Ok, I promise this is my last post on the subject! on 1/8/03 9:28 PM, Eric D. at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> A new keyboard would've cost $130 so that was a non-sequiteur. And, that new keyboard was *crap* compared to the SE keyboard (this was merely the small version of the Apple Extended Keyboard II, the best keyboard ever made). It was some MacAlly (or some similar creater) thing (at the time, the clone Mac keyboards were down-right horrible... Apple soon followed suit with the horribly cheap keyboards that were sold with the consumer Macs). Eric. Last e-mail of the night. PS Panther *rocks*. I got to play with a DP today (on a Lombard I bought for someone else... I promptly erased it before setting it up properly (very, VERY distressing experience (erasing 10.3) but it had to be done ... I didn't think it would be a good idea for a Mac virgin to be using developmental software ;) plus it took all my will power not to copy the DP off there but I have enough procrastination distractions as is (as you can no doubt tell by my posting messages here). Having 10.3 with which to play would mean that I flunk out not just by my own doing (I'd blame Panther :) :) :)... I'd have to back up all the useless crap that I've accumulated on the 20 GB drive (having firewire + a digi video camera & research that involves some motion really gives me an excuse to make videos :) :) :), then figure out how to get 10.3 working, then do a triple-boot with 10.2 and 9, then I'd have to play with it... and then... well, you get the picture. Anyway, damn, it's sweet. It made a 333 MHz Lombard with 128 MB RAM & 4.5 GB drive feel *as fast* as it does under OS 9 (I've tried 10.2.6 on an identically configured Lombard before and even it is tolerable (though, the 128 MB kills performance... how Apple can in good conscience sell iBook with 128 MB of RAM is beyond me) (4.0 GB drive)). The menus aren't quite as bad as in 10.2.6 (look better IMO), divider bars (between menu sections like in OS 9) are back (that's what confused me when I turned it on and selected the menu... I thought the fellow had installed some bizarre extension... until I started drooling and speaking in tongues when I saw 10.3 in the About this mac), menus display much faster, moving windows around is *stunningly* smooth given that it was on a 333 MHz laptop with an 8 MB ATIRage3 (or something like that) video card and was refreshing the whole window contents (compared to 10.2.6 on a Pismo/400 512 MB RAM). My immediate complaint is that brushed metal is in the Finder (that's one *ugly* interface) and that there is a *lot* of dead space (& on laptop screens there's not a whole lot of spare real-estate) now that brushed metal is in the Finder. Oh, apple system profiler is *infinitely* better -- Apple has completely re-written it. Now that I think of it, I really regret not copying the profiler off the machine before I formatted (it might've worked in 10.2). The detail of info (and easy layout) it gave was stunning (perhaps it was a quirk of a developer preview but I would be surprised if that were the case)... no more guessing at what the ethernet status is (OS X ASP doesn't display enough ethernet status info). I briefly tried the user switching but on the 333 butit didn't do the cool switching effect... just a blue screen while I waited and waited and... (I'd seen that reported elsewhere too... nof unky effect that is)... it took a while (more RAm probably = faster start). But, once the second login was active, switching was quite fast, even with 128 MB of RAM (though, let me tell you that the functional minimum for an OS X machine still remains 192 MB). The System Preferences have been completely revapmed. Logical connections (like Display and screen saver (no longer Display effects or something silly & indecipherable like that)) have been made and the preferences pane seems a lot less cluttered. I only played five minutes with Panther b/c I was on a very tight timeline (1 hour) to get it ready (it's going to my partner's niece who's a Mac virgin and computer neophyte so it had to be set up with the bare bones of software). If this preview is an indication of things to come, I see great things in store for users of older (but not quite the oldest) G3s and G4s. I want it NOW!!! A one word summary of my state of mind after using it for those five minutes: "stunned" (in a good way). Eric. -- Mac Canada is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... 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