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TheTraveller · Nov 14, 2003, 03:53 PM

I asked this question with 10.2, and the results seemed pretty mixed. So I'm asking again with 10.3:

Have we finally been delivered to the Promised Land, this amazing operating system Steve Jobs was touting way back when? Has Apple finally delivered on its promises?

Appleman · Nov 14, 2003, 04:04 PM

Almost there. One feature still missing:

Snappy (tm)

Phazer80s · Nov 14, 2003, 04:20 PM

Originally posted by Appleman:
Almost there. One feature still missing:

Snappy (tm)

Appleman, what type of system are you running?

Panther runs at about 90% of OS 9's speed on my 733 G4 with a GForce2MX (32MB) graphics card. It's respecably Snappy�. I gotta give a lot of credit to the programmers who worked on this. It took them 3 years to get it right, but it seems they *finally* nailed GUI responsiveness.

Panther's still got a few problems with scrolling and window resizing is consistently poor; overall, I figure this is the best we can ask for given the computing demands of Quartz. Any speed complaints I have now are probably because of my hardware's limits.

Krypton · Nov 14, 2003, 04:23 PM

Better yes. Best? nope

There are lots of great improvements, but also a lot of areas where new solutions don't make a great deal of sense, such as handling of Finder windows and networking.

ryaxnb · Nov 14, 2003, 04:51 PM

Yes. John Siracusa will ask for a "Very Very Far From It" option.

MacNStein · Nov 14, 2003, 07:14 PM

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
I asked this question with 10.2, and the results seemed pretty mixed. So I'm asking again with 10.3:

Have we finally been delivered to the Promised Land, this amazing operating system Steve Jobs was touting way back when? Has Apple finally delivered on its promises?

IMO, yes, it's what I've waited for. On my G4 dual it flies... it has tons of "Snappy�" coming out of everywhere. In fact, it's downright "Holy Sh*t�"!

When I right-click on the Applications (or any other folder) icon in the Dock it pops up and navigates as fast as the "Start" button in XP (on my bud's 3GHz Intel box). Not to mention the Cmd-Tab app switching. It's great.

On my PB it's not as fast (of course), but it's at least 2-3x faster than Jag. Overall, I'm really amazed and finally... dare I say it... content. And it'll get better from here. Sweet.

Ron Goodman · Nov 14, 2003, 08:02 PM

You need some more options. OS X has been "there" at least since Jaguar, although Panther is nicer and I epect X will continue to improve.

dru · Nov 14, 2003, 08:16 PM

Originally posted by TheTraveller:
I asked this question with 10.2, and the results seemed pretty mixed. So I'm asking again with 10.3:

Have we finally been delivered to the Promised Land, this amazing operating system Steve Jobs was touting way back when? Has Apple finally delivered on its promises?

Almost there. My #1, #2 & #10 gripe: The Finder is still a dung heap that crashes far too easily.

Am I the only user who has lots of files in folders? Only who uses thumbnails? Only who uses "calculate folder sizes"?

HELLO? UGH.

Agasthya · Nov 14, 2003, 08:23 PM

Originally posted by dru:
Almost there. My #1, #2 & #10 gripe: The Finder is still a dung heap that crashes far too easily.

Am I the only user who has lots of files in folders? Only who uses thumbnails? Only who uses "calculate folder sizes"?

HELLO? UGH.

Yeah, Finder is a joke. It has been for pretty much ever 10.x version.

RooneyX · Nov 14, 2003, 08:26 PM

No operating system will ever satisfy. Because technology is always changing on the hardware level software will always be playing catch up and users will be complaining about the lack of drivers, driver problems, and so on.

mitchell_pgh · Nov 14, 2003, 08:41 PM

I'm very happy with the level of refinements. I would love to see a few more iApps come out to make that $129 investment more worth it.

I wouldn't say "We Made It" as I still have a few hiccups from time to time.

This thread is a loaded question.

It is nice to have fast hardware and a solid/fast OS finally.

hudson1 · Nov 14, 2003, 08:44 PM

I fully agree with John Siracussa's comments on the Finder. In OS X, the Finder tries too hard to do too much and, as a result, no longer embodies a simple, consistent, and understandable theme or metaphor.

