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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.
Another in-depth review, focusing more on features and less on the OS's underbelly is over at MacInTouch... http://www.macintouch.com/tigerreview/index.shtml
Now that I've seen Tiger, I can't wait until Longhorn is released. Just think of all those juicy features that Microsoft will see and innovate into their latest product!
I'm a big tall mofo.
to tiger direct today to pick up a copy.
This is a real release now, not an accidental shipment? I know Apple is ahead of everyone, including themselves, so we best check.
What keeps me going is my inertia.
Not Google, but someone got a message from Apple about distributing it on Bittorrent. Oh and replied.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
I think the Safari RSS support is neato. Does osnews.com have an RSS feed. If so, maybe Slashdot can just automatically aggregate it into the front page from now on. It might save a lot of time.
Hey... whatever happened to TigerDirect's requested stay order on the release? Did Apple stuff then with enough money? ;)
fuvoo: watch something
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.
Does anyone know the list of file types that Spotlight will be able to index out-of-the-box? OpenOffice maybe?
You can have:
- reliability/stability/security
- lots of choice
- bleeding-edge feature set and interface
But you must pick only two.Damn those pesky terrorists
So when is this website gonna be sued?
You can have all 3, just run Linux!
If it's your whole machine that's crashing (i.e. kernel panic) then look to bad or under-spec RAM first, not the OS. OS X machines are very particular about RAM.
Damn those pesky terrorists
G'day all,
/Users, /Documents and /Applications/apps (where I put any applications *I* install) - yes, I'm a paranoid bugger - I did a boot->nuke->install of Tiger last night onto my PowerBook G4
.Mac details (you gotta play!)
My copy arrived from TNT 24hours ago. Along with a friend who's copy arrived at the same time, we upgraded his iBook and my PowerBook overnight.
I have two words for you:
1. Spotlight
2. Dashboard
If you don't know what I'm talking about (presuming you all do!)... --> http://www.apple.com/ and read all about them! Say no more!
Well, I can happily report that my experience has been a happy one! After backing up
All I can say is that Tiger be pretty, Tiger be fast! It was a complete surprise to find that at long last my problems syncing my Sony Ericsson P900 seem to be over, as are my faxing problems. I haven't tried either *fully* yet, first impressions are good, and happiness should prevail.
A couple of interesting things noted last night:
* The install *really* doesn't like it if you don't enter in valid
* The almost-missed "sending registration details to Apple" message was kind of surprising. My fault for giving my PB a working network connection, but it would have been nice to be asked first before sending off data! Having said that, it's nice not to need loads of installation
keys, etc. And hey - it's probably in the EULA which of course I read in detail before installing (*NOT*)
So, for anyone out there holding out to see what the feedback is like - don't! You'll just kick yourself harder the longer you hold off upgrading!
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!
it's G-R-R-R-R-E-A-T!!!
(ducks and runs for cover)
Why then do you arguably get somewhere between 0 and 1 of those three when running Windows? (I've switched from Windows to Mac as my primary development machine.)
Ian Ameline
Me, I'm waiting till they upgrade the iMac line. If the new iMacs offer better graphics, I'll be getting one. If not, I'll be getting a PowerMac.
At the start of the year, I didn't want a new computer. Then the mini came out, and I thought I should get one 'cause they're neat. And then I thought I should get an iMac, because I'd have to get all the peripherals since I currently have a PowerBook, and besides, the mini wouldn't be much faster than what I have now. Now, I'm considering a PowerMac.
I hate Apple more than Microsoft. Microsoft's a big evil corporation, but I don't want to buy anything they make because it's all crap. Apple's a big evil corporation, but they make really cool stuff and turn me into a consumer whore. That's really evil.
"Why can't everyone just be straight with me?"
"Because we live in a bendy world, dear."
if you tell it to "Use secure virtual memory." /var/vm/ appeared to contain a uniform 128-bit pattern, I had thought at first that Apple was simply preventing user-space processes from reading them, but this is fortunately not the limit of 10.4's virtual memory protection.
