Panther STILL Rules Over Tiger?

Lt Major Burns said:
i think that that's the thing - Panther is every bit the pinacle of a robust, usable, stylish, powerful stable OS, and by 10.3.9 there was practically nothing wrong with it, and it was still way ahead of the curve.

the fact that 10.4 was released shouldn't taint 10.3, and if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

10.4 was a problem for apple - how do you appeal to a userbase so completely happy with their OS? has it ever happened before? hense dashboard etc - gimmicky features to get people to buy it for the underlying changes they were putting in.

also, 10.3.0 and 10.3.1 i remember were not perfect, by any means. 10.3.9 was good, very good, and had 9 upgrades to get it there. 10.3.5 i think was when it was at it's peak. it had reached stability, and this was the standard install on factory machine right up until tiger.
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Exactly. I totally agree. And that's why I'm holding off on Tiger for now. I absolutely love Panther 10.3.9. It's swift, clean, stable and gives me no problems whatsoever. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! When (if) I decide to install Tiger, it will be in the future, when Apple perfects it after a few versions.
 
You know what? It doesn't really matter which Mac OS you opt for ... 'cause Apple/Mac RULES regardless! :) And this is coming from a long-time PC user. Yep, I'm a happy convert! :D
 
Aime

I'm sticking with Panther 10.3.9 for the same reason as you, i.e. I'll wait until 10.4 is a little more refined after a few upgrades. Besides 'Herself' (my wife) won't let me have the £79 to go out and buy Tiger.

I still think Apple have spoilt the end product a tad by getting rid of the Favorites contextual menu it used to have with 10.2 (under the GO Menu). I have mentioned this in another thread this morning. I found this is a very useful addition for navigation. Why they ditched it is a mystery to me.

I would love to use my iBook at work, but the entire British National Health Service is Apple-phobic, so I'm stuck with Windoze.........yawn.
 
rhisiart said:
Aime

I'm sticking with Panther 10.3.9 for the same reason as you, i.e. I'll wait until 10.4 is a little more refined after a few upgrades. Besides 'Herself' (my wife) won't let me have the £79 to go out and buy Tiger.

I still think Apple have spoilt the end product a tad by getting rid of the Favorites contextual menu it used to have with 10.2 (under the GO Menu). I have mentioned this in another thread this morning. I found this is a very useful addition for navigation. Why they ditched it is a mystery to me.

I would love to use my iBook at work, but the entire British National Health Service is Apple-phobic, so I'm stuck with Windoze.........yawn.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing you bought your iBook before April/May 2005 ... 'cause if you had bought it after that (like me) you'd have the Tiger software for free (it came with my computer). Good timing on my part, eh? :D
 
In retrospect, Jaguar, for me was when OSX matured to a point of a real solid, stable OS. One could argue that Tiger may have been introduced to early, and makes selling it difficult, because Jag is a great OS. Some one mentioned Java problems under JAG. Tiger, I have not had any of the difficulties with Java. Spotlight is awesome, smart-folders and mail alone would make me upgrade.
 
i have found smart folders to be kinda slow and cumbersome. for some reason it just doesn't seem like "smart playlists for files".

smart playlists are easy, fast and the possiblities endless.

although i loved panther, (it was, IMO, almost perfect) now i have tiger, i can't go back. i had my panther install cloned on my ipod before i upgraded, but everytime i went back, although it was silky smooth (i was having problems with quartz framerates in tiger) and stable, it just wasn't progress, so i went back to tiger and erased the ipod to use for music again.

Tiger is apples way of staying ahead of the curve, not sitting on their laurels, and proves to new users that apple is king of the OS. for users of the x.x.7+ release of their previous OS, the upgrade is minimal. it is, after all, only one decimal up.
 
ive got a brand new imac g5 17" 1.8, and tiger is great. ive only got 512mb of ram and it isnt resource hungry at all, i can easily play world of warcraft while surfing the net, while going to the widgets and checking my itunes widget at the same time with no slow down to the system whatsoever.

from a person thats gone from win xp, to linux for a year, to mac, i can easily say tiger is a beautiful and well thought out o/s.
 
I'm glad that it works OK with 512Mb - I've had trouble with my old 256Mb iMac G3 (see this post) and am about to upgrade to 640Mb.

So (hopefully) it should perform better.
 
Hey, interesting thread...

I'm still with Panther 10.3.9. And loving it!
(Quicksilver 867mhz / 1.5GB ram)

I decided to hold off upgrading for the following reasons:
• I'll wait until version 4.3/4.4 comes out by which time all the main bugs will be ironed out.
• Although Wiggets / Dashboard / etc are cute and kinda desirable - they are not a necessity.
• In fact, "Searchlight" is the only new element to Tiger that I think I would personally use to increase productivity. But then again, given the way I use my computer, it's also not a necessity.
• In moving to Tiger I have to move up to Quicktime 7 (Earlier versions of Quicktime are not compatible with Tiger). Presently I use Quicktime 6.5 Pro - which is great. And so cannot justify paying the "Pro" registration again! (Actually, staying with 10.3.9 and having the functions of Quicktime Pro
is more desirable than upgrading to Tiger with just plain normal Quicktime.)
• It's taken a few updates and creative fiddling on my behalf to get Panther working the way I want it. So far 10.3.9 has been perfect.
• I don't presently have $199 to blow on an operating system that I probably don't need!

