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Mac OS X Tiger Accidentally Shipped Early

Posted by Zonk on from the ooops-hey-this-is-shiny dept.

boarder8925 writes "Engadget reports: 'In many places around the world, Mac fans and Apple distributors received a shipment they weren't quite expecting: Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger arrived at the door a full eight days ahead of schedule for some lucky folks who pre-ordered. Vendors PCMall/MacMall and ClubMac gave pre-order customers a treat by unleashing the OS ahead of schedule, quickly followed up by a 'recall' of the copies from PCMall.'"

24 of 540 comments (clear)

  1. 201 new features by ehack · · Score: 5, Funny

    Feature 201: It's early !

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    This is not a signature.
  2. who would return it? by jshaw001 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I just want to know who were the people that returned the copies, so I can laugh at them. somethign like that.

  3. Amazing true fact by SYFer · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you are located within 50 miles of Cupertino and listen very carefully (I actually had to turn off my computer to cut the fan noise), you can actually hear Steve Jobs yelling!

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    "...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
  4. But Longhorn will average it out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But Microsoft will ship Longhorn...oh...just a wee bit late, so on average...the world is OK

    1. Re:But Longhorn will average it out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Well if Longhorn shipped 8 days early I would live in fear for those 8 days. With no autoupdate who knows what terrible exploits would surface in 8 days...

  5. Torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Torrent please

  6. Other early resellers... by The+Amazing+Fish+Boy · · Score: 5, Informative

    At least one other "reseller" has received legal threats, but apparently they think they are immune.

    1. Re:Other early resellers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Arrogant to no end"

      It is arrogant for some American companies trying to enfore American laws in foreign countries... .

    2. Re:Other early resellers... by ricotest · · Score: 5, Funny

      ":)" says:

      Hello, I'm mister quotes! When put around certain words, I imply that my use of the word is not 100% correct!

      For example, you are a very "clever" person!

      Bye!

    3. Re:Other early resellers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think the case law in Sweden firmly supports what thepiratebay is doing, especially since they are just a torrent tracker.

  7. No idea how it works in that industry, but... by LewsTherinKinslayer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I used to work at a video game retailing store, and we used to get shipments of products in well before their offical release date. They would be in plain brown unmarked boxes that would have red tape on them with the offical release date on it. Anyone who even openned the boxes early could be fired. We had Halo 2 the day before the release, and believe me, it would have been nice to start calling up the preorder people and telling them to come get it.

    Anyways, my point is, doesn't Apple (or other software companies,) have a similar policy regarding the release of their product and preorders? If not, perhaps they should.

  8. Maybe... by SnowCrashed · · Score: 5, Funny

    Maybe Microsoft could have something that closely resembles this feature in Longhorn =)

  9. Well, that spoiled the buildup. by zapfie · · Score: 5, Funny

    So.. this must be how my girlfriend feels when I.. uh.. arrive ahead of schedule. :|

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  10. Re:Oh come on... by Timesprout · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hey this is Apple, clearly this is a new and innovative shipping concept, designed to be aesthetically plesing to the user.

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  11. Re:Oh come on... by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've got one better...

    If I were a customer, I'd insist that they ship me the supposedly legitimate one and pay for my return postage before they get the other one back, seeing as how it was their mistake, not mine, and that I should not be liable for their cockup. If they want it right, they have to do the work to make it right, not me. If they won't support the product then the credit card company gets called and the charge is revoked, as I as a consumer haven't been given what I've paid for.

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    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
  12. This was a mistake?! by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm one of those lucky persons who received Tiger early. Actually, I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to receive it. Heck, I pre-ordered, so I thought the April 28 date was just the final date, when it was guaranteed to be available at any location.

    Anyway, I installed it already, and oh man, it is everything I thought it was going to be. Actually, those ten improvements (Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, etc.) that everyone's talking about are all pretty cool, but the OS really is significantly faster and smoother than 10.3.x. And a lot cool stuff is changed under the surface. Check the man page for cp, etc., and you'll see what I mean.

    I have to say, I really am impressed with this release. Every previous upgrade has been a big surprise and a big improvement, and I was skeptical that Tiger would be anything to jump up and down over, but I really have to say that I've been pleasantly surprised with this one.

    And no, I'm not sending it back!

    1. Re:This was a mistake?! by ljaguar · · Score: 5, Informative

      I actually did a diff on the cp man page between panther and tiger. There is no significant different. maybe 4 lines or so changes outlining legacy mode for options -i and such.

      But there is however a significant changes from panther's cp to tiger's cp.

      Apple's website outlines it this way: http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/unix/
      HFS+ CLI file commands
      Use command-line commands safely on HFS+ files. Utilities such as cp, mv, tar, rsync now use the same standard APIs as Spotlight and access control lists to handle resource forks properly.

      This feature... is so huge. It made the upgrade to tiger worth it just by itself. Previously, unix CLI progs such as cp and mv didn't respect certain features of HFS+.

      There are flags on HFS such as hidden, bundle, and custom icons. Also (most importantly) cp didn't respect HFS+ resource forks. This broke a lot of stuff when you tried to manage files with cp. You had to use stuff like CpMac and ditto which were piss poor lacking in features. (couldn't handle symlinks. when it got to broken symlinks, it would just die...)

