Slashdot Mirror
Rave Reviews for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
druid_getafix writes "The first mass market reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are trickling in with a big thumbs up for the release. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ says 'Tiger Leaps Out in Front' but complains about slowness of some applications - notably Mail. David Pogue of NYT says 'But with apologies to Mac-bashers everywhere, Spotlight changes everything. Tiger is the classiest version of Mac OS X ever and, by many measures, the most secure, stable and satisfying consumer operating system prowling the earth.' In related news Mossberg also covers the rising incidence of spam/virii in the Windows world and says '...consider dumping Windows altogether and switching to Apple's Macintosh...'. Previous reviews of Tiger were covered on /. earlier."
unless there's a torrent..
I did find it tremendously annoying that the multimedia part of the article requires you to have Real or WMP but not Quicktime.
You wear wraparound sunglasses, even indoors. You wish your mother would let you ride a motorbike. You tell your friends you're pulling in $50,000 a year and $2,000 a month "playing the stock market" but in reality you're only bringing in half that and your dividends from MSFT havn't been good in years. Your non computing friends all turn to you for help; you only charge $30 an hour. Your collegues talk about you behind your back. Your workplace nickname is likely to be "The Asshole". Unlike the Linux fanboys, you actually try to pick up dates in bars but women laugh at you.
You think you're so cool you hurt. You have mirrors on every wall in your "loft apartment", which is really a grimy little apartment next to a guy who plays Guns 'n Roses at 3am. All of your furniture is from Ikea. You sometimes think that changing your name to "Steve" would be "pretty cool". When you go to bars you only drink Miller Lite. No body ever asks you for help with their computers because they know you don't know anything but OS X, even if you do tell them you "run Unix" now. Your friends openly laugh at you.
You regularly give $10 bills to homeless guys because you have too much money. Computers baffle you, but you enjoy looking at pictures of naked women. You don't know what Linux is, but you continually bugged the IT guy at work about your computer so he installed Linspire on your machine.
You shop at GAP. You probably used to use a Mac. When you saw the multiracial image used as a desktop picture and heard that this operating system came from the same country as Nelson Mandela, you knew it was for you. You meet with your friends in fair-trade coffee houses and talk about the eventual overthrow of evil corporations such as Microsoft and Starbucks. Like the Linspire user, you have very little real knowlege when it comes to computers but you would never use your computer to look at pictures of women degrading themselves.
You've been "into computers" for ohh, one or two years now and fancy yourself as "a bit of a hacker". Wouldn't know C from C++, or even Perl for that matter. Older Gentoy users may be building their homes from matchsticks. You've explained to all your friends that your matchstick house will have an "optimised floorplan". They've tried to tell you that your house violates every known building code and law in your area, but you've ignored them so far because you can't read those complicated regulatory documents.
Much like the Gentoy user but you'd also be into sadomasochistic sex if you could get it. You're not just building a house from matchsticks, you're planing to grow the trees to make the matchsticks. You've cleared some land but don't know what to do next because you havn't read the books you've got, so you've posted to alt.arborists.newbie asking for help. It's been three days so far and no one has replied. You remain hopeful.
welco... AHHH!! *mauled to death by a tiger for using a slashdot cliche*
I'm always amazed how people seem to be able to judge the quality of an operating system within just a couple of hours. I can't imagine that you can really tell if productivity and/or stability have improved within a couple of hours.
So how do they review the OS?
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Java 5 is not included with the operating system, but 1.4.2 is included.
Java 5 will be provided as a separate installer, so that folks can upgrade when they're ready.
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
I've had Tiger on my 17" powerbook for a few days now - it's actually installed on my iPod so I can dual boot.
One thing I have noticed so far is that Expose seems a lot less fluid than in Panther. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I going mad? The difference is noticable even with only a couple of windows on the desktop.
Other than that it seems nice. My Vodafone 3G card works, and most apps that I have tried. The only thing I can't get working yet is OpenVPN - as the TUN/TAP driver isn't ported yet.
