376 words
OS X.3 is coming before the end of the month. Nice. Fortunately, they adjusted pricing a little bit to reflect the recent weakness of the US$, making prices look a bit better than quoted yesterday. Psychologically advantageous, the educational price is just below €100 now. Unfortunately the family vs. household thing still applies and I cannot take advantage of it – while other people can apparently.
Be sure to read Apple's promotional material. It's partially fun featuring quotes like
And those of you who use a multi-button mouse can also assign Exposé actions to the extra buttons on your favorite rodent.
Mac OS X Panther supports PPTP-based VPN as well as standards-based networks.
While other operating systems hope to introduce comparable technology in late 2004, Panther has it now.
and endlessly listing all the features. Things I wasn't aware of so far include:
- Ink being available in German and French now
- Image Capture sharing cameras via Rendezvous
- Terminal listing advertised services in a menu
- Better access to font variants
- More PDF goodness
- Inclusion of GIMP Print by default
Things that I'm curious about are:
- Will integration with WINS based Windows networks finally work?
- Will the system stop locking up completely should a mounted SMB volume become unavailable?
- Will VPN support really be that easy? Can I trash my Cisco VPN client then?
- What about iCal? It's not listed on the feature list. Will it be there at a tolerable speed at last. Update: There seems to be an update to iCal 1.5.1 available now. I'll see what that one does... Why 1.5.1? Did I miss 1.5?
- Will Adress Book's printing features be good? Will it be able to print lists as well (I'm basically still running around with the one year old list I printed the last time I used Claris Organiser and had a printer around.
- Will it be possible to use FileVault on parts of the home folder only? Safeguarding things like downloads or media files may be overdoing it, I suppose.
Any comment is appreciated. Otherwise time will tell...
BTW, it's funny to see how Apple's site isn't 100% updated yet and still refers to some older versions in some places. Even more so on their German site.
October 8, 2003, 17:58
samba shares Do The Right Thing on loss of network, it’s great. iCal seems faster to me. Those are the only ones on the list that I know of, though.
October 8, 2003, 20:22
Will integration with WINS based Windows networks finally work?
Yes.
Will the system stop locking up completely should a mounted SMB volume become unavailable?
Yes.
Will VPN support really be that easy? Can I trash my Cisco VPN client then?
VPN is PPTP (as is) and L2TP/IPSEC. L2TP is mostly only used on Windows, as a more secure replacement for PPTP. Me, I use OpenVPN everywhere, because it simply rocks, but without any user authentication hooks or dynamic port allocation it isn’t suitable for multiple client use yet. We’re finally switching from the craptacular Cisco VPN5000 client here, thank goodness.
What about iCal? It’s not listed on the feature list. Will it be there at a tolerable speed at last. Update: There seems to be an update to iCal 1.5.1 available now. I’ll see what that one does… Why 1.5.1? Did I miss 1.5?
1.5 probably ships with Panther.
Will Adress Book’s printing features be good? Will it be able to print lists as well (I’m basically still running around with the one year old list I printed the last time I used Claris Organiser and had a printer around.
Never used it; Claris Organizer rules. I’m still using it (as Palm Desktop), not sure yet if I’ll switch to iCal/AB in 10.3.
Will it be possible to use FileVault on parts of the home folder only? Safeguarding things like downloads or media files may be overdoing it, I suppose.
Nope.
October 9, 2003, 8:00
Thanks for the info. The Samba bits sounds good.
Re: VPN. Our (Cisco - whatever) VPN says things about IPSec somewhere. How does that fit into the picture?
October 9, 2003, 9:59
I’m a few years too late with this comment, but I want to say in response to Nicholas that OpenVPN does indeed rock. Seems like the only thing that works when nothing else does in regards to VPN support.
April 13, 2007, 7:09
