Panther on the Prowl: Macintosh OS 10.3

By Jonathan Berohn

You know Apple thinks they’re up to something big when they come up with a goofy nickname. Panther—OS 10.3—is no exception. If you’re already an OS X user, you’ll want to make the upgrade to take advantage of the improved functionality and stability. If you’ve been waiting to make the leap to OS X until Apple worked out the kinks, your time has definitely come.

The most impressive thing about 10.3 is its stability. When I was running OS 9.2, I could count on a crash every day or two—and sometimes they would come in batches. I’d also figured out quite few neat little tricks I could repeat to cause my Mac to crash on demand with no trouble at all. Since I switched, not one system crash. Now, I have had some individual programs go down, but with OS 10.3 all that means is that you have to restart the program. 10.3 protects system memory so that individual crashes don’t gum up the whole works.

You might expect this improved stability to come with a huge speed cost. I certainly expected my G4 Cube to churn quite a bit slower. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find that 10.3 actually speeds things up. My Cube starts up faster than before and runs everything I have tested (primarily MS Office, Explorer, and some games) faster than before. Even the few OS 9 applications I still run crank away at about the same speed as before. In short, even forgetting about all the new features, 10.3 gives you improved stability and faster processing.

And those features that we are forgetting really do deserve mention. First, a Dock replaces the program list from old Apple menu. The Dock is basically a list of the programs you like to use plus any minimized applications. It makes switching tasks a breeze. Second, the new Finder organizes your files and applications so that everything is virtually a click or 2 away. Finally, 10.3 lets you set up different identities so multiple users can save their own preferences and work without having to reconfigure the computer every time. All In all, Panther hits the mark.