Apple Announces Tiger Release Date

GatorMarc writes "Well, it's official. Tiger will be released into the wild on April 29th with more than 200 new features, including Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, VoiceOver, Safari RSS, Core Audio, and Core Image." Additional commentary available on ThinkSecret and MacWorld.

Comments

Reviews?

[salemlb]

Anyone have any reviews for Tiger on any hardware platform? I'm sure Ars will have one up (complaining about the finder again) before too much longer. Anything to convince me to take my g3 700 640mb iBook to Tiger in the meantime?

Re:Reviews?

[Golias]

Anyone have any reviews for Tiger on any hardware platform?

Sure thing. Here you go:

It's total shit on the Athlon XP 2500+. You can't even get it to boot up. Less functionality than either Linux or Windows.

I hear it works much better on other platforms, specifically Apple-built PPC systems, but you will have to look at other reviews for that information.

Re:Reviews?

[Reaperducer]

I have a 1.5 Ghz Powerbook, and a 500 Mhz iBook. I'll be upgrading both. A lot of Wintel-types will complain that $129 is too much for a point release. But there are a lot of reasons I'll be shelling out my $200 that haven't been covered on the rumor sites, and will work fine on the older iBook:

- Preview now reads Adobe DNG images.
- Preview now reads RAW images.
- Built-in no internet connection needded dictionary.
- Built-in language translator.
- Built-in flight tracker.
- Envelope printing from Address Book.
- Fax status in the menu bar.
- Built-in unit conversion.
- Burn folders.
- Preview slide show (the only reason I still keep Graphics Converter around).
- Inline Safari PDF viewing (about time).
- Wireless image capture.
- Jabber IM support.
- Firewall stealth mode.
- Burn DVDs for other file systems.


Unfortunately, some of the 200 new features that Apple claims on this page are duplicates, or things that were already implemented, like Bluetooth headset support (I've been doing that in Panther for almost eight months). But still, there are a lot of reasons to upgrade, even if you don't have the latest greatest hardware.

Re:Reviews?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even try Intel? I hate AMD-fanboys on Slashdot.

Re:Reviews?

[Scott Atkinson]

I've been running one of the final pre-release builds on our PDP-11 and I have to say it feels faster than Panther.

Of course, on such an old machine you wouldn't expect all the glory of Aqua, but I appreciate how Apple designed the OS to degrade gracefully. By default, Tiger comes up on our box at an sh prompt.

Re:Reviews?

[JQuick]

The shortest answer is Yes.

A slightly longer answer is No, but you can effectively disable it by simply excluding all or most of your system from the spotlight database.

The spotlight Preference Module contains a Privacy Tab. In this panel, you can add directories which are to be excluded from the index database. Presumably, adding / here would suffice to both save disk space and ongoing CPU costs. However, doing so broadly seems rather pointless. Certainly if you have confidential data on a network accessible volume you would be prudent to omit it. Likewise, if you have a subtree containing a large database, or collection of large files whose content is not usefully presented by spotlight, It might be worth excluding them.

On the whole, though, the incremental cost of maintaining the index is trivial and is correlated to the addition/modification of the files. This, in most environments, is both sporadic and requires negligible CPU and disk resources. If parts of your workflow have a file access pattern which makes spotlight less valuable to you, simply tailor spotlight to meet your needs.

Also, both system wide, and application specific spotlight queries are astonishingly efficient. Performing real time queries and displaying the results uses very little CPU and happens quite quickly. Even long queries (lasting seconds) do not appear onerous, since the result list is updated frequently as the search occurs, and incremental results are available.

The user decides which kinds of data are displayed for searches, and can tailor searches to a subset of volumes or systems when multiple disk (and remote volumes) are mounted.

Anyway, you can tailor the system to index less (or effectively nothing). Doing so, however, is unlikely to be of benefit. The system once primed appears so efficient that you would not save enough disk/time to make it worth your while. I suggest that rather than worrying about how to disable it to save processor cycles, you try it out for awhile and discover how it can save your brain cycles.

Spotlight is not a specific function or program. Rather it is a pervasive system. The base system provides a daemon which creates an initial index of all files, and subsequently handles requests for updating new or modified files. This process runs heavily niced in the background. While you can access a general Spotlight query tool using Command-Space, the real benefit of spotlight is its pervasiveness. Use the spotlight tool in the Preferences app to find out where a particular setting lives. (Note that Windows converts searching for a Windows-centric name will be presented with the Mac-centric counterpart.) Likewise in mail, the finder, and other programs, spotlight is available to help you find the context specific data you seek. Since developers can easily create spotlight plugins to parse data formats and export metadata, expect that most future applications will integrate well with the system.

It is important to note, that I found spotlight to be quite useful for a number of tasks, even though I only used it sporadically for testing purposes. Thus, I am inclined to be favorably biased towards it. On the other hand, I usually use a dual G5 Powermac and a fairly recent G4 17" powerbook. The fact that most of my use of spotlight was on a 400Mhz G3 powerbook suggests that my assessment of its efficiency is likely credible.

As always your time and your mood are the only true measures of a software tool, not my opinion.

Crap

[grahamsz]

I ordered a mini last night. Will i be able to get them to send a tiger upgrade or will that be another $100.

Re:Crap

[GizmoToy]

If by last night you mean April 12th (after midnight), then you'll be able to get it for $10 shipping and handling. Otherwise, you're gonna have to call and talk them out of it. In fact, I'd probably call today and let them know. Who knows, you only missed the announcement by a day, maybe they'll give you a discount, or just send it for $10.

I've been waiting to purchase a mini until the announcement since I knew if you ordered beforehand you won't get a free upgrade. Off to the Apple store I go...

Re:Crap

[the_2nd_coming]

cancel your order and replace the order.. if you call up you should be able to get this done easily.

Re:Crap

[noisymime]

and yet the mini I've been waiting over 8 weeks for (and that according to the website still isn't built) won't come with tiger :(

I use x86 PC myself...

[amliebsch]

But congratulations to Apple for what sounds like it will be another quality release. I personally don't plan on switching any time soon, but it pleases me to see some strong competition re-entering this marketplace. While I doubt this is the end of Microsoft, it certainly means they will have to get off their asses. The complacency of the last five years is over.

Re:I use x86 PC myself...

[Golias]

The complacency of the last five years is over.

Now on with the complacency of the next five years!

Enjoy your wait for Longhorn, the exclusive platform of Duke Nukem Forever. ;)

Re:I use x86 PC myself...

[devphaeton]

Enjoy your wait for Longhorn,

Where does he say he runs Windows? ;)

Re:I use x86 PC myself...

[Threni]

> While I doubt this is the end of Microsoft, it certainly means they will have
> to get off their asses.

Why - do you predict that the hundreds of millions of Windows PCs are now going to be migrated to this week's Apple product?

Re:I use x86 PC myself...

[amliebsch]

No, of course not, but Apple has always been a "substitute good" for a MS-WinPC. It's just been the case for a long time that it was not sufficiently better to overcome the network effect advantage of Windows. Now, it may be starting to reach that point. People who are purchasing new systems are going to give Apple more consideration. Microsoft will have to fight back if it wants to keep these customers.

Re:I use x86 PC myself...

[Roofus]

Where does he say he runs Windows? ;)

What else could he be running? The last guy that actually ran Linux left Slashdot about 600,000 user ID's ago!

Re:I use x86 PC myself...

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Now on with the complacency of the next five years!

That sounds too much like work. I think I'll just keep the old complacency.

Mac Mini update?

[rylin]

What I want to know is when the Mac Mini gets updated with a graphics card that CoreImage can use to its full extent.

Re:Mac Mini update?

[the_2nd_coming]

core image is an API... it will use the fasted thing on your Mac to do the rendering work.. if you have a 128 MB GFX card but the processor will get the job done faster, then it will use the processor.

Re:Mac Mini update?

[pastpolls]

Can you explain to me what you are doing on a Mac Mini that requires CoreImage or CoreVideo? Seems to me like these APIs were designed for video and image editing professionals, who is not the target audience for a mini.

Re:Mac Mini update?

[rylin]

The thing is, CoreImage won't use the 9200 at all

When a programmable GPU is present, Core Image utilizes the graphics card for image processing operations, freeing the CPU for other tasks. And if you have a high-performance card with increased video memory (VRAM), you'll find real-time responsiveness across a wide variety of operations.

