PRESS RELEASE 08 October 2003

Apple Announces Mac OS X “Panther”

Shipping October 24th With More Than 150 New Features

CUPERTINO, California - October 8th, 2003

Apple today announced that Mac OS Xversion 10.3 “Panther”, the next major release of the world’s most advancedoperating system, will be available in the UK on Friday, October 24th,beginning at 8:00pm. Panther delivers more than 150 breakthrough newfeatures including a completely new Finder that provides one-click access toa user’s favourite files and folders; Exposé, a revolutionary new way to instantly see all open windows at once; and iChat AV, a complete desktopvideo conferencing solution for business, education and consumers.

Selected Apple Authorised Resellers in the UK will host special events onFriday, October 24th, starting at 8:00pm to celebrate the introduction of themost groundbreaking version of Apple’s UNIX-based operating system to date.

“Panther sets the new gold standard for operating systems”, said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “With more than 150 new features, we’re delivering innovations today that will not be seen in any other operating system for years to come”.

Panther features a completely redesigned Finder with lightning-fast filesearching that is up to six times faster than Mac OS X version 10.2. The newFinder provides one-click access by putting a user’s favourite folders,storage, servers and iDisk in one convenient location. The new Finder alsooffers dynamic browsing of the network for Mac, Windows and UNIX fileservers.

Panther also introduces Exposé, a revolutionary new way to instantly viewall open windows and choose any of them to be on top. Exposé visuallyunshuffles overlapping windows on the desktop into an organised thumbnailview so a user can instantly locate and switch to any open window or get toany file on the desktop. Powered by the Mac OS X Quartz graphic engine,Exposé is a breakthrough in working with multiple files, applications andprojects.

Panther extends instant messaging to the next level with iChat AV, theworld’s easiest to use desktop video conferencing solution, offeringfull-screen, full-motion video over broadband, crystal-clear audio and afamiliar easy-to-use interface. iChat makes natural conversations over theInternet immediate and effortless, and has been enjoyed by over half amillion beta users since its introduction in June.

Other new features in Panther include:

Fast User Switching to elegantly switch between active users withouthaving to quit applications or log out;
FileVault, which uses the latest security standards and 128-bit encryption technology to ensure that data in the home directory is kept secure and private at all times;
Font Book, a new application that provides system-level font managementwith double-click font preview, one-click installation and an intuitiveinterface for managing font collections, and activating or deactivatingfonts;
the world’s fastest PDF reader in a significantly improved Previewapplication, with superfast text searching that builds an instant index ofsearch results in a PDF, text selection and copying, URL support and supportfor the PDF 1.4 format;
a fully integrated iDisk that increases productivity by automaticallysyncing a user’s offline work to their .Mac Internet server storage oncethey’re online again, so users can work locally on files with hard drivespeeds and have them synced automatically back to their iDisk later;
enhanced Mail, with advanced spam filtering technology and the ability to organise mail into convenient threads to make it easy to read, file ordelete related emails;
a new Address Book that includes powerful new features for printing labels and easily notifying contacts when a user’s personal information changes;
integrated faxing synced with the Address Book so sending and receivingfaxes is as easy as printing, and includes support for adding cover pages;
enhanced Windows compatibility that ensures files, printers and networkservices can easily be shared with Windows users. Support for MicrosoftExchange is built into Mail and Address Book to make it easy to accessExchange email and sync address book entries;
advancements to the open-standard UNIX-based foundation, including support for the latest open source libraries, commands and technologies, X11applications, IPv6, Kerberos integration and a greatly improved NFS filesystem;
Xcode, the fastest way to create Mac OS X applications. Xcode combines an easy-to-use interface with proven developer tools such as GCC 3.3 to make iteasy for developers to take advantage of the latest technologies from Apple;and
the latest versions of iSync, iCal, iPhoto, iMovie, iTunes and Apple’s new default Web browser, Safari.

Pricing & Availability:

Mac OS X version 10.3 “Panther” will be available in the UK on October 24th beginning at 8:00 pm at Apple Authorised Resellers for a suggested sellingprice of £99 (inc VAT) for a single user licence. Visitors to the Apple Store can pre-order copies of Pantherbeginning today. The Mac OS X Panther Family Pack is a single-residence,five-user licence that will be available for a suggested selling price of£159 (inc VAT). Volume and maintenance pricing is available from Apple. The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers whopurchase a new Mac system on or after October 8th; all customers who purchaseda Power Mac G5 that did not have Pantherincluded on or after August 16th; and customers who purchase the Mac OS X version 10.2 retailproduct on or after October 8th for a shipping and handling fee of £14 (inc VAT). See www.apple.com/ie/macosx/uptodate for full details.

Press Contacts:
Apple UK and Ireland Public Relations
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +44 (0)20 8218 1440

https://www.apple.com

https://www.apple.com/ie/pr