PRESS RELEASE
June 23, 2003
Apple Previews Mac OS X “Panther”
More Than 100 New Features Push “Panther” Way Ahead of Competition
MARKHAM, Ontario—June 23, 2003—Apple® today previewed Mac® OS X version 10.3“Panther,” the next major version of Mac OS X that will ship by the end ofthis year. The fourth major release of Mac OS X in four years, Panther setsa new gold standard for desktop operating systems with more than 100breakthrough new features including a completely new Finder™; Exposé, arevolutionary new way to instantly see all your open windows at once; andiChat™ AV, a complete desktop video conferencing solution for business,education and consumers.
“With Jaguar, we moved ahead of the competition. With Panther, we’rewidening the gap,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With over 100 newfeatures, including some real blockbusters, Apple is again the industryinnovator in operating systems.”
Panther features a completely new Finder that puts a user’s favoritefolders, hard drive, network servers, iDisk and removable media in oneconvenient location, providing one-click access to everything a user needs.The redesigned Finder also features lightning-fast search, colored labelsfor fully-customized organization of documents and projects and dynamicbrowsing of the network for Mac®, Windows and UNIX file servers.
Panther also features Exposé, a revolutionary new way to instantly view allopen windows and choose any of them to be on top. Exposé visually unshufflesoverlapping windows on the desktop into an organized view so a user canquickly find and select the window they want. Exposé will even temporarilyclear the desktop of all windows, so users can get to any file on thedesktop previously hidden by the open windows. Powered by the Mac OS XQuartz™ graphic engine, Exposé is a major advance in user interface designthat will change the way people work with multiple files, applications andprojects.
Building on the success of iChat, Panther extends instant messaging to thenext level with iChat AV. With full-screen, full-motion video overbroadband, crystal-clear audio over 56K modem and a familiar easy-to-useinterface, iChat AV makes natural conversations over the Internet immediateand effortless.
In addition, Panther includes FileVault, a new feature that secures thecontents of a home directory with strong 128-bit AES encryption. WithFileVault, users can select to have their whole home directory encryptedautomatically so it encrypts and decrypts files on the fly, withoutinterrupting their work. For mobile users, FileVault provides a new level ofsecurity on the road so if anyone ever tries to access a user’s account orif their notebook is lost, important data is always protected by high-security encryption.
Panther also includes new features that make it even easier for Macs toco-exist in Windows networks including an IPSec-based VPN for Microsoft andCisco networks, support for ActiveDirectory and SMB-based home directorieson Windows servers and enhanced Windows integration within the Finder thatenables printing to shared printers.
Mac OS X is the world’s most popular UNIX-based operating system and Pantheradds system-wide advancements to UNIX-based technologies including X11 forMac OS X, major performance improvements to NFS, a ports manager foraccessing open source projects, expanded Kerberos support, an integratedIPv6 networking stack and the ability to access Quartz graphics from Python programs.
Additional new features in Panther include:
- an enhanced Mail application that organizes email into convenient threads with drag-and-drop addressing and a Safari™-based engine for displaying HTML formatted email;
- Fast User Switching, allowing users to share a single Mac and quickly switch between accounts without having to quit running applications and ompletely logout of the system;
- Pixlet, the first studio-grade codec for filmmakers that was developed in conjunction with Pixar to deliver breathtaking HD-quality video on the Mac that is free from visual artifacts;
- a fully integrated iDisk that increases productivity by automatically syncing a user’s offline work to their .Mac Internet server storage once they’re online again, so users can work locally on files with hard drive speeds and have them synced automatically back to their iDisk later;
- integrated faxing synched with the Address Book so sending and receiving faxes is as easy as printing, and includes support for adding cover pages;
- Font Book, a new application that provides system-level font management with double-click font preview, one-click installation and an intuitive iTunes®-like interface for managing font collections, and searching, activating and deactivating fonts; and
- a significantly improved Preview application that is the world's fastest PDF reader with super-fast text searching that builds an instant index of search results in a PDF, text selection and copying, URL support and support for the PDF 1.4 format. Preview leverages powerful improvements to Quartz filtering technology such as colorspace conversion, image sampling and compression for advanced PDF workflows.
Pricing & Availability
Mac OS X version 10.3 Panther will be available by the end of this yearthrough the Apple Store® (www.apple.com/canadastore) and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US). Canadianpricing to be determined upon availability.
Mac OS X version 10.3 Panther will be available by the end of this yearthrough the Apple Store® (www.apple.com/canadastore) and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $129 (US). Canadianpricing to be determined upon availability.
Apple Canada Inc. is headquartered in Markham, Ontario and is a wholly-ownedsubsidiary of Apple Computer, Inc. Apple products are available at more than450 Authorized Apple Canada Dealer locations across Canada.
- © 2003 Apple Computer, Inc. All rights reserved.Apple, the Apple logo, Mac,Mac OS, Macintosh, Finder, iChat, Quartz, Safari, iTunes and Apple Store areeither registered trademarks or trademarks of Apple. Other company andproduct names may be trademarks of their respective owners.