Last Friday Apple started shipping the third major upgrade to its UNIX-based operating system - Mac OS 10.3, nicknamed "Panther". Panther contains both revolutionary and evolutionary changes, and unlike major upgrades from that "other" software company, most Mac users won't have to replace their computers to take advantage of them. Now, if you're not a Mac user, don't tune out just yet. There's some things in Panther that you'll get to use in the next major upgrade to Windows, code-named Longhorn. Problem is, Longhorn won't be grazing the Teletubbies green-grass hillsides until 2006.

Mac OS X's good looks come from a graphics layer called "Quartz Extreme", which uses today's powerful video cards to provide "eye candy" to the system. There's the Dock (like the Windows Task Bar) at the bottom of the screen, that expands and contracts as you move the pointer along the line of application icons; the Genie effect, where windows, when minimized, are sucked down into the Dock like a genie returning to the bottle; and, the use of opaque layers in many parts of the system. Panther pushes the Quartz Extreme concept even further with a feature called Expose'.

Expose is eye candy with a purpose. Due to the relatively low price of RAM and the multitasking features of modern operating systems, many users now have several applications open at once. The problem is, especially on a laptop, you soon begin to run out of screen real estate. You end up with applications, palettes, and documents stacked on top of each other, and spend a lot of time clicking around to bring stuff to the front to work on. Until Expose'. With one keyboard stroke (or mouse movement, or two-button mouse click), Expose' shrinks all the open windows, and arranges them over an opaque desktop. You can then move the mouse pointer over the window you want to bring to the front (revealing the document name), click, and the window is ready to use. You can also hit the Tab key while Expose' is active, and step through the windows till you find the one you want.

Have a lot of pictures open for editing in Photoshop? Expose' will do the same trick to all the picture windows. How about those times when you have a lot of windows open, but need to get at one of those icons on the desktop buried beneath? Click another function key, and Expose' moves all the open windows to the sides of the screen, revealing the whole desktop. It's slicker than Panther poop.

The Finder also gets some more muscle. It retains the three selectable views - icon, list, and hierarchical - but gets a customizable sidebar on every window, for quick access to just about everywhere on your Mac. This sidebar is carried over into Open and Save boxes as well.

Hit the CMD (Apple) and Tab keys, and an Switcher window with opaque icons for all active applications appears. Keep hitting the Tab key to move to the application you want to bring to the front, and let go.

DVD Player gets support for 5.1 surround-sound audio tracks, a closed captioning window you can move away from the video, and the ability to remember where you left off watching a DVD.

Searching for files on your computer becomes blindingly fast. As soon as you start typing what you're looking for in the Find field, Panther starts looking, and will most likely find your file before you can finish typing the name.

That’s just skimming the surface of Panther’s punch. More next time.

© 2003 Peter F. Zimowski