You know how some people get excited about Football Finals or Tennis Grand Slams? Well, I get that way about operating system updates. Yes, I’m that kind of nerd. So when MacAsia Apple Centre in GE Mall announced a Panther launch event on 24th October 2003 at 8pm (which happened to be Deepavali as well), I was like a kid who just found out Christmas was coming early – if Christmas involved binary code and kernel improvements.
Being the slightly paranoid tech enthusiast I am (blame it on years of Windows trauma), I double-checked the date. You know, just in case someone fat-fingered the keyboard and I’d end up being that guy standing alone outside a closed store with my credit card and dashed dreams. Turns out, yes, they were really hosting it on a public holiday, complete with food and drinks. And no matter how much I cajoled them, they won’t sell me the software before that date regardless of how much I had spent with them.
Here’s the thing about Panther (Mac OS X 10.3 for those who don’t speak Apple): every new operating system software update makes your older hardware run faster. Coming from the Windows world, this concept was as foreign to me. In my Windows experience, new operating systems were usually just elaborate schemes to make you buy new hardware – kind of like how you are forced to buy a new house every time there is new interior design idea.
But Panther? This magnificent beast actually made my Powerbook and Powerbook purr. I’m not talking about that placebo effect where you convince yourself your computer is faster because you just spent money on it (we’ve all been there). No, this was real. I even installed it on my friend’s ancient clamshell iBook – which was crawling on Mac OS X 10.1 – and suddenly it was dancing like it had discovered caffeine.
So here’s my challenge to Microsoft: try making Windows updates that don’t require users to basically upgrade their computer. For once, it will be kinda nice to squeeze every ounce of power from older Intel machines.