As evidenced by profiling in Shark, page faults can trigger decryption. I was initially worried--as files in
Reconsider your decision not to install Tiger on your aging iMac. I've got Panther running on my 400MHz Blue & White G3 (only 320MB of RAM) and it's running great. Perfect for surfing, e-mail, and iTunes jukebox. My expectation (largely confirmed by Siracusa's article) is that Tiger will run even better.
Part of the reason Apple can produce such elegant software is that they work on a well-defined hardware platform. When you say "Intel" you presumably also mean "random BIOS, motherboards, controllers, graphics cards, NICs, etc." Hardware support is not the only challenge that slowing down Longhorn, but it's a large part of the problem.
As for the WinXP UI shell on Linux? Why? It's not particularly great. Now, the Mac OS/X UI on Linux... that would be nice.
My blog
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.
I think they chose 6PM so more people would attend the launch. Most stores will be normally open at that time and most people won't be at work. It's better than a midnight launch IMHO.
You know it is Apple related software when the review uses an entire page to comment on the look of the cardboard box.
I take it you haven't actually used Tiger? Unike what we usually get from the generous ladies and gents over in Redmond, Mac OS X updates actually contain new features, and not simply cosmetic touchups and bug fixes that should have been available as a free update.
But the nicest thing about OS X updates is that they continue to improve performance on hardware across the board, including older supported hardware. My G4 1.33GHz is noticeably snappier than it was on Panther.
On the other side, can you even fathom someone uttering the words "Wow, that new version of Windows really makes my P3 fly!"
Click next right above the PDF thing..
Kyle
http://www.unlogikal.net/
I got my hot little hands on my copy yesterday, and installed last night. Simple, straightforward, no problems with the install. Took about 30 minutes; most of that time was likely indexing, as the actual data transferred from the DVD to my machine was only about 2GB.
Spotlight is astounding. It is amazingly fast, beautiful to watch, easy to use, and wonderfully complete, searching applications, documents (word, pdf, txt, rtf, html, etc, etc), images, music (though I haven't checked *lyrics* yet), mail messages - everything. It's fast. It will change my experience as a user - completely.
I spent so much time playing with spotlight last night that I didn't even open the Dashboard.
I did open Safari, however, and sites (all those I opened) render much more rapidly than in Panther. The RSS feature is nice, but I didn't spend much time with it. Much of the interface responds much more rapidly to user requests, with the singular exception of Expose, as others have noted. I am hopeful that Apple will tweak Expose in an upcoming update.
If you don't own a Mac, visit the nearest Apple retail store and try spotlight. As an engineer, I appreciate the technological achievement, and as a user, I am - to say it again - simply amazed.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
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?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
For those who've already picked up Tiger, how well is application compatibility preserved?
I'm worried that some apps that I have might be broken and may take a while for fixes to arrive. The one I'm worried about the most is Office for Mac being broken ( yeah yeah I know iWork is better but I got this for free from a friend )
One of the things I really like about MAC OSX is that it offers Windows users an alternative to Windows if they are not interested or if they are afraid for Linux. Readily available software on the shelves and the stability of the BSD kernel. I think it is the best of both worlds. At OSCON in Portland last year I was amazed to see how many people were using Mac's at the show...personal machines. I expected to see many more Linux machines, but I just didn't see that. Maybe someone who is more familiar with it could explain this to me, because while I think it is cool, I just don't know as much about the inner workings of it to be able to say "yes...for an Open Source person the Mac is a good alternative."
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
...and my PowerBook feels snappier already!
But you know, every last thing I buy from them does feel like blinkin' Christmas morning to open. Anyone who has an iPod, and obviously they're out there, did a little "that's cool" reexamination of the box once they'd gotten the thing out. God knows why it makes a difference, but it does.
Maybe Apple just regards it as a way to stake out their market position as (Steve J's analogy) the BMW of the desktop set. Same thing happens in optics: I'm a birder, and if you buy Swarovski or Leica or Zeiss, you get a very cool box around your thousand-dollar binoculars.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
You must not have seen option 3.