Java 5? That's Java 1.5.0, yes? No, wait, I mean that's Java2 1.5.0?
Does it run on SunOS 2.10? Sorry, I mean, Solaris 10?
Reality Distortion Field.
No news as to when Java 1.5 (I refuse to call it Java 5 - see more) will be out. However, Apple has said that Tiger will be required for Java 1.5 (ie they're not gonna make it compatible with Panther) Early reviews of 10.4 Beta have said that a beta version of Java 1.5 is there, but seeing as apple hasn't mentioned anything, I'd be surprised to see it on an actual 10.4 disk. Summary: Java Tiger on Mac Tiger? If not now then soon. More: As for the name Java 5... Java 1.0 was Java 1.0. When they came out with Java 1.2, they called it Java 2 Then they had Java 2 versions 1.3, 1.4, etc. Now they have Java 5. Come on people! I don't care what your versioning conventions are, I just care that you have some.
As do I, but I really thing Apple need to do something about getting a cheap machine out. I can build my own for half the price of a Mac mini, and until they can match that they won't be getting any of my money, and I'm sticking with Windows.
ROFLCOPTER. "Apple need to sell a cheap [$250] computer."
An upgrade to Windows XP Professional is $200 alone. How much computer can you buy for that last $50? Sorry, but if you're going to complain that a $500 isn't cheap enough, I'm going to say you're a biased troll who thinks pirating an OS makes a computer cheaper for comparison purposes. You can't call something cheaper if you're stealing part of it.
"Man, that $2000 PowerBook is too expensive. If they had a $1000 laptop, I'd buy one, but NOT SOONER NO OMG."
"Man, that $1000 iBook is too expensive, but if they had a $700 Mac, I'd buy it. NOT SOONER, though!"
"Man, that eMac isn't cheap enough for me. I can build my own computer for $10 and a pack of paper clips. Wake me when they sell an AFFORDABLE computer."
"What? They're charging $500 for a computer?! Too bad they don't have a $250 computer, or I'd buy one."
Pattern here?
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Uh, dude, you can't do that.
you can't take a quote, edit it to death to remove the point of the sentence, and then call it hype. "consumer" was the key freakin point in that sentence and you just said "haha no. I shall rewrite this to mean something else and then call them liars!"
Can you show me another consumer desktop OS that's as stable, secure, and satisfying? It ain't Linux, Linux isn't 'consumer' enough. No more than a Ford F-850 is a 'consumer' truck.
Blessed be he who reads this post, Cursed be he who tells my boss.
Apple is obviously not interested in competing with all this crap'n'cheap PC storese and hardware floating around. Why can't people figure that out ?
Furthermore, I've actually spent less money on computer hardware since I bought my Power Mac, simply because I was suddenly so happy with it, and felt no need to constantly change stuff.
I threw my last Windows/PC years ago, running Linux/OpenBSD on my servers, and OS X on laptops/workstation. I dont miss this fuzz about crappy drivers, PSUs that goes black, noice, having to install a shitload of free/shareware just to be able to do something.
Simply put, I value my time, so I save money (and adrenaline) on my Mac's. If you dont mind all the crap that goes with cheap PC hardware, Apple is simply not for you, so dont "whine" about not being able to buy a cheap Mac.
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
From the NYT article:
The Safari browser now subscribes to R.S.S. news feeds,
And its "private browsing" mode conceals the tracks of online deeds.
There are archives now, and log files, when you send or get a fax;
You can make the pointer bigger on those Jumbotron-screened Macs.
You can start a full-screen slide show from some photos on demand;
And the voice that reads the screen aloud can lend the blind a hand.
There's a password-phrase suggestor meant to make yours more secure,
And the Grapher module draws equations simple and obscure.
Then the Automator program is a geeky software clerk -
You just choose the steps you want performed, and it does all the work.
