in Finder, Macs show up in Network Neighborhood. I also think printer sharing got better between platforms.

Depends on what you need from the OS.

[cgc]

I have a 400MHz G4 Sawtooth and I need Snappiness. It definately feels snappier. Much snappier. It's a shame Safari still doesn't properly work on my college's distance learning pages. Only $69 for students = muahahaha!

[RooneyX]

Are you worthy of Panther?

[gfourdoor]

The way I look at it is, the Mac operating system keeps getting better as it developes.

Is Panther better than Jaguar? I think it is.

Is it worth the $130? Well, yeah... in the long run, I believe it is. But that's me. I like OS X more than any previous operating system. The applications I have are being developed for the latest system upgrades, so it doesn't make a lot of sense to get behind on upgrades.

On my dual 1GHz G4, I don't see much difference in speed. I think that Panther will shine more on single processor machines.

[fisherKing]

speed difference on my pismo is significant...
reminds me of *gasp* os9.

so far so good (actually have hotsync and some apps up&running!)


fast, clean, smart. love it.

[nobitacu]

Totally worth it in my book.

Ming

[MacGorilla]

Worth it, yes.

I like a lot of the under the hood changes to the BSD subsytem and X11. I am such a geek

[merp]

I just got my upgrade today, and I'm not so sure. I think gfourdoor is on the money, in that it's worth it in the long run, what with bugfixes and such. I do have some small complaints.

First, kudos to whoever cleared up all the glitchy interface issues. In X.2.whatever, I'd have problems w/ the mouse pointer not being the right thing over certain UI elements, and other weirdness, like selecting a folder background color from the "Developer" palette. All this stuff works correctly now, and I"m glad it does. It makes the OS feel more finished.

What annoys me, tho, is the bloody Boolean variable read bug that's been in Property List Editor apparently ever since 10.0 (or whatever). It's _still_there_. I mean, they bundle an app that's supposed to read and write XML docs, and it's fscking broken. I mean broken to the point that I can't trust it to save my file modifications correctly. Sure there's always vi, or TextEdit, but come on, I can't use the included, pre-associated tool for what it's supposed to be used for. I just hope that if I keep submitting bug reports, eventually it'll get fixed in a point release. Maybe I'm being anal, but it really detracts from the polish of the OS as much as the UI issues I had with Jaguar.

Oh well. Enough of the rant for now. Otherwise, I'm pretty satisfied. .3 _is_ faster, even on my G5, I can tell it's snappier than .2; I've yet to run real benchmarks, but file transfers ffrom SMB mounts are quicker, and don't hork Finder like they used to. I'll beat on it some more tonight, and report back, but yah, I could see upgrading for $130... There's enough new stuff to make it worth it, especially the included IDE (Xcode). I'll have to run some projects thru it and see how it does.

[dlefebvre]

Really worth it. I'm already used to Exposé and could no more live without it. l quickly got used to the new finder (cool new search) and there's a great boost in efficiency with the new open and save.

[PreciousBbird]

I am seeing snappier performance with my single 867. If you figure out how much it costs a day to run it and how much time you save by snappy performance and how much your time is worth and add that up over a year, I venture to say you will think it is worth it.

And I consider myself a master at rationalization - especially when shopping!