Core Image-capable graphics cards include:

* ATI Mobility Radeon 9700
* ATI Radeon 9600 XT, 9800 XT, X800 XT
* nVidia GeForce FX Go 5200
* nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra
* nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL, 6800 GT DDL

Re:Mac Mini update?

[rylin]

On the other hand, apps like CenterStage will probably make use of CoreImage/CoreVideo. Thumbnailing out album-art (probably with a nice and shiny jewel case layer above each?) when browsing songs or similar. Of course, since I don't have a Mini, I don't know how well the Mini would cope with these things. That said, when buying a rig - even if it's for $700 (thanks, .eu), I want it to ba a little future-proof.

Great...

[jschroering]

..now we'll need to a new product to speculate about every other day!

Jimmy

I've ordered mine :)

[adam mcmaster]

I submitted this about an hour ago, and it was rejected. Should I be offended that they accept everyone else's dupes but not mine? Ah, well.

It is interesting to note that, at least in the UK, Tiger is actually £10 cheaper than the current price for Panther (the previous release). They're also giving those who order now access to an exclusing "Online Seminar", which sounds quite interesting. I can't wait until next month when my copy arrives :)

Re:I've ordered mine :)

[zev1983]

I also submitted this story. But just now I found a new feature called Inkwell http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/inkwell/ that apparently lets you use an input device like a Wacom pad to do things like gestures and to "Write anywhere."

I haven't heard of this before so I thought I'd drop a note about it.

Re:I've ordered mine :)

[chasingporsches]

this was in panther, and i believe jaguar. if you have a tablet, even the cheap 4x5 wacom which is what i have, you can use all of inkwell's features already. a "Ink" option shows up in the system preferences once you plug in a tablet. i dont use it, though. its rather finicky, and considering my tablet isn't the same size as the screen, it overcompensates for the size and so a small letter written on my tablet becomes huge and its hard to use.

Re:I've ordered mine :)

[elbobo]

You're not using your tablet in mouse mode are you? You don't want it setup so that your tablet space is relative to your screen space. I forget what the other option is called, but you want that.

I use OS X almost exclusively through my tablet and used Ink for "typing" when I first got my Powerbook. It worked fabulously, and the only reason I switched back to keyboard was because I finally realised that I can actually type faster than I can write.

Geez!

[mattmentecky]

Sunday he wins the Masters Golf Tournament and already they are naming an OS release in his honor after him!

Adieu to Tray-Load iMacs

[Uire]

According to the new system requirements. old tray-load iMac owners, and probably old Firewire-less iBook owners too, are at the end of the OS line. While sad, this isn't entirely surprising. But, since Firewire seems to be the deciding factor, one wonders what the fate of the newer but still Firewire-less slot-load 350MHz iMacs will be.

Re:Adieu to Tray-Load iMacs

[ioErr]

Firewire isn't a requirement in itself, but rather an easy way to tell the age of a computer. Any Mac too old to have shipped with firewire is too old to be supported by 10.4

Re:Adieu to Tray-Load iMacs

[Secret Agent 99]

Careful with that "tray-loading" business: all iMac G4 models are tray-loading, and they're definitely supported.

Re:Adieu to Tray-Load iMacs

[shotfeel]

Tiger doesn't, but having built-in Firewire is the easiest way to define the specs of the motherboard and supporting "chip set". Its easier than specifying a revision number or RAM type. Firewire ports are something you can see (or not) from the outside of the machine.

Personal very Excited

[monkeywork]

As a recent "switcher" I've enjoyed OSX and this update improves on pretty much all the items I use day to day. I'll be purchasing it as soon as it arrives.

List of New Features

[ckswift]

Here is the entire list of the 200+ New Features:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/newfeature s.html

Re:List of New Features

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have inline PDFs with a plugin a long time ago, this is just native to the browser now, no need for a plugin/Acrobat Reader.

Re:List of New Features

[TylerL82]

Dashboard Keyboard Activation Preference
Easily change the default key that activates the Dashboard.

HOLY SHIT!
Apple is lightyears ahead in the preferences industry!
Who do I give my credit card number to?!?

Java 5

[2starr]

This is great news, but the lack of mentioning Java 5 makes me think that it won't be included right away. That's sad news for me...

Re:Java 5

[qwertphobia]

The rumor sites are saying Java 5 is on the way also, as a separate update. This way older applications have a better chance of working on an out-of-the-box Tiger install.

Re:Java 5

[XenoWolf]

According to http://developer.apple.com/java/faq/ Java 1.5 is available to download for Tiger, albeit as a "Developer Preview" - still it's there, and will be coming soon for full release

Mac OS Up-To-Date Program

[Thu25245]

Tiger Up-To -Date details

Family Pack Still Exists

[MBCook]

Just a quick note that despite some rumors, the family pack still exists.

• 1 Copy - $130
• 2 Copies - $200 (Save $70)
• 3 Copies - $200 (Save $200)
• 4 Copies - $200 (Save $330)
• 5 Copies - $200 (Save $500)

What a deal for multiple computer households. I can't wait. I just wish the free update for new Macs was retroactive to January's announcements.

Re:Family Pack Still Exists

[the_2nd_coming]

though the lack of copy protection means that I can use the one copy on all 5 of my computers for 130 bucks :-)

Re:Family Pack Still Exists

[Anonymous Coward]

We buy it because in doing so we HOPE Apple won't go to the obnoxious lengths Microsoft has in protecting themselves against piracy.

As long as retards like you cheat the system, it makes it HARDER for honest, ethical people.

Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you should. Jeez, grow up!

Re:Family Pack Still Exists

[Anonymous Coward]

A notification has been sent to the BSA that one Michael Brinkman of Hudson, MI is a known software pirate. Thank you for your honesty in helping to crush software piracy everywhere.

Re:Family Pack Still Exists

[eclectic4]

No, you grow up!

*exits 2nd grade playground*

In reality, Apple's decision to not be total bastards with regard to it's OS registration/usage/upgrading/, etc... is that it's mainly a hardware company. Microsoft is a software company. Too add, Microsoft can be bastards about making those extra bucks, because the vast majority of the entire world's user base is using it's software. It's just far too good to pass up because pissing off your customers while being merely "fiscally responsible" won't hurt them that much. They will gain far more than they could ever possibly lose, in other words.

Apple, however, is in the hardware business (That is, as far as the OS goes. To my knowledge, Apple only sells one app over $999). The more people that are using their machines with the latest OS the better for them. Throw in the hippy free-loving attitude of its users (along with Apple's knowledge of that), the fact that they only hold 3% of that user base (no need to stifle it any more!), and the explanation is even clearer.

I don't know. I realize the damaging effects of piracy. I would never condone it and often criticize others for it. I merely wished to point out that many Mac users have been swapping and installing OS's on machines since the beginning of the platform. And believe me, Apple knows it. You couldn't possibly make it as easy as it is to install on more than one machine (there isn't one technical reason that stops anyone from doing so, not one. No serial number, nothing. Just install anywhere, anytime) without realizing it. I think Apple rides a very fine line, and is good at it, by charging what they do for their updates.

Re:Family Pack Still Exists

[Loco3KGT]

I still called the cops.

Apple envy

[CCelebornn]

The more I see of MacOS X and the more features they put in there, the more I realise just how slow devopment on the Windows platform is. Think of the progression thats been made from Apple, then compare that to Windows. The last great leap was done with Windows 2000 IMO: but even then for the desktop users there was nothing really knew.

Spotlight, Dashboard & Automator all look like great additions. I know there are perhaps Windows alternatives, but can any of them claim to be as slick as Apples?

I'm a Windows user, but as time goes on the thought of an mac mini just to give the OS a try becomes more and more tempting.

Re:Apple envy

[gl4ss]

I'd rather have them upgrade Finder to be something more usable, non-blockin, non-piece-of-crap than any of those features.

Re:Apple envy

[jdog1016]

I don't think that anyone is denying that Windows has improved over the last ten years, but the fact is, if you look at the features in Windows 95 (average user experience ten years ago) to the features in Windows XP (average user experience now), there really isn't any significant difference in terms of features and capabilities, at least as far as the average user can tell. And as for the improvements that have been made in usability, security, and overall stability, these aren't really improvements at all--they're bug fixes, issues that should have been resolved ten years ago. Now the same thing is happening again. Windows XP was released in 2001, and since then, no significant changes have been made, and as a result, the user experience is arguably worse than it was ten years ago, simply due to this ridiculous amount of unhindered malware.

