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Apple to Release first Tiger Update
Ninj4Bytes writes "AppleInsider is reporting on the first update to Mac OS X Tiger. The update is reported to address 'over three dozen componets, with an emphasis on improving general stability and reliability'. The patch is listed for a mid to late May release."
Tiger overall is a great upgrade from Panther. It's got some really neat new features and there's bound to be several of them that anyone will use. That being said, important new core features like Spotlight are not working as advertised for many users. Other things, like Quartz 2D Extreme which is desigend to offload almost all the UI work to the GPU, was buggy enough to be disabled in the Tiger release. There's a lot of work there that's relatively unfinished, and I think it's great that Apple's making motions to get things in order mere weeks after its release.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
Yup! Also, Google has announced Google This, Google That and Google Something Else. Now you're caught up for the last six months -- pay attention from here on!
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Hey, don't leave him out of the loop like that. For example, SCO is suing IBM! Yep! And apparently Star Wars Episode 3 is coming out NEXT WEEK!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
They did this with 10.3 too, it was 2-3 weeks if I recall..
I just wasted your mod points! HA!
This is what Help said: "You cannot remove widgets from the Widget Bar or change their order"
And that's just plain stupid. I hope they fix that soon.
I submitted this bug report to Apple the day after Tiger came out. (Bug ID 4104116)
And once again, as with my iTunes + null separator character bug, it was quickly marked "No Workaround" and I lost privileges to view it. I cannot fathom why they don't want me to see the report again.
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
If you take the developer tools and install them, there is a Quartz 2D Extreme debugger utility that indicates the component is indeed there, but disabled. You can enable it, but some people have said it causes some interesting problems.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I was at the Apple Store yesterday talking with several employees (wearing very cool spotlight T-shirts) about the lack of AntiVirus for Tiger. They were quite sheepish about the subject and mentioned the training they'd received about how to broach the subject when customers ask about it. The bottom line was that there is no AntiVirus software compatible with Tiger at the moment and that they were to upsell .mac where Apple's servers run AntiVirus on .mac emails.
Is this a non-issue? Is it odd that you don't hear much about this?
I've read a lot about Tiger over the last six months and that is the first I had heard of this issue.
Say hello to my little sig.
You should check your facts before you accuse other people of spreading FUD. If you read the very article you link (at ArsTechnica), you will see confirmation that Quartz 2D Extreme is disabled in Tiger.
From the second to last pair of paragraphs in your link...
"There's one final barrier to hardware-accelerated bliss. Quartz 2D Extreme is disabled by default in Mac OS X 10.4.0. That's right, the whiz-bang new technology you just read all about is not actually used in Tiger unless it's explicitly enabled using the Quartz Debug application. Even then, it only applies to applications that are launched after it was turned on. It also appears that Q2DE is re-disabled when you quit the Quartz Debug application.
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."
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100% of the stories posted on Slashdot don't belong on Slashdot, depending on your perspective. For instance, I don't give a flying fuck about most of the *nix stories posted here, so I:
a) don't read them
b) sure as hell don't post in them about how they don't belong on Slashdot
Now I do this because even though from my perspective I come here for other types of geek news and errata, other people do come here for those types of information. In case you didn't realize, there's a handy feature found in your user profile on Slashdot that allows you to remove items from being shown on your homepage (example: Apple-related news). Give it a try.
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I can't decide if I like Tiger or not. having splashed out for a family pack, for my iMac G5 (1GB RAM), my Al PowerBook G4 (512MB RAM), my parents Al PowerBook 17" (256MB RAM) and mother-in-law's mini (512MB RAM) I can't say that I've seen anything about it that I would recommend. If anything it feels slower than panther. Spotlight is useful and I played with it for a bit, but its way too slow to be as world changing as we had been promised. I was really looking forward to Automator, but the few times I though it would be useful it wasn't (although I haven't given up yet). Dashboard widgets are an interesting addition, but at a substantial memory cost - I don't feel it on the G5, but the G4s I've got access to you seem to have a choice - Dashboard or Fast User switching... fast user switching is more useful to me.
