Eager for Panther? There's reason to pause

When Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) was released Oct. 24, I already had a copy in my hand. That night, I decided to upgrade my 15-inch aluminum PowerBook G4. Days later, after several reinstalls and software restores, my colleague Jeff Carlson and I figured out memory was the problem and I ordered some name-brand RAM.

My wife, Lynn, noting that I was in the middle of finishing up the production of a 560-page book, asked why I hadn't waited until the book was finished to think about upgrading, since my 10.2 (Jaguar) installation was working just fine.

I didn't have a good answer for that.

I've been reading Steve Johnston's column in Pacific Northwest magazine for years in which his wife, identified as The Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston, provides him with the sense that he so willingly and regularly admits he lacks.

Around our house, Lynn — known as Ms. Warner to the formal — is The Early Rejecter, and with good reason. She's a middle adopter: someone who wants to extract the maximum utility from functioning systems before she upgrades. She waits until an upgrade is well known and tested before she commits.

This would be known as a sensible act. Myself, I heedlessly install new software, wipe hard drives, wonder what happens if I press a certain button, and otherwise act as if I'm playing "Tron 2" with my computers instead of actually trying to get work done. Every time I've persuaded her to betray her nature, it's backfired on me.

In my defense, I make a living writing about the computer world, and have to try out what I can as soon as I can. Lynn is a landscape designer, and while plants can fall over, die, or take over a yard, they rarely need to be constantly dug up and replanted to make them work.

In my last column about Panther, The Early Rejecter took me to task for my lengthy list of problems at the end of the column that could result in irreparable data loss if users upgraded to Panther under certain circumstances.

In my conclusion, I said Panther was worth the upgrade because it improved performance and had nifty features that made using the system more efficient.

Lynn wondered if I wasn't being too easy on Apple Computer. Shouldn't you have cautioned people more, she asked, given the dire potential outcome? I noted that only owners of certain FireWire 800 drives, a small but advanced subset of probably early adopters, and people who had put in third-party PowerBook RAM would be affected, which was almost certainly a more advanced crowd.

And anyone who had messed around with FileVault, Apple's advanced encryption tool for securing the contents of a user's home directory, could be at risk, too, but I doubted regular users would immediately leap into that task.

Yes, she said, but the early adopters are exactly the folks with third-party RAM, fast drives and encryption needs. Uh-oh, I replied. She was right.

In the future, The Early Rejecter's wisdom will guide me a little more thoroughly: while Panther is a great release, I shouldn't have recommended it so wholeheartedly until these extreme problems were fixed.

Since writing that column, Apple has released Mac OS X 10.3.1, which apparently fixes the problems with FileVault and addresses some FireWire issues. If you own a FireWire drive, make sure and check your manufacturer's Web site for firmware upgrades related to Panther.

If you're not sure your FireWire drive is fully compatible, don't leave it mounted or connected when powering up, rebooting, or shutting down a Mac running Panther.

Apple's speed bump: On Tuesday, Apple announced the biggest all-in-one computer that they've ever shipped, and I would warrant, that any company has ever offered at a consumer price.

The new 20-inch G4-based iMac has a huge screen and a larger base, but otherwise has the same pivot-arm design as the 15-inch original and later 17-inch addition to the line-up. For design professionals who want an LCD and good performance, the $2,199 system is in a very sweet spot. A 20-inch Apple Cinema Display is $1,299, so for just the $900 difference, you get (literally) a supercomputer to boot.

Apple also has tweaked its Power Mac G5 line, aimed at higher-end professionals. The entry-level 1.6 GHz G5 is $1,799, the mid-level dual 1.8 GHz box costs $2,499, while the fastest dual 2.0 GHz system is $2,999. Apple released free updates for its professional sound and movie-editing products that take advantage of the G5's 64 bit processor.

The difference now between the G4-based iMac and Power Mac G5 lies in three areas, said Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing. Power Macs can accept external monitors; they have higher performance from the processor and the overall system; and are much more expandable, including the ability to handle up to 8 gigabytes of RAM and half a terabyte of internal drives.

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