a) The changes made to the OS, while significant, haven't been big enough to warrant a completely new major version (i.e., the jump from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS 10 was a complete rewrite, whereas the various 10.x releases have been revisions to the Mac OS X 10 codebase).
b) They don't know what to do with the "X" if they go to Mac OS 11. Mac OS XI? Mac OS X 11? Mac OS X+?
I don't know where you got that - I would think that more press would make you less likely to think of it as a service pack. Nearly all the press coverage has referred to Tiger as "The new Mac OS" anyway.
The move from 10.x to 10.y is like the move from Windows NT to 2000, or 2000 to XP. The equivalent of a Service Pack for Macs is going from 10.x.a to 10.x.b.
Obviously, you can't make exact comparisons, since Apple's OS (and "Service Pack") releases come a lot more frequently than Microsoft's.
Maybe if RedHat didn't start so much extraneous crap at startup, they wouldn't need to screw around with this. How about actually working on improving the boot time, and not relying on Microsoft-like tricks to fool the user?
These guys are a bunch of self-important snobbish assholes. If they think this will do anything but undermine their credibility and popularity, they're idiots.
They are not ugly. A purple, plasticy Toshiba or Sony shitbox is ugly. Thinkpads look purposeful, like a Hummer H1 or F-18. They're not supposed to be beautiful, they're supposed to work.
As for heavy, I don't know where you got that - have you ever used a modern Thinkpad? When I was looking for a thin, light 15" mobile desktop, a Thinkpad was all I could find.
As for the "nipple" joystick, most Thinkpads come with both the nipple and a touchpad, so you can use whatever you want. The ultraportables don't, but what do you expect? A touchpad is a waste of space and weight.
As for the screen, you're basing your opinion on shitty spy photos that were submitted to the FCC? I have a Thinkpad T42p, and the 1600x1200 screen is the best I've ever used.
IBM is the last remaining manufacturer of quality PC laptops. I'm glad to see that the sale of the PC division to Lenovo hasn't affected that.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Microsoft having undocumented (call them secret if you want) APIs. You're making the "all Slashdot posters share the same opinion" mistake.
In this example, Apple broke undocumented APIs. Anyone writing or using an application that takes advantage of undocumented APIs should be prepared to discover that they've been changed, moved, or deleted entirely.
The APIs that DesktopManager uses were probably left undocumented precisely because Apple knew they were going to be subject to change.
Apple is good, and we are going to talk to talk about it.
Yeah, but think about it - with desktop search, if you want to go after a file, just type the name, or some content related to it. No need to hunt through fifteen layers of uber-organized folders, scrolling through lists to find the folder you want, looking for the file, etc.
It's about three clicks and a few keystrokes over five seconds, versus fifty clicks over twenty seconds.
I assume it's taken a while to notice because not many PCs come with Firewire 800. In fact, until I saw this article, I thought Apple was the only company shipping computers with it.
Most PCs, if they have Firewire at all, have FW400 (the original).
Automator: VB/VBScript/VBA (look up SendKeys) Windows Scripting Host since Windows 2000 Windows Management Instrumentation since Windows XP
What you described is equivalent to AppleScript. Automator is a GUI application built on top of AppleScript that's supposedly (haven't used it yet) simple enough for anyone to use, not just programmers. Microsoft doesn't have anything like that.
Automator and VoiceOver are most definitely user features. Automator is like a GUI version of pipes on the command line (I don't know how else to describe it, having not used it myself yet), and VoiceOver is an OS-integrated text-to-speech system for the visually-impaired.
"Tiger may lack some of the niceties that make Windows more appealing to new users"
*cough* *splutter* - what!?
And really, the guy claims that Tiger is akin to a service pack in the "Windows world", yet most of the functionality it contains will only be delivered by Microsoft in (wait for it) - a new OS! (Longhorn)
And Longhorn still won't have Dashboard, or Automator, or Core Data/Core Image, or Expose, or anything else that makes OS X great.
I posted a negative comment earlier about this article, but the idiocy gets worse and worse as you go on.
"Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we'd call a service pack in the Windows world"
What Windows service packs have come with major new features? A firewall in SP2? Please. Hell, what Windows OS releases have come with major new features?
"It will not change the way you use your computer at all, and instead uses the exact same mouse and windows interface we've had since the first Mac debuted in 1984"
Err...yeah. Sorry, the telepathic mind-reader is coming in 10.5.
"Don't get me wrong, please: Again, Tiger is a solid release. It's just not a major upgrade. And it's certainly not worth $129."
Right. Tiger is not worth $129, but Windows XP is worth $250 or whatever over Windows 2000.
"nor does it include the iWork '05 productivity applications, which include Pages (a weird word processing/page publishing hybrid)"
Weird? Pages is weird?! What the hell is Word, then? Certainly not a word processing/page publishing hybrid, oh no.
"Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger includes, in my opinion, only two major new features, Spotlight and Dashboard, and both were clearly influenced by other existing products and services"
Bullshit! What about Automator? What about Core Image/Core Data? What about VoiceOver?
What's not to get? The stock was already trading at a price based on the expectation that they had sold 6 million iPods. The actual number of 5.3 million was less than that, and so the stock fell.
News in the market is only good news if it's better news than what they were already expecting/forecasting.
Slashdot Mirror
One of two reasons:
a) The changes made to the OS, while significant, haven't been big enough to warrant a completely new major version (i.e., the jump from Mac OS 9 to Mac OS 10 was a complete rewrite, whereas the various 10.x releases have been revisions to the Mac OS X 10 codebase).
b) They don't know what to do with the "X" if they go to Mac OS 11. Mac OS XI? Mac OS X 11? Mac OS X+?
I don't know where you got that - I would think that more press would make you less likely to think of it as a service pack. Nearly all the press coverage has referred to Tiger as "The new Mac OS" anyway.
The move from 10.x to 10.y is like the move from Windows NT to 2000, or 2000 to XP. The equivalent of a Service Pack for Macs is going from 10.x.a to 10.x.b.
Obviously, you can't make exact comparisons, since Apple's OS (and "Service Pack") releases come a lot more frequently than Microsoft's.
Maybe if RedHat didn't start so much extraneous crap at startup, they wouldn't need to screw around with this. How about actually working on improving the boot time, and not relying on Microsoft-like tricks to fool the user?
Considering Microsoft has done this for years already, I don't think it will be much of an issue.
"For example, XP had the desert dunes wallpaper as default in the beta but switched to the grassy hills wallpaper for the release."
Uh huh. Quite the paradigm shift, there.
These guys are a bunch of self-important snobbish assholes. If they think this will do anything but undermine their credibility and popularity, they're idiots.
They are not ugly. A purple, plasticy Toshiba or Sony shitbox is ugly. Thinkpads look purposeful, like a Hummer H1 or F-18. They're not supposed to be beautiful, they're supposed to work.
As for heavy, I don't know where you got that - have you ever used a modern Thinkpad? When I was looking for a thin, light 15" mobile desktop, a Thinkpad was all I could find.
As for the "nipple" joystick, most Thinkpads come with both the nipple and a touchpad, so you can use whatever you want. The ultraportables don't, but what do you expect? A touchpad is a waste of space and weight.
As for the screen, you're basing your opinion on shitty spy photos that were submitted to the FCC? I have a Thinkpad T42p, and the 1600x1200 screen is the best I've ever used.
IBM is the last remaining manufacturer of quality PC laptops. I'm glad to see that the sale of the PC division to Lenovo hasn't affected that.
I'm curious as to what modern web/document design style you don't consider "kitschy", if you have a problem with that site.
Got an example of a web page with a design you like? I'm genuinely curious, not just trying to bother you.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Microsoft having undocumented (call them secret if you want) APIs. You're making the "all Slashdot posters share the same opinion" mistake.
If you're working with a lot of windows/applications, virtual desktops can act as a nice complement to Expose.
I'm surprised Apple hasn't made it a built-in feature. They have fast user switching, but that's not the same thing.
In this example, Apple broke undocumented APIs. Anyone writing or using an application that takes advantage of undocumented APIs should be prepared to discover that they've been changed, moved, or deleted entirely.
