Mac OS X 10.3 (aka Panther):
Most excellent release of Mac OS X. It was a much smoother transition from 10.2 to 10.3 than it was from 10.1 to 10.2 (for starters, QuickMail didn’t fight 10.3 the way it did 10.2), although there were a few incompatibility problems, most notably Silk. I also don’t know if anyone has successfully compiled and/or run PostgreSQL on 10.3 yet. Remote Desktop 1.2 seems to be working, which is a pleasant departure from past upgrades. Tragically (and I’m not being sarcastic), Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 is unplayably slow. That one hurts.
The new Finder is nice, although it’s taking me more time than I expected to get the hand of it. The metal interface is cool and all, but it’s an awful lot of chrome (no pun intended) taking up space. I think I may actually prefer the 10.2 Finder. The threading in Mail is exceptionally well done. Safari 1.1 is there, but I haven’t noticed a difference from 1.0 yet. iChat AV is no longer a beta version. Exposé is wicked cool, and the new Command-Tab switching is implemented well. The overall look is much more polished. I especially like the new tabs, much more than I thought I would.
The big news? Mike and I have successfully authenticated Panther against Active Directory at login without using a Mac OS X Server. Woohoo! Now all we need to do is figure out to map home directories to the network and we’re golden.
iTrip:
I also received my new iTrip yesterday, the one for the third generation iPod. So far, I really like it. Dan, Mike, and I immediately went out to the VUE to test it, and it passed with flying colors. Mike then ran a completely unscientific test showing that the range on the iTrip is about 20-25 feet, at least in our parking lot using my radio. Dan tried it in his car and got decent reception considering his antenna is broken off. Mike was able to pick up the iTrip’s signal in his car while it was still in Dan’s car.
We were especially pleased with the bass; it was much boomier than we expected it to be over an FM signal.
Overall, it sounds pretty good. It certainly isn’t as clear as a line in, or even a cassette adapter, but considering it was my only real choice, it’s pretty good. Jen even gave it a thumbs up.
Now to purge my car of compact discs…