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Mac OS X Tiger Released and Analyzed

Posted by Zonk on from the grrrrrrr dept.

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.

14 of 563 comments (clear)

  1. Another good review by archdetector · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  2. Fantastic! by bigtallmofo · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  3. I'm heading over... by dduardo · · Score: 5, Funny

    to tiger direct today to pick up a copy.

  4. Yay ars! by BenjyD · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Grrrrreeeaat! by gobbo · · Score: 5, Informative
    Can it make my dual 1.8 stop crashing?

    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
  6. Tiger Has Arrived! by ramsesit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    G'day all,

    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 /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

    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 .Mac details (you gotta play!)
    * 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!

    1. Re:Tiger Has Arrived! by sg3000 · · Score: 5, Informative

      > I have two words for you:
      > 1. Spotlight
      > 2. Dashboard

      I got my copy of Tiger yesterday, so I installed it last night. Dashboard is cool, where I spent way too long adding and removing widgets just so I could watch the ripple effect (I've got a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4 17" with 1 GB RAM). It's kind of like when everyone spent about 30 minutes doing the Genie effect when they got Mac OS X 10.0 Beta. Random cool things:

      1. When it's sunny outside, the sun from the Weather widget spills out above it, gently illuminating the other things on the desktop. That's cool

      2. The Address Book widget is fast and makes AddressBook far more usable. Just type in a name, and boom! you have their info.

      3. The Calendar widget is next to useless. I thought it would show me my iCal events for the day or something, but no such luck. It just sits there, red and unaware.

      4. I find this hard to believe but QuickTime 7 looks much better than QuickTime 6. I watched the large Star Wars Episode III trailer in it, and it appears to look far more detailed! You can actually see Anakin's complexion turning gray when he's talking to Palpatine!

      5. Spotlight is really cool. It took about 30 minutes to index, but once it was done. I searched on a few terms. It found emails I wrote six years ago that I forgot I received. It's very fast. Type in someone's name, and in one second, you can see all sorts of stuff about them on your hard drive. Basically, your Mac turns into a giant contact manager (if you've ever gotten one of those PIMs to work where it tracked files, emails, and whatever for contacts). I'm getting used to the idea of using SpotLight to look for a file or application before I even go to the Finder, and it works well. SpotLight has earned its place in a hallowed corner place on the screen.

      6. iChat can now display what song you're listening to in iTunes. That's cool, too!

      7. The mouse preferences has a place to adjust the sensitivity of the scroll wheel and which to make the primary mouse button (left or right).

      8. When Safari can't open a page (like this Ars-Technica page right now), it displays an error page, rather than a slide down dialog box. It's less obtrusive this way.

      --
      Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
  7. Wow! Now that's a Review by allgood2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Box review by KrunZ · · Score: 5, Funny

    You know it is Apple related software when the review uses an entire page to comment on the look of the cardboard box.

  9. It's the speed increase, stupid... by carbona · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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!"

  10. Tiger is the beast?? :-( by Seoulstriker · · Score: 5, Funny
    **** THE PROOF THAT TIGER IS EVIL ****

    T I G E R
    84 73 71 69 82 - as ASCII values
    3 1 8 6 1 - digits added
    \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/
    3 1 8 6 1 - digits added

    Thus, "TIGER" is 31861.

    Subtract 97 from the number - this is the year Vesuvius erupted, written backwards. It gives 31764.

    Add 0791 to it - this is the year IBM announced S/370, written backwards - you will get 32555.

    Subtract 38, the symbol of slavery. The result will be 32517.

    Add 1983, the year Microsoft introduced Windows 1.0 - the result is 34500.

    Turn the number backwards, and add 1778 - the year Oliver Pollock invented '$', the symbol of
    exploitation, suffering and injustice. The number is now 2321.

    This, when read backwards, gives 1232. This is 666 in octal, the number of the Beast...

    Evil, QED.


    This can not be good. :-(
    --
    I am defenseless. Use your button. Mod me down with all of your hatred.
  11. Won't install. by ProfessionalCookie · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  12. Re:launchd by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 5, Informative
    The idea behind launchd is to have one single daemon to replace all daemon that launch other processes, this means initd, crond, inted, etc...

    The advantages of this approach are the following:

    • All those daemon have shared functionality but different code, this means more code to maintain and more security risks (all those daemon have to run at some point as root). Each of the 'old' daemon also has a different file format, which does not make life easier either.
    • Process launch criteria can be a mix of those offered by the 'old' daemons, crond is based on time, inetd on network connections, initd on boot sequence. Launchd 'understands" all those notions.
    The example I was given was of starting a backup task on a laptop. The criteria to launch the task would be something like if last execution was more than X days ago and the computer is not running on battery power and there is a network connection and CPU load has been low for some time then launch... Launchd is supposed to have 'adapters' to understand the old file formats.

    Personally I think this is a good idea, factoring out common functionality and using more reasonable file formats, but of course the old guard will complain that the current set of daemon just works (not on a laptop) and that this was proposed by people who do not understand Unix - who is this Jordan Hubbard anyway? :-)

  13. How did you find them? by stewby18 · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wanted to do the same, but I just can't find them no matter how much I search on Google.