These were the things I was looking for in an operating system, and Panther seemed to fit the bill perfectly. Frequently I would hear claims that the software was easier to use than Windows, required less maintenance, and was inherently more secure.
Prior to receiving my new Mac and its operating system, I read up on the Mac OS to get an idea of what to expect. When I purchased my first Mac in early 2005, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther was preinstalled on its hard drive. I have personally used two versions of Mac OS X, 10.3 and 10.4, and I will describe my experiences with both here. Since its first release in 2001 (with a public beta released the previous year), Mac OS X has had four updates.* These occurred on a roughly 18 month release cycle, with the latest version being Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the edition I will use as the basis for my usability study. Since I began to use the Apple Macintosh, there have two distinct releases: Mac OS X 10.3 Panther and 10.4 Tiger.
My history with the Mac OS is considerably shorter than my time with Windows, but it is no less interesting.
