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."

Comments

Good

[Winterblink]

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.

Re:Good

[Winterblink]

Here's another example.

In the "Welcome to Tiger" booklet that comes with OSX, there's a shot of Tiger's spotlight search bringing back results showing documents, images, settings, etc. Under the photos, they focus on a section where you can blow out the details of individual photos and see the metadata used by the search to find it. Clearly shown in the sample (and indeed demoed by Steve Jobs himself at various keynotes) are the keywords assigned to the photos in the iPhoto software. This has never been searchable on my system, even after a rebuild and repair of permissions by the install disc. Some people are reporting this is fine, while others are having the exact same problem.

Re:Good

[Shanep]

I have the 1.42GHz mini with the 80Gb drive and 1GB RAM.

I type in "theo de raadt", just for some obscure example which I figured would get some results, since I'm subscribed to misc@openbsd...

Somewhere between a quarter of a second and perhaps a half a second of finishing typing his name, the results are up (386 total).

If I type in "network", same deal. A split second I've got results (1134) and then another split second later they're broken up into 9 categories.

I am impressed. I've used programs like iSys before, however this is integrated from the desktop all the way to the command line.

At first I was put off by seeing results come up as a type and this caused me to type slower and make mistakes because I was distracted by that and would look at them before they were as meaningful as they could be. I've since learned to just force myself to concentrate on completing the phrase and then looking.

Re:Good

[Kplusplus]

Most likely you never let Spotlight finish indexing your entire HD at first install of Tiger. It's a very low priority background task, so the fact it hasn't hit all your files yet isn't surprising. As to those elements not being searchable, they most certainly are, I added spotlight support to the Colloquy IRC client and know this to be a fact.

Here is a screencap from when I was testing:
http://matrixpointer.com/screens/xenon_spotlight.p ng

Re:Good

[dr.badass]

Clearly shown in the sample (and indeed demoed by Steve Jobs himself at various keynotes) are the keywords assigned to the photos in the iPhoto software. This has never been searchable on my system, even after a rebuild and repair of permissions by the install disc.

I haven't experienced this problem myself, but here are some things you might try, in Terminal:

mdimport -L will list all of your Spotlight importers -- there should be one for iPhoto, but if there's not, then that's your problem. I don't know why you wouldn't have it, though.

mdimport -r /System/Library/Spotlight/iPhoto.mdimporter will force Spotlight to reindex everything that that importer can index.

Re:Good

[doggkruse]

There is an easy way to enable it. Open /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist and change Quartz2DExtremeEnabled to yes.

Re:First patch

[Otter]

What, they've already released Tiger?

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!

Re:First patch

[squiggleslash]

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!

Let's hope they fix Dashboard

[wembley fraggle]

When I got Tiger, I went and downloaded a bunch of Dashboard widgets to try them out. Later, when my Dasboard launchbar grew to 5 screens of widgets I wanted to remove some from the launchbar. Couldn't figure out how to do it, so I went to apple help.

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.

Re:Let's hope they fix Dashboard

[crawdad62]

Just go to ~(username)->Library->Widgets and drag them out.

Hey, maybe they fixed my bug...

[Monthenor]

I submitted this bug report to Apple the day after Tiger came out. (Bug ID 4104116)

Summary:
In Tiger, the iCal Info Drawer becomes an invisible window in Expose's windowing modes when the main window is minimized.

Steps to Reproduce:
1) Open iCal.
2) Open the main iCal window.
3) Click the "i" button in the lower right (or press command-i) to open the Info Drawer.
4) Minimize the window.
5) With iCal as the active application, trigger the Expose "Application Windows" mode.
6) Mouse over where the Info Drawer would appear if the main iCal window were not minimized.

A) Now trigger the Expose "All Windows" mode.
B) Mouse around the empty spots of the screen.

Expected Results:
After both step 6 and step B, there should be no window found.

Actual Results:
After both step 6 and step B, there is an invisible "window" with no name that can be clicked to activate iCal. It is the approximate size and shape of the iCal Info Drawer.

Regression:
OS X 10.4.0 Build 8A428
iCal 2.0 (1024)

The bug only occurs IF one is using 10.4.0 AND iCal's main window is open AND the Info Drawer is open AND the main window is minimized. If iCal's main window is open and visible, Expose treats it correctly. If iCal's window is closed, no phantom Expose window appears. If the Info Drawer is closed, no phantom Expose window appears.

Notes:
This is obviously not a show-stopping bug, just something very very weird. It does throw off the window-arrangement calculations of Expose, so I suppose it has slight usability implications.

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.

Re:FUD alert! FUD alert!

[Winterblink]

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.

No AntiVirus for Tiger

[xactuary]

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.

Inaccuracy alert!

[avalys]

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."

Re:This isn't the type of post that belongs on /.

[Winterblink]

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.

Tiger w00t?

[el_womble]

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!

Missing an important step.

[MisterSquid]

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.

Re:This is pretty common...

[Chief Typist]

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

Apple to Release first Tiger Update

[Oscar_Wilde]

Apple to Release first Tiger Update

Oh good! I was worried it would be released by Microsoft.