I started Mac OS-ing with system 7. Quickly moved on to 8.6 which had it's fair share of problems. I had a terrible time under OS 9 (while others couldn't stop raving about it...). Was forced to endure OS 9's constant headaches for a few years while OS X came of age. Flirted with Jaguar - but it was way too slow. Then came Panther.

Apart from a brief period during version updates (around 3.4 -3.6) where I had a few compatibility problems with my printer drivers), Panther has been a 'dream' in comparision to some of the 'nightmares' I've suffered under previous Mac operating systems.

It's always been fast, reliable, and rock solid. Combined with the right hardware it has also been visually brilliant. So, I guess you could also add to the list above that I'm a little bit scared of moving on too...

Like someone else said: "If it ain't broke... "
 
tumbleguts said:
Hey, interesting thread...

I'm still with Panther 10.3.9. And loving it!
(Quicksilver 867mhz / 1.5GB ram)

I decided to hold off upgrading for the following reasons:
• I'll wait until version 4.3/4.4 comes out by which time all the main bugs will be ironed out.
• Although Wiggets / Dashboard / etc are cute and kinda desirable - they are not a necessity.
• In fact, "Searchlight" is the only new element to Tiger that I think I would personally use to increase productivity. But then again, given the way I use my computer, it's also not a necessity.
• In moving to Tiger I have to move up to Quicktime 7 (Earlier versions of Quicktime are not compatible with Tiger). Presently I use Quicktime 6.5 Pro - which is great. And so cannot justify paying the "Pro" registration again! (Actually, staying with 10.3.9 and having the functions of Quicktime Pro
is more desirable than upgrading to Tiger with just plain normal Quicktime.)
• It's taken a few updates and creative fiddling on my behalf to get Panther working the way I want it. So far 10.3.9 has been perfect.
• I don't presently have $199 to blow on an operating system that I probably don't need!

I started Mac OS-ing with system 7. Quickly moved on to 8.6 which had it's fair share of problems. I had a terrible time under OS 9 (while others couldn't stop raving about it...). Was forced to endure OS 9's constant headaches for a few years while OS X came of age. Flirted with Jaguar - but it was way too slow. Then came Panther.

Apart from a brief period during version updates (around 3.4 -3.6) where I had a few compatibility problems with my printer drivers), Panther has been a 'dream' in comparision to some of the 'nightmares' I've suffered under previous Mac operating systems.

It's always been fast, reliable, and rock solid. Combined with the right hardware it has also been visually brilliant. So, I guess you could also add to the list above that I'm a little bit scared of moving on too...

Like someone else said: "If it ain't broke... "
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly! Your reasons for not switching to Tiger are almost identical to mine. Although ... I don't have to worry about the 200 bucks 'cause I just bought my computer about six weeks ago, so it shipped with a Tiger software CD, as do all new Apple computers now. :D

I've had no problems whatsoever with Panther 10.3.9. And frankly, there seems to be more problems with Tiger users than with Panther users. But that's expected in any new operating system. I'm sure Apple will iron out all the kinks soon. But hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it! Right? So, for now, I'm sticking with Panther.
 
I found 10.3.9 to be slightly buggier than 10.3.8 (although most of that just required a few quick updates of third-party software), but still definitely better than 10.4 or 10.4.1. Safari's the major culprit, here. Locks up quite a lot in Tiger, especially when dealing with Java. I've started using iCab again for Java-based stuff, because Safari just craps out on me too much to use.

The Finder also seems awfully shaky in Tiger. I don't know why, but if certain disk images are mounted, it brings it to a pathetic crawl, to the point where closing any window makes it lock up for 5-10 seconds. Most of my Tiger performance issues can be traced back to a lack of RAM, but what I'm talking about here is definitely something different. Also, folders with thousands of items tend to make it just unexpectedly quit. Never happened in Panther.

I think 10.3.8 was the peak in terms of speed and reliability, much like 8.6 was for the classic Mac OS. Now Apple's shifting more to new-features mode, and refinement will probably take a back seat for a while. That's the price you pay for being on the cutting edge.
 
I had to reformat the hard drive (and I zeroed it in case of bad blocks) of my iMac after installing 10.4. I kept getting kernel panics. Some of the os files had become corrupt, apparently. No problems now. And I never had problems with 10.4.1 on my Power Mac G5 or my old iBook.

Doug
 
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