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OS X Operating Systems

Rave Reviews for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger 1088

Posted by Zonk from the widgets-widgets-everywhere dept.
druid_getafix writes "The first mass market reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are trickling in with a big thumbs up for the release. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ says 'Tiger Leaps Out in Front' but complains about slowness of some applications - notably Mail. David Pogue of NYT says 'But with apologies to Mac-bashers everywhere, Spotlight changes everything. Tiger is the classiest version of Mac OS X ever and, by many measures, the most secure, stable and satisfying consumer operating system prowling the earth.' In related news Mossberg also covers the rising incidence of spam/virii in the Windows world and says '...consider dumping Windows altogether and switching to Apple's Macintosh...'. Previous reviews of Tiger were covered on /. earlier."
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Rave Reviews for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger More

Rave Reviews for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

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  • Voice recognition (Score:3, Insightful)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:41AM (#12370198) Journal
    I think the whole voice recognition without having to configure it for your voice is pretty slick. I want a Mac.

  • W00t, guess i'll go get it! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:41AM (#12370207)

    unless there's a torrent..

  • Java 5? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Undertaker43017 ( 586306 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:43AM (#12370214)
    Is Java 5 in the final version of Tiger?

    If not when will Apple be releasing it?

    • Re:Java 5? (Score:5, Informative)

      by qwertphobia ( 825473 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:47AM (#12370250)
      Java 5 is not included with the operating system, but 1.4.2 is included.

      Java 5 will be provided as a separate installer, so that folks can upgrade when they're ready.

    • Re:Java 5? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:49AM (#12370264)
      Java 5? That's Java 1.5.0, yes? No, wait, I mean that's Java2 1.5.0?

      Does it run on SunOS 2.10? Sorry, I mean, Solaris 10?

    • Re:Java 5? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ABaumann ( 748617 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:52AM (#12370286)
      No news as to when Java 1.5 (I refuse to call it Java 5 - see more) will be out. However, Apple has said that Tiger will be required for Java 1.5 (ie they're not gonna make it compatible with Panther) Early reviews of 10.4 Beta have said that a beta version of Java 1.5 is there, but seeing as apple hasn't mentioned anything, I'd be surprised to see it on an actual 10.4 disk. Summary: Java Tiger on Mac Tiger? If not now then soon. More: As for the name Java 5... Java 1.0 was Java 1.0. When they came out with Java 1.2, they called it Java 2 Then they had Java 2 versions 1.3, 1.4, etc. Now they have Java 5. Come on people! I don't care what your versioning conventions are, I just care that you have some.

    • No Tiger in Tiger (Score:5, Interesting)

      by kherr ( 602366 ) <kevin&puppethead,com> on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:52AM (#12370287) Homepage
      Java 5 (Tiger) is not included in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). But Apple's got it under development and I'd suspect there'll be a Java update to Java 5 within a short period. Apple's been making test builds available to developers.

  • How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:43AM (#12370216)
    Some people were waiting on Tiger's release to find out. Does AltiVec handle the CoreImage stuff alright?

    • Re:How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:5, Informative)

      by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:43AM (#12370886)
      The mini handles it all absolutely fine. It can render every single effect, but some of them are a little slow - the ripple effect has been manually turned off by apple because it runs at about 10fps. Two effects are slower than that, others are much much faster, but the mini can render every one of them fine.

    • Image ops on powermac 1 ghz g4 (Score:4, Informative)

      by acomj ( 20611 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:44AM (#12370889) Homepage
      I have a dual 1 ghz power mac. I have a lot of ram 1.5 gig, and manipulate images in photoshop 7. Without core image acceleration its very good, especially with some of my larger images which can by 100 megs each. The only time the wait is anoying is when i'm using genuin fractals "degrain" filters which are slow (20-30 seconds) but work very well.

      It even edits video ok. All without the core image.

      My understanding of core image api is if the machine can't send the operations to the unsupported video card it just uses the main processor. minis have 1.2-1.4 ghz so they should work prety well for any image task thrown at it.

      A g5 would improve things for anyone really into hardcore editing..

  • I for one... (Score:5, Funny)

    by earthbound kid ( 859282 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:45AM (#12370231) Homepage
    welco... AHHH!! *mauled to death by a tiger for using a slashdot cliche*

  • Pity (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DenDave ( 700621 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:45AM (#12370235)
    Pity, I haven't got my copy yet. Can't wait... Spotlight will definetly change everything.. I wish we had this functionality on our windows network. Usually colleagues have a habit of making emssy files and storing things all over the shop, if we could search on meta data that would really help. From what I can tell so far, spotlight means you no longer care where things are, they simply exist and the context becomes the "path"... Truly innovating and definetly worth my money.