They will be "stuffing" the computer boxes with a little insert with a NFR set of CDs, for the customer to install when they open it up. Apple usually stuffs any boxes that ship after the OS releases. It'll be a few weeks at least before we start seeing macs that have 10.4 on their actual install/restore CDs though.
Apple has also been known to send NFR CDs for things like iLife when a new version cones out, sent to the retailers so they can stuff the boxes they have in inventory, but I haven't seen them do that with an OS before.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Here is the official list of supported hardware.h tml
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.
You will find that a lot of older hardware works, just not as well as you would hope.
YMMV.
This can not be good.
I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
There's a coupon for CD media, but you've got to surrender your DVD media to get it. I _like_ my DVD media...but I've also got an (pre firewire) iMac that can't read DVD's....can I make a dmg on an external usb/firewire drive and install it that way?
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
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.
The article and summary both mention the consolidation of many launching methods into an new 'launchd' daemon that is responsible for a wide-range of tasks including starting and stopping applications and other daemons on behalf of users and the system. After more than 100 comments, I have not seen even one mention of it. Is this because it is uninteresting, no one has RTFA, or because nobody really knows what it does yet? The Arstechnica reviewer advocates that the other UNIX type systems immediately steal this idea and code and incorporate it. Nobody here has an opinion on that?
Any old in-house app can be developed in .Net, where you can throw as many servers as you like at it and who cares how often you have to coddle it?
He was talking about user applications - I've seen some simple examples myself but nothing really beyond shareware.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Until there is a way of pulling (good, relevant) metadata out of most (all) file types Spotlight etc will be at best half features.
:)
I have difficulty getting users (intelegent users, mind) to file things in a single directory consistantly (yes I know this is ment to avoid directories but a location is only one example of metadata) . Fill in meta data as well? I may as well ask them to fly!
Ok text docs, spreadsheets etc will be fine (ish) as some occasionally appropriate info will be extractable, but what about drawings, scans, films. I know companies and the analy retentive will fill this in but an awful lot of people will not.
On the plus side I see this as the near end of application (un)installation hell....
rm *.mozilla !
ls *.apache !
or whatever syntax you choose, as the metadata will gladly be added by distro builders/app programmers. I've never heard this mentiond.
Ah well I'm off for two weeks holiday. Promise to think of you all while walking the dog
Jo
Yeah, you're right that Microsoft isn't writing drivers for all these different devices, but let's look at a couple things. First, I never need to load drivers when I'm using my Mac. The drivers are pretty much always included in the OS. Working on a Mac, you'd hardly know there's such a thing as a "video card driver". Why? It's in the OS. You get updates with the OS updates. After all, Apple is only including a couple different graphic chipsets from 2 different vendors in their systems. There aren't a lot of drivers to include before you have drivers for every possible video card.
And when there is a problem with the drivers, if there's some instability or performance, whether it's the OS's fault or the video driver's fault, Apple can just work either ATI or Nvidia to fix it. With all the different possible configurations of Intel/AMD with Intel/Nvidia/ATI on god-knows-whose vid card and motherboard, it's a little harder to track down the problem, reproduce it, convince the party at fault that they need to fix it, and push the patch down to everyone's local computer.
I don't know if that's a clear explanation, and maybe I'm missing some things.
Hello, I have problem please hlp me fix it now!@!! I can't get my 10.4 Tiger to install on the P-P-P-Powerbook I got on ebay. I have contacted ebay and they will not help. Please reply quikly.
* A very smooth install. Point, click, walk away for 45 minutes. Added a drive before I started, and booted to a new RAID array. Entirely painless.
* I wasn't particularly excited about Spotlight until I tried it. We're all used to Find functions searching on demand. Having everything pre-indexed makes all the difference. It is REALLY easy to find things this way. I quit using the mouse to launch applications when I discovered Quicksilver. Now I'll stop using it to find things on the drive. You non-Mac guys are gonna love this feature as Beagle matures and Microsoft gets with the program. Makes mousing around a diectory tree feel like clubbing things with a stick.
