2 January 04

Hermione Gets A New Cat

Several days ago I installed Mac OS 10.3 (“Panther”) on our iBook laptop named Hermione. We’re quite pleased with this update of the operating system. Our favorite features include the fast user switching (Pica doesn’t have to log out completely if Numenius want to switch to his desktop for a bit), the more tightly integrated look and feel, and the already quite good email application, complete with a trainable spam filter and a nice interface for sorting mail into different mailboxes according to rules that one defines. A little clunkier than we hoped is the new font manager: I doubt it’s up to handling thousands of fonts, but that’s hardly needed for what we do with the laptop. Now it’s the time to reinstall software: I just put on software for connecting to our GPS unit—what every geographer needs!

Posted by at 09:13 PM in Miscellaneous | Link |
  1. Mac OS Panther has the seal of approval in this household. Nice to know you are Mac users!

    — Jenny    3. January 2004, 00:03    Link
  2. Panther has been a pleasure to use. A lot of little additions, like the sidebar in folder windows or the wonderful ability to view all windows simultaneously in Expose make it just a well thought out and smooth system. I can’t even imagine going back to OS 9 now.

    The Font Book is a clunky old fart, though. Why is it that Apple just can’t get it right with font management? It’s such an important function and with the hundreds of fonts I use so inconvenient when I can’t just click on the menu bar and have all the information and controls right there.

    Though I like the dock, it has become ungainly with all the programs I have (though I’ve tried to sort them out with folders, still I use programs such as Safari, Kung-Log, ITunes, iView MediaPro, PhotoShop, Painter, Fireworks, and Mellel on a daily basis and so need them displayed individually in the dock) I’ve tried using DragThing, but am not really happy with it. Have you found anything that might work better with large numbers of applications?

    I heard rumors last year of an OS X version of the AppleWorks word processor (strange how such an important application doesn’t come with the system), one that is supposed to blow other word processors away, but so far haven’t seen anything about this anywhere. It would be nice to have a word processing get up that would address my needs as a writer. As it is I rely on Z-write, a Carbon-based application that is fast getting outdated.

    Now if I could afford the OS X version of PhotoShop…

    — butuki    3. January 2004, 15:50    Link
  3. P.S. My desktop computer is named Phalarope. Just love birds’ names.

    — butuki    3. January 2004, 15:53    Link

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