    • Re:Pity (Score:3, Insightful)

      by cloudmaster ( 10662 )
      Spotlight is "locate" with something like fam automatically updating a database when a file's name or metadata is changed. The gnu findutils have been on *nix systems- including OS X for a long time, and have been available under Win32 for as long. Windows also has had what's called "indexing service" since Win2K, and "Microsoft Fast Find" as part of Ms Office for a while. All of those things are file indxing systems like spotlight. All Apple did to "innovate" was to make the interface a little prettie

      • Re:Pity (Score:4, Informative)

        by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:17AM (#12370522) Journal
        Spotlight is not "locate", is a combination of locate, grep and Firefox search-as-you-type.

        The main innovation in Spotlight is incremental searching, not waiting until pressing enter. This allows the user to refine the search on-the-fly, which is a big usability improvement. OK, incremental search is not new. But system-wide incremental search? Now this is a new feature.

    • Re:Pity (Score:3, Funny)

      by utexaspunk ( 527541 )
      Usually colleagues have a habit of making emssy files and storing things all over the shop

      unfortunately, spotlight won't help you find your files if you name them dyslexically...

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:46AM (#12370236)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Aesthetics and responsiveness of widgets? Application load times?

    • Re:How do the judge so fast?!? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Brento ( 26177 ) <brento.brentozar@com> on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:54AM (#12370303) Homepage
      I'm always amazed how people seem to be able to judge the quality of an operating system within just a couple of hours.

      Journalists, especially high-profile ones like Mossberg, get preview versions of new gear long before the rest of us specifically so they can review it. They sign non-disclosure agreements to make sure the technology doesn't get into The Wrong Hands, and the vendors generally know the journalists will behave because the journalists have their entire career invested in it. If Mossberg tried to distribute pirated versions of Tiger ahead of the release date, Apple would stop giving him advance copies, and he'd lose prestige as a journalist.
      • That said, we often don't get time to properly review it.

        I remember reviewing for GameSpot (back in the dot-com days), receiving a game and having 1 week to write a review. You may be thinking "One week, so what?" but you've got to paint a picture of the game accurately enough that it answers a key question for the consumer: "Should I buy this thing or not?" I remember a few times I gave low review score to certain magazines on games that should've been higher (Twisted Metal 1, why did I rate you so poor

    • Re:How do the judge so fast?!? (Score:4, Informative)

      by someonehasmyname ( 465543 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:23AM (#12370599)
      Somehow my preorder showed up yesterday, so I backed up all my stuff last night to an external firewire hd. Then I booted off my Tiger cd, formatted my hard drive, and did a fresh install of Tiger.

      Once Tiger was running I still had to install a few drivers, such as my Unitor 8, and Delta 410.

      After that, I reinstalled all my necessary apps like Logic Pro 7 and various soft-synths (Vanguard, Atmosphere, Stylus RMX, etc.) and started beating the hell out of this system.

      After a few hours without any problems I concluded that, for my purposes, Tiger kicks ass.

  • Gloat (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:46AM (#12370239)
    My god is it a great time to be a Mac user.

    Apple Tech
    NeXT Tech
    Dual G5
    iPod/iTunes/iTMS
    OpenGL
    unix Layer
    and my copy of Tiger is riding around in a FedEx van at this very moment.

    Everything I've ever wanted in a computer system is a few hours away from becoming reality.

  • Expose - Slowness (Score:5, Informative)

    by DJPenguin ( 17736 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:48AM (#12370254)
    I've had Tiger on my 17" powerbook for a few days now - it's actually installed on my iPod so I can dual boot.

    One thing I have noticed so far is that Expose seems a lot less fluid than in Panther. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I going mad? The difference is noticable even with only a couple of windows on the desktop.

    Other than that it seems nice. My Vodafone 3G card works, and most apps that I have tried. The only thing I can't get working yet is OpenVPN - as the TUN/TAP driver isn't ported yet.

  • Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:54AM (#12370298)
    Apple, now raking in profits from its iPod, should seriously consider lowering their prices on their high-end machines to gain market share. Currently APPL is trading at $36.35 +0.40 (1.11%) a share and the stock has gone up consistenty since 2003 when it was around $10 a share. Now is the time for them to make some moves.
    If Tiger indeed blows away XP, so they should try to advertise it more, get it out to as many people as possible in order to increase their popularity and inspire more people to use and develop Apple software. If everyone had a better alternative to Windows for say just a fraction more in price, people would start buying it. The iPod has already convinced people Apple is a good brand, all they need is a price incentive to switch to Apple PCs.
    • If Tiger indeed blows away XP

      Good G*d, man, in grasping the Tiger's tail let's not lose our grasp of Reality.

      OS X may be better than Redmond.*, but 95% of computer users and corporations would rather have a better OS ~that they can install on their current hardware~.

      • Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by water-and-sewer ( 612923 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:56AM (#12371881) Homepage
        OS X may be better than Redmond.*, but 95% of computer users and corporations would rather have a better OS ~that they can install on their current hardware~.

        Not true. That's true for geeks like us. Most people have absolutely no what an operating system IS, and upgrade their lifestyle by buying a new computer. I am currently finishing a masters degree with a bunch of people that complain they need a new computer, because "this one just doesn't work anymore." They're using P4s and Windows 2000, and are going to upgrade to XP, not aware you don't have to get rid of your existing hardware. For that matter, they could speed up their machines by simply reformating all the spyware off and starting with a fresh system, but no. They're going to Dell.com to pick out a "better" machine.
        Thank God for those people. I get lots of good quality, 1 year old hardware from them for cheap. Not my fault they didn't take the time to learn about their computers.

    • Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Momoru ( 837801 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:28AM (#12370666) Homepage Journal
      Currently APPL is trading at $36.35 +0.40 (1.11%) a share and the stock has gone up consistenty since 2003 when it was around $10 a share.

      It should be mentioned that these prices are not comparable directly since Apple split their stock. The current pre-split price is over $70, so its a 7 times gain, not just a 3 times.

    • Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:30AM (#12371502) Journal
      There's some evidence to suggest that they're headed in this direction already. The last time their Powerbook line got a bump, they also got a mild price cut. Their Cinema Displays also just had a mild price cut, bringing their average cost from "an arm and a leg" to "a hand and everything below the knee."

      Of course, once their sales hit a certain level, their incentive to keep dropping prices goes away, and there's only so much growth a company like Apple can reasonably expect to support in a given period. So, in other words, ignore me completely.
    • Apple has managed to stay in business for 25 years. They have managed to turn a profit for the last 5 years. This is especially good performance given the nosedive the technology industry has been during the same period.

      I dare say they know what they are doing. That's like saying Daimler Benz should drop the price on their high end cars to compete with GM.

      They aren't even in the same Market.

  • Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sehryan ( 412731 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @08:56AM (#12370326)
    I would love to make the switch, but I am not sure I could justify it. I know it is all subjective, but what is a good reason to switch away from WinXP? Looking for real reasons to switch, not trolls or flames.

    For reference, I don't have problems with virii, my system never crashes, and all of my main programs (mainly design programs from Adobe and Macromedia) run very nicely. So what would I gain from switching?

    • Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Informative)

      by zpok ( 604055 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:13AM (#12370490) Homepage
      Initially, you'd be less productive (say one week, tops) and afterwards you'll probably be a lot more productive.

      That's the top one reason I always keep hearing from multimedia professionals who've switched. What makes them more productive? Workflow management, which seems to be easier in OS X, better handling of files and more freedom and consistency in setting up the perfect work environment. This includes scanning, printing and all color-proofing issues.

      For some things it's the difference between one click versus four. For some things it's simply features not available on Windows.

      And today it's a lot easier to set keyboard shortcuts just the way you want them and adapt your workflow to your taste. So switching has for the most part become trivial.

      I'd say coupled with the cross platform apps you use, there's at least not a compelling reason not to switch. If you personally would gain a lot by switching is another issue.

      I know, a pretty wooly answer. In the end it's down to your preferences and way of working. Best talk with fellow designers, see what they think about it, and see if what they say applies to your situation.

      DON'T ask the geeks here at /. they'll bog you down with arguments that have nothing to do with your reality ;-)
      • > DON'T ask the geeks here at /. they'll bog you down with arguments that have nothing to do with your reality ;-)

        Totally agreed. They will claim KDE and Gnome is the holy grail of desktop computing. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's a far cry from Aqua. KDE and Gnome still requires the console for more than trivial tasks. Aqua, on the other hand, manages to hide the BSD-beast that's doing the crunch work.

        as a point of reference, I majored in CompSci, and have used a variety of Win, Mac, Unix/Linux.

