[LightWaver-67]

I know that a good percentage of people come here when they are having problems. And it is easy when scanning these topics and threads to think; "Man, this OS is a mess... why the hell would I want it as my computers operating system...?"

But I've got to say... it only seems to be HERE, on these BOARDS that I hear about problems. I know at LEAST a dozen people that are running 10.3(.1) on their assorted Macs... iBooks, iMacs (both kinds, newer & older), eMac, Powerbooks & Powermacs. None of them nor myself are having issues. Everything runs fine. Speed is fine. No lost hard-drives off of FireWire... no complaints about the Finder.

They are all (including myself) running trouble-free and absolutely HAPPY with the OS. It's just a stark contrast to come here and see everyone put-in their 2� about what they don't like... and individually, it might not be bad, but cummulatively... it starts to make it look like it's the worst frickin' OS ever released by ANY company.

I just want to take a moment to say how HAPPY I am with the current OS. I can't WAIT to begin the testing & migration from OS9 to OSX at my job. I use OS9 during the day... and I REMEMBER and re-live how painful it can be.

The NUMEROUS re-boots per day (per hour?), the fact that spooling large job files to the print-server can tie-up the machine until it's done. Apps wanting more memory... getting odd & unknown errors with no explanation (An error has occured -8842) > What the hell is that...? Overall... OS9 works when it wants to... but is only one-track-minded.

I LOVE the new OS... I am not having the problems that seem so widespread here (not negating them) and no one I know has had nor is having any issues caused by Mac OS X.

Just thought I needed to balance the scales a little.

G'day...!

[dillerX]

I look at it this way. With as many people as their are here, there are bound to be some installation, and assorted issues.

I myself haven't had but a couple minor glitches. Both of which have been settled by a quick jaunt here to see if anyone else has had the same issue.

10.3 = NICE

[Love Calm Quiet]

Yes, seamless UPGRADE installs on:
iBook 14" G3
Pismo
TiBook

OS X 10.3.1 - great experience. Love the smoothness of shared printing.

[bbales]

I'm glad to read about good experiences. A friend of mine has had no issues, either, and is really liking Panther.

The great thing about these forums, and those on other sites, is if you DO have problems, you can find out if anyone else is experiencing something similar and what they're doing to fix it. I have learned so much from forums and discussions. (When Y2K occurred, AOL mail inexplicably went to dates of, I think it was, 1919. Quick trip to a different site showed me other people were seeing the same thing. A few days later, AOL fixed it.)

[NeXTLoop]

I'll chime in with two Panther installations that are running smoothly. No problems and loving it.

[JKT]

There are probably three reasons why you see so much complaining/criticism here:

1. Many (most?) people who come here are Mac enthusiasts who like to see Apple perfect things - anything less than perfection will get criticised. Your day-to-day user isn't going to be so strict.

2. Many people here are more likely to have installed third-party hacks than the day-to-day user, which may lead to an increased chance of a negative install experience owing to conflicts.

3. Criticism is more likely to get shouted out than a compliment. True of every walk of life.

[snerdini]

4 perfect upgrades here...
(Archive & Install on all of them)

~ iMac SE DV 500
~ QS G4 933
~ iBook 800
~ MDD G4 Dual 867

Everything running great so far!

[powerbook867]

My 1.6 is running solid. I have had no problems or complaints since I performed the install...I'm about ready to do an upgrade on my wife's Powerbook...I'll keep you posted!

[mitchell_pgh]

I've been using a Mac for a VERY long time and must admit that I've only had one catastrophic experience, and it was my own fault. There are always things that I would like to see improved, and I don't always agree with Apple on their marketing and hardware decisions, and some days, I even get upset about all things Apple.

But in the end, I keep coming back. Not because I need to, but rather, I want to. It's an old clich�, but "it just works".

[ctbritt]

I'll chime in as well. No problems on multiple installations including two powerbooks (pismo and 12-in. G4, revA) a 2x2 G5 and a couple of others I'm not remembering. I love it and would never even go back to 10.2, much less OS 9.

[Anand]

If you use Panther at home it is fine. In fact, it is great! If you use Panther at work in a mixed netowork environment, it can be a pain. Panther has networking issues, no doubt. If you have not seen them, you are blind. If they can fix that it will be great everywhere!

