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geekwagon · Oct 8, 2003, 07:18 PM

I was thinking about it today, and realized that there are several features of Panther that were either discussed at the WWDC keynote or on the Panther website at apple.com right after/during WWDC that don't seem to be either in the latest builds or discussed on the new website. Some I can think of:

1. BSD Ports collection. This one was actually in the WWDC seed but disappeared in the next one. It had a slide in Steve's presentation, IIRC.. I'd really like to see this make a return, although getting Fink to work on Panther would be work.
2. Home Directory stored on iPod (forgot about this one, but just saw it on Macrumors.com)
3. I think I remember Steve saying that you would be able to take any folder stored on a Panther server and sync it for offline usage just like you can with the iDisk now. I clearly remember seeing this listed on a previous version of the Panther Server website, too, but it is gone now.

Any others you can think of? I should go back and re-watch the WWDC keynote again.

RooneyX · Oct 8, 2003, 07:34 PM

The ability to turn off special effects and just have windows minimize to the Dock immediately without animations, sheets to appear immediately without animations, and user switching without waiting for the desktop to rotate.

Developer · Oct 8, 2003, 07:51 PM

The Ports Manager is available here

http://www.opendarwin.org/projects/darwinports/

I didn't hear about the other two features.

blackbird_1.0 · Oct 8, 2003, 08:08 PM

I think the BSD ports thing is coming in Panther, as well as being able to sync your files with those on your iDisk.

Hop Pocket · Oct 8, 2003, 08:22 PM

It seems to me that Fink is a working example of Darwin ports.. Am i wrong?

geekwagon · Oct 8, 2003, 08:31 PM

Originally posted by Hop Pocket:
It seems to me that Fink is a working example of Darwin ports.. Am i wrong?

Fink doesn't work under Panther yet (GCC 3.3 problems) although they are working on it. Plus the feature that was discussed at WWDC was to be included with Panther on the CD's. Fink is a 3rd party solution.

I think the BSD ports thing is coming in Panther, as well as being able to sync your files with those on your iDisk.

Yes, you can sync files with an iDisk in Panther. What I would rather though is to sync to a network share like Win2k+ can do. I have too many GB of stuff to use an iDisk for everything I would like to keep synced (although I do use it for some things)

Horsepoo!!! · Oct 8, 2003, 08:31 PM

Originally posted by RooneyX:
The ability to turn off special effects and just have windows minimize to the Dock immediately without animations, sheets to appear immediately without animations, and user switching without waiting for the desktop to rotate.

Bzzzt. Wrong. That was never a Panther feature.

mitchell_pgh · Oct 9, 2003, 01:59 PM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Bzzzt. Wrong. That was never a Panther feature.

It would be interesting to see just how fast Panther would be without the eye candy. It would ultimately suck because many of us would use it to get that little "extra" something from the CPU... Thus, the OS wouldn't shine as well as it does.

I'm glad they have the eye candy... It puts the pressure on Apple to make the thing more responsive.

When are they going to enable the robotic arms that have been in all of the G4 and G5 towers since the Quicksilver!!!

Diggory Laycock · Oct 9, 2003, 03:48 PM

I thought the Crash Reporter was cool - but maybe it was never meant to be in the final Release.

barbro · Oct 9, 2003, 03:51 PM

There was something on the panther page at apple about producing compressed pdf's (i.e. pdfs where the images have compression on them). I wonder if they axed that as a favour to adobe.

Horsepoo!!! · Oct 9, 2003, 03:57 PM

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
It would be interesting to see just how fast Panther would be without the eye candy. It would ultimately suck because many of us would use it to get that little "extra" something from the CPU... Thus, the OS wouldn't shine as well as it does.

I'm glad they have the eye candy... It puts the pressure on Apple to make the thing more responsive.

When are they going to enable the robotic arms that have been in all of the G4 and G5 towers since the Quicksilver!!!

Well a lot of the animation provides important feedback...it's nice to see exactly where the window is going when minimizing to the Dock. It's nice to see the windows shrink as the move and tile up on the screen using Expose...and it's nice to see the sheet pop down.

Sometimes when I'm zoned out while browsing, I click on a link that brings me to another page that looks the same but I sit in front of the computer thinking the page is still loading...expect that it already is, but there wasn't enough feedback to grab my attention.

I'm actually glad there are 'pointless' animation effects.

The bouncing icons in the Dock when an app is being launched are there to indicate that something is indeed happening. A big complaint on Windows is that there's no enough feedback: you double-click on an app and nothing happens for a while, you automatically think that maybe you didn't click correctly...and double-click again. All the while Windows did register the original double-click and the second one and opens two instances.

If someone in my family had a desktop that looked like mine, and I had to change users, and there was no animation to indicate that I have changed user accounts, I might get confused.

The animations aren't just there for sh!ts and giggles.

Alex Duffield · Oct 9, 2003, 04:58 PM

Originally posted by Horsepoo!!!:
Bzzzt. Wrong. That was never a Panther feature.

Sure it is!! You just have to have a system that does not support Quartz Extreme

clarkgoble · Oct 9, 2003, 05:33 PM

I actually think that turning many animations off ought to be a feature. Just leave it as an option. Heavens, hide it if you wish and make it accessible with TinkerTool or some other program. But it ought to be there.

A feature of Panther that never technically was part of Panther that I was hoping for was the meta-data savvy file system and Finder. If that was actually being pursued then I guess it simply wasn't far enough along.

moki · Oct 9, 2003, 05:57 PM

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
I actually think that turning many animations off ought to be a feature. Just leave it as an option. Heavens, hide it if you wish and make it accessible with TinkerTool or some other program. But it ought to be there.

Like it or not, part of being a good software designer (or any kind of a designer for that matter) is being a good dictator. That aside, Apple has serious branding reasons for wanting to not support themes, and for the look and feel (which includes those animation features) to be a mandatory part of the OS.

diamondsw · Oct 9, 2003, 06:03 PM

Originally posted by RooneyX:
The ability to turn off special effects and just have windows minimize to the Dock immediately without animations, sheets to appear immediately without animations, and user switching without waiting for the desktop to rotate.

You're missing the point - this is not a wish list, but rather for discussing features that were announced in Panther or in previous builds that are not in the GM.

Lack of animation does not fit the criteria.

diamondsw · Oct 9, 2003, 06:06 PM

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
I actually think that turning many animations off ought to be a feature. Just leave it as an option. Heavens, hide it if you wish and make it accessible with TinkerTool or some other program. But it ought to be there.

A feature of Panther that never technically was part of Panther that I was hoping for was the meta-data savvy file system and Finder. If that was actually being pursued then I guess it simply wasn't far enough along.

Never announced as a feature of Panther. While I agree with you that it's desirable, it's not germane to the thread.

We have enough threads of wishlists around here.

JB72 · Oct 9, 2003, 06:10 PM

Originally posted by geekwagon:
1. BSD Ports collection. This one was actually in the WWDC seed but disappeared in the next one. It had a slide in Steve's presentation, IIRC.. I'd really like to see this make a return, although getting Fink to work on Panther would be work.

I would imagine (or maybe just hope) that they are waiting for the Metapkg Alliance comes to fruition before Apple includes it along with the OS.