So, the problem with service packs is that they aren't real upgrades--they're just patches, bugfixes. A good example is the Windows Firewall--why wasn't it turned on in the first place? And yet Microsoft issuing a service pack to turn it on is an upgrade?

Anyway, just my opinion.

Re:Apple envy

[brontus3927]

SP2 has a lot of patches and bugfixes (about 60), but it's a lot more than that.

• The firewall isn't just turned on by default, it was improved. It has an advantage over a third party software firewall in that its turned on before the ethernet device and turned off after the ethernet device, so its on the entire time your connected.
• Security Center is a centralized location to check status of firewall, anti-virus, and windows updates.
• IE6 now has an add-on manager, blocks pop-ups, and monitors downloads to protect against downloading malware
• Outlook Express has updated spam-blocking features
• "out of the box" wireless support
• Support for the NX bit. The NX bit has only very recently been available on a x86 platform.

Since most of these cover things that weren't around yet or problems 10 years ago, it's disingenous saying that they should have been resolved 10 years ago.

Re:Apple envy

[TomSawyer]

Since most of these cover things that weren't around yet or problems 10 years ago, it's disingenous saying that they should have been resolved 10 years ago.

The decision to not care about security was made more than 10 years ago. The specifics of how windoze has been compromised time and again -- while not necessarily foreseen -- could have been avoided by common sense security practices that were already common in other operating systems.

Re:Apple envy

[TomSawyer]

1. Read my prior post where I reported that in 2001, Microsoft sent its developers for intensive security training.

Last I checked, 2005 - 10 years < 2001, which leaves your first argument as "hey, M$ should be commended for playing catch-up."

If I had a habit of recklessly falling asleep with a lit cigarette I wouldn't expect high praise when I decide to quit smoking after the house is in flames. Especially if others kept warning me about what a bad idea falling asleep with a lit cigarette is.

As for your second point, complexity and popularity alone are not valid excuses for M$. There are plenty of more complex, more visible, and more mission critical operating systems that don't reach for their proverbial knees when a hacker, let alone a script kiddie, comes knocking at its door.

Re: Apple envy

[gl4ss]

Finder is a piece of crap on an os that is otherwise high class - having the basic file browser be something that has a habit for getting totally stuck is not acceptable(with network drives - and and to add to the insult that is finder is that you can't terminate it like a regular program and could be in a situation where you don't get even to a console and can't shut down the OS even, leaving the only choice to be to take out the battery when you're on a lappy). I have to use network drives quite often, drives with hundreds of files at times - so finder is not "perfectly usable" at this point of time! and i'm pretty scared of what it was before the current release as i've been told that it was even worse before..

so yeah, right now a better way for me to increase my happiness in my mac is not to buy tiger, but to buy path finder as replacement for the finder.

anyways.. my question was not just flaming away on how crappy the finder is right now... I posed the very valid and important question: IS FINDER ANY BETTER IN TIGER?

Re: Apple envy

[MrBlackBand]

... and and to add to the insult that is finder is that you can't terminate it like a regular program...

Yes you can. Just do a force quit (Command + Option + Esc), select the Finder, and click Restart. The Finder will terminate and restart.

Re: Apple envy

[gl4ss]

the problems mainly manifest themselfs when you're browsing big directories, with thousands of files, through the network or when you're copying something over the network, or browsing some network drive and slam the lid shut and go on your merry way to bus or whatever and then open the lappy again somewhere else(no, doing this is not an user error and should be something that the os should cope with - it's apple after all), it doesn't cope well with having lost the drive(and for the record I've used samba for the sharing - equal has equally shitty, almost intentionally flawed, support for ftp but i won't even get there).

Re: Apple envy

[Smurf]

Sorry, but that hasn't been my experience (and judging by the other responses I'm certainly not alone). Maybe you have an additional issue in your installation that most of us don't have?

The next time the Finder hangs on you, try switching to another application (command+tab, Exposé, click other window or dock icon, whatever). *Then* try to invoke the Force Quit window (command+Option+esc or from the Apple menu). In the worst cases that works for me.

Regarding restarting the machine (if you really need to, but in my case that has never been Finder related), try holding the power button for several seconds.

Re: Apple envy

[astrosmash]

...has a habit for getting totally stuck is not acceptable(with network drives - and and to add to the insult that is finder is that you can't terminate it like a regular program...

Well, that's a universal problem with any networked file system, including NFS and SMB.

The problem (as I understand it) is that you have all these network file system calls happening in kernel mode; if one of these calls takes a long time to complete or timeout, the process is stuck in kernel mode and cannot be killed.

The "no kill" problem happens on any OS, including Mac, Linux, and Windows. Try this on Windows: Open notepad, Select File->Open, and type \\google.com\foo. Notepad will hang for 5 minutes, and Task Mananger will not be able to kill it.

Using a network file system over an unreliable network is very painful. I used to blame Windows for this, but it really is a universal problem.

The unique problem with OS X is that there is only one Finder process, and most other applications depend on this process in some way. If Finder gets stuck in a system call and cannot be killed, your desktop becomes quite unusable. Microsoft has mitigated this problem somewhat in XP by running multiple Explorer.exe processes; it's harder to get the desktop and taskbar to hang, but it's still easy to lock up individual Explorer processes.

I access network drives on my Mac all the time without any trouble. But you're right, if the network goes down it is perhaps more of a pain than it needs to be.

Don't forget Core Data...

[solios]

As discussed in this Drunkenblog interview. Of the Core fillintheblanks, it's easily the spiffiest.

The other feejurs, imo, are just fluff. Unless they've sunk some serious improvements into mail, ical and iphoto.

I don't want MORE features, I want the features they're shipping to be developed beyond vestigial buzzwords (re: OpenDoc in the OS 8 era).

Huh?

[Quiet_Desperation]

And "Longhorn" is better?

it's kind of annoying.

So learn to be less annoyed by trivialities. Or switch to decaff.

all it is are glorified service packs

No, that's Windows you're thinking about.

and for some reason, everyone buys into it

Or maybe they are just better informed than you are.

Seriously, you can call 200 new features, some of them altering how people will use the OS in fundamental ways, a service pack?

I just called too....

[kajoob]

I ordered a mini last friday, so I just called and spoke to the Apple CSR. She said any mac purchased before the announcement won't ship with Tiger and she told me about the up to date program ($9.95) upgrade. HOWEVER, it did not take any arm twisting to get her to take $10 off the purchase price of the mini so it's like I'm getting Tiger for free. Give it a try...

Apple Customer Service
1-800-676-2775

Re:I just called too....

[Justin205]

And even if you don't get $10 off the mini's price like parent did, $10 for an upgrade isn't too bad.

So it sounds like they'll be offering the upgrade on most computers bought this month, possibly?

Re:I just called too....

[Surt]

Sure, if you do it during work hours so you get paid for doing it. It's like raising your hourly wage by $10 if you can do it in an hour.

Re:I just called too....

[WIAKywbfatw]

OK, even if that is the case - which I'm perfectly happy to concede without argument - who's fault is that?

Anyone who's even vaguely familiar with Apple - anyone who's read any Apple Expo news, anyone who reads any Apple magazines or websites, anyone who reads the Apple stories on Slashdot - knew full well that Apple were going to be realising Tiger soon. And, anyone who fit into that category also knew full well that they weren't guaranteed a free upgrade, and that how much they were going to have to pay for it would depend on when they bought their Apple machine in relation to the official launch/announcement date for Tiger.

How hard is it to put off your Mac purchase for a few weeks if you're that concerned about saving yourself the upgrade cost? If money's that important - and having Tiger as opposed to Jaguar is as well - then can't buying that new machine wait a few more days?

Come on, who's fault is all this? Apple's? How? They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. If they said anyone who bought their machine in the last year was entitled to a free upgrade you'd still have someone who'd bought their machine 366 days ago posting here about how pissed off he felt at the injustice of it all.

bonjour?

[circusboy]

I see rendezvous has been redubbed again,

nom de plume or nom du guerre?

(pardon my unpardonnáble french...)

Re:bonjour?

