Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Preview at WWDC

hype7 writes "Apple just announced that it will kick off WWDC 2004 with a preview of the next iteration of Apple's operating system, Mac OS X, in a Steve Jobs keynote. This version of Mac OS X, 10.4, has been code named 'Tiger.' As usual, Apple is being incredibly tight lipped about what's going to be added; there hasn't even been that much speculation of new features on the rumor sites. WWDC is scheduled to begin on the 28th of June."

Re:Yet another Apple upgrade.

[justMichael]

What ever is in it, I'm sure that it will cost around 200$ to upgrade and still wont have everything that they said would be in version 10. But maybe I'm just an embittered ex Apple developer.

I think you mean around $130, unless you are buying the family pack. Or maybe the exchange rate is pushing it up to $200?

To the best of my knowledge the cost has remained a constant $129 USD.

Re:Yet another Apple upgrade.

[abh]

none of apples upgrades have cost 200 dollars

Um, neither have Microsoft's upgrades. And by my math, multiple $99 or $129 Apple upgrades are going to cost more than one $99 or $129 Microsoft upgrade

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[account_deleted]

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Re:And as usual...

[grahamlee]

They do for the Server [apple.com] editions; I'm not sure it makes so much sense for the clients but if they get enough people asking then I'm sure that they will. The fact is it's possible to get away with an earlier edition (I'm using OS X Server 1.2, Rhapsody DR2, 10.2 Jaguar and NeXTSTEP 3.3 :-) but that many - not all, but a significant minority - of Mac users will upgrade at the drop of a hat. One problem is that often the newer versions aren't binary or library compatible with the old versions, so if a developer upgrades to 10.4 and forgets to click the 'GCC 2.95' box in XCode then their software won't work on previous versions :-(.

Re:Yeah!

[CelticLo]

errr
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Server 2003
All released in the last five years.

Then theres the free service packs...

Re:I may skip this one ...

[ev1lcanuck]

I beg to differ, 10.1 didn't allow a lot of things 10.2 did, such as DVD playback which is a pretty big thing in my eyes. It made it so if you shelled out the extra cash for a combo drive iBook you would have to boot to OS9 if you wanted to watch a movie on the plane. Very inconvenient. 10.2 also added a number of other features that 10.1 didn't have. 10.1 was essentially a polished and more stable version of 10.0. 10.2 brought the OSX product up to a point where it could stand on its own and be more comparable to Windows XP. It also brought much better Windows networking tools and plenty of extra apps that 10.1 lacked.

And the only major improvements in 10.3 were iChat AV, FileVault, Expose, and a prettier GUI. All of which, except for Expose, you could get as add-ons for 10.2 (iChat AV is available for $30, FileVault equivalents can be found from third parties, and a prettier GUI that is fully customizable can be found from third parties).

Prices wrong

[DamienMcKenna]

10.0 was available for free from CompUSA stores, possibly others too. 10.1 was a free upgrade. 10.3 is available for about $90 if you search on froogle.

Re:Yeah!

[b-baggins]

For a supposed Geek crowd, Apple's numbering scheme sure get them confused. .x revisions are major releases. .xy releases are service packs. It's only been this way for three years, now, so what's your excuse for not getting it yet?

Re:Glad to hear it...

[Paulrothrock]

Welcome to the family, friend. I'm sure you'll like it here. (Here's a little tip, though: When you get your Mac, wipe it and reinstall without the language packs but make sure to include X11 and XCode. You'll save HD space and get X11 functionality and a great dev environment.)

Re:Troll Posts asside, Apple seems stupid here...

[UserChrisCanter4]

Or, compare this to Windows. I have a copy of Windows 2000 from early 2000, as in right around when they released it. Retailed for $300 (OEMed for about $180, if I remember right). And that's right about the time of OS 10.0 (a little before, actually). So for $300 for 2000, and another $200 for XP Pro (the actually comparable upgrade) in that span, I would really have gained very little.

2000's updates were mostly security issues, a few Direct X upgrades (not something I consider an added value, but definitely important for games), Windows Media 9 which I actively work to keep away from everything, and some Journal Reader add-ins.

