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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.
"
Some of the new features may be a stretch, but you must also admit that there are hundreds of new features in Xcode 2 alone, which is only mentioned once.
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.
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.