[-Q-]

I have to concur with Anand. Panther has been great overall, but trying to use my Ti at work has been challenging. But I've no issues with it other than trying to see the network shares.

[snerdini]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I've been using a Mac for a VERY long time and must admit that I've only had one catastrophic experience, and it was my own fault. There are always things that I would like to see improved, and I don't always agree with Apple on their marketing and hardware decisions, and some days, I even get upset about all things Apple.

But in the end, I keep coming back. Not because I need to, but rather, I want to. It's an old clich�, but "it just works".

That pretty much sums it up for me too, minus the one catastrophic experience

[lenox]

Glad to hear the positive results; this topic is definitely a welcome change.

I am still integrating panther slowly (as one of my macs is in the office and MUST have no downtime), but I have been moderately impressed.

[Hop Pocket]

I love Panther. On so many levels it has been a fantastic upgrade from Jaguar. My only complaint now is that I get a kernel panic every other week.. :/

[cambro]

Count me in too. Panther is great and an archive-install went fine on TiBook.

Then again, I don't hack up my system with third party mods either...

[mcsjgs]

Panther by and large has been a nice improvement over Jag. If you have not been bitten by the bugs (Firewire, File Vault, Networking, Printing, and SCSI) your experience has probably been quite good. For those of us bitten by one or more of the bugs, it has been a little disturbing that Apple would let a major upgrade out the door with the faults it had. Foreseeable faults.

[Morenix]

Why ppl are so mad with Mac OS 9?
Why u did not use the Windows 95 previosly?

[barbarian]

I personally got bitten by the firewire bug which cost me 2 days of running around (and $90 for data rescue), but afterwards we upgraded about 50 machines at work with only some minor problems. We did the work machines in one day. A similar operation with our windows machines took almost a week.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Morenix:
Why ppl are so mad with Mac OS 9?
Why u did not use the Windows 95 previosly?

The reason SO many of us are tired or angry regarding OS 9 is because Apple had painted themselves into a corner. And we FINALLY have an OS that we can be proud of... and some people refuse to switch. I'm comfortable with it, but when they bitch about OS X or spread FUD about it, and they haven't used it more then 10 mins... I get upset.

The reasons I hate OS 9/8:

a) If you were young, and wanted to learn about programming, OS 9/8 wasn't for you. (OS X offers everything from basic shell scripting [which can be very powerful] to advanced object oriented programming]) all of which is FREE.

b) If you were a web developer, you basically had to turn to Unix or Windows. The Mac platform was a joke.

c) Memory management in OS 9 was very similar to the way it was in OS 7 or even OS 6.

d) Networking was nice (as long as you were connecting ONLY Apple computers or spent big $$$'s to use 3rd party software)

e) Extensions were one of the many weak spots on the OS. It would be like adding 100+ kernel extensions to OS X. I was constantly juggling them. (turn the scanner off, and the font extension back on, but that would mean that I needed to turn font smoothing off) [YES, THAT WAS JUST AN EXAMPLE]

f) We bitch about Microsoft having proprietary software, Apple was the worst back in the day. They have been forced into abandoning that mentality, but it took years for them to figure it out. We now use many more open standards with OS X. Even the proprietary applications (iApps, etc.) use open standards like XML etc. so at least you can play around with them or use them for things they weren't necessarily designed for.

g) Applications: OS X has a ton of little programs that are very mature. I'm amazed by all of the OS X versions of applications out there. The only one I would like to see is DVDXcopy. But that's just me.

I could go on and on, but I think you get my point. OS 9 is DEAD... long live OS 9.

[rezonate]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:

The reasons I hate OS 9/8:

Damn true. Towards the end of OS 9, I was thoroughly sick of it, my needs using a computer had grown vastly by the time 9 came out, and it was just a nightmare to use. mitchell_pgh summed it up pretty well, and in X I'm the happiest I've ever been with an OS.

[Hi I'm Ben]

The only problem i had with my mac was OS 9.


And the PowerLogix 1.2 ghz upgrade didn't sit well with my cube either.