I think Apple would have made it easier on themselves if they had built two separate and distinct ways of displaying the file system: A traditional OS 9 type of Finder plus a file system browser (column view).

Really, there was no need to build into these two concepts a morphing action that allowed the two concepts to flip over into each other. It's probably the real reason why windows have a tendency to do unexpected things.

Is it a case where adding that extra step of elegance made the whole result less elegant?

Webscreamer · Nov 14, 2003, 08:51 PM

Originally posted by hudson1:
I fully agree with John Siracussa's comments on the Finder. In OS X, the Finder tries too hard to do too much and, as a result, no longer embodies a simple, consistent, and understandable theme or metaphor.

I think Apple would have made it easier on themselves if they had built two separate and distinct ways of displaying the file system: A traditional OS 9 type of Finder plus a file system browser (column view).

Really, there was no need to build into these two concepts a morphing action that allowed the two concepts to flip over into each other. It's probably the real reason why windows have a tendency to do unexpected things.

Is it a case where adding that extra step of elegance made the whole result less elegant?

want simple? 10.0 is your friend

hudson1 · Nov 14, 2003, 10:21 PM

Originally posted by Webscreamer:
want simple? 10.0 is your friend

I've had X Public Beta, 10.0, 10.1, 10.2, and soon will have 10.3.

Still, I have no clue as to what you're talking about. Surely you're not trying to tell me that the 10.0 Finder was "simple, consistent, and understandable" coming right on the heels of OS 9.

snerdini · Nov 14, 2003, 11:16 PM

Public Beta: Oh crap - oh well, it's still in beta
10.0: Is this seriously the final release? Seriously?
10.1: Well, it's usable now - barely
10.2: Pretty darn good, with some glaring problems
10.3: So close...

Appleman · Nov 15, 2003, 12:26 AM

Originally posted by Phazer80s:
Appleman, what type of system are you running?

Comparing with OS 9 on the very same machines, it still isn't Snappy (tm). Period.

Of course, Panther tends to lead the way to go concerning Snappy (tm), it's faster than Jaguar, and more responsive.

So I voted "almost there". Of course, we'll never be there.
But I love it, even on a Bondi it works acceptable

addiecool · Nov 15, 2003, 01:13 AM

So Far from the Promised Land, YES we are far. I agree OS9 was not stable and all but for workflow it was a champion.

1. I do a lot of grpahics work and OSX still does not match to many OS9 features and speeds.

2. The finder is still a kind of Joke... Crashes a lot

3. SMB? Finder browsing? Excuse me.... they do not work as intended. If you connect via browse it does not show up in the finder sidebar or desktop or save passwords. Oh! and if you tell me we will get an update, that we have been getting since the release of 10.2. Seriously cant they get SMB fixed.

4. FTP in finder: Still does not work as needed.

5. Panther starts to crawl after a while and requires frequent reboots.

6. Kernel Panics? YES YES they are always there. 10.2 never kinda crashed on me. Panther is like windows Blue screen of death turned into a black screen of death (BSD based subsystem?)

7. FireWire 800: Sheeeshhh. didnt they test it before release. It is not a very big thing. It might be whosoevers fault, but they could have atleast warned...... So much for lost data

8. USB Printing still sucks...

Personally I feel that instead of putting more and more effort on eye candy Apple should fix up these issues and make the OS rock solid and improve workflow.

Above all I love My Mac and I love OSX. Still anyday a million miles above any damn windblows stuff...

addiecool · Nov 15, 2003, 01:16 AM

-----Double post-----

mcsjgs · Nov 15, 2003, 01:21 AM

We'll be a lot closer at about 10.3.5

MacNStein · Nov 15, 2003, 10:35 AM

You guys who are complaining about Finder performance. On what Macs are you running OS X? Specs?

