Panther

Apple’s latest update, the Mac OS X 10.3 (code-named Panther) is a great operating system and sets the bar for how computer operating systems should evolve.

Body: It was a pleasant surprise a couple of weeks ago when I received an e-mail from our friendly MacAsia Apple Centre in GE Mall announcing that they are going to have a launch event on the 24th October 2003 at 8pm. A quick check to the calendar revealed that Deepavali falls on that day. Wanting to be sure that I do not show up for an event because of a typographical error, I e-mailed them a few questions and got a prompt reply stating the following:-

1. Yes. It is a public holiday and they’re having a launch event with food and drinks
2. No. I may not buy the OS before that date no matter how much money I had spent with them

I am a big fan of Jaguar, the previous OS and had no complains about it and was anxious to try out the software. After 2 weeks of running the new OS, I am pleased to report that it is everything that I had expected and more.

Apart from the subtle but effective GUI changes (something that I look forward to in every release of new OS), my Powerbook and Powermac appeared to work faster and breezier. Now, I’ve come traditionally from a Wintel platform and this is the most perplexing “feature” of Apple Mac OS X updates- they actually make your current machine faster! To confirm this, I’ve installed Panther on my friend’s clam shell iBook (which was crawling on Mac OS X 10.1) and everything (reponsiveness, screen refresh, windows dragging, etc) was so much more faster.

I challenge Microsoft to pull this off without requiring people to buy new Intel machines every time a new Windows is released…

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