Mac OS X Tiger Released and Analyzed

bonch writes "Ars Technica has gone under the hood of the Tiger release and offers up detailed impressions on the new OS X update. The review covers everything from interface changes, new kernel updates and programming interfaces, the unification of UNIX system startup services into one service called 'launchd', the return of metadata, to the fact Apple has announced that from 10.4 forward there will be no more API changes. A fascinating read about the technical details behind Tiger and the specific changes that have occurred since Panther's release 18 months ago." Today is the update's official launch day, though some lucky people have had it for a few days already.

Comments

Yay ars!

[BenjyD]

I wish more hardware/software sites were as rigorous in their reviews and articles as Ars Technica. It's so much better than the average OS release or Linux distro review from many other sites.

To me, "The installer is cool, look at these spiffy screenshots" and nothing else is not a review. 21 pages of detailed technical and UI examination and discussion - now that's a review.

Re:Yay ars!

[Matthias Wiesmann]

I agree, if more articles linked by slashdot were of this quality, I would sure be happy. Then again I'm really disappointed by the discussion here on slashdot, we get a really technical article (stuff for that matters), and people keep bitching about the price of the upgrade, making silly wishes for g5 laptops or OS for intel.

A few months ago, Jordan Hubbard came to CERN to talk about some of the Unix elements of Tiger, and talked about launchd. I think that this is one of the features of Tiger that should be cloned ported to Linux (John Siracusa seems to agree). Having an unified launching mechanism for processes is really something that is needed on Unix, especially for laptops.

You really want to be able to launch processes depending on different triggers and circumstances, like saying at that time, if the machine has been idle for some time and I'm not running on battery power, then launch that process. Yes, you can do hack similar functionality with scripts, but no, this is not convenient or stable.

Re:Yay ars!

[As Seen On TV]

I think that this is one of the features of Tiger that should be cloned ported to Linux

Please don't. We're releasing it as part of Darwin for a reason. Please don't waste all that time re-implementing what we created in a similar but not entirely compatible fashion. Just use our code, then invest your time doing something new and wonderful.

Re:Grats to the Mac Community

[gobbo]

It would be nice to have more choice.

You can have:

• reliability/stability/security
• lots of choice
• bleeding-edge feature set and interface

But you must pick only two.

An insanely thorough review!

[earthbound kid]

I spent a couple hours earlier today reading it, and I gotta say, the article is right on about the Finder and metadata. How cool would it be if Finder had a "Keywords" utility palette that let you "tag" files in a Gmail-esque manner? Instead we get to deal with the continued inconsistent behavior of Finder. Their video of the "Smart Folder" constantly jumping around after being opened and closed is hilarious, but sadly accurate. Here's hoping the 10.5 will be the release where Apple digs up the Finder and rebuilds it from scratch in Cocoa. It seems like lately Apple's been really lax in the HIG department. (Mail 2.0 buttons, anyone?) Someone in that department needs to find religion and start cracking the whip on their projects.

Still, Tiger is really, really impressive compared to their competition. While Longhorn continues to look more and more like a cross between Copland and the White Whale, Apple delivered its project on-time and with all the features they promised. It looks like the computing mainstream is finally starting to give Apple some credit for their accomplishments, too. Even the New York Times put out an editorial about how cool it is to upgrade to Tiger! It's just interesting to think about how much more it could be.

A truly spacial Finder with real metadata? Incomparable!

Wow! Now that's a Review

[allgood2]

My brain nearly imploded when reading this review. I realized after so many years of being treated to 1-3 page reviews that skimmed over everything except the authors ego, I had almost forgotten what an in-depth review could be (I'm ignoring Amit Singh's http://www.kernelthread.com/ since they're more like white papers).

It was great to read about a lot of backend stuff like metadata handling or core video rather than just here about Spotlight again and again. No mistake, I'm looking forward to spotlight, but I like knowing how things work and or the problems that had to be overcome to get them to work.

Great big whiners

[Elwood P Dowd]

It's an excellent article, and gets at a number of good points. Very worth reading. I'm just through the first quarter.

John Siracusa is a great big whiner. Thankfully, in this article, his Spatial Finder crown of thorns is only employed in one sentence. He also predictably complains about the unified title bar look for aqua Windows. And the new look for Mail.app.

I've been a Mac user from the age of four on. I could move at light speed in System 8's finder, and I'm delighted to be rid of the spatial Finder. I like the unified title bar look, and I like the Mail.app redesign. Does my anecdote cancel his out? The guy at Ranchero Software seems to like the unified title bar look too... now can Siracusa bite it?

worth the price just for Quartz Composer

[rogerbo]

a word of advice, install the dev tools that come with it and take a look at Quartz Composer. It's an entire modular programming interface to all the Core Image / Video / Audio / OpenGL stuff. Similiar to MAX/MSP but complete integrated.

You can use patches from it your apps with a single function call, make screen savers with it or run the compositions stand alone in Quicktime.

Hours for fun for graphics geeks.