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Tiger's 200 New Features
An anonymous reader writes "If this hasn't already been posted, Apple set up a page listing,
by software section, all of the new features for OS X.4, or Tiger.
Given that every upgrade touts over a hundred features, it is interesting to see all of the enhancements to this upgrade to see what adopters get out of the box.
There are a lot which are tweaks, some new non-Spotlight oriented features and a few that are interesting, mostly security related features.
2 words: stealth mode.
"
There looks like there will be some great new features in Tiger, but I think they are stretching it with things like "Import contacts into Address Book in a variety of formats, including tab-delimited and comma-separated text." and "Print a handy pocket address book to take with you anywhere."
By including this type of thing in the list it threatens to swallow all of the real new features like Dashboard and Spotlight.
I think a lot of network admins will breath a sigh of partial relief when they see the Password Helper. There will always be the "[kids_name]123" password people, but there are a decent number of users who want something secure but easy to remember, and to know roughly how secure a particular password is.
Please help metamoderate.
...at $129 yet again, but I've got the family pack on pre-order, so amortize the $150 after the Amazon rebate across 4 Macs and it's quite the bargain. They should really provide upgrade pricing, but the $129 list is still wayyyyy cheaper than XP Pro, but twice as expensive as my SUSE 9.2 boxed set.
Because a high wind blew through a stable and knocked it's door off, so they had to put in a barn door, and now the barn is left without a door.
(This is an issue because, if the cows get out of the yard they might end up inside the barn and make a hell of a mess.)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
I just wanted to point out that I have been on slashdot for a while now, and I have *never* seen a thread with so many posts moderated as "troll", "flamebait" or "offtopic". Many of the posts are valid points, and if they were discussing microsoft, they would be modded +5 funny, or +5 informative. It seems to me someone is taking things a little too defensively.
For the record, I hate microsoft, and I am a unix guy at heart. That doesn't mean that everyting apple feeds to me I have to love. A little healthy criticism does everyone good, including apple.
You're looking for a file containing the word "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" (sic?)
In any case, in spot light you type "superca" and the list refines itself enough that you see it and start working with it.
If it waited for you to hit enter, how far would you type? Would "superca" be enough? Maybe you would type "supercalifra" to be safe. Maybe, if you were like most users, you would think you needed to type the whole word out... then you spell it wrong (like i probably did above) and it doesn't find anything.
Live search minimizes your typing. It's the same reason for type-ahead find in firefox. It just works better.
Seeing as how all Apple computers come with some version of Mac OS - wouldn't you say that this IS upgrade pricing?
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
If you use computers, you should care. Apple has consistently 'led the market' in computing, meaning if you watch Apple now, you will have an idea of what will be a big deal in a few years in general.
It's not necessarily the case that Apple can get 'credit', so much as Apple was first to 'get it right'. If not Apple, then someone else would have, it was just the fact that Apple was first that it matters. Examples include:
Windows, mice, folders, desktop metaphor in 1983 with the Lisa and 1984 with the Macintosh -> Windows 1.0 in 1985
Networking, introduced in 1990 with AppleTalk and AppleShare in System 7 -> Windows for Workgroups and Windows 3.11 in 1992
Quicktime, also introduced in 1990 with System 7 -> Video for Windows/AVI in Windows 3.1/3.11 in 1992
Color support, which allowed for Photoshop and other image programs, in 1988 with System 6 (Photoshop came out in 1990) -> Windows 3.0 in 1990 (And Photoshop in 1992)
Desktop publishing, Word, and WYSIWYG came out for Mac in 1985 -> Windows version in 1989
See a trend yet?
So what features does Tiger have that will probably be common in a few years?
'Quartz' 3d accelerated OS
'Spotlight' integrated OS wide database driven search
'Core Image/Video' hardware accelerated image and video libraries
'iSync' computer to computer 'synchronization' (bookmarks, preferences, etc)
'Apple Remote Desktop' built into the OS
'Target Disk Mode', which transforms your system into a 'plain' Firewire hard disk when it is booted.
'Xgrid' transparent, p2p distributed computing built into the OS
Who knows, maybe only half of these things are big deals, but I suspect most of them will become 'standard' by the time Longhorn ships.