Had I decided to upgrade to XP, I would've gained an eye-bleed inducing green and blue color scheme by default, system restore, and...? As far as I can tell, with the exception of some bluetooth products and a few system hack-type programs (stuff to change the UI and so forth), XP would've been 2000 pretty edition (hence the NT 5.1). So in these accumulated 4 years and some change, I'd have paid somewhere between $350 and $500, depending on how I valued support and whether I felt it necessary to upgrade to XP (I don't). I'm sure some harder-core windows historians could tell me a few of the other things introduced, so feel free.

On my macs, I got 10.0 included with an iMac, and 10.1 for free (the free upgrade offer), but we'll call it $150 there to be fair (assuming that I bought 10.1 retail). I paid $129 for 10.2 and $129 for 10.3, which puts me in essentially the same price category. I've seen substantial speed improvements, particularly on my older hardware (a 450mhz g3 iMac and a 500mhz iBook), which alone makes upgrading even more worthwhile (in stark contrast to XP's potnetial to run slower on a given system out of the box). I've seen quartz extreme, encrypted filesystems, easier integration of X11, fast user switching, and expose all introduced in that span, as well.

Honestly, to me, it's worth the cash. I'll need to see what Tiger brings to the forefront, although I suspect that theories about heavy G5 optimizations are probably true. If it turns out that people start noticing it running faster on their older hardware, which is entirely possible given the track record, I'll drop my $129 again.

Accessibility Improvements

[markyT]

Tiger will include Spoken Interface [apple.com]. The integration of aural tools into the OS (instead of tacking on screen readers) will be a major improvement over both the current Mac and Windows systems and a huge boon to users with a visual handicap or motor skill impairment.

Re:Yeah!

[Surlyboi]

Well said. I just got off the phone with a client whose systems I've frozen on Jaguar because certain companies *cough* Kodak *cough* have decided to stop updating their film scanner drivers past 10.2.8. Other than the lack of Expose, he's suffering no ill effects from not having the latest and greatest. He's quite happy with his systems the way they are.

Re:Yeah!

[jlaxson]

Since when do the service packs add real functionality?

And, if you want to count server OS's:

Cheetah (10.0) (Not sure if it had server with it)
Puma (10.1) (Again, not sure, playing on the safe side)
Jaguar (10.2)
Jaguar Server
Panther (10.3)
Panther Server

And you want to count service packs anyways?
Just from memory:
10.2.1-10.2.8 is 8 upgrades (all adding FUNCTIONALIY, albeit small steps)
10.3.1-10.3.3 (10.3.4 is seeded to developers right now).

You count.

Re:Glad to hear it...

[toonrmeusa]

You don't need ``loads of cash'' to switch to a Mac-- check out the sub-$1000 eMac [apple.com]. Yes, it's more expensive than a Mom-and-Pop thrown-together PC, but it's not outrageous when you consider what you're getting.

Re:Does anyone know a link

[Anonymous Coward]

Won't be available until the conference. That's how Apple always does it: introduces a new OS at each WWDC (or MacWorld, back in the day) and shows off the most important new features, then posts a preview page on their website. Noone outside of Cupertino knows what new features there will be in 10.4. On the other hand, usually the new features that are announced at WWDC are actually in the OS when it's released: there isn't this whole "Longhorn is going to have a DB-based file system" rumors 2 years before the OS is released and then "no it isn't" when they realize they aren't going to make their deadline.

Re:Yet another Apple upgrade.

[kalidasa]

Windows XP Pro Upgrade cost $199. By my math, that's pretty damned close to $200 .

Re:What's improved?

[NatasRevol]

Ability to "check out" home directories from a server

It's called mobile accounts. Check it out. Been there for, I believe, 1.5 years now.

I'll add my support for FTP write from the finder.

Re:Yeah!

[MoneyT]

Support will probably last untill the next OS release. That is, Apple normaly supports the current and previous OS. Of course, that isn't to say they won't support older ones either. They still release the occasional patch for 10.1

Re:What's improved?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

Garbage collection for Cocoa?

It's already there. It's called an autorelease pool, and it's used extensively throughout Foundation Kit.

