[CUBE] Jaguar, what's next?

[Joost van de Griek]

On 2003-06-17 23:35, John Guy wrote:

> We have have all heard the rumours about panther as the next instalment, but
> what are we going to see in it?

<http://www.macosrumors.com/>
<http://www.macwhispers.com/>
<http://www.macintouch.com/>
<http://www.thinksecret.com/>

Mind you, that's all hearsay and speculation. No hard facts...

> Is it going to be a processor dependant OS, i.e. The new 970's from IBM [...]

No. Apple is at this very moment still selling G4 (and even G3) equipped
computers. It is safe to assume that both CPUs will be supported in Panther,
else all hell will break loose.

I seem to recall that Panther will support all models that support OS X,
that is to say, anything with a G3 or better Cpu that was made by Apple,
except the "Kanga" G3 PowerBook.

> [...] or is it going to be a polished and tweaked version of Jaguar?

Surely it will be polished (rumour has it, maybe it will be polished in more
ways than one), but surely new features are to be expected, too.

> What features are we going to gain over Jaguar?

A Cocoa Finder for one. For the rest, see the rumour sites.

> Who is it aimed at?

All Mac OS X users, I would expect.

> Will it work on a cube?

See above. Yes, it will most definitely work on a Cube.

> As we have historically seen from Microsnot, there is a tendency so see the
> next s/w OS every 2-3 years or so, give or take, but as technology and
> processor speeds advance, so will the demand for greater flexibility and
> integration.

Apple's OS updates come much more frequent than that. It's only been three
years since:

- Mac OS X Public Beta
- Mac OS X
- Mac OS X 10.1
- Mac OS X 10.2

At the same time, Mac OS 9 development has continued until about a year ago.

> We all within two years will have some need for Bluetooth or its next
> generation reiteration, in managing our lives, but what is Panther going to do
> to achieve this for us?

Panther will probably offer a better Bluetooth implementation. With a USB
Bluetooth dongle, Cube users will benefit from this in the same way as any
other Mac/Bluetooth user.

> We are a dedicated and semi-elitist community, why not we have the prettiest
> computer yet designed, but could Panther spell the demise at a s/w level of
> the cube?

Not likely. In fact, I think there is still a lot of room for improvement in
OS X, as far as code optimisation goes. So it seems likely that Panther will
run faster still than Jaguar.

Apple is not known for cutting off legacy hardware from OS updates (68K Mac
support was dropped with Mac OS 8.6). Most likely, G3 support will be
dropped first, probably when 10.5 sees the light of day. Then again, with
the CPU situation the way it is, all bets are off. But I wouldn't expect the
G4 to be cut off for another year or two.

,xtG
.tsooJ
-- 
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world:
Those that understand binary, and those that don't.
-- 
Joost van de Griek
<http://www.jvdg.net/>