So I've been playing a bit with a copy of OS X 10.3 (Panther) which will be released sometime before the end of the year. Hopefully in September at Macworld Paris. Not sure what to report. Other sites have posted exhaustive screen shots, so I won't bother. If anyone has any specific questions I'd be happy to try to answer them.
My brief summary is that this is a very nice update. Lots and lots of minor changes that add up to a greatly improved interface. The Finder (the file system interface) is morphing into the two column view Apple has been using in iTunes and iPhoto. I had thought about this possibility before - and they've done a great job of implementing it. I think new users will find this very intuitive. Open and Save dialogue boxes are much improved as well. And the new feature Exposé is very cool. You can assign it to any key combination, and then activating it reveals every open window at once by shrinking each window as much as necessary so they all fit on the screen. Then you can click on any window you want and everything zooms back to full size, with the one you selected on top. For finding a particular window on a very cluttered desktop this is so much better than window shades (from OS 9) that it is not even funny. Great time saver if you work with lots of open documents. I think Exposé alone will make the switch to X worth it for MB and H.
|
My brief summary is that this is a very nice update. Lots and lots of minor changes that add up to a greatly improved interface. The Finder (the file system interface) is morphing into the two column view Apple has been using in iTunes and iPhoto. I had thought about this possibility before - and they've done a great job of implementing it. I think new users will find this very intuitive. Open and Save dialogue boxes are much improved as well. And the new feature Exposé is very cool. You can assign it to any key combination, and then activating it reveals every open window at once by shrinking each window as much as necessary so they all fit on the screen. Then you can click on any window you want and everything zooms back to full size, with the one you selected on top. For finding a particular window on a very cluttered desktop this is so much better than window shades (from OS 9) that it is not even funny. Great time saver if you work with lots of open documents. I think Exposé alone will make the switch to X worth it for MB and H.
- jim 7-17-2003 6:37 pm