Night of the Panther - Roll-Out Event

On the evening of October 24, 2003 Apple premiered Version 10.3 of its operating system, code-named Panther, at its retail stores. The stores closed at 7:30 p.m. across the country, and then opened again at 8 p.m. to begin selling the long-awaited OS upgrade, and to demonstrate its 150+ new features.

I attended the roll-out at the Walnut Creek (N. Calif.) Apple store, where the first-in-line was Josh at about 6:20 p.m. About 10 others quickly followed, and by the time the doors opened, there were 145 people in line, bending around the corner of the Tiffany & Co. jewelry store in downtown Walnut Creek.

In the 30 minutes the store was closed, employees posted stickers on the windows proclaiming 10% off all computers during the event, and 10% off anything in the store with a purchase of Panther. They also rolled out boxes of the software and a cardboard kiosk to display the product.

As is usual with Apple events, passersby stopped to ask us what was going on, if they were giving away free merchandise, and why would anyone wait in line for software?! We also talked to several persons who were curious about Apple's products, and were able to provide them with information about Apple's product line.

The store's theater was filled with persons watching hourly demonstrations of the main features of Panther. Each of the product areas of the store was staffed with an Apple employee (wearing a special Panther-edition T-shirt) continuously demonstrating a specific feature of the operating system.

During the theater presentations, the audience was generally silent, except for a group of 8-10 persons who applauded when Exposé was demonstrated: several program windows instantly zapped to minature size on the desktop. There was more applause when iChatAV was active and its window was miniaturized--and still displaying video!

As usual, the fire code prevented everyone who was in line from entering the store at once. There was a line of 60-75 persons for about 90 minutes outside the store. By 10 p.m. there were no more persons waiting in line, and about 50-60 persons inside the store, still shopping and watching the Panther demonstrations. When I left the area at about 10:30 p.m., there was still a crowd of about 50 customers inside the store.

When leaving the store, each person received their own set of Panther dog-tags, which appear to be aluminum, and have the Panther-style "X" logo on one side against a black background, and a small Apple logo on the other side against an unfinished metallic background (see above).

Several of the Walnut Creek overnight group attended the Panther debut, including Josh, Chris and Matt (now an Apple employee).

The Walnut Creek event was shown on KPIX-TV, Channel 5 (SF) during their 11 p.m. newscast.

Apple has posted a page of information and photos of the Panther event at The Grove (S. Calif) store.

Others have posted photos of Panther events in Tampa, in Orlando (big page, lots of thumbnails), in West Nyack (NY) and Palo Alto (Calif.) [MacCentral coverage], and several reports on the MacMinute Web site (Italy?!). It appears that the SoHo (NYC) store crowd had to be corraled by fencing! The "OS News" Web site has a story and photos of the Palo Alto (N. Calif.) Panther event--Steve did not make an appearance!

Also listen to an interview with Apple's OS X product manager, Ken Bereskin, at the "Inside Mac Radio" Web site (mp3 format).

For more information on Panther, check Mark Pilgrim's "Dive Into OS X" site, which has lots of great explanation and screen shots, or surf this Web site for a series of "Take Control" e-books that delve into the specifics of Panther. The ThinkSecret Web site has three pages of quick Questions and Answers. Apple has posted a Web page with a video explanation of Panther's features. Lastly, MacWorld Magazine has posted a great series of Web pages that explains Panther features, and includes migration tips.