Product Reviews

Apple's aim to ship a major update to Mac OS X every year is almost on track; 14 months after OS X 10.2, version 10.3 is with us.

This has been the subject of much speculation since its debut at Apple's annual World Wide Developer Conference last June, with its new-look Finder, window management features, data security options, network enhancements, fax abilities, integrated .Mac support and more. Until a few days ago nobody but developers have been able to assess it, but when OS X 10.3 was declared finished and ready to ship, we delved right in to see what the future will be like.
Many people considered OS X 10.2 to be the first truly 'sorted' OS X release; 10.0 was regarded by many in the industry to be effectively a beta version and 10.1 to be more of a 'first final' version. Mac OS X 10.3, according to Apple, is where the rejuvenated Mac OS really grasps the way personal computers should work today and in the future.
When Steve Jobs announced OS X 10.3 he said that until now the Mac OS was relatively 'computer-centric', that it required users to work, to an extent, in the way the computer works. He claims that OS X 10.3 is the first truly user-centric Mac OS (and by implication any other OS too), that puts the user first. Although the changes in things such as the Finder's basic behaviour do mean users have things to learn, it does seem that this claim is at least partly true.
Until now the Finder has been based on how Macs worked back in the 1980s. Now it tackles the fact that people work with multiple volumes and disks and use network resources (both local and Internet-based) as a matter of course. On top of that, the Mac OS is now being designed for an age where most people have at least a little exposure to computing, unlike the days of older operating systems, when most people were pretty new to computing in general.
Finder windows
The Finder navigation buttons have gone from the top of windows, appearing in a navigation column to the left instead. Some controls, essentially those that operate on items, are still found at the top. There's a new permanently visible contextual menu here that helps users perform appropriate operations on whatever's selected. The core navigation items - the named home folder, Applications, Documents and so on, plus quick access to mounted volumes and anything the user cares to add themselves - are in the new navigation panel. This is extremely useful in practice, although it can take a little time to really sink in. If you don't want to see this panel, the dividing bar between the navigation panel and the main section can be dragged over to the left to show just icons, or to leave the user with a window similar to the previous Finder window - in behaviour at least, if not quite in appearance.
The brushed-metal look of OS X 10.3's Finder windows will irk many. OS X's navigation methods make using a single Finder window relatively easy. But it's often useful to have two or more open at once, and the chunky grey window structure can take up a fair amount of space. As you can guess, we're not big fans of this new look. However, it must be said it is something that has proved less of a problem in use than we expected.
Animated translucency is a common theme in this release. When items are opened an animation scales up the icon while fading it out, a surprisingly elegant take on the old 'zoomrect' animation we've had since almost the dawn of time. Switching between panels in System Preferences also uses translucency, fading one into the other. As with the menu fade in OS X 10.2, these are all done fairly quickly so as to add subtle style to everyday operations without feeling sluggish - even on a 500MHz PowerBook G3.
The overall Aqua design has been updated a certain amount. The stripes are less evident in window and menu backgrounds, document titlebars are a simpler steely-grey graduation with no stripes in evidence at all, and the transparency applied to regular inactive window titlebars has been removed. These touches are small, true, but they all help make OS X feel distinctly sharper and cleaner than before.
Filtering
The way basic Finder searches operate - using the field in the toolbar - has been changed too. Rather than waiting until the user presses the return key, the search field acts as a filter for pre-emptively finding out the appropriate items - effectively by filtering out things that don't match - right from the moment the user starts typing; no need to press return to start the process, it is often half finished by the time you finish typing. The effect is to make searching simpler and faster overall. However, users have to specify whether they want to search all local disks, just within their home, the current selection, or 'everywhere' via a popup menu found half-hidden within the field. This defaults to local disks, and is likely to confuse people until they find the set of options.
Revealing Exposé
If you only ever do word processing then you're unlikely to have had many windows open at once. However, virtually all Mac users juggle multiple documents in multiple applications at least sometimes, and getting hold of the right window in the right application can sometimes be a bit of a fiddle. Apple's new Exposé feature changes all this quite dramatically without making users change their habits.
Trigger Exposé and the desktop background is dimmed and all document-style windows (not palette windows) are shown scaled down and not overlapping. With many kinds of document this is enough for the user to tell which is which, but in case the shrunk-down view isn't enough a document's name is shown when the user points at the small version. Click on a window and it is brought to the front, saving the user from juggling applications and looking through various window menus. As well as showing all document windows, Exposé can be used to show just the windows in the current application; particularly useful when dealing with multiple files in applications such as Photoshop.
The trigger which invokes Exposé can be a function key shortcut, and it can also be activated by moving the mouse into a designated corner of the screen - a gesture-based event. However, the gesture approach, while the most naturally fluid, can trip up the unwary user. Hit the designated corner by accident and Exposé kicks in whether you want it or not.