There's a lot of miscellany, lots of spit-and-polish stuff,
But it works and doesn't slow you down - and these days, that's enough.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
The plural of virus is viruses.
Writing "virri" doesn't make you look clever, educated people will laugh at you.
Speak for yourself. Not all of us trot out our soapboxen for such little things.
Well, the main reason I use Macs and MacOS isn'nt blazing speed differences and OMG!!! It just works!!! statments. although I have yet to install a driver to get something om my PowerBook to work. I don't know how they do it, but most things seem to not need a driver or use a preinstalled driver of some sort.
I use Macs because they make me efficient. I feel more comfortable sith a Mac and lots and lots of nifty solutions make it a better platform for me. An example: When I work in Photoshop, all I need to do in order to view all the open pictures is to take the mouse in the lower right corner. Expose kicks in and I can see every picture I'm working on. If I want to see all the open apps and switch to another, mous in the lower left corner. Another example; everything is drag'n'drop. I'm composing an email and need a picture from a website? Just drag the pic from safari over in the email totally seamlessly. And both the email client and safari are preinstalled. Easy-peasy.
There is so much to tell, but just try it. If it is good for you use it. If not, don't.
The mini handles it all absolutely fine. It can render every single effect, but some of them are a little slow - the ripple effect has been manually turned off by apple because it runs at about 10fps. Two effects are slower than that, others are much much faster, but the mini can render every one of them fine.
Hardly XP Home.
Apple has got this one right. There is NO "OS X Light." There's just one O/S to serve them all...
OS X comes with web server (Apache), SSH server (where's that in XP anything?), a SQL database, and many other things that you can't get without XP Professional or even Win2000/2003 Server.
Now, most of those "advanced" services are turned off by default, but they are there if you want to use them, and don't cost anything (other than the space they take up) if you don't ever configure them.
I think Microsoft's OS strategy sucks, because it generalizes: I need Win2003 Server Standard Edition--or is it Enterprise Edition?--to get some of the services I need, but need XP (Home,Professional) to get the desktop bubblegum that my kids want. I can't pick and choose--Microsoft does it for me and I don't get a say in their selections!
Of course, you can always get freeware/shareware or commercial add-ons, but that ups the price of the OS.
So... the proper comparison is OS X would be to purchase XP Professional with bits of Windows 2003 Server (total cost, mucho dinero!).
Who wants to bet that Microsoft will continue this silly strategy with Longhorn? I can see it now: Longhorn Home, Longhorn Professional, Longhorn Advanced Server, Longhorn Lite, Longhorn Media Edition, Longhorn Tablet Edition, Longhorn Pocket Edition... And what will developers target? (This requires Longhorn Home, with some bits of Longhorn Server, but is incompatible with the display driver in Longhorn Tablet...)
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
This pattern is real, but it exists not because would-be Mac owners are stand-offish about parting with money, but because PC prices have dropped, and dropped faster than Mac prices.
The problem, of course, is that people look at the cost of the hardware alone, and not the cost of the OS, upgrades, and applications and the value of the security and usability advantages provided by Apple. Windows piracy (and Windows applications piracy) probably hurts Apple more than it hurts Microsoft.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Liger is going to pretty much be my favorite OS. its bred for its skills in stability and magic.
thats pretty much my best post ever. I spent like 3 hours typing it.