GPL Deconstructed
FTFA - How is this a feature?
Buy Printing Supplies
Easily purchase supplies for your printer right from Mac OS X Tiger.
I (and I think many others) don't want their operating system selling them crap.
Stealth mode essential? Please. It doesn't make you much more secure--it just pisses off legitimate users of the network.
m ti ps/security.html#stealth
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.d.h.walker/c
The fact that the site is called winsupersite.com should give you some hint of bias from its owner. Of course, it's not iluvwindozecuzitskool.com but it's getting there. I wouldn't call Thurrot an "experienced reviewer". The first paragraphs about how he claims to be a Mac fan because he had at some time an Apple IIgs are particularly laughable.
The fields that Thurrot covered in his review concern generally the GUI. And, apart from Spotlight, there is little revolution in this area from Panther to Tiger, merely refinements. Most of the people that will upgrade won't notice a big difference in their habits.
There are two points where Thurrot isn't particularly convincing. One is his endless comparision between Mac OS X and what Microsoft offers, that ranges from "It's some kind of imitation of Windows" to "They're the first to implement it but MS had certainly already thought about this feature before and their version will be better". The other point is the new set of APIs brought by Tiger, much welcomed by developers and overlooked by Thurrot.
In the end, many people will be ready to spend $129, not only because they're "Apple fans" or because they expect a revolution but because they feel that 10.4 will be an improvement in many fields (especially speed) and that future exciting apps for Mac OS X will require this release.
For instance, I'll pay for the new version and I see the relative lack of major redesign in Tiger as a sign that major architecture choices for Mac OS X have turned out to be valid. Apple is currently expanding what their OS can do instead of spending time to correct a big flaw. Which is a rather new notion for Apple users. And Apple users love to pay for something new.
The image units are really cool indeed. Not only will there be a standard for "filters" built into the OS, but every app will be able to use them (including AdobeCS, iPhoto, Office, etc)
But where it becomes interesting is in the freeware domain. These image units greatly level the playing field. It will become excessively easy to build an image manipulation app in Cocoa that not only uses all these same filters (+ the third party ones) but also uses the hardware to its full potential (i.e. GPU-accelerated filters). Adobe will face some serious competition (specially if we look at PS Elements). I can also see The Gimp having a hard time competing on the Mac without some serious remodeling of their design philosophy.
In all, these new APIs will make it A LOT easier for the next killer-app(s) to be developed on OSX. And that, to me, is the biggest feature of Tiger.
Panther could do this too; after all, it uses ipfw. But Tiger just adds it to the graphical interface for the firewall.
English is easier said than done.
I've been on Slashdot since '99, and I noticed initially there was quite a bit of resistence to most things Apple. The groupthink about Apple seemed to be, "Yeah, they make shiny widgets that graphic artists like, but they're toys unsuitable for people who know anything about computers."
The release of early builds of OS X started the ball rolling in the right direction. Apple's foray into Open Source with Darwin at first was greated with enormous skepticism, but after a while people started to realize that Apple wasn't just pulling a publicity stunt. The evolution of Apple hardware got more people interested in Apple, and the titanium PowerBooks in particular made quite a few Slashdotters to realize that OS X on a PowerBook was essentially a very capable UNIX machine with a great form factor and nifty features.
Subsequent events (the launch of the iPod, the foray into online music, the G5 boxes, and the continuing improvements to OS X) have changed a lot of minds. I seriously doubt that Slashdot has become infested with Apple fanboys who drool at the opportunity to mod up comments that make Apple look good. My take on it is that Apple has changed for the better, and they're coming out with hardware and software that many Slashdotters like.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Okay, so you get to the point where there's one group for every file on the system. Every file is owned by its own group, and you determine who has access to that file by who belongs to that group.
Which is just strikingly similar to ACLs.
Also, if you can't trust your developers to not make writes to the files, then who can you trust?
Clearly you don't understand the idea here. It's not about trust. It's about safeguards against accidental changes. You may prefer to work without a net. We don't.
Put the file in a PDF or a password protected PDF or even a web page.
Let me say it again because it clearly didn't sink in the first time: Proposing silly workarounds while denying that the shortcoming of the system even exists is, in a word, dumb.