[GizmoToy]

Yea, Apple got sued by another networking company (sorry, can't remember the name off-hand) that owned the rights to the name Rendevous. Part of the settlement was that Apple change the name of its zeroconf implementation. They chose the unfortunate-sounding backup name Bonjour.

Re:Core Image and Mac Mini

[Rosyna]

You'll still get full hardware acceleration for Core Image. It'll use whatever hardware you throw at it. If the GPU can't do it all, then whatever it can't do will be handled by the AltiVec unit(s). CoreImage is heavily optimized to the extreme max!

Department

[Moby Cock]

from the forward-down-forward/down-punch dept.

Heh. Version 10.4.1 should be called Tiger Uppercut.

Re:Department

[stratjakt]

Zonk is one of those "Xtreme gamer d00ds" who probably has one of those vinyl devil may cry skins on his PS2, so he can post pics to various modder forums.

More appropriate would have been D, DF, F+high punch or high kick for a "Tiger!" energy wave.

Re:Department

[DrJonesAC2]

From the down down/forward forward punch dept

Soon to be followed by 10.5: Apple Hadoken

Core Data

[stang7423]

Am I the only one excited about the core data technology? In every write up of Tiger I have seen so far have not mentioned this new technology.

I mean come on. It gives you save, undo and redo functionality for free, no extra coding. Plus if you make good use of cocoa bindings in interface builder you could build a complete simple application with out writing a single line of code manually. That is pretty freaking sweet.

Maybe its just the geek in me but I think its cool. Plus you can save in multiple different file formats, binary, xml, or sqllite.

More Here: http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/coredata.h tml

Re:Core Data

[Builder]

No, you're not. I'm actually holding off development of a new app because I'm waiting for this.

It will cut my development time by days and I'll be able to have a prototype out the door in a week. I really love the way it hooks into Interface Builder so that even during the dev stage, you can just lob a view to your data in there, and see how you think it will work best for the user.

The fact that you can save to something like sqllite means that it will be trivial to slap a web front end on your app as well.

Re:Core Data

[jwthompson2]

Core Data has the potential to be a huge aid in development, especially if it is as easy to switch between XML and Binary as Apple claims. I'm also looking forward to tweaking some of my existing apps to use it. One question that I haven't got an answer to though. Will there be anyway to backport the functionality, any ADC Premeirs out there know if Core Data's .framework will be embedable and able to be targeted to pre 10.4 versions of OS X?

If so, YIPEE...if not, ok...

Re:Core Data

[brainnolo]

Core Data was the missing piece in the puzzle.

If you adopt the MVC (Model-View-Controller) style you can see that the first piece has been Interface Builder, which eliminated the need to write code for the View in an excellent way.

In 10.3 Cocoa Bindings (accessible via Interface Builder as well) eliminated the need to write code for the controller functions for the values setters/getters through they Key-Value technology (obviously you still need to write the parts that do some actions).

With Core Data now you do not even need to write anymore a BIG part of the Model, the data containers. This makes you able to limit in most cases your coding work to the actual elaboration of data, avoiding the storing/retrieving part which is the most boring, and as Apple demonstrated, can be generalized in most cases.

Then you are a dumb ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me get this right:

I could have sworn that I read somewhere that Apple will give you a free upgrade if you bought your Mac within two months before the release date of the new OS

Getting a free upgrade was part of your strategy, but you didn't check it out with the Apple Store sales person or atleast call Apple's 800 sales number to confirm? You just went on what you thought you remembered?

It doesn't even sound reasonable for Apple to offer a 60 day reach back on a free upgrade. Makes NO sense at all. Not to mention, there is no precedent for this in Apple's past (or MS for that matter).

Yeah you spent a lot ($3800) on a computer and the best you can do now is see if your week-and-a-half old computer can be returned, repurchased, and qualify for the free upgrade. If so, then perhaps they will save everyone the return trouble and give you a free upgrade.

64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[bats]

Tiger finally provides 64-bit apps, right? Not quite. In their 64-bit apps overview document, Apple slips in the bad news. Neither the Carbon or Cocoa APIs are 64-bit, so no graphics apps can be 64-bit. Their solution is to create a 64-bit command line app and wrapper it with a 32-bit frontend, communicating through pipes, shared memory, etc.

While that's all well and good and the Unix Way, its disappointing that graphical apps should be hamstrung in such a way. If you need big memory access and OpenGL, you've got quite a few hoops to jump through. As a linux weenie who made the switch, I'm saddened by crumbs we keep getting as Apple strings us along towards 64-bit land. Linux has been 64-bit for a very long time now and even Microsoft's 64-bit XP is fully 64-bit including graphics.

At least my G5 is still the 'world's fastest personal computer'.

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[TheRaven64]

Hmm. This limitation makes some sense. Most applications will suffer a performance penalty if compiled as 64-bit code (i.e. pointers will take more load / store operations). On x86, this is offset by the fact that 64-bit code gains a number of general purpose registers, but PowerPC does not get this boost, since it was designed as a 32/64-bit ISA originally.

It might have been a bit neater if they had kept the pointer size for Cocoa / Carbon (does anyone sane use Carbon?) as 32-bit, and provided a 32-bit malloc for data that needed to be bellow the 32-bit boundary, allowing 32-bit code to run at full speed, but this could very quickly have got messy.

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[As Seen On TV]

You're missing something massively important. The reason why we chose not to release 64-bit versions of the UI frameworks is that they run much slower than the 32-bit versions.

User interface code is really pretty messy when you get right down to it. You're doing a lot of abstraction, moving a lot of pointers and integers around. On exactly the same G5-based computer, a 64-bit UI is going to run considerably slower than a 32-bit UI because of cache exhaustion. Because you're using pointers that are twice as big as you need them to be, you can only fit half as many of them in the various caches that are there to speed up your computer's performance. That effectively cuts your caches in half.

So we had two choices: Either waste a ton of developer time releasing 64-bit-clean versions of the UI frameworks and then tell our developers not to use them, or just don't ship them at all.

Believe me, the Final Cut Pro and Shake teams were pissed off about this. Their expectation was that they'd be able to release 64-bit versions of their applications by NAB. But a 64-bit version of FCP with 64-bit Pro Kit is less interactive than the 32-bit version on the same hardware, for very marginal gains in actual utility. FCP is already very good at making use of up to 2 GB of RAM when dealing with hundreds of gigabytes of data on disk; adding 64-bit support would have helped few and hindered many.

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[shawnce]

I don't have a single problem running 64bit KDE on my AMD64 laptop. No silly restrictions and message passing required, plus your 64bit apps get a decent speed boost over their 32bit counterparts.

Your 64 bit KDE does the same "silly ... message passing..." and that silly stuff allows developers to actually get software out to you in a timely fashion (abstractions, API, OOP, etc.).

In the case of AMD64 and Intels clone the architecture gains new capabilities beyond just 64 bit integer math and addressing support. For example it gains additional registers that programmers can use. This results in the ability of 64 bit applications on AMD64 to actually run faster then a 32 bit equvalent (focus on just 64 bit pointers).

In the case of PPC the architecture was designed from the start to support 64 bit and it always has had 4x the usable registers as x86 architecture and I believe close 2x what AMD64 supports.

So the side benefit that you see with AMD64 doesn't take place with PPC since PPC already had it. The means that switching an application to 64 bit on PPC can actually degrade its performance since you have no side benefits coming into play to offset the loss do to having to pass around pointers twice as large (focusing on 64 bit pointers here because as of the G5/PPC970 Mac OS X application have been able to use 64 general and integer math, the later aspect of the G5 can greatly increase performance of some classes of application).

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[Enrique1218]

So basically, the full potential of the G5 sitting in the consumer iMac and maybe the Power Macintosh won't be realized for quite some time. Damn, not even pro apps like FCP or Shake is going used it soon. That is a real disappointment because what's the point of having a 64-bit processor if it is not being used in the lifetime of the computer. I sure hope dual-core processors offer something better than this.

