Is Panther better than Tiger and Leopard?

I use Tiger on my main machine, but Panther on my other. I find Tiger rock solid, but if you are happy with Panther, I wouldn't try to talk you into Tiger. I haven't used Leopard enough to comment.

Hi, Tom. I don't know that Panther is "better" than Tiger or Leopard, but it is less demanding of hardware resources, leaving more processor cycles and RAM for your applications to use. If it does everything you need it to do (as it does for me), then there's no reason not to keep on using it until one or more of your essential applications is upgraded to a version that requires a later OS version. And with both Tiger and Leopard already on hand, you're all set to make that transition smoothly whenever it becomes necessary.

I second eww's point about newer applications requiring a later version of OS X. For example, if we want to continue using Safari with Panther, we're stuck with 1.3, which may not be quite as secure as version 2 or 3, and sometimes it can't handle some web sites (YouTube stopped working for a brief period). Still, we can use Camino or Firefox.

I think a lot of applications require the 'Core' graphics in Tiger and Leopard. And many shareware/freeware applications now require 10.4 and above, perhaps because the developer may only have one version of OS X and cannot test the code on an older version.

I haven't used Tiger or Leopard, so can't say if Panther is better, but there have certainly been occaisions when I needed to have Tiger to run some shareware I wanted. I'll probably upgrade one day, but it maybe when I upgrade my aging iMac.

Cheers,
Dan

Panther can do one trick that Tiger and Leopard can no longer do. Connect to a Mac OS 9 machine that is acting as the server. Apple removed "AppleShare over AppleTalk" starting with Tiger.

And, Panther (and Tiger) can run Classic apps on PowerPC Macs. Leopard cannot, even on a PowerPC Mac.

I use Panther on an old G3 iMac that has an upgraded G4 CPU card. Because the analog video board failed many years ago, I made it "headless" and attached an external 19-inch CRT at 1280x960 (millions of colors). I'm amazed how well it performs with Panther.

I think Panther is definitely better than Leopard! I haven't used Tiger, I skipped straight to Leopard from Panther and am very unhappy. I have a PowerPC iBook so that may be one thing, but they say it should work on PPCs so I believed them. Uh-uh. Endless slowdowns and beachballing, my scanner stopped working, can't print in color from certain programs, the problems go on and on.

Maybe if you have a new Intel mac Leopard is all right. But I am going back to Panther.