* Not sure if I like Dashboard yet. It's impressive eye candy for visitors, but I don't know how really useful widgets are unless you have them open on the desktop all the time. Even on my big-ass flatscreen, that means burning valuable real estate. I'd rather call the apps more-or-less instantly from Quicksilver when they're needed. Guess we'll see what sort of widgets people come up with.
* Like previous releases, Tiger feels more nimble than its predecessor. I know a lot of this is just tweaked user interface, but I like it.
* The RSS screensaver is as cool as it is useless. ;-)
* Mail is improved. But it's now ugly as sin.
* The cosmetic presentation of Tiger is cleaner and less "lickable" than 10.0-10.3.
* Nothing has broken yet. I have a LOT of apps to check, though. Am concerned older ones -- such as Office v.X -- won't run well.
* Safari totally smokes now. Fastest thing I've ever used, including Opera. We got a preview of this when Safari 1.3 was released with the last point update.
* Looks like Automator will be worth learning.
Pretty subjective stuff, but I'm quite pleased with Tiger so far. Looking forward to pushing it some over the weekend.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
I understand the theory, but if this is so...
why is it that Joe-Random-Bored-Dude can get Linux to run on his toaster oven?
I wanted to do the same, but I just can't find them no matter how much I search on Google.
Why develop something as impressive as Quartz 2D Extreme and then leave it turned off by default? My inquiries to Apple have gone unanswered, so I can only speculate about the reasoning behind this decision. My best guess is that all of the bugs could not be excised from Q2DE in time for Tiger's launch date, and that it will be enabled by default in a subsequent update--perhaps as early as version 10.4.1."
I told you so.
I posted this on LiveJournal too..
:P )
Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) comes out this Friday, April 29th. It only ships on *DVD-ROM MEDIA* - if you want it on CD-ROM, you'll have to order the $9.99 CD-ROM set from Apple, and jump through a few other hoops (I don't remember what they are offhand)
If you don't want to wait, here's how to install it using Target Disk Mode. This will require *two* Macs, both equipped with Firewire.
* Take the Mac with the DVD-ROM drive (Mac #1) and insert the 10.4 DVD.
* Power the non-DVD Mac off.
* Plug the Firewire cable into Mac #2.
* Plug the other end of the cable into Mac #1.
* Boot Mac #2 with the letter "T" held down. Hold it down until you see the Firewire logo appear on the screen.
* Wait a few seconds. Mac #2 will appear as a Firewire volume on the desktop of Mac #1.
The 10.4 DVD contains the 10.4 Installer - double click it, and it'll ask you to reboot. Go ahead and let it reboot. The installation procedure will be just like you were installing it on your local machine, but when it asks you which volume to install it onto, select the Firewire volume (Mac #2) and go from there. It's safe to have it reformat & install (unless you want to just do an "upgrade" which is rarely recommended.)
Once the installation is complete, it'll want you to reboot again. Go ahead and reboot. As soon as the machine powered off for the reboot, yank the Firewire cable out of both machines. Mac #2 will still have the Firewire logo, but that's ok. Just force reset it with the reset button.
Mac #2 will boot up & walk you through the Mac OS X 10.4 setup assistant.
At this point, you're done. Software Update will run once you get to the desktop. Have fun!
(Hopefully this will stave off the "Wah, I don't have a DVD-ROM.. how can I pirate teh Tiger??" crowd.
FYI... there are no wild tigers remaining in africa...in africa you'll find lions (but not panthers)...and much like the beast itself Mac users are are rare, but at the apex of the food chain. Tigers are the biggest cats in the world. They live in wet, humid and hot jungles as well as icy cold forests. There are five different kinds or subspecies of tiger which are still alive today. These tigers are called Siberian, Indochinese, South China, Bengal, and Sumatran. Their Latin name is Panthera tigris. Tigers are an endangered species; only about 4,870 to 7,300 tigers are left in the wild. Three tiger subspecies, which are now extinct are: the Bali, Javan, and Caspian tigers. They have become so over the last 70 years...