        Wi

    • Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nordicfrost ( 118437 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:20AM (#12370561)
      Well, the main reason I use Macs and MacOS isn'nt blazing speed differences and OMG!!! It just works!!! statments. although I have yet to install a driver to get something om my PowerBook to work. I don't know how they do it, but most things seem to not need a driver or use a preinstalled driver of some sort.

      I use Macs because they make me efficient. I feel more comfortable sith a Mac and lots and lots of nifty solutions make it a better platform for me. An example: When I work in Photoshop, all I need to do in order to view all the open pictures is to take the mouse in the lower right corner. Expose kicks in and I can see every picture I'm working on. If I want to see all the open apps and switch to another, mous in the lower left corner. Another example; everything is drag'n'drop. I'm composing an email and need a picture from a website? Just drag the pic from safari over in the email totally seamlessly. And both the email client and safari are preinstalled. Easy-peasy.

      There is so much to tell, but just try it. If it is good for you use it. If not, don't.

      • Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:49AM (#12370955) Journal
        Another example; everything is drag'n'drop. I'm composing an email and need a picture from a website? Just drag the pic from safari over in the email totally seamlessly.

        Just checked, and the same happens here at work with IE and Outlook. :-)

        • Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by nordicfrost ( 118437 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:00AM (#12371099)
          We use Groupwise at work, doesn't work there. But there's something interesing about your statement. You didn't know it until now. In the Mac world, there's this wierd feeling you get that "this probably works" and you try it. Usually it works. It is difficult to explain, but the global drag and drop feature is so thightly integrated that one tend to use it. In Windows, it works in some situations and not others. I don't have the time to find out what apps / situations that can have DND to make them more efficient. In Mac, you just do it.
          Sorry for the bad explanation, but the feeling is difficult to describe.
    • I would love to make the switch, but I am not sure I could justify it. I know it is all subjective, but what is a good reason to switch away from WinXP?

      I can't tell you why to switch, although the fact that you "would love to" is probably a start.

      I got an iBook G4 at home, because I was intrigued by OS X, and because it was actually competitive on features and price for its part of the market. I bought it shortly before I became more interested in digital photography, and iPhoto has been a nice bonus.

    • The petty annoyances (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:00AM (#12371088)
      Usng both a Windows2K (was using XP for a while as well) computer and a Mac day to day, I can list some little things that annoy me on Windows that are solved by the Mac:

      Lots of windows? Taskbar has two modes, neither of whcih work very well - either fold your icons together and make it really a bother to get to, or have the taskbar go to multiple lines. Expose is just SO much better a way of dealing with finding multiple windows.

      Macs don't ever hide menu items just because you've not used them for a while.

      Ever had a Windows Window no respond to you because a modal dialgue has popped up somewhere and that window is now obscuring it? Well, I have and Macs do not have that problem due to a much more intelligent way of handlind modal popups (it's embedded in the window that spawned it).

      Config files for every app that are really text and editible (or removable) by hand.

      UNIX utilities as first-class members of the OS and not something that clings to life within the system. Yeah I'm looking at you Cygwin!

      Usable simple text editing app (TextEdit). Both Wordpad and Notepad have unique issues that means you can't just automatically use one or the other (why do you think they are both still there). Heck in Tiger you can just use TextEdit for 99% of your word processing since it reads/writes Word files and supports things like tables.

      Everything supports save as PDF through printing interface. No need to use Acrobat.

      A home directory that reallly is in one place!!! You don't have to search the whole hard drive to REALLY back up all your app settings. They are all under ~/Library.

      When people talk about being more productive on a Mac, these are the kinds of things they mean. It's all the little annoyances that are part of using Windows day to day... you don't notice them after a while but each one makes you just a tiny bit slower and interrupts your workflow. In my experience Macs have a better sustained throughput for humans. Sure if you're just sitting there typing a letter one may not be faster than the other, but it's when you have to stop typing and make transitions when your odds of being interrupted are lower on Mac.

      And for less subtle reasons - Spotlight? Dashboard? Automator? These are pretty compelling reasons all on thier own, especially if you can write code at all. And if you can't then Automator should be even more compelling.

    • So what would I gain from switching?

      I use Adobe and Macromedia applications regularly on both systems. First, you need to make sure your particular applications are well supported on the mac, or it is a non-starter. Adobe has several projects where they have mostly abandoned the mac.

