the main reason this post exists is so I wouldn't have to look at that troll post anymore.
but, while I'm here, I'll talk about something fun, exciting, and cool.
Panther 7B80. I'd say that the thing is done. I'm betting that by now, they have a gold master and will soon start cranking Panther CDs out.
80 reeks of "fit and finish". They've removed all the "pre-release" branding, and they've put the chrome apple logos all over it. Aqua is lookin' good. Much less in-your-face, much more subdued and in line with the appearance of the hardware. It comes over, to me, as being more remenicent of Platinum. For anybody that ever disliked the garishly over-the-top look, this fixes it. Set it to graphite, and it's quite stylish. I, personally can't use it without the blue, though!
Panther has gotten a new desktop picture (FOAM IS BACK!), the Finder is... wow. You have two choices... use it with the sidebar and toolbar turned on... and it works pretty much like it has since 10.0.
However... turn the sidebar off, and the Finder window drops that sodding brushed look and is clean, crisp Aqua, and is FULLY SPACIAL, just like OS 9. AMAZING!!
Icon highlights work a little differently now. Instead of the icon darkening, it now has a dark square around the icon. If the icon fills the area (for example, your icons are set to 48x48 and the icon takes up the full 48x48 pixel square, then the icon darkens.
Opening a folder or drive, leaves the icon highlighted, and the color around the icon title turns silver and the text turns gray to show you that the window for that icon is open... I've been waiting for that for some time!
Overall speed enhancements abound. Rage 128 cards now get some OpenGL acceleration. iTunes visualizations can now use GL, and look quite, quite nice. No QE... that will never work on Rage128. That's honestly, a blessing in disguise. The Rages might not get QE's quickness, and the lag it removes from things, but the Rage 128-based iBooks aren't suffering from the failures that the Radeon ones are.
This is a good release... much more important than 10.1 or 10.2 were. Jaguar was such an underwhelming, disappointing release. They talked it up so much, and it comes along, and it's 10.1 with some refinements. Panther, however is an honestly compelling update. It's the first real "point release". Jaguar should have been the 10.0 "first release" and Panther would be 10.1.
It's goooooood