      New cp and mv and even rsync (yes!) uses different API now that respects everything and then some. (first class citizens again!)

      Even further than just handling HFS+ correctly, this new cp will invoke Spotlight so that spotlight db is correct always no matter how you manage files. This is totally sweet. /cartman

      Also this API will respect the new ACL functionality in tiger as well.

      A few other notable features of Tiger for me are Xcode 2.0, GCC 4.0, new PDF support for forms and encryptions and such.

      All that and ACL and the new CLI utils are less hyped but more important to unix users like me than Dashboard (which runs less than spectacularly on G3 600mhz iMac.)

    2. Re:This was a mistake?! by daviddennis · · Score: 5, Informative

      You've gotten some pretty good responses, but if you're not using a Mac I fear they are pretty obscure. So let me take a shot at it.

      Before MacOS 10, the Apple file system split files into two segments: A data fork, which looked basically like a conventional DOS/Unix file, and a resource fork, which was a sort of mini-database letting you structure your file contents. This was particularly useful in executable programs; the resource fork would contain icons, menu definitions and the like. It would also contain the program that created the file (the "creator code"). When you double-clicked a file, the system would look at the creator code, find the corresponding application and start it up. This was a much slicker system than file extensions because the file could be called anything you wanted and the association with a program was automatic and unchangeable unless you were familiar with system internals.

      A program called ResEdit let you change these definitions and you could do things like define different keyboard shortcuts by playing around with the menu definitions.

      This was also used by programs to create data file formats. This was very nice, because if those files contained information in standard Apple formats, it could be easily read and modified by ResEdit and similar programs. So the movie files created by Final Cut Pro, for example, had a lot of the information in the resource fork which made debugging and reading these files a lot easier than the alternatives.

      MacOS X attempted to get rid of this entirely, because of a significant problem: Resource forks don't exist in the Windows or Unix world, so copying Mac files to other operating systems was a bit of a non-starter. So in MacOS X, we have file extensions, just like in Windows and Unix, instead of creator codes in the resource fork. You can argue until you're blue in the face by saying resource forks are a much more elegant way to deal with the situation, and you'd be right. But at the same time it hardly matters since most people need to exchange data with Windows computers.

      Naturally, MacOS X retained support for the resource fork so that applications such as Final Cut Pro could continue to use it. However, they discouraged use of resource forks in future applications.

      The problem was that they didn't tell the Unix utilities like cp about the resource fork. Instead, the utilities would copy all the data fork but not the resources. So if you had a Final Cut Pro file using the resource fork, you could cp it to another folder and the file would not work when you tried opening it.

      So in Tiger they have fixed this problem, and the resource forks are now retained, so I can feel free to use cp et al to copy all Mac files, including those with resource forks.

      This is, of course, a major victory for people like me who like to use the Unix utilities for file management.

      D

  13. Legal status of unordered merchandise by Kufat · · Score: 5, Informative

    Cornell's law site backs him up; unordered merchandise belongs to the recipient. (Interestingly, I had that link handy because one of the free stuff sites accidentally sent me two iPod shuffles instead of one, and I wanted to know my legal status with regard to the second one.)

    1. Re:Legal status of unordered merchandise by bleckywelcky · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But morally, hanging onto both shuffles would be wrong. In the Tiger case, people are trying to jerk them around, so they could keep their current copy until the release and exchange it for a "legit" copy and have a clear conscience. But with the shuffles, if the company realized their error and scheduled a pre-paid pickup, you should give it back. It's not actually your property, but by law you can keep it if you want - that doesn't mean it's right. If a $20 bill falls out of some guy's pocket and you pick it up, legally you could keep it, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't give it back.

  14. Finally... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    A feature that Microsoft can't copy!

  15. Moral status of unordered merchandise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well as the "moore library issue" and "your information wants to be free" stories show. There's a large number who don't think like that. Todays motto is "what's in it for me?". That's until the consequences of such come home to roost. Then it's "all your fault for me being a bad person." Multiply this with each succeeding generation, and you see were societies heading.

  16. Re:Apple cut piracy on Tiger. NOT. by commodoresloat · · Score: 5, Funny
    This doesn't cut piracy, and apple knows it, for the reasons the other posters spelled out above. They put this on DVD so they could send you one disc instead of 5. This has nothing to do with trying to cut piracy.

    If Apple really wanted to cut piracy on Tiger, they would include a sticker on the disc that says "Don't steal Tiger."

  17. Re:Apple cut piracy on Tiger. NOT. by As+Seen+On+TV · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's part of it, but you really want to know the real reason? Swapping CDs sucks. Seriously. That's the real reason we put Tiger on a DVD.

    Here's the one and only thing you need to know to understand Apple: Our goal is to make using your Mac a pleasant experience. Anything that takes away from that is our enemy. That's why we've historically even had an iffy relationship with some of our biggest software vendors. When Word 6 came out, I'm told that the level of anger around campus almost reached the point of violence. (That was before my time here.)

    Bottom line: When you're installing your new OS, having to swap CDs sucks. So we're shipping DVDs. Anybody who doesn't have a DVD drive -- which is something like three out of four Mac owners, believe it or not -- can get CDs from their local Apple store or from the Web site.

    (And don't think we didn't have long and heated conversations about whether it sucks more to have to swap CDs or to have to mail-order CDs. That one went back and forth a lot.)