      Asssuming you do not use any of these the main advantages are:

      Better GUI - UI elements have better feedback and make a lot more sense. (buttons pulse and when the system is working stay lit so you the system registered

    • Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dr00g911 ( 531736 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:21AM (#12371391)
      A lot of people will make this into a religious debate -- which I'm guilty of from time to time -- but it's really just a matter of personal taste.

      I have Macs and Win boxes in both my home and work offices. I've got a Debian box at home as well.

      There are very specific tasks that work better on the PC in my opinion. For me, those tasks are games and Maya. This is coming from an artist's perspective primarily, a coder's perspective second and gamer's third.

      Everything else, I use my Macs for because they just 'feel' right. It feels like I'm drawing with my left hand to use Photoshop under Windows with an identical interface and mostly identical key commands. Mouse acceleration curves feel funky, and I loathe -- nay -- LOATHE the fact that the majority of apps I use have to have a second desktop behind them (that gray background you get when 'maximized'). I like seeing my desktop. I like having a palette monitor that's got my email client in the non-palette space. I like the Mac's implementation of drag & drop. I like the lack of reliance on the second mouse button to do everyday tasks.

      Quark Xpress 6+ is flaky on any platform at any speed, however type is significantly more manageable and supported on the Mac.

      BBEdit is reason enough to buy a Mac, all by itself if you're a coder. It's rocked my world for years (network-wide find & replace from circa '95 -- maybe earlier) and just keeps getting better.

      Don't even get me started about Windows and CMYK support, professional level color management, search functionality ("find" was practically instant across all drives and servers BEFORE spotlight -- now we have instant filename, content and context-sensitive metadata). Coupled with 45 minutes on my 3ghz P4 to search just my frigging C: and D: drives.

      Once you get yourself immersed in the Mac, it fits like a tailored suit -- there's an astounding amount of tiny bits of polish and subtle features that have been cloned to the Win side by someone who didn't understand the meaning of elegance or subtlety (see the Longhorn 'Glass' demo that's surfacing for a prime example).

      Anyhow, at home I choose my relatively slow 17" flat panel iMac G4 over my screaming and fully loaded gaming and Maya PC for almost every task because I'm more productive and happier. YMMV.

  • Gilbert and Sullivan! (Score:5, Funny)

    by adavies42 ( 746183 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:07AM (#12370423)
    From the NYT article:

    The Safari browser now subscribes to R.S.S. news feeds,
    And its "private browsing" mode conceals the tracks of online deeds.
    There are archives now, and log files, when you send or get a fax;
    You can make the pointer bigger on those Jumbotron-screened Macs.
    You can start a full-screen slide show from some photos on demand;
    And the voice that reads the screen aloud can lend the blind a hand.
    There's a password-phrase suggestor meant to make yours more secure,
    And the Grapher module draws equations simple and obscure.
    Then the Automator program is a geeky software clerk -
    You just choose the steps you want performed, and it does all the work.
    There's a lot of miscellany, lots of spit-and-polish stuff,
    But it works and doesn't slow you down - and these days, that's enough.

  • Rising incidence of parasitical software... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ites ( 600337 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:13AM (#12370486) Journal
    Another slashdot user predicted this something like a year and a half ago [slashdot.org].

    "What percentage of Windows PCs are 0wn3d by one or other parasite?
    By multiple parasites? By spammers working with crackers working
    with corrupt web site designers and pornographers? Enough, I think
    to ensure that within a short time - say 6 to 12 months - we will
    hit infection levels of 50% and more. The vast majority of home
    PCs, happily connected to the Internet, will be hit, and a large
    proportion of office PCs, insufficiently secured and protected,
    will also succumb."

    This was written in September 2003. And it's just starting to hit the general consciousness now?

  • I don't understand nobody's talking about (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HawkingMattress ( 588824 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:17AM (#12370520)
    Their new automator [apple.com] framework, which let applications send streams of objects to each other and have them propose interfaces to interact with.
    (Well that's how it seems to work at least). It looks like the equivalent of unix pipes for desktop apps.
    Something i've been waiting for for years.

  • Looking forward to Automator, Dashboard, and iChat (Score:5, Interesting)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:18AM (#12370537)
    Everyone is a buzz about Spotloght and it is no doubt going to be great, but I am also looking forward to improving productivity with Automator.

    As with lots of scripting languages, sometimes it is just plain faster to brute force what you are doing than sit down, recall a language syntax and function set, write a script, give it a test, and then run it. What I see as cool about Automator is that it makes building a script so freaking easy and fast and since you can call scripts with scripts, you can build a nice function library of scripts to make the process even faster.