Instantiate an object, then send that object an autorelease message. (Or use a factory method to get an object instance; same thing.) When the pointer to that object goes out of scope, like at the end of the calling block, the object is automatically deallocated.

Re:Yet another Apple upgrade.

[b-baggins]

Apple doesn't sell upgrades. That $129 gets you a full version of the OS. You can sell your old version on ebay if you want; you won't need it to install 10.4

What else Apple doesn't give you: Product Activation. They don't even require a serial number or product key. Just put the CD in the drive and go.

Re:Improvements

[System.out.println()]

My point is that now that 10.4 is about to ship

Well.... no, it's not. It'll be at least 6 months, probably more.

Finder is the top listing. So, you couldn't find files before? No tool to help you seek what you are looking for? Yes, yes there was. What does this top listed improvement give me? Hint: Pretty Icon layout. How much was that worth?

Actually they did vastly improve the Finder in Panther - and none of the improvements had anything to do with the icons (except for the colored labels). Off the top of my head, there's a new, highly convenient sidebar, and Folder Actions allow you to attach an Applescript to a folder any time something happens to said folder, which is really cool (and useful).

The improvements to Mail aren't eye candy - the biggest one, organizing email by discussion, is really nice, similar to what Google's webmail gives you, only in a desktop app.

Re:Improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

New Finder: rewrote it for performance, added new UI elements (any finder window can be used to unmount disks, e.g.).

New searching: removed searching and indexing from Shelock, integrated it into the finder, and made indexing less intrusive.

Expose: calling that eyecandy just shows how little you understand GUI design. Eye candy is "doesn't that look nice" - like Luna. Expose provides an easy method to switch from window to window within an application or between applications, or from windows to desktop, using simple key shortcuts.

Mail: a bunch of junk mail features, including decent bayesian analysis (needs a lot more work, though).

Journaled File System.
Unicode 4 support.
Better Samba support.

It's not just eyecandy.

Re:Logic Board Extension Program

[Dynedain]

Apple is charging the $130 for each "upgrade" of their operating systems (they are not upgrades but full versions only)

Try taking the Panther updgrade disc and putting it into a machine that doesn't already have OSX on it. It won't allow you to install.

Re:10.3 is good for me

[w3weasel]

10.2 was a free upgrade from 10.1, 10.0 was a free upgrade if you had a paid-for beta... I'ts highly likely that 10.4 will be a free upgrade from 10.3.

so unless you bought them all seperately for kicks... you are lying.

Re:Logic Board Extension Program

[ps_inkling]

It would be interesting for Apple to set up a "n-year upgrade program" where you get every release of your particular OS for those n years. They are already doing that for their server operating systems.

They do have an upgrade program. It's called Apple Developer Connection [apple.com].

You pay $500 for Select level (OS X and OS X Server), or $3500 for Premiere level (previous plus WebObjects) access. For the price, Apple sends you a CD every month with some example programming code, and new releases of the operating system for the next 12 months. (When it was Mac OS 9, you also received the foreign language versions; it's built-in with OS X.)

Yeah, $500 is a little steep for a $129 OS upgrade every year; but being able to download beta versions [apple.com] and get 20% discounts on new hardware makes it worthwile to me. This plan probably would not work for enterprise-wide deployment.

Re:I may skip this one ...

[thornist]

I beg to differ, 10.1 didn't allow a lot of things 10.2 did, such as DVD playback

I beg to differ with you. I still run 10.1 on my iBook and watch DVDs almost daily. With the video output running into my TV it's a great little entertainment box (together with iTunes handling my music collection).

Re:They have to

[Surlyboi]

Could be because you stopped at 10.1. They didn't optimize for speed 'til 10.2

Don't chuck your PB, just shell out the 90 bucks or so for a version of the OS that's been released since the end of the Clinton administration.

Re:Logic Board Extension Program

[greed]

That's not the disk you pay $130 for.

But keep in mind, Apple sells no machine without an operating system. So all versions of Mac OS are really "upgrade" versions. All the $130 retail versions will work with a completely blank machine, which you only get by formatting, partitioning or replacing the drive--you don't get one from Apple like that.