[romeosc]

I have been very happy with Panther, but I feel that I would have been less than thrilled if I lost my firewire back up or any of the other major glitches.

I normally install new OS on a separate partition or second hard drive until I feel comfortable. But this time, "the glitch" could have wiped out all my data on a firewire drive!


NOT A MINOR FLAW!

...... but I still love 10.3.1, but I am a little skiddish when I update!

[clarkgoble]

Even if only 1% of people have a problem they will still gripe. When the problem is as serious as the HD with FW-800 was, then I can understand their complaints. I'm frankly surprised that never popped up in beta testing...

[romeosc]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
Even if only 1% of people have a problem they will still gripe. When the problem is as serious as the HD with FW-800 was, then I can understand their complaints. I'm frankly surprised that never popped up in beta testing...

I agree! I don't care about normal non destructive upgrades!

[Ratm]

I'm running it on a B&W G3 and have had not a single, glitch, hiccup, crash, freeze, KP, not to shabby for a four year old computer thats never needed to be service once in its entire little life . My father was hesitant about buying Panther but after I installed it for him on his G4 and he's observed for himself what this OS can do for his work flow, he's been very happy with it.

[ryaxnb]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
The reason SO many of us are tired or angry regarding OS 9 is because Apple had painted themselves into a corner. And we FINALLY have an OS that we can be proud of... and some people refuse to switch. I'm comfortable with it, but when they bitch about OS X or spread FUD about it, and they haven't used it more then 10 mins... I get upset.

The reasons I hate OS 9/8:

a) If you were young, and wanted to learn about programming, OS 9/8 wasn't for you. (OS X offers everything from basic shell scripting [which can be very powerful] to advanced object oriented programming]) all of which is FREE.

b) If you were a web developer, you basically had to turn to Unix or Windows. The Mac platform was a joke.

c) Memory management in OS 9 was very similar to the way it was in OS 7 or even OS 6.

d) Networking was nice (as long as you were connecting ONLY Apple computers or spent big $$$'s to use 3rd party software)

e) Extensions were one of the many weak spots on the OS. It would be like adding 100+ kernel extensions to OS X. I was constantly juggling them. (turn the scanner off, and the font extension back on, but that would mean that I needed to turn font smoothing off) [YES, THAT WAS JUST AN EXAMPLE]

f) We bitch about Microsoft having proprietary software, Apple was the worst back in the day. They have been forced into abandoning that mentality, but it took years for them to figure it out. We now use many more open standards with OS X. Even the proprietary applications (iApps, etc.) use open standards like XML etc. so at least you can play around with them or use them for things they weren't necessarily designed for.

g) Applications: OS X has a ton of little programs that are very mature. I'm amazed by all of the OS X versions of applications out there. The only one I would like to see is DVDXcopy. But that's just me.

I could go on and on, but I think you get my point. OS 9 is DEAD... long live OS 9.

Yea. Also, IE:Mac was always crashing on me (i.e. (IE?) two-three times a day.) In OS X iSuppose it does this too, but you can just restart it. In OS 9 more or less every time it crashed, the system went down. In OS X things are nice & safe, mostly. Note that the first "modern" (Open Firmware capable, even if it didn't use it, like the 7300, etc.) Mac iHad at home was this iBook 900 14", but at Grandma's I was always using her iMac 333 and iBook 366, running OS 9. She still hasn't tried X, even though her iMac (with 288MB RAM) could probably handle it OK.

[LightWaver-67]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
I'm frankly surprised that never popped up in beta testing...

My thoughts exactly... How could something THAT catastrophic not manifest itself at least ONCE in the entire time before general release...?

---

Oh... one more thing about OS 9 and prior versions...? I have had this happen twice... once, not a big deal, the second time... it was a HUGE deal:

In OS 9 (and earlier) items on the desktop were "above" the hierarchical file structure within your disk drive.

There was one evening back in the mid-'90s while I was in mid-freelance gig in my home-studio. My primary drive was starting to make odd noises, so I overnighted a replacement drive. The next day, I took the precautionary action of copying the entire contents of the disk to the new disk... everything. I basically opened the HD and did a "Select All" and copied the contents to the new drive. I went so far as to compare file-counts in directories... etc. THEN... Just to be sure, I booted from the new drive. All my files were there. Even the folder on the DESKTOP of the current job I was working on was there.