I searched on a few terms. It found emails I wrote six years ago that I forgot I received.
i know we've all been a bit lonely at times, but, you know, there are people you can call before you get to that stage.
More than one person can own a trademark. The word "tiger" has 187 registered. However, I was unable to find the record that shows TigerDirect's ownership, since for some reasons "(tiger direct)[ON]" doesn't work, but they aren't on "(tiger)[FM] and (tiger)[ON]" which I would expect to work.
'SBEMAIL!' is better than a goat!!
You know, there's really practically no demand for it. Microsoft Office 2004 is pretty amazing, albeit not perfect. Everybody who needs it, already has it.
And everybody who doesn't need it can get Pages and Keynote for $79.
Your computer came with a CD labeled something along the lines of "Hardware Test." (The exact verbiage varies from computer to computer.) Stick it in, boot the computer with the "c" key held down on the keyboard to force it to run from the disc.
Run the hardware test suite. This will identify any failing RAM by slot for you.
I've had the problems you describe, and it's largely because I'm so familiar with Linux that I get frustrated when things I expect to work a certain way (because they work that way in Linux) don't (because they don't work that way in OS X).
Best example so far: Netinfo. I have no idea what this thing is or how it works, other than that it's rudely replaced all the things I'm familiar with for networking-type-stuff. ("No entry for netinfo in section 5 of the manual." Dammit, Apple, where's my man page?)
Everything that I'm looking for is there. The fact that I don't understand how it works (and too lazy to find out where the missing man pages are) does not make the operating system overrated. It means I need to expand my horizons and learn how to do things in OSes not named Linux, and get off my ass and do a simple Google search.
I mean, in the time it took me to write this post, I could probably have found via GIS one or all of the following: (a) the man page for netinfo, (b) a download location for ALL of the missing man pages, not just netinfo, (c) an Apple-produced PDF detailing how netinfo and other networking ideas work, (d) the entire Apple sysadmin guide library, (e) a book I could borrow from the city library RIGHT NOW with all I need to know about NetInfo.
So it's not OSX's fault that you and I suck.
Yes, it definitaly got beaten with an ugly stick.
Also, am I the only one who actually liked the mailbox drawer in Panther?
Free Manning, jail Obama.
The effect of proprietary software is to trade away freedoms in exchange for convenience--a genuinely self-centered framing of the argument. Other concerns (such as respecting software freedom, understanding why things are the way they are) fall aside and are generally ridiculed (such as why free software OSes don't come with MP3 players and encoders). How can it be "silly" for someone running different hardware to look at the proprietary MacOS and ask for it for their hardware? I'm not asking this because I want MacOS or because I think MacOS is good, but within the limits of allowable debate concerning proprietary software, it seems reasonable to me for people to want what is merely recent and well-advertised.
Digital Citizen
Sort-of offtopic but still ontopic...
Where does one go to get help with some of the more advanced, Unix-related issues of Tiger? Message boards, etc. Any good ones? I'm having a bugger of a time with NIS issues, ones that didn't plague Panther.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
You provided a reference to an FSF document to support your reasoning. The cited web page says, in part:
Granted, the APSL does not prohibit users of the software to link with proprietary libraries, thus is not a "copyleft" license. So, what? This is less restrictive than the GPL, not more. This, in and of itself does not preclude Linux users from using it on their systems.
The FSF concludes that it is ok to use and improve software which other people release under this license.
You would be allowed to compile the daemons using gcc and glibc libraries and use them with no problem from the APSL. You would also be allowed to link GPLd programs against the supporting APSL licensed frameworks.
The only limitation is that if you ship an improved version of this code that you make that code available to others under APSL terms. i.e. you provide source code so that Apple and and other users of the APSLed code benefit from the changes.
