I've seen a lot of complaint threads lately about the price of Panther. A lot of people seem to think $130 is a little too much to charge for a "point" release. After playing with Panther for a bit I came up with a small list of features that made Panther worth the price to me.
- Scheduling - THis isn't a feature that is widely talked about bit it is an addition that is way overdue. Scheduling is one of the features that made Macs a dream to administer in a lab. If everyone comes in at a certain time and goes home at a certain time you can make sure the systems are either on or off when you want them to be. It is also a great feature if you've got a Mac at home you want to dial into when on the road. It removes the need to train your cat to turn your Mac on when you're on a business trip.
- Vicki - I like using the native Text-to-Speech function in MacOS and have been using them for a long time. I like combining T2S functions with AppleScript. I've got an AppleScript that reads me movie times and another that gives me a weather report. Not something I couldn't read in a second or two myself but they're nice toys to use when I'm working on something and I don't want to go look everything up myself. I've also got a script that runs when I login that says "Would you like to play a game?". In Zarvox's voice it sounds creepy. The Vicki voice is pretty sweet and I hope Apple keeps upgrading T2S so their other voices are such high quality.
- SMB Printing - Another one of my "Finally!" features. I was really disappointing that SMB printing has been broken for so long. Unless you or your administrator adds Unix Print Services to a Windows 2000/XP machine you're out of luck printing to a shared Windows printer in Jaguar. Now us Mac folk can truely co-exist with Windows users on the same network. SMB file sharing was a great start but SMB print sharing is a requirement for most networks.
- Better Smoothing - To my eye the font smoothing has improved significantly between Jaguar and Panther. I spend almost as much time looking at my Powerbook's LCD as I do my CRT I hook it up to when I'm at my desk. The better the LCD looks the more I can read comfortably when I'm away from my desk.
- Pinstripes - Apple seriously toned down the contrast on the pinestripe background for the toolbar and windows. The pinstripes made for a painful reading experience on my Powerbook's screen. I'm very happy they finally decided not to blind their users with pinstripes anymore. I think the subdued contrast looks much better anyhow.
- Mail - Not everyone is as pleased with Mail as I am. I subscribe to a metric buttload of developer lists. Being able to collapse threads is an awesome feature that is also on my "Finally!" list. Mail is also quite a bit less sluggish than it was in Jaguar. I don't have to worry about handling it with kid gloves anymore fearing it was going to die and destroy my mail boxes. While I don't have any use for Exchange support now I know there are plenty of people that do. Having it will be another feature that make Macs more attractive for businesses because they work with existing infrastructures. They also fixed the damn compose icon so it isn't as confusing as to its function.
- Address Book - Label printing and mailing list printing! I don't feel that needs elaboration. I can finally easily print out my contacts for use away from my Powerbook. E-mailing a vCard isn't always an option for giving people contact info. Phone number formatting is pretty sweet as well. A botched Bluetooth synch and a backup from my SIM card left a lot of my contact numbers formatted poorly. No longer do I have to manually repair them.
All of the major features like Exposé rock and I'm really pleased with them. I've just been finding more and more little improvements that are making OSX a really sweet system to use. Being able to print to SMB shares and read my mail in an organized fashion is quite the benefit to me.
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