Re:Improvements

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, I first thought you were genuinely curious about whether Apple's constant upgrade cycle was detrimental and annoying to Mac users. this post makes me question whether you are not simply another troll.

Simply stated, many of the features are under the hood or don't appear to be useful until you've had the opportunity to use them.

Active Directory plug-in. Previous versions relied on an LDAP plug-in to authenticate against the AD. Panther introduced a new and easy to use plug-in that allows a mac to bind to the AD, authenticate to it, and take advantage of some additional AD functionality. The plug-in is not entirely perfect yet, but is extremely functional.

Exposé: It really is a revolutionary way of dealing with window management and I honestly don't know how I could live without it after using it for so long.

Improved SMB: This is debatable, but I've noticed improved speed and accessibility of SMB shares.

Disk Utility: apple's Disk utility gained some additional functionality and makes it quite easy to image a mac. There are better shareware/freeware alternatives, but the built-in functionality is quite nice and should only get better.

Speed: Panther is definitely faster than previous versions.

HFS+ Journaled: Panther allows you to use a journaled file system.

File Vault: You can now encrypt and decrypt yor home folder on the fly. I don't use it because my home directory is too large and degrades performance, but for people who have smaller home directories, it's a wonderful thing.

Labels: If you were a user of pre-OSX macs, you'd most likely know and love labels. It was probably one of the most requested features not included in the original version of OS X. I can't describe how nice it is to be able to label files or folders in different colors to quickly distinguish them or to quickly track changes to the contents of a folder by simply looking to see what files are not a specific color. definitely many uses, although I think the appearance of labels in OS X still needs some work.

Integrated Search Bar: Not necessary but certainly convenient and easier to use than most search utilities in other operating systems

iChat AV: It's hardly C-U-See Me rebranded. iChat AV (Also available for Jaguar, if you're willing to pay) has made video chat easier than any other chat program available today and most reviews have state its quality to be the best as well.

Preview: Preview is Apple's default PDF and image viewer. At the time it was released, Preview was the fastest PD viewer available and in fact, may still be.

Fast User Switch: It's infinitely more accessible and functionally better than the Windows and perhaps even Linux versions of user switching.

I'm sure I can go on about even more changes that I've noticed and find beneficial, the point is that if you're not a Mac user and have not used Panther and a previous version of OS X, then you most likely won't be able to understand how beneficial many of the changes are/were. Besides, those tat don't want or need the new features don't need to upgrade.

Re:Glad to hear it...

[bedouin]

(Here's a little tip, though: When you get your Mac, wipe it and reinstall without the language packs but make sure to include X11 and XCode.

Or he could just use Monolingual [mac.com].

Re:running out of cats.

[Llywelyn]

Not any time soon. They already have Cougar, Lynx, and Leopard, so that promises up through 10.7 (2007) and there are still a few few non-obscure breeds of big cats that they could tap...

Re:A.W.E.S.O.,M - O Says 'lame article'

[Dylan Zimmerman]

OS 6 to 7 marked the change of most of the OS's source from 68k ASM to C. Version 8 was when they switched from 68k to PPC. 8.5 introduced HFS+. Version 9 introduced Carbon, and 10 has Cocoa and other Frameworks. All of these changes were under-the-hood, but they enabled revolutionary changes once programmers started to use them well.

The OS got a facelift in 7 (I think), 8 (Platinum), and 10 (Aqua and now whatever they call the brushed-metal). I'm too young to remember before OS 6, but I remember that it looked slightly different from 7.

If I'm wrong here, someone correct me. If I'm right, please confirm it.

Re:Please tell me they've pamified LoginWindow

[CatOne]

Don't know abput pam_ified, sorry.

But login window is kerberized. Kerberos is the way authentication is being done, so you'd want to kerberize your services. Another pluggable authentication layer would be superfluous.

Re:Troll Posts asside, Apple seems stupid here...

[bonch]

You can't say that about a 1GHz PC running XP!

As a 1GHz user running XP, yes, I can.

Re:Glad to hear it...

[for_usenet]

No need for a complete wipe - check out an app called "Delocalizer" [bombich.com] - which will remove all the additional language packs without re-installation.

