Panther: OS 10.3

October 24, 2003

So tomorrow is the release of the updated Mac OS, and I am a bit torn by it. Well, not that much, since I don’t own a Mac and don’t have to worry about updating, but that is besides the point. But since OS X came out, this is the third revision, meaning if you went from 10 to 10.1 to 10.2 to 10.3, you will spend over 400 dollars. You are welcome to make the argument that you don’t need to upgrade if you don’t want, but don’t have 10.2 installed and let me know how many programs will run under that for you. No doubt, 10.3 will have a similar effect, and understandably so. Programmers want to take advantage of the updates in 10.3, it just means that you have to get the update one year after you shelled out $129 bucks for 10.2

Now there are a number of new features in 10.3, such as Expose, the redesigned Finder and the secure Home folder, but I question if they are worth the $129 they are charging. I have played around with 10.3 for about a week now and I personally have only found Expose to be that interesting. I suppose it isn’t fair since I don’t use a Mac primarily, but the new Finder doesn’t seem like a big deal to me. The search speed is quick, but how often do you really search for a file? The bottom line is that OS 10 is fairly polished now, it doesn’t need the performance tweeks that it needed between 10, 10.1 and 10.2, so a lot of the additions are purely cosmetic. Personally, I couldn’t see being happy having to pay $129 bucks for some cosmetic changes.

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