Slashdot Mirror
Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Preview at WWDC
hype7 writes "Apple just announced that it will kick off WWDC 2004 with a preview of the next iteration of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X, in a Steve Jobs keynote. This version of Mac OS X, 10.4, has been code named 'Tiger.' As usual, Apple is being incredibly tight lipped about what's going to be added; there hasn't even been that much speculation of new features on the rumor sites. WWDC is scheduled to begin on the 28th of June."
The big question I'm waiting to answer is whether this will be an incremental update or a major update. Panther added some nice new functionality Fast User Switching, Expose (which I don't use nearly as much as I thought I would the first time I saw it), and better networking support. It was a tough call but I believe it was worth the upgrade, fast user switching alone has made my life a lot easier.
What's left, quite a lot actually. The Finder for one thing could use a lot of enhancements. Forgoing the whole brush metal fiasco, I care little about, there is the whole underlying functionality. Why is it that the OS can't update the window's contents without being pushed to do it. This is something that is fundamentally critical to an operating system. Additionally browsing folders across a network with a large number of files in it is painfully slow, and I'm talking my 100MB network at home.
Lastly I would like to see a decent integrated development environment. XCode is a nice upgrade from previous tools but I'd still like to be able to work on the GUI and on code at the same time. CASE tools have come a long way, but Apple's tools still have a very antiquated feel about them.
Sir, there is a dragon outside with an armful of armor. He's inquiring if we offer free refills.
I carry a similar train of thought. I fuck with shit all day at work (as a net/sys admin drone) and when I come home, I certainly don't want to fuck with more stuff.
However, UNIX is my bread and butter and I prefer a UNIX environment. Bam! Apple walks onto the scene with perhaps the best GUI (imho) on top of a UNIX environment. I'm in love.
Warning: This post may contain gratuitous expletives. If you are offended by such material, please do not continue reading this post. Thanks.
Come on, you're not even trying. A decent, powerful, extensible Finder replacement (cf PathFinder)? A more flexible dock for us power users (DragThing is invaluable, but there's no way to replace the Dock itself for things like notifications, icon updates, minimized windows)? Ability to "check out" home directories from a server? Polishing more of the rough edges off Xcode and the other bundled apps? More consistent UI (eliminate -- or make universal -- the metal abomination)? A universal metadata layer so that everyone can -- for example -- easily and simply access iPhoto and iTunes attributes on files? A Cocoa component architecture for sharing third-party Cocoa views? Garbage collection for Cocoa? Support for PDF annotations in Preview?
They ought to suck up the price of the upgrade and roll it into their .Mac subscriptions. Make it cheaper to get .Mac + the upgrade vs. just the upgrade alone.
I am a recent convert and I am *utterly* pleased with 10.3. With that being said, there are a couple things I'd like to see improved/fixed:
1. Give me the option to have my quoted text in Mail.app appear at the top of my cursor when replying to an email. Few types of miscreant are worse than top-posters, and Apple doesn't need to be aiding and abetting.
2. Speed. I'll take OS X over Linux/X11 or XP any day of the week, but I'd love to see XP's responsiveness in the Tiger GUI. Again, I prefer the stability to the speed, but having both would be rich.
3. As mentioned, SMB interoperability can use some tweaking in the areas of both speed and ease of use.
4. This is sacrilegious, but the Finder still isn't there for me. I *hate* the spacing of the icons in icon view (they are like 3 feet apart), and the viewing of directories and files simply isn't as intuitive to me as it is in XP. Pathfinder does a much better job, in my opinion.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
Even though they say it's a no-no in Usenet land... "Me Too!"
I'm piping up just so all the Linux heads can see that we're out there. Before you complain, know that I have no problem compiling the Kernel, I have a couple of Linux boxes running web sites in my home server closet and a very active postfix mail server servicing a bunch of different purposes and etc.
I'm no expert, but then again, I don't want to be. My 13 year old daughter has an iMac and an iPod and she loves them. I'm a convert. My next "main box" will be an iMac or a G5 or something, especially now that I'm getting into the digital video thing.
In any event, thank you Apple for saving me from Config File Hell. I'm sick of editing obscure, unique, hidden freaking config files, recompiling this and that and all the rest of the headaches associated with using Linux. I want the security and performance of *nix, with the ease of Windows. That means, OS X.
I work as a system administrator for a small non-profit. I have enough work and dealing with configuration of yet another Linux box is not something that I would like to do on my free time. Do not get me wrong, I love what I do for living; however, I do not want to do my work at work and at home.
When I switched to Mac OS X I was fairly pleased with the fact that I could work from home on a system with a stable GUI that hasn't crashed on me in more than one and a half years. I can do all my work on a system that does not require a lot of maintenace; that increses my productivity. I am impressed by the quality of Xcode and how much you can do with it without installing a ton of new things. I can do OpengL programming, write user interfaces and do all sorts of things out of the box -- install Xcode and you're a done! Did I mention well-integrated Java support?
With that in mind, I am looking forward to the new version of the operating system that I love to use. However, I hope that Apple incudes more than new icons and new GUI features in 10.4. Here is my small wish list:
Update CVS to the most recent version.
Add better group and user management. For example, make sure that every user is a member of 'staff' and the admin user is a member of 'staff' and 'wheel.' It would be cool if UNIX inclined people could have a set of advanced options when it comes to user creation.
Fix passwd. I would like to use it in order to change my passwords; it is faster for me that way. I am sure that this command can be updated to change my KeyChain password.
Add more fonts.
Add tabbed sessions for Terminal. I know that there is iTerm, but it choked on me way too many times. I like Terminal better.
Add virtual desktops as a part of the window manager.
Provide a stable front end to firewall that supports both TCP and UDP rules. Currently, only TCP traffic can be managed.
Well, I guess that is it for 10.4.