I keep seeing all of these posts where someone mentions they can get a PC with 'X' ram, 'X' HD, 'X' CPU for 'X' cheaper than a Mac... You can also go buy a $1000 Honda and add all sorts of ground effects, spoilers, lights, and other 'performance' mods and have a pretty quick little car that will beat a BMW 740il soundly... But it's still a Honda. And unless you're stupid, you'll wind up going down the road at the exact same speed as that Beemer. The only difference is that you added all of that stuff to your car, you know every rattle and squeak, tolerate the lousy ride because you can corner like no ones business, have bass that can make your neighbors evaporate, and you can fix any of it easily or upgrade it... Meanwhile the guy with the Beemer has a 10-year warrantee that covers tears in the upholstery and doesn't have to think about the car, he just drives it. He gets to spend his weekends out playing with his kids rather than tweaking a new intake manifold, can drive the car from Denver to L.A. without worrying about the radiator being two sizes too small for the type-R motor that has been shoehorned into the car, and his stock sound system is pretty nice because he doesn't need 3000 watts to overcome the #10 coffee can exhaust system. Of course the average /.'er drives a VW Thing that was hand built by everyone he/she knows, only runs on methanol that he/she makes in the back yard, has the steering wheel on the wrong side, and requires three keys to start. ;)
Mac OS X includes speech commands, not speech-to-text. You can't dictate to your Mac using the built-in software. So don't compare it to anything you talked about here; it's a different kind of solution.
That said, speech commands work amazingly well. You can click a file in the Finder and say "Mail this to (name from your address book)," and it opens up a Mail window with that address, the file attached, ready for you to type or just click "Send."
That's cool. That's really cool. No question. But you know what really blows me away? About two weeks ago, without really thinking about it, I did it while brushing my teeth. Seriously. I was sitting at my computer at home early in the morning, still half asleep, with my toothbrush in my mouth. I mumbled "Send the latest blah-blah file to person-so-n-so," which I have set up to trigger a Spotlight search to find the most recent copy of a specific file and e-mail it to the named contact. (I have to do this often enough it was worth automating.) I said this with my toothbrush in my mouth, with a mouth full of Crest. And it understood me.
Honestly, it kinda freaked me out a little. It was a very "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" moment.
(Just for fun, I tried it again, and it didn't work. I guess I was able to mumble it just right the first time, totally by random chance. Got lucky. Still a pretty funny moment.)
I love Linux. I've used it on the desktop at home for about 8 years. Linux can't compare with my Powerbook in terms of desktop user experience. My Mac 'just works.'
The hardware you're talking about has the same capacity hard disk and RAM. There's a 2.3GHz celeron compared to the 1.25 GHz G4. If you're talking about raw GHz, I guess you have Apple beat.
Video? I'm sure that the included video adapter is superior on the mini. Does your server have a modem? A DVD player, CD burner? Audio in or out? USB? Firewire?
But Linux has free software! Those free applications push Linux ahead, right?
Photo management? gPhoto has pretty good camera support - if you're using the right USB drivers. That gets the photos from the camera - now, what about organizing and editing photos? Slideshows with transitions, audio, etc? iPhoto kicks butt here.
Video editing? First find and configure the firewire card drivers for the chipset you have, then go get what? Cinelerra? Too hard for a linux geek to make work. VirtualDub, Kino? WAAAAY too limited in terms of features and ease of use.
DVD mastering? Don't get me started...
Music software? XMMS is pretty handy for playing music, but organizing, sorting? Grip for capturing the data...
OpenOffice and GAIM on linux are fine tools. NeoOffice and Adium are fine tools on my Mac, and they work almost identically on the Mac.
The point is that it's POSSIBLE to do these things on linux. On my Mac, it's EASY.
Write a letter, print it to a remote printer, rip a CD and copy it to a USB or firewire equipped MP3 player, take digital photos, create a slideshow with music, export it to a readily available format (doesn't have to be quicktime, but find something equally easy for the recipient to use.... Compare start-to-finish time on both platforms. My Mac clobbers linux in this.
Don't get me wrong here I'm a big Linux geek. My Mac makes desktop computing useful and usable.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I turned off Speech Recognition on my Mac - it was freaking me out when it started responding to voices on the TV. No lie! A typical conversation:
TV: "...we don't have the time..."
Mac: "It's seven thirty two".
Ok, it's not exactly riveting dialogue, but still.. You KNOW you're getting neurotic when your household appliances are having conversations and you start feeling left out.