[Starry Night]

Aloha,

I currently have 10.2.6 which has performed flawlessly over the past 2 years. I don't want to get left too far behind in OS evolution and would like to install a more recent version of OSX in a partition on an Ext FW HDD to test drive it before putting it on my main HDD.

There are sooooo many bugs being reported about Tiger, especially on the Apple.com boards, that I'm feeling leary of buying Tiger. Plan B would be to buy a OEM version of Panther for $44 and update it to 10.3.8 and give Tiger a year to evolve and improve.

What I want is the same trouble free experience that I'm having with 10.2.6 but in a more recent OS form. Is 10.3.8 a good place to be? 10.3.9 seemed to have lots of problems hence the idea for 10.3.8. Stability is my greatest priority.

Thanks!

[mduser63]

My own personal experience has shown that 10.3.9 was a the best version of Panther, and was in fact the only update to Panther with which I really noticed any difference (I started with 10.3.4). Safari was much better with 10.3.9 compared to 10.3.8, because it got the same underlying code as Safari 2.0 for faster rendering, etc. That said, I have had absolutely zero problems with Tiger. I upgraded the day it was released, and I haven't shut my computer down since then. Other than the (very) rare application crash, I haven't run into anything bad at all as far as stability or functionality goes. If you're really worried about it, you could wait until 10.4.1. It should improve most of the serious things that a few people are having problems with.

[Starry Night]

Thanks for the reply. What do you make of all the reports of Tiger people having such problems with Mail, iTunes, iPhoto, printing, Safari crashes, Ext FW HDD being dropped, etc?

It all makes me nervous

[Big Mac]

10.3.9 is the best version of Panther and arguably the best minor upgrade in OS X history. On the other hand, Tiger is the future. You may want to wait for 10.4.1 to see how much of an improvement it is, before purchasing Panther.

[Starry Night]

Is there any notion as to when 10.4.1 will be released? Do such releases follow any sort of time pattern? If I go for Tiger (still on the fence) I want to take advantage of Amazon's $35 rebate which gives me until the end of May to make the purchase......

Also, what criteria do you experienced Mac Users use to determine if an OS release is truly buggy or if what one reads on the various boards are just the small percentage of users who will always have problems? Some say, "oh, they're support discussion boards, of course all you hear are the problems, the majority who are having no problems don't bother to post." Do the Tiger reports rise up to the level of legit concern?

Thanks.

[Starry Night]

In the end, I'm opting to go with Panther. I'm not a power user and Panther at $44 will give me all the boost I need right now, and will give Tiger time to work out its problems. The Macintouch Tiger review sealed the decision for me:

"For the more typical consumer or small business user right now, Tiger is optional. If your critical business operations depend on a Mac system, you don't want to upgrade it until the community has a chance to thoroughly test Tiger (although experimenting with it on test systems is a good idea, to help prepare for hardware and software updates that won't work with Panther).

If you want to find the needles in your haystacks, or you like the idea of Dashboard's modern version of Desk Accessories and Safari RSS, or you need effective basic parental controls, would like to explore Automator to simplify your daily workflow, or have the bandwidth and hardware required for iChat AV 3's video conferencing, Tiger is a worthwhile upgrade.

On the other hand, if you already own a copy of Konfabulator, use the ultra-fast Firefox browser and like its RSS paradigm (or use another RSS reader), don't care about Spotlight or Automator, and are happy with your current email client and parental controls, Tiger may not be compelling."

I've read that 10.3.9 has java related issues that effect different things. Is it correct that "security update 2005-02" is the fix for those 10.3.9 issues?

Thanks!

[James41]

You are never, repeat, never going to find an os that doesn't have some quirks to it on some systems. It just doesn't happen. Tiger works perfectly fine on my PowerMac G5 2.0, no problems what so ever, same story on my iMac G5 1.8.

However, there are hundreds of complaints from people even with the same specs as i have yelling about first one thing then another. More than a few i am sure are because of certain hardware problems, bad installs, or any of a thousand reasons. But that is to be expected with any new real upgrade of an os. 10.4.1 is due out almost any day not and will fix quite a few of the actual problems, however, as with previous releases you can expect a whole line of 10.4.xx's

If you do not wish to go through that, your best bet would be to update to 10.3.9 as that is probably the best that 10.3 is going to get. It was quite stable for millions of users and probably will be for you also.

In about 18 months or so, what ever time span Apple decides on, when Apple releases 10.5 then you might like to upgrade to what ever level 10.4.xx had made it to. Up grading an os is strickly a personal preference... Heck, you have any idea of how many business are still running Win98...

[d.fine]

10.3.8 worked really well for me. Some strange things started happening after installing 10.3.9 (apps hanging, dock crashing, etc.)
My main machine has 10.4 now, but the G4 400 will stay on 10.3.8 for now.

[sminch]

i've run 10.3.5 through 10.3.9 (which is what i'm running now) and am happy as larry with it - i've got no intention of getting 10.4 any time soon. in my experience the os has been stable as, with no issues worth mentioning. no crashes, no hanging apps. i'd thoroughly recommend it.

james41 - i hope you weren't hassling windows98! great os. well, for windows at least

sminch

[CharlesS]

10.3.9 was far, far, far better than 10.3.8.

Sure, there were a few people who reported problems with it. However, there were also a few people who reported problems with 10.3.8, 10.3.7, 10.3.6, 10.3.5...

Moral: Someone is going to report problems with every update. 10.3.9 was great. The one legitimate problem with it, the Java thing, was resolved with a subsequent Software Update. If you just let SU keep doing its thing until it says you're up to date, you'll be fine.

[Dale Sorel]

Oh my... I'd stay with OS 7.5 just to be safe

[romeosc]

Originally Posted by Dale Sorel

Oh my... I'd stay with OS 7.5 just to be safe

Or go back to multifinder or 6.08 both were revolutionary (for their time)