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[stang7423]

Your missing the point once again. 32bit UI is faster and that is what the average user will care about. This all doesn't mean that the application can't take advantage of 64 bit pointers. It just means that Apple's interface elements were not upgraded to use 64bit pointers. There are still methods for allowing these pro apps to use 64bits in their complex computation. My guess is that the pro apps will have a 32bit GUI that talks to a 64bit backend with something similar to what apple refers to as Shared Objects now. This way you have your 64bits for complex computation and your 32bit fast GUI, the best fo both worlds

Remember: 64bits doesn't make computing 1+1 faster, but it makes computing (2^32) + 1 faster

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[tim1724]

So basically, the full potential of the G5 sitting in the consumer iMac and maybe the Power Macintosh won't be realized for quite some time. Damn, not even pro apps like FCP or Shake is going used it soon. That is a real disappointment because what's the point of having a 64-bit processor if it is not being used in the lifetime of the computer. I sure hope dual-core processors offer something better than this.

Please note that "64-bit" encompasses two completely different things:

• 64-bit integer registers and arithmetic operations on those registers
• 64-bit pointers

Note that you can already use 64-bit registers and do 64-bit math. This is more of a compiler issue than an operating system issue. (The only change needed to the kernel is to save the full contents of the registers on context switching, rather than only the low 32 bits.)

What would 64-bit pointers give you if you could use them?

• ability to address more than 4 GB of RAM from within a single application (how many applications need that much RAM?)
• larger code size, resulting in greater memory usage
• slower performance, because less code can fit in the L1/L2 caches
• slower performance in low memory situations because you're more likely to have to page out more often.

How many apps actually need to address more than 4GB of RAM at once? Usually they're only doing that if they are dealing with big files. A process using 32-bit pointers can do this using mmap() and if used correctly the kernel can load the whole file into RAM (if possible) and just adjust virtual memory tables so that the same chunk of 32-bit address space points at different parts of the file as needed. The app just has to make the right mmap() call to cause the kernel to shuffle around the virtual memory mappings to change which physical page is mapped onto which virtual page in that process's virtual memory.

If you do need 64-bit addressing for some reason (although it's extremely rare for it to be actually necessary, nearly everything can just mmap() files instead), then fork off a separate process and let it do whatever needs to be done with that huge amount of RAM. Use your favorite form of IPC or shared memory to talk to that process.

What does Tiger give us that's not already in Panther? Well, all apps will see some performance improvement as various system libraries now use 64-bit operations for arithmetic where appropriate. Processes using 64-bit pointers now have some important libraries available, most notably libsystem (Apple's combined libc and libm) which was not available for processes using 64-bit pointers in Panther. Not all libraries are available in 64-bit versions (Carbon and Cocoa, for example) but there's no good reason for them to be. There's no good reason for it. Apps run slower when using 64-bit addressing on current systems, so only those rare processes which really need the extra addressing space should be using it, and user interface code certainly doesn't fall into that category.

Apple's information on 64-bit computing in Tiger is available here.

So you see, the full capabilities of your 64-bit CPU are being used. 64-bit math is up to the application writer to use the appropriate compiler options (and in Tiger the system libraries will also use 64-bit math internally) whereas 64-bit addressing is already used by the kernel (even in Panther) to handle virtual memory, allowing the use of more than 4 GB of RAM (although most processes will use 32-bit addressing and will thus be limited to only 4GB each).

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

But you don't *have* to use 64bit values, do you? Even if the CPU does 64bit (like the G5), you can still use "lwz" (load word and zero) instructions, which basically just ignore the upper 32bits of each register. If you want to store these into memory in a 32bit value (because you don't use the upper 32bits anyway), again, "stw" (store word).

Only the part of the application that used 64bit values has to use double word instructions.

Now to pointers: even if part of your application uses 64bit arithmetic and maybe a huge 64bit address space, what prevents the GUI part to reside in the low 4GB of RAM? In my opinion, nothing, except that the malloc used in the program is too stupid. Well, just offer a special hi_malloc for high memory to use in the huge-address-space part, let Cocoa use the low 4GB. That way pointers can be stored in 32bits as well, since their upper 32bits are zero.

Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics!

[tim1724]

Well, you seemed to be complaining that Tiger wasn't going to fully use your G5. I was pointing out how it does so. You can do 64-bit math, and you can do 64-bit addressing if you really want to (but you won't). Plus you can use all the other good stuff the G5 provides (such as faster speeds than the G4).

Of course, it's possible that someone might want to use 64-bit addressing even on a machine with less than 4GB, for example if one wanted to mmap() lots of files simultaneously. They wouldn't all be allocated physical pages of RAM at the same time, but it would work. Although a bit silly. :-)

Don't forget, the G5 has a significant lead over the G4 in terms of clock speed, in addition to a much better bus. (The G4, even if it could be made to run faster, doesn't have nearly enough bandwidth on its bus to feed instructions and data to the CPU.) So there are very significant advantages to running a G5 instead of a G4.

Dual core is easy to take advantage of .. just be sure to run more than one application simultaneously (which is always the case anyway in Mac OS X .. there are lots of background processes running at all times). The kernel's scheduler will take care of distributing processes between the different cores, keeping them busy. No programs have to be modified at all. (Although an individual program will run much faster if it is multithreaded, as then that single program will be able to use more than one processor core at the same time. Single threaded programs won't see any change, except that there will be less competition for CPU time as other processes can run on the other cores instead.)

Re:Panther Upgrade

[Reaperducer]

I could have sworn that I read somewhere that Apple will give you a free upgrade

Yeah, that'll hold up in court.

There has to be a cut-off somewhere, and no matter where that cut is made, someone is going to be hurt. This time it's you. I guess that's what happens when you make financial decisions based on internet rumors.

Still under NDA

[kuwan]

Well, considering that it's still under NDA you're probably not going to see a lot of reviews on it. Or, you may see a lot of reviews that will then quickly disappear courtesy of Apple Legal. I did read a good one that I can't find right now (it was probably taken down) where the reviewer said that he couldn't go back to Panther after using Tiger. Tiger, even though the version he had was a little buggy, was so much faster than Panther that he'd rather live with the bugs than give up the speed. I think he was using either an iBook or a PowerBook.

Anyway, some real tests need to be done, but it's looking good so far.
--
Join the Pyramid - Free Mini Mac

Re:Still under NDA

[As Seen On TV]

That really surprises me. The feedback we've gotten from developers trying to use Tiger builds, all the way up to A420, is that it's far too slow for everyday use. It's much slower than Panther in those builds because nothing has been optimized. It has a lot of debugging code that makes everything run very, very slowly compared to 10.3.

I suspect you might have seen a bogus "review."

Tiger is a great OS. But the development builds are not fast.

Re:Still under NDA

[TylerL82]

The first half-hour of using Tiger might be noticeably slower because Spotlight's indexing the entire hard drive.

After the one-time full indexing, files will be indexed as they're created on-the-fly.

Re:Still under NDA

[squiggleslash]

I[tt] surprises me it's out this early to be honest, what I heard is that Tiger's been delayed indefinitely, due to a major bug and a political issue. Apparently in tests, it took over 20 minutes to copy a 17Mb file from one folder to another. The copy, apparently, causes Netscape to hang, and puts a lot of strain on editors like BBEdit lite.

As if to add insult to injury, Steve Jobs has apparently dealt with this inevitable delay by ordering that the BSD-underpinnings of the operating system be stripped out and replaced with GNU or Unix code, citing an internal study that shows BSD developers in complete disarray, with usage - based upon Usenet postings - showing a definite decline in BSD support. Perhaps if Apple ported Mac OS X to Intel, they wouldn't be suffering these problems.

On an unrelated note, I've just heard on Talk Radio that the famed computer hacker Stephen Wozniak has died, aged 54. Whether you enjoyed his Integer BASIC interpreter, you can't deny his contribution to modern computing. Truly an American icon.

Re:Still under NDA

[Y2]

An Apple engineer told us it took more than a day for his computer (single processor G4) to finish all the indexing of his stuff.

I can "first-and-a-half-hand" report 2 hours to index about 55 GB on a powerbook. After that, it is indeed quite fast.

Re:Please explain

[Khakionion]

Well, I hate to present your trolling with these pesky facts, but Apple Automator will definitely help with improving productivity.

hot damn!

[circusboy]

the graphing calculator is back!

Re:lame naming scheme

[koko775]

Because grandma can't remember 10.4, but she can remember "Tiger". It's that simple. How many times have you asked the typical Windows user what OS they run? They usually don't even know!

Re:Mail.app subscriptions?