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Still, whether you're handling many windows in one application or many windows in many applications this is a very useful and natural way to work. It is also worth noting that Exposé doesn't freeze the state of windows. If you start loading a complex or slow Web page then invoke Exposé, you can see the page continue to load while in the miniaturised state. Lengthy processes, such as those performed by PostScript RIPs or 3D rendering tools, are unaffected by the Exposé feature, as are QuickTime movies, Flash animations and so on.
File 'archiving' is a new ability, and marks Apple's clear acceptance of the .zip compression format. Although StuffIt Expander is installed in the Utilities folder, choosing the 'Create Archive' item in the contextual or File menu in the Finder will create a .zip archive of the selected items.
Old is new
Data security has been brought back to OS X; the new FileVault feature in System Preferences allows very high-level encryption to be applied to a user's entire Home folder, with decryption happening on the fly while logged in. As cracking the encryption level used here is effectively impossible, in the real world at least, it is important not to forget the password. However, a master password can be set which will unlock any FileVault account set up on that computer.
Other features found in OS 9 have finally been reintroduced, from Labels (applying colour to files and folders) to the ability to search for items using filetype and creator codes.
Utilities
Many of OS X's applications and utilities have been updated for the new release. Apple's Mail has been given a major overhaul and is likely to be more than enough for most users, with improved spam filtering, more intelligent multiple account handling and more. TextEdit shows the advances made with the Font panel, a system-level feature third-party developers can make use of in their own applications. As well as working with font collections, new options for underline and strikethrough, text and background colour, and most impressively a full-featured set of controls for setting text shadow (including opacity, blur, offset and angle) are on offer.
This isn't the most impressive type-related advance, however. The new Font Book utility satisfies the need for a font preview method, a simple installation tool and a font manager in one fell swoop. It doesn't have all the features of, say, Extensis' Suitcase, but it does do what many people need. Font Book's window provides a list of collections, the equivalent of font 'sets', plus the option to add, delete and edit sets yourself. A separate column shows fonts and font families, and a preview panel is on the right. Adding a new font to a collection will install it for use by the current user (in your home Library fonts folder), all users (the top-level library), or the Classic fonts folder inside the old, OS 9 System Folder. Installed fonts can be enabled and disabled. Disabled fonts are moved, logically enough, into a new 'Fonts (Disabled)' folder in the appropriate location.
The Internet Connect application provides a streamlined way to set up a dialup Internet connection, plus access to VPN (virtual private network) support using L2TP over IPSec or PPTP. This feature in particular will please network administrators, as VPN is becoming an increasingly important solution for providing secure access to corporate networks.
The CPU Monitor is replaced by the new Activity Monitor, a tool that crams the old CPU Monitor (presented in a better way) plus graphic representations of system memory, disk activity, disk usage and network activity into one package. Disk Copy is now built into Disk Utility, but it appears that Display Calibrator has been dropped.
Third-party software
We tested a wide range of third-party software and found few issues. Photoshop 7, FileMaker Pro 5.5, Flash MX and Word X all behaved impeccably. In addition, Java-based applications such as ThinkFree Office behaved better than before.
It wasn't all perfect; AppleWorks needed to be updated to the latest incremental release before it would launch, and a few packages had problems working with some fonts. We also found that a number of third-party add-on extras that modify the way the operating system works caused problems. These should be removed before installing OS X 10.3 or, alternatively, install the new version to a clean volume instead. Of course, it's likely that some third-party application issues which escaped us will come to light and updates will be required for full 10.3-compatibility, but we didn't spot any problems worth noting in everyday use.
Print
The old Print Center has been renamed Printer Setup Utility, and basic setup work is now done using the new Print & Fax panel in System Preferences. OS X now includes support for Windows printers, working with the standard Windows network neighbourhood. Apple's efforts to make OS X the most flexible operating system around seem to be paying off; it seems quite likely that it will soon be easier to set up a Mac than a PC to use a Windows network.
Faxing is treated as just another form of printing, logically enough, and it will be of great interest to many business users. Faxes are generally regarded as having a certain amount of legal standing, whereas emails remain in the grey 'unproven' area at best, when it comes to contractual disputes and the like. This point alone makes Apple's inclusion of fax support as a built-in feature rather than a third-party software bundle a good move. Faxing is offered as an option within the standard Print dialog or sheet, next to the Save as PDF button. Clicking on this switches to a completely new section with options for specifying the recipient's number (a button here links to Address Book), cover page settings and so on. Preview
PDF handling in the Preview application has been greatly improved. The speed of rendering is dramatically increased, making thumbnails appear in the drawer almost instantaneously. Hyperlinks in PDFs are now used, so PDF documents with clickable tables of contents work in Preview as well as Adobe Reader. There are three 'tool modes' now; one for scrolling a page around within the window, one for selecting text in the PDF, and one for selecting a portion of the page as a graphic, ready to be copied to the Clipboard. In the drawer the display can be toggled between thumbnail and list view, and a search field allows page finding using the same live filtering approach used in Finder windows.
In summary
There are things in OS X 10.3 which will take getting used to, the Finder being a prime example. However, this release is as big a step forward as version 10.2 was over 10.1 - and possibly even more so. With everything we've covered here plus dozens of further improvements, such as a host of new system-level drivers for third-party hardware and more, the bottom line is that Mac OS X 10.3 looks and works significantly better than before.