Panther

I suppose this is the now mandatory post on Panther… 😉

I upgraded our home machine last night without a hitch. All our user settings came over and having enabled Fast User Switching, we are very happy in general. Finder performance is much improved, which is worth the cost of entry in my book. Exposé is by far the coolest thing going. I can see using it continuously throughout all apps. I love how there is a key for the computer, (active apps) the active app itself and a quick shot to view the desktop. The new UI tweaks will take a bit to adjust, but certainly not difficult, in fact things seem to be designed to make life more efficient, even if at first you don’t agree, given how it used to work.

Junk Mail handling looks excellent and Mail has been designed to automatically pick up cues from filters you may use on the server level. Threading is a killer addition as is the ability to handle personal certs. I’ve signed up for mine… have you?

Minor gripe… I cannot get symbolic links working like I had previously to share our iTunes library across users. I used to run a symbolic link from the local iTunes folder to an external drive which allowed both users to share a library and playlists so any new music that was added became immediately available to both. For some reason I can’t get the right access privileges enabled to move or copy the Symbolic link from the drive to the user directory. At least not yet…

I tired to do a fast user switch while iTunes was playing and the music played until the Finder came into view on the second user. When I switched back, I noticed that iTunes had elegantly paused the music and I picked up exactly where I had left off.

All in all a terrific update. Even with a nit or two. I can’t wait to upgrade my powerbook… but I have to wait for my office to clear it. Very tempting sitting here with the discs…