[ghutchis]

What's the problem? If you go to "Advanced" settings for an IMAP account, there's a box that you can check for:

"Automatically synchronize changed mailboxes"

Works OK for me...

Liger

[TheClassic]

I'd totally making the switch if it was named "Liger." It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed... bred for its skills in magic.

Re:Liger

[MagPulse]

It was disappointing finding out ligers are real. I tried getting him to do magic but he wasn't having any of it.

New Feature: XGrid

[Chi Hsuan Men]

From the Mac Website:

Xgrid takes advantage of the power of distributed computing with Xgrid, Apple's easy-to-use tool that turns a group of Macs into a supercomputer.

Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these... ...wait a minute.

Re:Rendezvous axed...

[GizmoToy]

I just mentioned this in another post, but Apple got sued by the rights holders over the name Rendevous. Part of the settlement included renaming the technology. Rendevous and Bonjour are the same thing, with different names.

Re:Panther Upgrade

[KillerDeathRobot]

Have you called Apple? They very well might be willing to give you a free or cheaper upgrade, especially if you tell them your little story.

Upgrade or clean install?

[kajoob]

As a new mac user that just recently switched from the windows world, I have a question for the mac people....

It's well settled in the windows world that an upgrade of the os is only done as a last resort - the first option is backing up, doing a clean install, then importing all your data. Is the same true for OSX, or will just upgrading tiger be the same as a clean install?

I finally have everything tweaked on my mini and would hate to have to reinstall all my apps etc. TIA.

Re:Upgrade or clean install?

[D'Arque Bishop]

Well, you're in luck. Mac OS X (as of 10.2) came with an upgrade option called "Archive and Install". Basically, what it does is it takes your old system files, puts them in a special folder called "Previous System", and then loads a clean copy of the new OS. During this install you're given the option of saving all of your old settings.

That's actually the method I used to upgrade my Powerbook from Jaguar to Panther, and it worked almost flawlessly. (The only issue was that my Palm HotSync Manager stopped working, but a reinstall of the Palm software fixed that.) I'd personally say it's the best way to cleanly upgrade your system and maintain your current settings.

If you want more info on Archive and Install (as of Panther), just click here.

Just my $.02...

Re:Upgrade or clean install?

[displaced80]

Basically, what you want is what OS X calls an 'Archive & Install'.

This takes your /System/ folder, and your /Applications/ folder, and puts them in a compressed disk image called (IIRC) /Previous Systems/Previous System 1.dmg.

Note, that your /Users/ folder can also be included in that image (if you don't check the 'Restore users' option).

Then, when the OS installs, it replaces any items /Applications/ which are bundled in the OS, creates a new /System/ and (if 'Restore Users' isn't selected) a new /Users/

The magic lies in letting it also restore your users. Your /Users/ folder is preserved. Remember that all your configuration is stored in that folder, so after the upgrade everything's set up exactly how you left it. /Library/ is also untouched, beyond what's replaced by the upgrade, so things like your network locations & settings are preserved.

Because the filesystem is pretty strongly 'scoped', an archive & install essentially swaps out your current /System/ for the new one, updating the odd item in /Applications/ and /Library/ as required.

You'll find it a very reliable process. There's rarely any need to re-initialise (think 'format') the entire drive. I'd recommend backing up /Users/ just in case, but your data and settings are pretty safe.

I've only once started from a completely clean drive -- and that's because I replaced the system drive with a larger capacity unit. That's in 3 1/2 years of Mac use, upgrading (using Archive & Install) all the way from 10.0.3 to 10.3.8.

Short story -- Archive & Install works very well indeed, and should do exactly what you're after. Enjoy the fact that the system enforces clear divisions between System, Applications, and User Data & Settings.

Re:Upgrade or clean install?

[diamondsw]

If you want to avoid some apps breaking (like HotSync did), carefully merge the "Previous System/Library" folder contents into your new /Library folder. You have to know what's going on in there, but it's a lot faster.

If you don't know what's in there, app reinstalls work just as well.

Re:Upgrade or clean install?

[nsayer]

I've only once started from a completely clean drive -- and that's because I replaced the system drive with a larger capacity unit.

I've even upgraded to bigger drives without having to do a full install. Carbon Copy Cloner will quite happily copy your boot disk to another drive that you can have sitting, say, temporarily in an external USB or FW enclosure. When it's done, you power off, replace the boot drive with the new one and you're done.

Re:Upgrade or clean install?

[mveloso]

Well, you might want to wait a bit and see how it shakes out. Check the early adopter reports on macintouch.com and macfixit.com to see what issues people run into.

Unlike Windows, MacOS X upgrades tend to be pretty clean. If they go bad, though, they're catastrophic (FileVault, anyone?).

These days, I tend to back up, clean-install everything, drop all my documents back, and reinstall my 3rd-party apps. But archive & install does work pretty well (I did that on another one of my Macs). The only reason to clean install is the upgrade process seems to use more disk space than a clean install (old files?).

ENjoy!

Re:iPhoto, iMovie removed?

[GizmoToy]

The new versions of iLife and OS X are included on all new machines. iLife split off from the OS a revision back (Panther). This is nothing new.

Re:Still no Java 1.5?

[fracai]

a preview is available to developers and it'll be available to all at a later date

Re:Panther Upgrade

[TheRaven64]

I bought my PowerBook a couple of weeks before the Panther announcement. The terms of the Panther upgrade were the same as the Tiger upgrade - free for anyone who bought a system after the official announcement. I went to the Apple site and filled in my purchase date and AppleStore order (before the deadline), and they sent me a copy anyway. I suggest you try the same thing.

Failing that, you have a 30-day money back guarantee with a new Mac, so you can always send it back and get a replacement with Tiger bundled (or just email / 'phone them and tell them that you are going to do this if they don't send you a Tiger upgrade, and see if they agree).

Re:Can't Wait

[GizmoToy]

Well, it is free but you have to pay for shipping, for which they charge $10 (a little steep, I agree). If you time your order so that your machine arrives after the 29th, Tiger will come inside the box (but not installed - I did this with Panther and my old PowerBook), no shipping required.

With correct math

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to correct the strange math in the parent post:

• 1 Copy - $130
• 2 Copies - $200 (Save $60)
• 3 Copies - $200 (Save $190)
• 4 Copies - $200 (Save $320)
• 5 Copies - $200 (Save $450)

DVD

[mrpuffypants]

Also interesting to note that Tiger ships on a DVD now. Is this the first mainstream OS to ship on DVD ever?

Re:DVD

[toddestan]

Yes, but does it come with a version that's not a DVD too? Until fairly recently, Apple was still selling computers with just a CD-ROM drive (eMac, and iBooks for the education market). Will these people be able to buy a CD version, or are they just screwed?

Re:Core Image/Core Audio

[As Seen On TV]

Good God, are you ever not a graphics developer.

I'm gonna make this fast because I'm sick of writing the same comment in every Tiger article. Core Image is Apple's implementation of hardware-accelerated 2D image processing. It's comparable to SGI's ImageVision Library, which you should look up right now.

Core Audio is a hyperlow-latency audio-processing framework.

Neither of these things is in any way related to Direct X, Open GL, or any form of 3D programming.

FINK with Tiger?

[bach37]

Any fink developers out there? Will fink be down for the count for awhile, until new binary packages are made for Tiger?

Re:FINK with Tiger?

[vocaro]

There shouldn't be any problem running 10.3 binaries on Tiger, and if not, Fink always gives you the option to build your own Tiger-specific binaries from source.

Ah, but there's no benefit going to 64-bit...

[rufo]

One of the interesting things about the move to 64-bit is that unlike going from IA32 to AMD64 on Windows, on Mac OS X there is no speed boost from targetting the G5. All the speed boosts you're ever going to get from compiling for a G5 are there and enabled in Panther; all you get from moving your app to 64-bit is 64-bit addressing, and as such, a slight drop in speed. This will hopefully be offset by the fact that your app actually needs more then 4GB of memory space. This sort of makes 64-bit apps less neccessary/desirable then it does in the PC world.

Get the Mini

[ToasterTester]

I picked up one of the Mini's and they are a blast to work on. The great Mac interface, lots of quality software, and Unix under the hood. Been getting up to speed on Apple development and nice free tools. Plus it is a great central box. You can get a MS Remote Desktop Client, then it has ssh for get to my Unix boxes. So one nice place to work from.

