Practical Mac / Glenn Fleishman
Panther worth the price for a Mac upgrade

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Panther, introduced last month, is Apple Computer's latest attempt to trump its own operating system by throwing a grab bag of features at users and seeing which ones they pounce on.

This version, officially 10.3, is the result of Mac user demands and a gradual evolution from the weak 10.0 and 10.1 releases through the very strong and reliable 10.2 (Jaguar).

In Panther, you find the first major reform of the Finder in years. Navigating through directories is facilitated through the Sidebar, a panel that shows local hard drives and mounted disks and file servers, as well as any folders you drag into it.

As a 19-year Macintosh user, I assumed I'd hide the Sidebar pretty quickly. Instead, I'm now addicted to it for rapidly navigating across my several drives and regularly used folders. (For navigating inside Open and Save dialogs, I still turn to Default Folder, www.stclairsoftware.com, which you must update to version 1.9 to avoid Panther startup problems.)

Mac OS 9 and earlier users will appreciate the return of Finder Labels, which allow you to apply labels and colors to folders and documents. You can then sort by those labels or use them as visual cues in a crowded desktop.

Exposé is the kind of feature that you can understand only when you've seen it. A single keystroke hides all windows by pushing them to the edges of the screen, or exposes all windows by shrinking them — hence the name with the fancy French accent. It's an odd visual effect, but a remarkable shortcut that I turn to frequently when I have many programs open at once. (Looking at my Dock right now, I have 20 programs and 11 windows open.)

Apple has tried to make it easier for a single machine to have several users, too. Mac OS X has always allowed multiple accounts, but Apple added fast user switching, which lets you essentially keep several users logged in at once with all but the currently active user hidden. Chief Executive Steve Jobs admitted proudly that they borrowed this feature from Windows. Apple's twist is that as you switch from user to user, the screen animates, showing the rotation of a giant cube.

One user can protect his or her data from another on the same system, or from anyone who tries to gain access to the system, with FileVault. FileVault encrypts the entire home directory of a user, rendering it impenetrable without a password. However, because Mac OS X stores your "digital life" — photos, movies, and music — in your home directory, the process of converting potentially tens of gigabytes of files might take a very long time and be more protection than you need. If you need more limited file encryption, try the PGP Disk module in PGP 8 for Mac (www.pgp.com).

Panther's output improvements really shine in a couple of small ways. First, the default upgrade and installation includes the gimp-print drivers, a collection of free software that supports many older and Windows-only printers that would otherwise be unusable.

Second, you can now fax using built-in software. The controls are few, but you can both send and receive faxes, which means one fewer piece of software to manage. For more sophisticated faxing and document transmission, I still recommend PageSender (www.pagesender.com).

Early Panther users have found a few significant problems. A problem with Panther's FireWire support has erased many users' FireWire 800 external hard drives and even some older FireWire 400 drives and, worse, rendered them unrecoverable. Apple and several FireWire drive companies released updates this week. There are some strategies that the TidBITS newsletter covered in its recent issue: db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=07420.

I've also read numerous accounts of corruption and the loss of preferences when using FileVault and allowing it to recover unused space after encrypting your directory. I'd recommend leaving FileVault turned off until Apple issues an update.

I had enormous headaches installing Panther on my 15-inch aluminum PowerBook G4. I had purchased non-Apple, non-brand-name RAM to increase the unit's memory from 512 megabytes to 1 gigabyte. Although it worked generally reliably with Jaguar, Panther barfed on my RAM.

I wound up purchasing Kingston RAM, assuming that Kingston's excellent reputation would mean the RAM would either work or they would solve my problem. It worked just fine. An officemate and other users have reported similar problems with that particular PowerBook model and generic RAM.

If you're cautiously thinking about upgrading and want more assistance, I recommend a new book from the Take Control series published by TidBITS. "Take Control of Upgrading to Panther" by Joe Kissell ($5, tidbits.com/takecontrol/) was my guide through the process. (Full disclosure: I'm working on a few future "Take Control" books, but I'm recommending out of sheer appreciation, not a financial connection.)

Panther is worth the $129 (single user) or $199 (five home users) upgrade price if you want to increase efficiency and take advantage of an array of new and improved tools, plus its increased speed and stability.

Jaguar was very good. Panther, so far, is great.

Glenn Fleishman writes the Practical Mac column for Personal Technology and about technology in general for The Seattle Times and other publications. Send questions to gfleishman@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists

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