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Mac OS X "Tiger" Enters Final Candidate Stage
Orangez writes "Apppleinsider.com reports that 'Tiger' reaches the final candidate stage. 'With massive software projects such as Tiger, Apple will sometimes seed several final candidate builds before one is declared gold master...'" The final release has widely been speculated to be in the next month or two.
I'd like to see them ship this sooner rather than later. People are excited about this release and we'd like to get our hands on it to become familiar with it.
I hope this release sticks around for a few years and Apple chooses to update it rather than come up with some new cat name and ask people to pay for it. I doubt that, however, since OS updates seems to be a major cash cow for Apple.
They are inadvertently (or purposefully) creating a situation where people are running 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and now 10.4...makes it very tough for developers. We can't assume that everyone has the money to upgrade their OS all the time (and yes, I know they should).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Any word on how it's expected to run on older hardware: meaning, any G4 from the last 4 or 5 years?
Every newer OS X has run better than the previous version on these machines from my experience, and from what I've heard others say. Realistically, how long can that go on though until newer versions start to overwhelm older hardware?
Anyone with their hands on a pre-release version of Tiger have any insight into this?
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
*yawn*
The Mac Mini (in its default/cheapest config) is perfectly good for surfing the web, checking mail and playing music and DVDs. And it's affordable. I know because I had mine pre-ordered and have been using it ever since it arrived.
Apple's OS software tends to get faster with every release, so you can be sure that Tiger will work fine on a Mac Mini. In fact we have it running on a Mini at work.
If you want a Mac, buy one instead of your next PC. If you really dislike the Mini, iBooks are cheap on E-bay.
Follow me
Well, the difference between Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6 is huge. It's the same as in your example: x is the MAJOR version, y is the point release.
On the other tentacle, this is a case of comparing apples (uh oh) to oranges: OS X is a whole OS, Linux is just the kernel. We should be rather comparing Tiger to, let's say, Debian Woody or Debian Sarge.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
You are obviously not a developer
Agreed. Still, I'm grateful it's finally here.
They are not done. CoreData is just being introduced as is SpotLight, CoreImage and CoreVideo. QuickTime is just now being integrated with the Quartz display engine. There are still lots of things to add and make better.
I for one am looking forward to Lion or whatever the next cat's name will be.
It is.
It is.
New widgets and OS features can make you more productive. Just ask some Mac users about Exposé
Andreas
Mac OS X isn't revolutionary. It really is the synthesis of everything that we all wanted in an OS back in the late 1980s. If you take the better features of early Macintosh, Amiga, and all those competing projects that were attempting add a GUI to Unix, and mung them all together and then work out most of the kinks, you end up with Mac OS X.
;)
That sounds more KDE to me! And that's why I prefer KDE to any other non-OS X UI!
Seriously, the OS X UI and Cocoa frameworks are much cleaner and better thought-out than a munged hodgepodge of paradigms. Apple's value proposition is related to not just the technical underpinnings but the thoughtfulness of design and attention to end users. Apple sweats the interface details.
And the real question now is. . . Where do we go from here? After achieving the OS that everybody wanted 15+ years ago, now Apple's OS team suddenly find themselves without a goal. They've resorted to tacking on a hodgepodge of minor trinkets and calling it a major upgrade. It must be hard to step back and admit that they're done with this OS, and that continually adding new features to it may no longer be the right approach.
I'm not gonna try to push Tiger as a huge innovation, I have sympathy for your point here. However, to a certain extent, if maintaining OS X on the cutting edge (which may be a relatively slow crawl at times, if you're waiting for enough hardware to drive the really revolutionary stuff like voice recog or more miniaturization or whatnot) means putting up with continuous point releases to keep engineers working, that's fine with me. The US gov't does this to a degree with companies like Electric Boat: they don't _need_ new ships all the time, but they need to maintain the ability to build them, and they can't afford to let the skilled people become unavailable. If keeping a solid core of engineers at Apple paid and happy means the occasional softball release, so be it.
And honestly, I don't think Tiger's a softball release. For me, Panther was, and for any particular Macista a particular OSX release may be. But Tiger's got interesting stuff at the framework level, and who knows how useful Spotlight and Dashboard stuff will be?
If it was up to me, I would focus on maintenance, bugfixes, security, optimization. . . and de-emphasize the OS as a product. Put the OS back in its proper place, I say! An operating system shouldn't be a featured product, it should be merely a component -- a part of the computer, just like the hard drive, the RAM, the processor, etc. -- that is required for running applications.
Work for Intel then?
Seriously, when it comes to defining the place for an OS, you have to take the user into account. This attitude is great for hardware folks and embedded developers, but for desktop people it's toxic. As an end user, I want someone _else_ to make a lot of these decisions, because I don't want to waste my time on them. Having an 'advanced user' preference pane to offer finer-grained control of things is nice, but it shouldn't be necessary for normals.
The goal should be to provide a stable, efficient foundation for apps to run on, because apps are where your work gets done.
Sounds like a kernel to me, and Darwin does a pretty decent job of this. Cocoa frameworks also contribute, and Apple's OS releases typically contain a ton of interesting framework improvements (like CoreImage and CoreVideo for Tiger for example.. Imagine realtime SGI-like stream filters for video and image effects) that make upgrading worthwhile (and mandatory for the new apps enabled and/or improved by these new optimized libs).
From what I hear, every release of OS X get *faster*, allowing older hardware to run the new OS better than it could it's previous OS.
I would think Micro$oft would want to take a look at this....Of course this would mean people wouldn't have to buy PCs as often...I wonder how Micro$oft's relationship with PC makers compares with Apple making their own hardware...
Something to think about. Any thoughts?
Disclaimer: I am not under any Apple NDA, nor does any of this information come directly from someone under NDA.
There is some new hardware coming out, sometime between "now" and "the end of 2005" (how is that for vague). This new hardware will require extra drivers and code to support some new features. The beta testers have only been able to run Tiger on this hardware, released versions of 10.X don't work much, or at all.
Since releasing Tiger before the hardware is announced means that legions of Mac fanatics will be picking it apart, they will quickly find the code relating to new hardware names. So it is almost a certainty that Apple will release Tiger at the same time they announce the new hardware. The hardware might ship later, but at least it will be announced by the Tiger ship date. Tiger may be announced as much as a month in advance of its ship date, if past announcements are any guide.
So the speculation is centred around which events in Apple's calendar would be good for announcing a new round of hardware upgrades and new models, as well as releasing Tiger. The WWDC has been a favorite target until recently, as it is now approaching rapidly and Tiger is still in beta, MacPsychics are looking further into the summer for good announce dates.
the AC
My money is on the WWDC for a ship date
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on