That's worth repeating:

The folder that had 3.5-days worth of my work showed-up on my desktop when I booted from the new drive.

So...

I chose the other drive that was starting to fail... and I did a low-level reformat of the drive. No-sooner did I stat the process... then ALL of the assorted icons and folders on my desktop DISAPPEARED...!

HOLY CRAP! NOOOOOO! STOP! COMMAND-PERIOD! NOOOOOO!

Too-late. It was gone. I tried all-sorts of unerase utilites, but since I had it "zero-out the data, it killed those files.

I absolutely forgot that EACH DISK had it's OWN desktop and those files were still married to the OLD disk, not the new one... and they didn't get copied-over because they do not reside within the hierarchical structure of the Hard Drive.

There were a LOT of profanities screamed that evening...!!!!

I had to work almost two-straight days... roughly 18-hours each to catch-up and deliver on-time. That's when I learned my lesson of BACKING UP!

Anyhow... that was then... this is now.

[dagmar]

Just my 2 cents: my daughter has been using her original Bondi iMac since college; she's getting married next week to a PC guy, and they wanted a new computer. I agreed to buy them one, but only a Mac, and, great guy that her fiance is, he said he's gladly give it a try. Got them a refurbished G4, 1.25 ghz processor, 1.25 gigs of ram, only OSX installed, and delivered it four weeks ago.

The day we set it up, he made an iMovie, and hasn't looked back since. He's updated to Panther, which I haven't even done yet, reads all the forums, and is planning on attending a user's group meeting next week...even went to the nearby Apple store on the 24th for the Panther release. For him, everything is working beautifully, except for burning iDVD's, and he's only been at it for 4 weeks.

The best part for me is that he really seems to be having fun, no complaints...what PC user can say that...and he's psyched about Panther.

[BimmerBoy79]

Just thought I'd add that I've upgraded all of the machines in our office to panther and have had absolutely no issues. This OS totally rocks!

[cpac]

yet another - 5 machines upgraded, some on a clean install, others on an upgrade install, all working marvelously.

love them apples.

[alphamatrix]

Yep, all is cool on the 1.25Ghz PowerMac and the 533.

[MusicalTone]

I am glad you are happy LightWaver-67.

I take that you do not use your Mac on a Network then?

Or need to use FileVault?

Or FireWire 800 disks?

Or FontBook?

Or ....


It seems to me that overall Jaguar was a more finished product and that Apple (quite understandably with all that they have been doing lately) have taken their eye off the ball a bit.

[LightWaver-67]

Originally posted by MusicalTone:
I take that you do not use your Mac on a Network then?

Incorrect... tested it at work. Neworking works for us. No prob's.

Or need to use FileVault?

Correct. I have no use for it. None of my data is confidential. Or at least not THAT confidential.

Or FireWire 800 disks?

Correct. I use all FW400 drives

Or FontBook?

What's the problem with FontBook? It does what it claims & nothing more. Personally, I need more. Suitcase has been working fine for me... but that shouldn't diminish FontBook's usability for the "Average Consumer". It never claimed to be a Suitcase or FontReserve replacement.

Or ....

It seems to me that overall Jaguar was a more finished product and that Apple (quite understandably with all that they have been doing lately) have taken their eye off the ball a bit.

I don't believe for a moment that the developers that worked on the I/O portion of the OS dealing with FireWire are the SAME group of developers that worked on FontBook or Aqua aesthetic changes. I don't think THOSE resources got jumbled. The snafu happened because it happened... NOT because those developers were paying too-much attention to "Expos�" or something else.

