Panther: Lack of features - Page 2

mightyjlr · #9 October 3rd, 2003, 12:16 AM

I AM looking forward to Panther, I will pre-order it as soon as it is available. There are a decent amount of upgrades, and I like how everything looks (I like brushed metal), and I like expose, and I like the search feature. I just was hoping for something more... revolutionary I guess. I feel bad for complaining, but with Jaguar OS X really became useable, and I was hoping with Panther it would almost re-invent the OS again, but I guess we'll have to wait for a few more versions for that.

Arden · #10 October 3rd, 2003, 12:36 AM

cf25: I can't remember what it's called, it's the thing on the left of Panther Finder windows that shows your hard drive, Applications folder, etc.

JLR: They can't reinvent the wheel every year. I'm sorry you're disappointed, but compared to OS 9, which was built up on top of the same basic technologies over 16 years, OS X is still a wee baby, and I don't know what kind of revolution you were expecting, but it'll be a while yet. It'll come, don't lose hope; it's just not coming right now. Panther is a solid step forward in OS X evolution, and a good notch taken out of Windows.

RacerX · #11 October 3rd, 2003, 01:25 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by arden
cf25: I can't remember what it's called, it's the thing on the left of Panther Finder windows that shows your hard drive, Applications folder, etc.

I don't know what Apple is calling it now, but back in NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP it was call the shelf. Back then it was at the top of every window.

Things that were once old are new again.

adambyte · #12 October 3rd, 2003, 05:15 AM

lol. The dock, the shelf... is it just me, or is OS X more like OpenStep than Mac OS 9?

serpicolugnut · #13 October 3rd, 2003, 05:54 AM

I can understand your concern about the lack of features. There really are a lot of great things about Panther, but it's not so much that they are new features, but that they are features that have been greatly improved over the previous version.

For example, we've been able to search in OS X since the start. But with the journaled search now in Panther, searching will take on a whole new dimension of speed. Same goes for Preview and it's ability to rip through PDFs.

Expose, File Vault, Fast User Switching, Pixlet and the new improved Finder are the marque items, but the entire OS has been given a spit shine and it shows.

Personally, there are several features that I have grown accustomed to during my last couple weeks of use. I've been using builds on my production machines since b59, and they have been rock solid.

Randman · #14 October 3rd, 2003, 07:25 AM

And don't forget, you don't HAVE to buy Panther. It's not mandatory. Heck, I know plenty of people still very happy with 9.2.2.

**fryke** · #15 October 3rd, 2003, 08:13 AM

It's not a shelf, RacerX... It doesn't act as a clipboard, for example... Well, maybe some features missing from the shelf are replaced by the 'Sidebar' (that's what Apple calls it)...

Panther offers many new features. Some will be useful to many, some to few, but overall, this is a big upgrade, I think. It's not revolutionary, it's evolutionary. But good. Well worth the money.

RacerX · #16 October 3rd, 2003, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by fryke
It doesn't act as a clipboard, for example...

Clipboard? Maybe I'm missing something here. As I sit in front of a system running OPENSTEP, how would I cut and paste to the shelf? Why would I do that?

The shelf did most of the things that we used the desktop for. And when Apple dropped the shelf (and the dock) in Rhapsody, they added a desktop with shelf-like abilities (which I also have never used as a clipboard).

Quote:

Well, maybe some features missing from the shelf are replaced by the 'Sidebar' (that's what Apple calls it)...

From the way that I used NEXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, the sidebar does exactly the same thing that I used the shelf for so I wouldn't have to open up more than one window. I can drop folders onto it that appear in every window after that. Mounted volumes appear in it. Click on a folder/volume and the navigation area shows the contents of that folder/volume.

Other than not being a space hog and not being able to place documents in it (which you can do with both the dock and the desktop, so it isn't really needed), it sure looks and acts like the shelf to me.