I found a strange thing today. With the last version of Mac OS X, if I open a menu the front application stops running. The last version of Mac OS that did this was Mac OS 9. In Jaguar I could open a menu and see an image on a web page animating, but no more. Only Quicktime movies seem unaffected.
Is it a way to speed up things and make Mac OS X snappier? Because it's true: Panther is snappier. A step backward in multithreading, a step forward in snappiness!
It was somewhat previsible. It seems that since the Apple Store is online and now that it is in the streets of many US big cities independent dealers are neglected by the company.
As far as I'm concerned this tendency has become clear some years ago at the launch of the Lime iBook, available only at the Apple Store online. The Apple Store was only on the internet at this time, but this move shown clearly that Apple was ready to use it's obvious advantage it has on it's resellers.
So today when I see that US dealers say that Apple do no longer help them I clearly belive it. Apple want to play alone selling it's products and it's sad. It may have success now, but it's slowly destroying a nework of people interested in the platform. Some resellers had to convert to Windows.
I do not think the situation is as bad in Canada (for now), but dealers are probably under the same pressure.
According to some rumors , Java 3D should soon be available on Mac OS X, with Java Advanced Imaging. You can pass the good news!
A new version of Safari came with Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (what a long name!) and I found two new bugs. Two other bugs have been resolved though. For more information I invite you to take a look at developer Dave Hyatt blog and to find more about the new bugs I discovered see the Safari Bugs section of my site.