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?

[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...

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...

[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?

[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

Great...

[jschroering]

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

Jimmy

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.

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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: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

[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!

[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!

[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).

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

[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.

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: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.

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: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

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)

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: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: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?

Info about Widgets

[sammykrupa]

Here is a site devoted to OS X Widgets:

http://www.dashboardlineup.com/

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...

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: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

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: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?

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.