My hope is that these new technologies expected Quartz 2D Extereme to be turned on and that once its stable, I'll get the "it just feels snappier" experience that we mac users have come to expect from an upgrade. At the moment this feels more like Win2k to XP.
To keep this pro apple, its not all bad. There are two technologies that I wouldn't give back: Safari RSS and QuickTime 7, both of which feel positively super charged. But I wouldn't describe them as "worth the ticket price alone", especially as you can now get QT7 for panther.
This update can't come soon enough. Lets hope it unlocks the true tiger within!
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Just go to ~(username)->Library->Widgets and drag them out.
. . . and shoot them. It's the only way to make sure they don't come back.
blog
There's a simple reason for this -- after the release is declared final, and the GM disk image is created, there is still testing going on.
During the time that the GM disk is being pressed and shipped, the people in the QA department are finding bugs and engineers are fixing them.
Apple then distributes the fixes with Software Update after ADC members have time to test the seed (giving them a week or two to do it.)
-ch
100% is realistic, there isn't a story on Slashdot that EVERYBODY wants to read.
The point is that this site will always be one where news is interspersed with rumors, opinions, etc. That is what Slashdot is. This particular posting isn't inconsequential if you're someone like myself who has had issues with the latest OS (not showstopper ones mind you, but issues nonetheless).
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I've tried commenting mine through iPhoto, adding keywords in iPhoto, and using the new "spotlight comments" feature in Finder. For me, the spotlight comments ended up being the only way I could get spotlight to find it, but that particular item is pure metadata on the file itself, not through the iPhoto application where I've been annotating my photos so far. Hopefully the patch fixes, this. :)
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
This has been Apple's pattern ever since 10.0 - I think it's partly because their beta program is so closely controlled. Despite all the testing they do, it's still a tiny fraction of the number of users who install it in the first few days after release.
The other thing is that once Apple freezes a release as "GM", then you've got a gap of around a month before the public release. So in the meantime, they've got a head start on fixing issues, plus the ones that come up in the first week or two of public release. That makes for a first bugfix release within a month of launch (which has always been Apple's pattern in the X world), followed by further point releases every couple of months afterwards until the next major rev.
And that's in addition to the (now) monthly security updates and any other updates to components that come along.
I've got a whole fleet of Macs (iMac G5, PowerBook 667, PowerBook 15" 1.5 and mini at the office, iMac G3 and a pair of iMac G4s at home), and the way I handle a major update is to try it on one system at launch, because some of my customers will jump immediately. In this case, I threw it on my newer PowerBook G4 (I put my copy of Server on the mini). After the 10.4.1 update, I'll probably start deploying it on a couple of the other Macs, but keep 10.3 around for a while so I can support my 10.3 customers.
A handful of my customers still use 10.2, but it's not enough to bother keeping a 10.2 system around.
The disadvantage of Apple's approach is that the new release usually has a lot more little minor bugs and compatibility issues than a new Windows rev, because the new MacOS version is in the hands of relatively few people for a shorter development cycle. On the other hand, the fixes are rapid, and within a couple of months all the straggling 3rd party developers have usually caught up. Apple releases entire new versions of the OS in the time it takes Microsoft to release a service pack.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
See the new 4. Consent to Use of Data clause here. While the link is to a sample license, clause 4 is the same as the license included with the Tiger media.
It would seem that Apple can now collect data on 3rd party Applications and Peripherals you install. And then can share it with unnamed subsidiaries. And just what is "related information" to say Quicken for Mac? For the sake of argument assume Apple is benign and is just going to collect what it needs to implement the Software Updates, and never stores the data or uses it for any other purpose. Why not word the license like that?
Are there any lawyers out there using Macs? How does this impact you client confidentiality? Or doctors, could this cause a HIPPA violation?
Software Updates don't need this liberal a Consent. Remote support might, but it should have it's own per incident consent form, and not be applied to all users.
Come on Apple, you're not supposed to be like this.
The product was not necessarily rushed. It means that Apple did not stop testing the system since it went gold. A company that declares its software done and then never tests or upgrades it again is far worse than a company that says "let us fix a few things that somehow slipped by."
Apple to Release first Tiger Update
Oh good! I was worried it would be released by Microsoft.