I recently wrote that I broke down and ordered OS X 10.3. Well, it finally arrived and I installed it today. First impressions:
1. It's tightened up the UI quite well, making a lot of small improvements that individually don't count for much but collectively are worth $40.
2. The improvements in mail are real and feel very nice. Thread identification is done very well (it highlights related subject lines when you click on an email). Upgrading was seamless, it just asked if I wanted to upgrade and a few seconds later was done with all the back end work. It's a $20 value.
3. Safari has the aforementioned general tightening up and miscellaneous improvements to its credit. There might be more but I'll give it a value of $10
4. UI scripting takes a great leap forward in this version. The ability to script any program that uses native widgets is a huge step forward here. In 10.4 it's going to be opened up to those without programming talent but I've got a little bit of that so I get to use it now. A $60 value for the programming savvy
5. X11 is now out of beta and comes as an optional install. For those who know the joys of Fink, this isn't that big a deal but taking all the work out of installing X Windows certainly is nice. I'll call it a $30 value
6. XCode is a major improvement. Being able to automatically compile over multiple machines is great. $75
I'd go on, but the major point is already demonstrated, it was definitely worth the money.
Posted by TMLutas at October 22, 2004 07:23 PM