Re:EDU pricing?

[Rainbird98]

I just order through the Apple Store for Education. The pricing is $69.95 (plus tax) and shipping is free.

Re:Developer Perspective

[mihalis]

Q: How does it compare with Delphi or VS.Net?

A: You do know that Xcode only runs on the Mac, right? You can't compare these things. They don't run on the same platforms.

I have to disagree with this point. Development environments can definitely be compared across systems. Not at the fine-grain level perhaps, but on the overall experience.

I'll give an example :- I maintained parts of an application that ran both on Solaris and on Windows for many years. Although all kinds of neat development environments can be assembled from freely available tools, or even bought (e.g. Sun's various IDEs) on Solaris, Visual Studio definitely had an edge. The Windows-only developers had a productivity advantage. Pre-compiled headers, fast intel cpus, very fast tools, including really good source code browsing with cross-referencing etc. It's all built in for a reasonable price, so everyone used them. On Unix some people had pretty good tools, some people used vi and print statements, and it showed.

Re:JPEG2000

[Knobby]

Preview.app has been able to export JPEG2000 images for at least a year now.

Info about Widgets

[sammykrupa]

Here is a site devoted to OS X Widgets:

http://www.dashboardlineup.com/

Can Mail.app finally subscribe to IMAP folders?

[larse]

Anyone know if Mail.app finally gained support for subscribing to selected email folders? This is the single feature I cannot live without (hundreds of public IMAP folders on the company mail server).

Re:H.323 in ichat

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple should understand that not everybody WANTS an AOL or .Mac account just to do videoconferencing.

Yeah, I mean if I have two machines on a subnet, I should not have to go through a separate server just to videoconference. The two computers should just "see" each other and do some sort of peer-to-peer networking auto-discovery so I could chat that way.

Oh...

Wait...

iChat already does that?

Then Apple should set up a free service in case I am not on the same subnet. Or at least farm that out to another company. But definitely keep it free.

Oh...

Wait...

iChat already does that?

AOL IM accounts are free, and anyone can get one. I am not sure what your complaint is. To do video conferencing over the Internet, you are going to need a central server (for now) with accounts. Apple says you can use either a .Mac account or a free AOL IM account. What else would you have them do?

Re:do programmers deserve to get paid?

[pyros]

Why not pony up $650 and buy 5 individual copies then? By buying the family pack, you are "depriving" Apple employees of $450 that they would have made if you paid for each license individually.

Because they know that as humans, people will feel cheated for not getting a volume discount and having to have 5 identical CDs and just pirate instead. Apple is simply increasing the profit margin on a box with 1 CD by putting more licenses in it (probably just costs extra ink) and customers get to know they're doing the legal thing and getting a good deal to boot.

They were cool

[grahamsz]

I called their customer service and since i missed the cutoff by 1 h 45 min (since it's of course PST) they said they'll let it slide. I got a second email confirmation from them this morning with todays date on it :)

Apple you rock :)

Re:Dashboard

[pauljlucas]

Dashboard? Innovative? Its just a copy of the many other widget platforms that have been available for quite a few years now.

I doubt it. Have you seen the demos? Nothing else is as polished. And the fact that they can be entirely programmed in JavaScript will mean that lots of people will be able to code them. Dashboard will be the new HyperCard.

Re:Python GUI apps on the Mac

[poot_rootbeer]

APPLESCRIPT IS A NIGHMARE!!! I wish they would dump it for a usable OSS language like perl or python.

If only there were a way to run Perl or Python on OS X...

Re:Running out of cat names...

[RackinFrackin]

I'm ready for OS X Liger. It's pretty much my favorite OS.

Tiger Available on CD-ROM (extra cost)

[apenzott]

The CD-ROM Version is available by filling out this coupon and surrendering the DVD ROM and one upgrade coupon.

(I don't know if the family pack is dual-media.)

Re:H.323 in ichat

[fracai]

using an AIM account from AOL connects you to the AIM server for text chat and then uses a direct connection for video or audio.

Re:[CD-ROM Version of Tiger Avaiable] (Extra Cost)

[apenzott]

The CD-ROM Version is available by filling out this coupon and surrendering the DVD and one upgrade coupon.

(I don't know if the family pack is dual media.)

Is it just me ...

[roubles]

... or do they still not have support for multiple workspaces (aka virtual desktops) ?

I thought this was way up on the requested features list ... apparently not.

But seriously, isn't is about time ? Solaris, KDE, Gnome have had this support for ages.

Re:Is it just me ...

[Moofie]

Have you used Expose? I find it much better than virtual desktops (which I think are available in any number of third-party utilities).

Re:Not yet in Mail.app

[FaasNat]

Okay, I take that back. Reading through the comments, I came across a link to the page with Mac OS X's new features. On that page, I found this.

HTML Message Composition
Format newly composed email using HTML.

Woohoo!

Recently bought, definitely upgrading

[Winterblink]

I recently bought a Mac (about a month or two ago) so I don't qualify for the cheap upgrade as far as I know. But I'm still definitely going to pay for this upgrade.

My experience with OS X has been nothing short of amazing. I look between my Mac and my XP machine and wonder why the heck I'm using the latter, when the former is more stable, easier to work with, and generally a hell of a lot more slick. Everybody who's come by has looked at it and scoffed, but when you sit them in front of it and have them play around, most people are sold on the things.

Re:Recently bought, definitely upgrading

[strikethree]

Sorry about replying to myself, but after my previous whinefest, I figured Apple deserved this:

I chose options on the phone to get my in touch with a real live human being instead of a recording and Apple is sending me Tiger next day shipping for FREE. (I probably should not have mentioned the free part). They do treat their customers well.

strike

Re:Developer Perspective

[mihalis]

You're never, ever going to choose between Xcode and Visual Studio. Ever. You're never going to sit down and ask yourself, "Gee, should I use Xcode or Visual Studio?" Instead, you're going to have made some other decisions like "Should I write this program for the Mac or for the PC?" and those decisions will dictate whether you use Xcode or Visual Studio.

So comparing the two makes no sense whatsoever.

The only possible motivation for anybody to want to compare them would be to come to the conclusion that one or the other sucks, which is just childish nonsense.

You assume a fair bit here. Actually, I am choosing between XCode, Visual Studio and various other development environments right now. I would like to learn some new languages and techniques, and I'm interested in both XCode, Visual Studio and other very very different "environments" like "Processing" (web site). I have both PCs and Macs, and with MSDN Universal (from work) there's no cost differential between XCode and Visual Studio. I would just like a comfortable dev environment for my own personal programming projects. I got as far as running some XCode wizard (the screensaver one I think) and couldn't quite see how to do stuff in C++. I'm familiar with Visual Studio 6.0 for C++, but not Visual Studio.NET, so there would be a fair bit of relearning even if I chose the Microsoft platform. I had a quick look at Processing last year and that seems like fun, and if I have to learn something, why not something completely different like that.

If I decide to go the Java route there are a bunch more alternatives and once again PC vs. Mac is an issue, but for my own personal projects I use whichever I want as the mood takes me (my most recent project was in C++ using raw Xlib for graphics on SPARC/Solaris).

Re:In in!

[mrtrumbe]

One more time: dashboard apps are html, css and javascript. Not "applets." Not "ActiveX-like." Html, css and javascript have about as much access to your local disks as...well, any other webpage on the internet. Which is to say: nearly none.

Taft

The un-sung hero - TextEdit

[SuperKendall]

One of the things really improved in this release that gets no press is TextEdit.

Already better than WordPad or Notepad (primarily because you can operate either ina normal or rich text mode), it has a lot of great enhancements - you can read Word files more easily (I think it comes with table support now and can read XML files saved out by Word), you can do bulleted lists, and even better you can save as HTML with CSS support! So Tiger now has a nice and very simple HTML editor included.

TextEdit could probably handle something like 80% of the documents people ever work on now.

Re:Dashboard

[rampant mac]

"Dashboard? Innovative? Its just a copy of the many other widget platforms that have been available for quite a few years now. Calling dashboard innovative is like calling Internet Explorer 1 groundbreaking. If anything it continues Apple's tradition of taking the ideas of successful mac shareware apps and including a copy of the app free in the os ala MS."