    I am also digging on Dashboard. At first I didn't like the idea of a second desktop that is different than the first, and I will have to try before I agree that it makes sense to keep these on a different desktop, but I love the idea of the small applets (I used Konfabulator breifly) for small tasks like weather, itunes, stock tickers, and calculator. That they take minimal system memory means I will be more apt to keep them open and within easy reach without having to launch the applicaiton.

    Lastly, I am totally excited about iChat AV supporting up to four people (including me) in a video chat. It just looks so cool to see three people sitting around the virtual room like that and this feature is making me finally break down and buy the iSight. It looks like the best autofocusing camera available for $150.

  • Pshaw (Score:4, Informative)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:31AM (#12370720) Journal
    Want meta-data search (spotlight) on GNU/Linux? Try installing Beagle [gnome.org].

    From Beagle's webpage; "Beagle is a search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you're looking for. Beagle can search in many different domains:

    documents
    emails
    web history
    IM/IRC conversations
    source code
    images
    music files
    applications ...and much more

    Have a look at uber hacker Nat Friedman's [nat.org] videos of hot Beagle Action. [nat.org]

    In short, beware teh Gnome.

    • Re:Pshaw (Score:4, Informative)

      by GaryPatterson ( 852699 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:50AM (#12371810)
      So can it search for relationships between files? Not just metadata, content of filename, but stuff like "show me the emails with the picture of the dog that I sent to members of my family"?

      SpotLight is not just metadata plus content. It's also about relationships between objects. You can create relationships by dragging objects about (say a picture of a dog onto an email to family members) and SpotLight remembers them in detail (the dog metadata in the image is then in a relationship with the people in the email address fields, as well as the email itself and any objects inside it).

      This seems like a new thing to me.

  • WHAT THE HELL (Score:3, Funny)

    by jcoleman ( 139158 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @09:46AM (#12370923)
    I am the only one who's totally pissed off that not only is there a MICROSOFT ad on this article (probably appearing on others, but this one especially) but it HONKS A HORN AT FULL VOLUME? What is wrong with SlashDot?

    Coleman

    PS It scared the crap out of me.

  • The trouble with Tiger (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:06AM (#12371176) Homepage
    Don't get me wrong, Tiger seems like a great operating upgrade. I think its a little steep at 130$ but probably worth it.
    My problem with it is that it fragments the new mac users more than 10.3 did. Here is why.

    They give the developer new tools/frameworks for easier better application development. These are great. HOWEVER, if you a developer choose to use those new features your software ONLY works on 10.4 (tiger) not on 10.3. core data for example [apple.com]
    . Also it looks like apple won't make java 1.5 work on older versions of the mac OS, meaning they won't work on older versions the the OS either. This further fragmenting apples small market share, adding frustration to developers and software purchasers alike. You have to code with the older frameworks or compel your users to update. This is a not required but "strongly compelled upgrade"

  • Holding out for OS 10.9.8 Liger (Score:5, Funny)

    by CaseOfThaMondays ( 877679 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:26AM (#12371459)
    Liger is going to pretty much be my favorite OS. its bred for its skills in stability and magic.

  • Price Point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rihahn ( 879725 ) on Thursday April 28, 2005 @10:46AM (#12371735)
    I keep seeing all of these posts where someone mentions they can get a PC with 'X' ram, 'X' HD, 'X' CPU for 'X' cheaper than a Mac... You can also go buy a $1000 Honda and add all sorts of ground effects, spoilers, lights, and other 'performance' mods and have a pretty quick little car that will beat a BMW 740il soundly... But it's still a Honda. And unless you're stupid, you'll wind up going down the road at the exact same speed as that Beemer. The only difference is that you added all of that stuff to your car, you know every rattle and squeak, tolerate the lousy ride because you can corner like no ones business, have bass that can make your neighbors evaporate, and you can fix any of it easily or upgrade it... Meanwhile the guy with the Beemer has a 10-year warrantee that covers tears in the upholstery and doesn't have to think about the car, he just drives it. He gets to spend his weekends out playing with his kids rather than tweaking a new intake manifold, can drive the car from Denver to L.A. without worrying about the radiator being two sizes too small for the type-R motor that has been shoehorned into the car, and his stock sound system is pretty nice because he doesn't need 3000 watts to overcome the #10 coffee can exhaust system. Of course the average /.'er drives a VW Thing that was hand built by everyone he/she knows, only runs on methanol that he/she makes in the back yard, has the steering wheel on the wrong side, and requires three keys to start. ;)

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