Insisting on re-inventing every wheel just so that everything is covered under GPL is a waste of effort. It steals time of those working on GPLed code from doing other work, and selfishly prevents others from benefit from you good ideas if you improve a fork of the work rather than the original work itself.
It strikes me as foolish that GNU/Linux people spend so much effort to mimic other people's work, re-implementing large subsystems just to get them under the GPL umbrella, rather than cooperating with others to re-use and improve the best code available.
I am stunned at how good this article is. If he accepted PayPal, I'd put in 5 bucks for John, it was well worth it. I wasted (?) most of a workday afternoon digesting it in its entirety. SOO many tidbits of info! They include
1) How to enable ACL's on a non-Server OS X installation
2) The fact that Quartz 2D "Extreme" (wow! nice breakdown of the tech!) is there, but not turned on... and probably won't be until 10.4.1 or later... but you CAN turn it on temporarily... and it explains how.
3) How to play with the emerging metadata features
4) A description of how Spotlight (which is file-focused) indexes objects such as Address Book entries which are (normally) not stored as separate files
Etc., etc. Excellent.
a "fix" for the button toolbar change in Mail 2.0, in case you loathe it and prefer the old style...
I just checked, and yes, it does support Jabber. At least, I assume it does; I don't have any Jabber accounts to try it with, but there's an option to enter one.
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
Let me tell you a little story about how the lack of a native office suite is hurting Apple's sales.
About two years ago, my in-laws had this old PentiumPro computer they wanted to get rid of. Basically, they write letters, do a little Excel for their business, e-mail, and surf -- that's all. My idea was to have them buy a Mac because they wouldn't have the hassle with all the malware, and it would Just Work. Also, my brother-in-law has a PowerBook and is there often enough to help them if something went wrong. So they listen to my little pitch, and then ask about the office suite -- which one does Apple have? Well, you can get Microsoft Office for the Mac, too. But, they ask, if we're going to use Microsoft office anyway, doesn't it make more sense to get Windows, because they will cooperate better?
So they bought a Dell.
Pages and Keynote are probably good products, but there is this thing about spreadsheets. When it comes down to it, Apple does not natively offer one of the most important programs or rather bundle of programs that everybody needs: An office suite. This leads to bizarre behaviour on the part of pro-Apple people:
Microsoft Office 2004 is pretty amazing, albeit not perfect. Everybody who needs it, already has it.
Microsoft costs about $350 at the Apple Online Store. This is money that goes to Microsoft (well, most of it, probably). Now, if Apple were to include a free office suite like a polished version of NeoOffice/J, those $350 could go to something that is actually Apple's -- an iPod, iSight, the beautiful Airport Express setup. $350 is getting close to another Mac mini for your dear old mother who never had her own computer before. In other words, everytime somebody buys MS Office for Mac, Apple looses money. This should be bugging Apple badly.
I realize that Apple is in a bad spot here. They simply need an office suite, and the only one that is aquafied enough for the general public is MS Office. They can't risk pissing off Microsoft by starting to make their own, even if they wanted to expend the resources -- Microsoft could make life hell for Apple by just little things in Office. Coming out and supporting NeoOffice/J of couse is something that would really piss off Microsoft, so you can't do that. It's not reasonable to expect any major official support, even though the NeoOffice/J people are Apple's best shot on the long run to get at that $350 Microsoft tax.
What I do expect, however, is that Apple makes life a bit easier for people who don't want to spend $350 on fucntions that in the PC and Linux world they can get for free with OpenOffice. Like, including OpenDocument support natively with Tiger, instead of forcing the people to write one themselves.
I would be writing this on a ThinkPad running Linux and not an iBook if it wasn't for the OpenOffice people, and would never had gone for Airport Extreme, an iPod, iLife 05 (good grief, have I already spent that much?) ... Apple will have to fix this problem at some point, and OpenOffice / NeoOffice/J seems to be their only realistic shot at the moment without start a war with MS they can't win. A bit of love would be nice.