(just my opinion)

[010111]

i've upgraded 28 machines to Panther so far... working on 2 more right now. and 8-9 to go after that... servers i always do well well well after a major release. crazy as it sounds to most people on this board... i did them *all* so far as "Upgrade" installs.

only one 'catastrophicly' bad install. and it was one that i have found *no* record of happening to anyone else in my quick searches online. (booting hanging on "Carbon Lazy Values = 11067 bytes!" or something like that... happened pre-shell... so no single-user mode either...) a simple backup then erase and install fixed it. probably not even Panther related.

no complaints so far... most people seem to *like* the new networking scheme ... only wish they would show up in the sidebar so you could remember you were connected and eject them easier... making aliases of mounted shares and putting them up top means you don't really have to worry about the main file servers anyway... click and they open.

other than that... a few people freaked out the first time Expose kicked in. thats about it.

as far as OS9 goes... the first time i ran the X Public Beta i was very very very very hesitant about what OSX would mean. it was horrible. slow. buggy. nonsensical. classic was a poor option. most people in the office chose to stay on 9 until 10.1 came out. i was the only person running X until then. i didn't have a full X office until 10.2 came out.

though i actually (shock!) have 3-4 servers that still run 9... because contrary to popular belief some servers just work better in 9.

[bbales]

Originally posted by dagmar:
Just my 2 cents: my daughter has been using her original Bondi iMac since college; she's getting married next week to a PC guy, and they wanted a new computer. I agreed to buy them one, but only a Mac, and, great guy that her fiance is, he said he's gladly give it a try. Got them a refurbished G4, 1.25 ghz processor, 1.25 gigs of ram, only OSX installed, and delivered it four weeks ago.

The day we set it up, he made an iMovie, and hasn't looked back since. He's updated to Panther, which I haven't even done yet, reads all the forums, and is planning on attending a user's group meeting next week...even went to the nearby Apple store on the 24th for the Panther release. For him, everything is working beautifully, except for burning iDVD's, and he's only been at it for 4 weeks.

The best part for me is that he really seems to be having fun, no complaints...what PC user can say that...and he's psyched about Panther.

Bet you were happy to welcome him to your family!

[tdvorak]

I have upgraded two TiBooks (one 500 and one 800) and a Flat Panel iMac, both have gone very well with no problems. Knock on wood!

[mcsjgs]

It would be interesting to know (Firewire and File Vault aside) how many of the problems relating to Panther upgrades are happening with older hardware. My bet is that it is a lot.

[kovacs]

I have upgraded all five of my macs with Panther ( two G4's, three G3's ). I upgraded most of them from Jag, I did a clean install on my portables because they didn't have enouh space on their drives for an upgrade. I haven't found any real problems, Font Book crashed a few times, the finder had some problems with a DVD but nothing major. Font Book is great, the new versions of Mail and safari are much better. Stability is good but the finder beachballed on me a few times. All the threads on this forum really scared me, but from my expirience I can say that this OS doesn't seem any buggier than 10.2.0...

[TheTraveller]

Panther & the 10.3.1 update installed just fine on my G4 PowerBook. So far nothing bad has happened, but give it time, it's only been a few days. However, my whole experience with OS X has been largely positive. I had pretty much stopped using Macs because OS 8 & 9 were so shabby, but OS X brought me back in a major way.

[Cadaver]

Not sure about the old hardware causing trouble with Panther statement above...

I upgraded an old 400MHz iMac DV SE with 256MB of RAM to Panther, and it works just fine. My 5 year old uses it for kid games, and it runs great.

My 600MHz iBook (8MB VRAM) runs Panther wonderfully. Not dual G5 speed (my main rig, BTW), but as good as can be expected.

As soon as I get around to it, I'm doing the same to a 400MHz blue & white G3. It's got a 7200 rpm 20GB HD, 512MB of RAM and a PCI Radeon Mac Edition, so it should run Panther pretty well. May even try the PCI Quartz Extreme hack on it.

[asxless]

I'm NOT gloating... I just want to say...
I have never lost any data due to an OS related failure/issue on any Mac I've used in nearly two decades. That includes dozens of Macs (starting with a Mac XL, including Macs, PowerMacs, PowerBooks etc.) running every version of the Mac OS since 1984. I have 3 OS X orphans running OS 9 and 2 Macs running OS X here at the house right now.

I attribute this track record to...
* the general good quality of the Mac OS releases / updates over the years,
* prudent delays in applying OS updates / upgrades,
AND most importantly...
* the information about potential OS issues I received by reading the posts in this (and other) online forums.