The APIs that DesktopManager uses were probably left undocumented precisely because Apple knew they were going to be subject to change.
Apple is good, and we are going to talk to talk about it.
If you click the "PureEdge for Mac" link, you'll see that their solution to supporting Macs is having you buy Virtual PC.
Yeah, but think about it - with desktop search, if you want to go after a file, just type the name, or some content related to it. No need to hunt through fifteen layers of uber-organized folders, scrolling through lists to find the folder you want, looking for the file, etc.
It's about three clicks and a few keystrokes over five seconds, versus fifty clicks over twenty seconds.
I assume it's taken a while to notice because not many PCs come with Firewire 800. In fact, until I saw this article, I thought Apple was the only company shipping computers with it.
Most PCs, if they have Firewire at all, have FW400 (the original).
Java 5 will not be included in Tiger at release (ostensibly for compatibility reasons) - it will be a separate download.
Also, what school has started using Java 1.5 for assignments anyway? I'd think 1.4 would be fine.
I hope you were joking. If you weren't, perhaps you'll note that I said Windows OS releases?
Even ignoring that, if Microsoft has to reach back to DOS 5.0 to provide evidence of significant new functionality added to their OS...
DirectX is in no way comparable to Core Image. OS X already has a DirectX equivalent - it's called OpenGL.
See http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/coreimage/ for what Core Image actually is.
Automator:
VB/VBScript/VBA (look up SendKeys)
Windows Scripting Host since Windows 2000
Windows Management Instrumentation since Windows XP
What you described is equivalent to AppleScript. Automator is a GUI application built on top of AppleScript that's supposedly (haven't used it yet) simple enough for anyone to use, not just programmers. Microsoft doesn't have anything like that.
Yeah, I did miss that. I hadn't read the whole article when I posted.
Look a few comments down and you'll see my reaction after reading the whole thing.
Automator and VoiceOver are most definitely user features. Automator is like a GUI version of pipes on the command line (I don't know how else to describe it, having not used it myself yet), and VoiceOver is an OS-integrated text-to-speech system for the visually-impaired.
Even more!
"Tiger may lack some of the niceties that make Windows more appealing to new users"
*cough* *splutter* - what!?
And really, the guy claims that Tiger is akin to a service pack in the "Windows world", yet most of the functionality it contains will only be delivered by Microsoft in (wait for it) - a new OS! (Longhorn)
And Longhorn still won't have Dashboard, or Automator, or Core Data/Core Image, or Expose, or anything else that makes OS X great.
I posted a negative comment earlier about this article, but the idiocy gets worse and worse as you go on.
"Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we'd call a service pack in the Windows world"
What Windows service packs have come with major new features? A firewall in SP2? Please. Hell, what Windows OS releases have come with major new features?
"It will not change the way you use your computer at all, and instead uses the exact same mouse and windows interface we've had since the first Mac debuted in 1984"
Err...yeah. Sorry, the telepathic mind-reader is coming in 10.5.
"Don't get me wrong, please: Again, Tiger is a solid release. It's just not a major upgrade. And it's certainly not worth $129."
Right. Tiger is not worth $129, but Windows XP is worth $250 or whatever over Windows 2000.
"nor does it include the iWork '05 productivity applications, which include Pages (a weird word processing/page publishing hybrid)"
Weird? Pages is weird?! What the hell is Word, then? Certainly not a word processing/page publishing hybrid, oh no.
"Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger includes, in my opinion, only two major new features, Spotlight and Dashboard, and both were clearly influenced by other existing products and services"
Bullshit! What about Automator? What about Core Image/Core Data? What about VoiceOver?
What's not to get? The stock was already trading at a price based on the expectation that they had sold 6 million iPods. The actual number of 5.3 million was less than that, and so the stock fell.
News in the market is only good news if it's better news than what they were already expecting/forecasting.
http://www.synapps.de/synapps/bin/view/Main/Rafael Laguna
I don't know, the guy looks old enough to have paid for them himself.
I know you were joking, but there's quite a big difference between having mommy and daddy pay for your extravagances, and funding them yourself.