Mac OS X Panther

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther

A version of the macOS operating system
Screenshot of Mac OS X Panther. Notice how the Finder icon in the Dock has been changed and Internet Explorer has been replaced by Safari
Developer	Apple Inc
OS family	Macintosh Unix-like
Source model	Closed source (with open source components)
Released to manufacturing	October 24, 2003 (2003-10-24)
Latest release	10.3.9 / April 15, 2005 (2005-04-15)[1]
Platforms	PowerPC
Kernel type	Hybrid (XNU)
License	Apple Public Source License (APSL) and Apple end-user license agreement (EULA)
Preceded by	Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
Succeeded by	Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
Official website	Apple - Mac OS X at the Wayback Machine (archived January 11, 2005)
Support status
Unsupported

Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of Mac OS X (now named macOS), Apple’s desktop and server operating system. It followed Mac OS X 10.2 and preceded Mac OS X Tiger. Apple released Panther on October 24, 2003.

System requirements

Since a New World ROM was required for Mac OS X Panther, certain older computers (such as beige Power Mac G3s and ‘Wall Street’ PowerBook G3s) were unable to run Panther by default. Third-party software (such as XPostFacto) can, however, override checks made during the install process; otherwise, installation or upgrades from Jaguar will fail on these older machines.

The system requirements are:^[2]

• PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor (at least 233 MHz)
• Built-in USB (indicative of a New World ROM being present)
• At least 128 MB of RAM (512 MB recommended, minimum of 96 MB supported unofficially)
• At least 1.5 GB of available hard disk space
• CD drive
• Internet access requires a compatible service provider; iDisk requires a .Mac account

Video conferencing requires:

• 333 MHz or faster PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
• Broadband internet access (100 kbit/s or faster)
• Compatible FireWire DV camera or web camera

Panther still supported the Classic environment fully for running older Mac OS 9 applications but made Classic application windows double-buffered, which interfered with some applications expecting to directly draw to the screen.

New and changed features

End-user features

Apple advertised that Mac OS X Panther had over 150 new features, including:

• Finder: Updated with a brushed-metal interface, a new live search engine, customizable Sidebar, secure deletion, File labels and Zip support built in. The Finder icon was also changed.
• Fast User Switching: Allows a user to remain logged in while another user logs in
• Exposé: Helps the user manage windows by showing them all as thumbnails.
• TextEdit: TextEdit now is also compatible with Microsoft Word (.doc) documents.
• Xcode developer tools: Faster compile times with gcc 3.3.
• Preview: Increased speed with PDF rendering
• QuickTime: Now supports the Pixlet high definition video codec

New applications in Panther

• Font Book: Font Book, Apple's font manager, simplifies viewing character maps and installing fonts. It also allows the user to sort fonts into categories.
• FileVault: On the fly encryption and decryption of a user’s home folder
• iChat AV: The new version of iChat. Now with built-in Audio- and video-conferencing.
• X11: X11 is built into Panther
• Safari: A new browser that was developed to replace Internet Explorer for Mac when the contract between Apple and Microsoft ended, although Internet Explorer for Mac was still available. Safari 1.0 was included in an update in Jaguar but was used as the default browser in Panther.

Other

• Microsoft Windows interoperability improvements, including out-of-the-box support for Active Directory and SecurID-based VPNs.
• Built-in fax support.

Release history

References