Sven G · Nov 15, 2003, 12:49 PM

As for this topic's title... Well, today's operating systems have become far too complex (as we tend to use computers also for rather useless things, and so on): some form of new, at the same time revolutionary and radically simplifying metaphor is needed, IMHO - and in a reasonable time...

sodamnregistered2 · Nov 15, 2003, 02:30 PM

Still some irksome bugs...

The window I select does not always come to the fore.

I loose text focus when editing code in Dreamweaver MX 2004. Sucks to have to ALWAYS go and reset text focus after I just typed a bunch of crap.

Network browsing could be better. They hyped some much improved yuck on us, and it's not much improved.

Safari ain't all that. I'm a Firebird user. I get cookie errors with Safari, and of course the occasional crash.

Um, If the network or share is not there, the beachball comes up. I have to wait a long time or it's just faster to reboot the thing.

I get QE text smears in windows.

Can't get around as easily as we should in finder. Why is it so hard to go up a level? Column view still annoys me to no end. There needs to be a setting where it at least tries to open each column wide enough to read a majority of the filenames. Instead, I have to resize several columns, and then I can start to scroll side to side. Auto resize the dang columns for me so I can get right to the side to side action.

I wish using a Windows printer was easier.

There need to be a better installer option. I really don't need fonts of the world. I will die, and never be able to read any of those asian fonts. They clutter all my font menus. Heck, I guess font management in general could be better.

I wish iPhoto would not come up when I plug-in my camera. I'm cool just accessing the camera and dragging the pics to a folder manually. Instead it tries to shove iPhoto down my throat, and I do not want to use it.

Illustrator 10 is a dog and crashes a lot when I try to edit text. Palettes act weird, ones that I NEVER turn off, turn themselves off. Palettes act weird in Photoshop 7 too. Now they want to juice me for the CS lineup. Balls.

Not all of this is Panther related, but the end resust is that the "overall workflow" is not as good as it could be.

TheTraveller · Nov 15, 2003, 02:34 PM

With all previous releases of OS X (going back to DP2) I've had pre-release versions of OS X to play with before the final shipping version. Panther is the first time I skipped the Beta releases and went straight to the final version.

I must say, on my G4 PowerBook 800 Mhz, 512 MB of RAM, Panther is noticeably snappier than Jaguar. I really like it.

kcmac · Nov 15, 2003, 06:52 PM

I really like Panther. It is the best OS I have used to date. But the promised land?

Before I die, I hope I can tell my computer or whatever form it is in by then what I need it to do for me.

Of course, no one has promised this, but just what exactly has anyone promised us anyway?

I like where OS X is heading but the journey will really never end. We will always want more.

Zadian · Nov 15, 2003, 08:04 PM

Is 10.3 the OS Apple promised we would get? Yes.

But I guess no OS will ever be "the promised land" - there will always be something that could be better, something that should be improved and there is always something new that changes the way the OS has to work.

The problem with improvements is, that they can't be to radical as they should be. They have to happen evolutionary, or most users will complain about it.

The desktop metaphor should have been dropped 6 years ago (NeXT dropped it 14 years ago), as it is useless if you try to organise ten-thousands of files. It was designed to handle few files (about 5-12 files), it can handle a few hundreds. But not ten-thousands of files.

Apple tried to change the Finder more radical but most of the users complained about that move. Now Apple tries the almost impossible, satisfy the demands of the users and to improve the Finder. The result is the chimera we see in Panther.

clarkgoble · Nov 15, 2003, 10:04 PM

There are a few minor appearance bugs but I suspect those will be fixed by January. i.e. selection colors, the way the side bar operates, etc.

Right now the only things I really need are better speed for large number of files. However I must confess that it has gotten better each major revision.

I would truly like sorting in column view like Pathfinder does (albeit perhaps with a better interface)

The big one that I was hoping for 10.3 and which I hope arrives before 10.4 is more metadata and BeOS like features for finding and saved searches. i.e. make the browsing in the Finder far more like iTunes.

BTW - for those harping on the Finder, while I think the ArsArticle makes some good points, I think that the Panther Finder is by far the best file manager I've used. Nothing else even comes close. We'll see what this new version of Nautilus looks like. I have my doubts about it. (But of course anyone on the Mac could use it using X11)