Many thanks to all of the 'brave' early adopters who can't wait a few days/hours to update/upgrade the OS AND are willing to post their experiences for the 'timid' early followers

Posts saying "everything is working fine for me" are nice, but not really very useful, because they rarely describe what "everything" represents. Is "everything" a few Apple apps (e.g Safari, iTunes, iPhoto etc.) running on a stand alone iMac with a dial up internet connections, printing to a USB ink jet? Or does "everything" describe a full range of 3rd party apps (Adobe, M$, MacroMedia, etc), haxies and hardware (USB/Firewire disks, scanners, cameras, etc.) running in a globally distributed, heterogeneous wired/wireless network of Windows/Unix file/print servers?

When I come to a Mac forum like this one, I am looking for information about what I need to look-out-for to avoid problems. So those 'whiny posts' about such and such not working as expected are _exactly_ what I am looking for. I can always ignore them, if they don't apply to my situation. But I can't find out what the potential problems are if the "everything is working fine for me" brigade manage to browbeat the 'complainers' and 'whiners' into not posting their observations, concerns and yes even their complaints and whines.

FWIW anyone who thinks that the posts in online forums should/do represent a 'balanced view' of the state of the Mac OS, simply doesn't understand the nature of online forums like this one. People who want to read how wonderful Mac OS X is should try... http://www.apple.com/macosx/

-- asxless in iLand

[Cory Bauer]

Between home and work, I've had seven perfect upgrades to Panther, and the only one that was a erase/install was my home system. Everything is working much better than Jaguar, and we are much more productive thanks to Panther's new features such as Expos�, Fontbook, the new Finder, and the ability to select text in PDFs! Thanks Apple!

[myownself]

Originally posted by dillerX:
I look at it this way. With as many people as their are here, there are bound to be some installation, and assorted issues.

I myself haven't had but a couple minor glitches. Both of which have been settled by a quick jaunt here to see if anyone else has had the same issue.

10.3 = NICE

I couldn't agree more with LightWaver-67. I feel exactly the same way. Excellent post, and what I've thought from time to time myself; even said as much to my buds online.

Nice :-)

[Spheric Harlot]

<Monty Python>
Bring out yer dead! ... Bring out yer dead!
</Monty Python>

[powermacj7]

It is a nice change to talk about positive experiences with OSX. And, remembering the issues of OS9. I went to OSX immediately, and have not looked back. I used Apples since Apple IIe, and OSX is the best OS I ever used (even though I love OS7

Some one mentioned, we finally have an OS we can be proud of. The OS 9 days were dark days for the Mac, glad they are over. I keep my system bare bones really, hardly ever download free-ware apps unless I know they good, and see people recommend them on these boards.

As far as system crashes, I had one Kernel Panic since the Beta, and none in Panther. I am not a power user. In the many years of using computers, particularly Apple, I am excited about the future, and hope our momentum continues in a positive direction.

[chris v]

I didn't see this thread back then, but yeah, I've got 5 machines running 10.3.4, now, and the OS has been pretty smooth. A few more App crashes then 10.2.6, (mostly 10.3.1-2) but I'm a happy camper.

I've booted OS 9 a couple of times recently. Talk about frustrating!

CV

[Parky]

Same here no problems at all with 10.3.4

[sushiism]

Good points about os9:
+pulls off the pixely look wonderfully
+finder is lovely the way it works (design and usability standpoint not technical)
+Simplicity of backing your system up or replacing it
Bad points:
-Crashes
-Extensions
-Simplicity
Good points about osx:
+Extremely powerful
+Extremely stable
+Graphics backend stuff is amazing thus no window redraw (bar brushed metal finder)
+Everything of the system is separate from user stuff.
+Nice photorealistic look
Bad points:
-Brushed metal finder and how that works
-Brushed metal everything and anything bah why is keychain BM now in 10.4
-Finder windows opening in brushed metal when you want them to be spatial style
-Column view

[Sven G]

Apple is really no better than most other software/hardware vendors, if one tries to see things in a little wider perspective: personally, I find that being rather OS-agnostic helps, and lets you see the good, bad and ugly things everywhere, without having to forcedly defend the one's or the other's "vision".

What sucks most about computing, today, is probably that it still tends to be something "private", and not a publicly shared value, so to say...