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Working With Tiger Technologies

Posted by timothy on from the keep-your-chair-handy dept.

Juanvaldes writes "Apple has put online more developer-oriented information about Tiger. There are also detailed articles about Spotlight, Dashboard, 64-bit apps and Automator."

2 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. New Apple User by rokzy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I just got my first Mac, an iBook G4, and have been amazed by it so far. the level of integration is astounding. everything Just Works(tm) and also Plays Nice(tm). for example, everything can be voice-controlled, and the voice control actually works and doesn't need training, and when I install a new app ("Firefox") it automagically understand that app.

    Having seen the Macworld Keynote, Tiger looks very good. I'm mostly interested in Dashboard. Seems like a good step forward (I love Expose). Spotlight also seems great, though the number of times I actually use a local search is tiny.

    Apple keeps getting better and genuinely innovating, whereas MS seems to just buy, rebrand, then move on when it's Good Enough(tm). I'm sorry if that sounds flamebait, but it's The Truth(tm).

    1. Re:New Apple User by reynhout · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Apple introduced Desktop Accessories in 1984. At the time, MacOS (then just called the "System") wasn't multitasking, so DAs were a way to run "something else" without closing your running application.

      Some examples: Calculator, Alarm Clock (later, the clock moved to the menu bar), Key Caps (so you could find all the non-standard keyboard characters like the Yen symbol, etc), Puzzle, Scrapbook (like multiple, persistent copy buffers), Notepad (like Stickies), Chooser (to select printers and networks), etc. Yup, 1984.

      They all lived under the Apple menu, and could be used at any time. They required some unusual constraints to WRITE, however...but Apple provided some decent sample code and shareware developers wrote hundreds more of them.

      After MacOS became preemptively multitasking, the only reason DAs stuck around is that users expected them. There was no longer a good reason to code within the DA frameworks, (and by then you could put any app you wanted into the Apple menu, so that was no longer unique..)

      Dashboard is not a knock-off. It's a reintroduction of Apple's own good idea from twenty years ago. As for the naming choice -- well, I think it's dumb...but it doesn't make sense to claim that that's stolen either. There is no more generic term for a small, useful thing. Widgets will be more powerful than DAs and easier to write, but that's a function of the intervening time, not stolen inspiration.

      Dashboard is also interesting because the applets (see?) are like Desk Accessories, but the use model appears to be Apple's first admission that virtual desktops might be a GOOD IDEA that users are capable of understanding (when presented in a very animated-so-you-know-whats-happening-at-all-times kind of way). That's a big step for Apple HIG!

      Next stop, multi-button mouses, STANDARD!

      I only worry that with Expose and Dashboard, Apple might decide that users are all tapped out in the weird-things-that-happen-to-my-desktop department and never implement virtual desktops themselves.

      (Though I'm pretty happy with Virtue. Look it up on version tracker.)