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Mac OS X 10.3: The preliminary Panther primer
---------------------------------------------
**Preparing, installing, and first troubleshooting**
Mac OS X 10.3, perhaps better known by its feline code name
"Panther," has now been available for well over twelve hours.
Naturally, that means there are already thousands of Web pages
whose theme is some variation of, "I can't believe Apple would
release this operating system when it's obviously so completely
broken." Reports of Panther problems are appearing in multiple
fora, sometimes with strong filtering, and sometimes without.
Some are annoyed at Panther's hardware requirements - it only
runs on "New World" machines that have no Mac OS ROM built in,
or as Apple puts it, a system with built-in USB ports. The
original platinum Power Macintosh G3, PowerBook G3, PowerBook G3
Series, and Power Macintosh G3 all-in-one computers stop with
Mac OS X 10.2.8.
On Saturday morning, we found references to Panther "always"
corrupting external FireWire disks, but we've used external
FireWire drives on Panther machines throughout the pre-release
cycle - including stand-alone hard drives, iPods, and other
computers in FireWire target disk mode - without incident.
Another report said Mac OS 9 was unable to see a hard drive that
has Panther installed, but the reporter didn't quite specify if
he had installed Mac OS 9 drivers on the disk - usually required
for the older OS to see any hard drive. Erasing a disk wipes out
any driver that may have been present.
Someone else said Now Up-to-Date & Contact are "incompatible"
with Panther, but the only problem we've had with either program
is one we'd seen under Jaguar - sometimes it won't load the
default contact or calendar file with an incorrect "volume not
found" error, but opening the file within the application works
just fine. (Now Software says [25] that upcoming version 4.5.1
is being tested for full Panther compatibility, so there may be
problems on some systems, but certainly not on all.)
[25] <
http://www.nowsoftware.com/panther.html>
That's not to say there aren't problems in Mac OS X 10.3 - Apple
released Mac OS X 10.2 on 2002.08.23, and by the end of the
year, had released three updates for it. In fact, since the
March 2001 release of Mac OS X 10.0, Apple has, on average,
released an update or upgrade to Mac OS X once every seven and a
half weeks. It would be most unusual if version 10.3.1 did not
appear before the end of the year, and that's because Apple will
fix bugs. There are _always_ bugs in an operating system, and
even if there weren't, there are always missing features.
What does this mean for you? Do you install now? How do you
prepare? How do you fix problems once you find them? No tutorial
can be exhaustive, but the MWJ_ Staff has been working with
preliminary and final versions of Mac OS X 10.3 for a few
months, and we have some advice.
**Installation questions**
We're not the only ones, either: TidBITS Electronic Publishing
has released the US$5 _Take_Control_of_Upgrading_to_Panther_ by
Joe Kissell, the first electronic book in the new Take Control
series [26] from the bitters of Tid. Kissell wrote
_The_Nisus_Way_ many years ago, and anyone who can make Nisus
Writer seem logical has a good shot at simplifying something
much less confusing, such as an operating system or nuclear
physics. Kissell's entry contains fifty-two pages of methodical
upgrading goodness, including "the paranoid upgrade" and links
to lots of updates to hardware drivers you may need for Panther.
[26] <
http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/>
We don't agree with everything in
_Take_Control_of_Upgrading_to_Panther_, but if you're worried
about how to proceed, it's easily worth the US$5. Nothing in the
e-book should make you lose any data, though some procedures it
describes will take significantly more time than may be
necessary. Like many other sources, Kissell recommends using a
procedure other than the default "Upgrade Mac OS X" installation
option, and we do not.
**"Clean" upgrades** -- Mac OS X 10.3's installer offers three
choices. "Upgrade Mac OS X" replaces an existing version of Mac
OS X with Panther, keeping all of your settings, fonts, users,
and other configuration options. It's equivalent to the "Easy
Install" options in classic Mac OS. "Archive and Install" takes
all of the old components the installer would otherwise delete
and moves them to a "Previous Systems" folder, optionally
including the home folders of all users. (If you pick "Preserve
Users and Network Settings," the installer leaves the User
folders in place.) "Erase and install" erases the entire disk,
losing all data on it, before installing a virgin copy of Mac OS
X 10.3 on the newly-cleaned volume.
The standard "Upgrade" or "Easy Install" options fell out of
favor among "experts" in the 1990s, under the theory that the
standard installation somehow left your system "dirty" by
respecting your installed fonts, extensions, and preferences.
Conventional wisdom began to recommend the "clean install"
option that created a brand new System Folder, ignoring your old
one.
The idea was that, by definition, a new Mac OS installation
wouldn't contain older patches or drivers that might conflict
with the new OS. After your new, "clean" installation was
running properly, you were then supposed to reinstall all your
old software anew. Alas, this is a long and involved process,
and most people didn't want to endure it, so a new class of
utilities sprouted to remove the burden. These "clean install
helpers" went through your old and new System Folders, moving
any files from the old to the new that didn't already exist in
the new, and sometimes offering to replace new preference files
with old ones - and, in the process, restoring many of the files
that a "clean install" was supposed to leave behind.
The entire purpose of an installer is to intelligently remove
outdated components and install new ones. No Apple installer can
know about third-party software incompatibilities, and Apple's
installer doesn't even try to know about them. In the end,
though, the choice is yours. You can ask the installer to
preserve as much of your current system as possible so that
_you_ can resolve incompatibilities, or you can ask the
installer to remove some or all of your third-party software in
the belief that it will be incompatible and should be
reinstalled.
Most experts recommend the latter procedure, as does Kissell in
_Take_Control_of_Upgrading_to_Panther_, with some Mac OS X
additions such as preserving existing users, but removing all
login items. (Annoyingly, "login items" are now inaccurately
called "Startup Items" in Panther's "Accounts" preference pane -
they're still applications that launch when you log in, not Mac
OS X Startup Items that launch before anyone logs in.) It's
certainly a safe approach, but you'll spend many hours
reinstalling drivers, fonts, contextual menu items, menu extras,
and even real startup items. If you just copy the files over,
you've gained few advantages over the standard upgrade; if you
reinstall everything, set aside a day or so to find all the
original installers and serial numbers.
In general, we believe that if you've been conscientious about
installing system-modifying software, it's far easier to tackle
those programs before a standard upgrade than it is to disable
everything and reinstall it piece by piece. If you think you're
in touch with your Jaguar system, don't be afraid of the
standard upgrade installation. It works for the vast majority of
Mac OS X users, and it will probably work for you.
--
- Eolake
--
email@maccreator.com
http://MacCreator.com