Mac OS X Panther (version 10.3) is the fourth major release of

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, Apple's desktop and server

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

. It followed Mac OS X Jaguar and preceded

Mac OS X Tiger Mac OS X Tiger (version 10.4) is the 5th major release of macOS, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Mac computers. Tiger was released to the public on April 29, 2005 for US$129.95 as the successor to Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. Som ...

. It was released on October 24, 2003.

System requirements

Panther's system requirements are: * PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor (at least 233 MHz) *Built-in USB *At least 128 MB of

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch ...

(256 MB recommended, minimum of 96 MB supported unofficially) *At least 1.5 GB of available hard disk space *

CD drive In computing, an optical disc drive is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only r ...

*Internet access requires a compatible service provider; iDisk requires a

.Mac MobileMe (branded iTools between 2000 and 2002; .Mac until 2008) is a discontinued subscription-based collection of online services and software offered by Apple Inc. All services were gradually transitioned to and eventually replaced by the ...

account Video conferencing requires: *333 MHz or faster PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor *Broadband internet access (100

kbit/s In telecommunications, data-transfer rate is the average number of bits ( bitrate), characters or symbols ( baudrate), or data blocks per unit time passing through a communication link in a data-transmission system. Common data rate units are mul ...

or faster) *Compatible

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony a ...

DV camera or

web camera A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in videotelephony, livestreaming and social media, and security. Webcams can be built-in computer hardware or peripheral ...

Since a

New World ROM New World ROM computers are Macintosh models that do not use a Macintosh Toolbox ROM on the logic board. Due to Mac OS X not requiring the availability of the Toolbox, this allowed ROM sizes to shrink dramatically (typically from to ), and facili ...

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 {{Rewrite, date=June 2022 XPostFacto is an open source utility that enables the installation of PowerPC versions of Mac OS X up to Mac OS X v10.4 (Tiger), and Darwin on some PowerPC-based Apple Macintosh systems that are not officially supported f ...

) can, however, override checks made during the install process; otherwise, installation or upgrades from Jaguar fails on these older machines. Panther still fully supported the Classic environment for running older Mac OS 9 applications, but made Classic application windows double-buffered, interfering with some applications written to draw directly to screen.

New and changed features

End-user features

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

Finder Finder may refer to: * Finder (surname) * Finder (software), part of the Apple Macintosh operating system * ''Finder'' (comics), a comic book series by Carla Speed McNeil * ''Finder'' (novel), a 1994 novel by Emma Bull * Finder Wyvernspur, a fi ...

: Updated with a brushed-metal interface, a new live search engine, customizable Sidebar, secure deletion, colored labels (resurrected from

classic Mac OS Mac OS (originally System Software; retronym: Classic Mac OS) is the series of operating systems developed for the Macintosh family of personal computers by Apple Computer from 1984 to 2001, starting with System 1 and ending with Mac OS 9. Th ...

) in the filesystem and Zip support built in. The Finder icon was also changed. *

Fast user switching Fast user switching is a feature of a multi-user operating system which allows users to switch between user accounts without quitting applications and logging out. In Linux The Linux kernel's VT subsystem dates back to 1993 and does not under ...

: Allows a user to remain logged in while another user logs in, and quickly switch among several sessions. * Exposé: Helps the user manage windows by showing them all as thumbnails. *

TextEdit TextEdit is an open-source word processor and text editor, first featured in NeXT's NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. It is now distributed with macOS since Apple Inc.'s acquisition of NeXT, and available as a GNUstep application for other Unix-like ope ...

: TextEdit now is also compatible with

Microsoft Word Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includi ...

(.doc) documents. *

Xcode Xcode is Apple's integrated development environment (IDE) for macOS, used to develop software for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and tvOS. It was initially released in late 2003; the latest stable release is version 14.2, released on December 13, ...

developer tools: Faster compile times with gcc 3.3. * Preview: Increased speed of

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

rendering. *

QuickTime QuickTime is an extensible multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. Created in 1991, the latest Mac version, QuickTime X, is a ...

: Now supports the Pixlet high-definition

video codec A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while a device that only compresses is typically called an '' ...

New applications in Panther

* Font Book: A font manager which simplifies viewing character maps, and adding new fonts that can be used systemwide. The app also allows the user to organize fonts into collections. * FileVault: On-the-fly

encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can dec ...

and decryption of a user's

home folder A home directory is a file system directory on a multi-user operating system containing files for a given user of the system. The specifics of the home directory (such as its name and location) are defined by the operating system involved; fo ...

. *

iChat AV iChat (previously iChat AV) is a discontinued instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. for use on its Mac OS X operating system. It supported instant text messaging over XMPP/Jingle or OSCAR ( AIM) protocol, audio and video ...

: The new version of iChat. Now with built-in audio- and

video conferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Enc ...

. * X11: X11 is built into Panther. *

Safari A safari (; ) is an overland journey to observe wild animals, especially in eastern or southern Africa. The so-called "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant, and Cape buffalo – particularly form an importa ...

: A new

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

that was developed to replace

Internet Explorer for Mac Internet Explorer for Mac (also referred to as Internet Explorer for Macintosh, Internet Explorer Macintosh Edition, Internet Explorer:mac or IE:mac) was a proprietary web browser developed by Microsoft for the Macintosh platform to browse web pag ...

when the contract between Apple and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

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 Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of processes and services. Initially, Active Directory was used only for centr ...

and SecurID-based

VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...

s. *Built-in

fax Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

support.

Release history

Timeline

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mac OS X V10.3 3 PowerPC operating systems 2003 software Computer-related introductions in 2003