Mac OS X version 10.3 "Panther" was the fourth major release of Apple Computer's Mac OS X operating system. It followed Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar" and preceded Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger". Apple released Panther on October 24, 2003 and was last updated April 15, 2005. The cost from Apple was US$129 for a single-user license and US$199 for a Family Pack (5 user, 1 household) license.
System requirements
- Supported Computers: Power Mac G3, G4, G5, iMac, eMac, PowerBook G3 (bronze keyboard models only) or G4, or iBook G3 or G4
- RAM required: 128 megabytes
- Hard Drive Space: 1.5 gigabytes
Since Panther requires a computer with a built-in USB port, certain older computers (beige Power Mac G3s and "Wall Street" PowerBook G3s) are unable to run 10.3 by default. Third party software (such as XPostFacto) can override checks made during the install process; otherwise, installation or upgrades from 10.2 will fail on these older machines.
Apple advertised that Panther had at least 150 new features compared to the previous version, including:
- Finder updated interface
- Brushed-metal interface
- Real-time searching (like iTunes)
- Customizable sidebar (like iTunes)
- Modified Icon
- Fast User Switching, which allows a user to remain logged in while another user logs in; the "switch" between users was animated by putting the desktop windows of the users on the faces of a cube which rotated to the loggin-in user (the effect is only seen on systems with Quartz Extreme).
- Exposé, a program to help the user manage windows, especially large numbers of them.
- Fax support built-in.
- Zip support built in.
- X11 support built-in.
- TextEdit support for Microsoft Word (*.doc) documents.
- Microsoft Windows interoperability improvements, including support for SecurID-based VPNs.
- Security
- FileVault: on the fly encryption and decryption of a user's home folder
- Secure deletion
- Xcode Developer Tools, which speeds compile times greatly with gcc 3.3.
- iChat AV video-conferencing software
- PDF rendering speed increase
- File labels
- Pixlet high definition video codec
- CoreAudio and Audio Units
- Font Book font manager
Builds:
Mac OS X v10.3.0 (build 7B85), released October 24, 2003
Mac OS X v10.3.1 (build 7C107), released November 10, 2003
Mac OS X v10.3.2 (build 7D24), released December 17, 2003
Mac OS X v10.3.3 (build 7F44), released March 15, 2004
Mac OS X v10.3.4 (build 7H63), released May 26, 2004
Mac OS X v10.3.5 (build 7M34), released August 8, 2004
Mac OS X v10.3.6 (build 7R28), released November 5, 2004
Mac OS X v10.3.7 (build 7S215), released December 15, 2004
Mac OS X v10.3.8 (build 7U16), released February 9, 2005
Mac OS X v10.3.9 (build 7W98), released April 15, 2005
