I'm not sure if this is new to Panther, but I just noticed it now (I may be a little slow :) ). When you launch classic, the progress bar comes up in a window and the OS 9 icon comes up in the dock. The cool part is the orange color in the number 9 in the dock slowly fills up from the bottom in synch with the progress bar. So, when OS 9 is fully launched, the big 9 in the dock is completely orange (then it goes away).
Such a nice little detail...