I tend to agree that it's not innovative, nor revolutionary. It is evolutionary, because it's a 21st century update of Desktop Accessories, which precluded Konfabulator by about 20 years.

How to answer

[SuperKendall]

So...when I go to a library Mac and launch Safari and browse my bank account...how do I know it really is Safari?

I would tell you, but how do I know you're really harlows_monkeys?

Re:Core Image/Core Audio

[TheRaven64]

There is more to DirectX than 3D graphics. Some rough (very rough) equivalents:

• DirectAudio - CoreAudio / QuickTime / OpenAL
• DirectPlay - OpenPlay
• DirectShow - QuickTime / CoreVideo / CoreAudio
• DirectInput - HID Manager

Re:Core Image/Core Audio

[Brad Oliver]

Image Units are written in the OpenGL Shading Language. The only thing it has in common with Open GL is the name.

That, and the fact that GLSL is part of OpenGL itself. ;-) Seriously, CoreImage uses OpenGL's GLSL/fragment program capability, it doesn't write directly to the GPU or bypass OpenGL or other nonsense. (I'm an OSX programmer, specifically games.)

Current Apple Theme -- Allow Users to Create

[ghutchis]

I think you hit on one "theme" that I see in a lot of what Apple is doing right now on the software-side. They have so much software designed to allow users to easily "create."

So their developer tools and AppleScript (and now CoreData and Automator) allow a user to easily create custom applications. It helps that the developer tools are included with the OS. My mom might not care, but it sure helps me!

GarageBand -- create music easily.

iMovie, iDVD -- create movies easily and export to DVDs.

Heck, even Keynote now has features to make interactive kiosk presentations.

The list goes on, of course. But so much seems to be putting the power into the user's hands to become a content creator, not just a consumer.

RendezVous may not be 'new' but its GREAT!

[crovira]

This 'over a lan' (specially a wireless LAN) implementation of ZeroConf is the great thing since sliced bread.

Why don't I read more about ZeroConf here?

I love being able to print to any printer that's hooked up to any machine.

I love being able to get my tunes from and to any machine that's running iTunes (2 Macs and a Win2k, [my Linux box is deficient there.])

RevdezVous is great use of the technology.

Re:RendezVous may not be 'new' but its GREAT!

[harikiri]

The rendezvous implementation in iTunes is brilliant. Within the office I can listen to my workmates music library, and vice versa.

In this type of office setup, it makes so much more sense to integrate rendezvous into anything that would benefit from collaboration, as your apps can see whoever else is running the app, and provide a dynamic way for finding and communicating with colleagues.

I believe subthaedit (or another mac editor) already uses this to enable people to work on the same document/code/etc at the same time.

Dashboard, Speech, and a PVR

[chia_monkey]

I think Apple is poised to make quite an entry into a PVR market in some capacity. I keep looking at Dashboard and think how simple it would be to control your TV, DVD player, iTunes, etc with that. Hm...imagine now training the Speech part of Tiger to work hand-in-hand with the Dashboard components. Oh sweet mother of all things holy...now you're controlling iTunes or your PVR (Mac Mini with Eye TV?) with your voice? Yum...yum I say.

Re:H.323 in ichat

[Wesley Felter]

To do video conferencing over the Internet, you are going to need a central server (for now) with accounts.

No, you don't. Many pro videoconferencing systems use IP addresses to connect directly.

Apple says you can use either a .Mac account or a free AOL IM account. What else would you have them do?

Allow me to use my own server, instead of relying on Apple or AOL?

Re:In in!

[argent]

One more time: dashboard apps are html, css and javascript. Not "applets." Not "ActiveX-like." Html, css and javascript have about as much access to your local disks as...well, any other webpage on the internet. Which is to say: nearly none.

That is unfortunately not true. They have access to your address book and other local data that it would be criminally negligent[1] if it were available from Safari-displayed web pages. Since I don't believe Apple is that stupid, I don't believe that they are just web pages.

[1] I'm not speaking figuratively here, I mean someone should go to jail if they've screwed it up this badly after all this time...

Re:Python GUI apps on the Mac

[Lurker]

Consider looking up the definition of sarcasim :-)

There doesn't seem to be a definition for sarcasim in my dictionary. Could you provide one please?

Re:Dashboard

[tim1724]

No haxie needed. The developer documentation for Dashboard includes a secret defaults key which enables exactly this behavior. It's still under NDA, so I can't tell you what it is, but look for it to appear on macosxhints.com as soon as Tiger is released. :-)

Re:In in!

[k3v1n]

Cocoa is also supported...

If you need to dig deeper into the system, or if you need to tap into your own application to create a Widget that closely interacts with it, you can create your own Cocoa-based plug-in. These plug-ins work by providing a JavaScript object that's made available to the Widget.

(from http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/dashboard. html)

Re:Core Image and Mac Mini

[mrchaotica]

If the GPU can't do it all, then whatever it can't do will be handled by the AltiVec unit(s).

That's called not being accelerated. "Accelerated" in this context means it actually uses the GPU. Otherwise, it would just use the CPU, which is merely called "computed" since it's running at normal speed. Since it can't use the Radeon 9200 (not enough programmability), it will use the unaccelerated CPU path. Do you understand what "accerated" means now?

Re:In in!

[argent]

Some widgets (like the address book) contain actual plug-in code for local data access and will display (but but access records) within the browser. I just tested this.

Shit. We are going to be SO boned when people figure out how to fake out the Safari equivalent of security zones.

Re:H.323 in ichat

[tim1724]

Allow me to use my own server, instead of relying on Apple or AOL?

The version of iChat in Tiger supports Jabber servers. (They're bundling a Jabber server in Tiger Server, in fact.)

You only have to use AOL or .Mac screennames if you want to talk to the AIM server.

On your local subnet you don't need any central server .. iChat can use Bonjour (formerly known as Rendezvous) to do peer discovery.

Re:Core Image and Mac Mini

[Rosyna]

Do you understand what "accerated" means now?

Nope, what does "accerated" mean?

And for accelerated, the code is still as such. It isn't running on the raw CPU using simple int/float operations but is in fact running on the much better AltiVec unit using SIMD instructions, yo. This of course means that CoreImage code running on the AltiVec units will be faster than CoreImage code running on the raw CPU. To me, that means accelerated

Reasons why it is amazingly cool...

[kiddailey]

QuickSilver was written by an individual who orignally developed the app for himself and then decided to share it with everyone. I imagine he'll (some day) make it shareware, but it's free till then.

Did you look at the Preview page? It gives a nice, simple explanation of some of the abilities of QS.

But I digress :)

The reason that it isn't described well is because it cannot be easily or simply described.

Instead, let me give you a few details.

• QuickSilver doesn't take up real estate. It sits in the background waiting for commands from you (mostly via the keyboard, but also via the mouse in some instances)
  
  
• You activate QS with a shortcut key, it pops up with a text field.
  
  
• You begin typing the name of the app or doc that you want to manipulate. Or, typing a command to activate a plugin (like '=' to signify you are typing a calculation)
  
  
• When your selection comes up (usually after two letters or so), you can then choose an action to perform on that object. For example: Launch (for apps), Reveal, Rename, e-mail, move to, delete, etc. (there are a ton of actions - you can make things defaults too)
  
  
• Some actions also have further input you can provide (all without moving your mouse and all without having to navigate anywhere or launch other programs).
  
  For example, if I select a document on my desktop, I can pick "e-mail" then select from my address book who to e-mail (just by typing part of their name) and QS will launch mail, start a new e-mail and attach the file I selected. You can even FTP this way too.
  
  
• It is plug-in based, so you can easily add other functionality. There are plug-ins available to even change the look of QS (I prefer the Spotlight style interface that pops up just under the menu bar). There's also plugins to allow you to control iTunes, iChat, Adium and other apps via the keyboard. There's even a weather and calculator plugin.
  
  
• It is adaptive and learns from how you use it - moving things around in the list so that frequently referenced items are selected more quickly.

All that said, you cannot really understand how QuickSilver will improve your OS X experience until you use it. I cannot live without it and often find myself wanting a Windows version as well. Give it a try - it's a drag/drop install and is removed just as easily.

I recommend the plugins: Mail, Clipboard (adds multiple clipboards), iTunes, Flashlight, Dictionary, Address Boook and Calculator. Most of these can be installed automatically when you run the app the first time if you choose.