I think the author of that code also posted, or made available the "under-the-hood" code that actually does the "heavy work" - namely, running a recursive find for files with the language extensions, and rm -rf'ing them.

Re:Troll Posts asside, Apple seems stupid here...

[jred]

Well, I'm running XP Pro on a p3-600, 256mb RAM. I wish I had more RAM, but other than that it runs ok.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:What's improved?

[proj_2501]

why not use this thingy [sourceforge.net]?

Re:What's improved?

[uid8472]

> > Garbage collection for Cocoa?

> It's already there. It's called an autorelease pool, and it's used extensively throughout Foundation Kit.

Er, no. Autorelease pools are nice, but they're not garbage collection. Real GC [hp.com] has to do with whether an object could ever be accessed, not whether it's marked as retained through manual reference-count annotations. C++ destroys non-static local variables when they go out of scope; that's not GC either.

Now, whether Foundation/AppKit (or, really, CoreFoundation) "should" use GC instead of retain-counting is a separate issue.

Re:A.W.E.S.O.,M - O Says 'lame article'

[Anonymous Coward]

People always misunderstand the Apple versioning scheme. At least since the release of OSX, a .0.1 update is equivalent to a Windows Service Pack. A .1 update is equivalent to the difference between Windows 95 to 98, 98 to Millenium Edition, NT to 2000, or 2000 to XP- in other words, same underlying codebase/technology, various bugfixes, added features, interface/code refinements/enhancements being sold as a "new operating system". When they go to OS 11, we can assume that it'll be as major an upgrade to OSX as WindowsXP would be to Windows 95.

Re:A.W.E.S.O.,M - O Says 'lame article'

[Anonymous Coward]

You're wrong on several points:

* System 6 was written mostly in Pascal.

* The first PowerPC systems shipped with System 7.1.

* The HFS Extended file system was introduced with OS 8.1.

-Apple System Developer Team until 1997 (fuck you, Steve!)

Re:Glad to hear it...

[IAmAMacOSXAddict]

Actually they include all the "extra" apps on the install disks. I agree with the first recomendation, repartition/re-format the drives the way you want and rebuild right off the start...

Bob

Apple user/programmer since 77 (Apple II), Mac User since 89 (Mac SE/30), Wow 27 years is a long time, and I'm only 36!! :)

Re:Yeah!

[ratlater]

Actually WPA auth works well with 10.2. I think the Airport 3.3 update added this functionality.

-matt

Re:Maybe we can get a real mail program this time?

[SideshowBob]

it would be great if Mail joined the rest of the world in finally supporting TLS

It already does. See this:

http://www.cit.cornell.edu/helpdesk/mac/email/os xm ailapp.html

Maybe try Google next time instead of ranting?

Re:10.3 is good for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. 10.1 was a free upgrade from 10.0, but you had to pay for 10.2 and 10.3. The reason 10.1 was a free upgrade was that 10.0 was basically a dressed-up beta. So mark my words: 10.4 won't be a free upgrade. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Re:Wishlist Ideas

[demon]

Include tinyDNS

They can't, due to DJB's license terms. It's the same reason Linux distros don't typically include it - binary distribution isn't allowed, plus they can't release sources with any patches. They'd have to install the developer tools, patch the sources, build, and install, every time you install OS X.. and I don't think that'd go over well with the typical OS X audience.

Re:Biggest Needed Feature In 10.4...

[DiscoOnTheSide]

the mappings already been done. Hold down the option key and start hitting keys. Done.

Re:Wishlist Ideas

[Visigothe]

DO NOT ADD Virtual Desktops as part of the Manager--Add command key options ala NeXTSTEP that commandkey-dblclick autohides ALL OTHER APPS BUT THE ONE YOU WANT TO WORK ON

Actually, if you option-command click on the icon in the doc, you will get this functionality.

Re:What could it be.

[tyrione]

It will never happen, Gecko use that is. They passed on Gecko specifically for the fact KHTML is much lighter and allowed them to augment it without having to fork and blow it up/rip out what they don't like.

Re:Ok, I think everyone's covered what's going in.

[hawaiian717]

Actually, pre-G3 systems have never been able to (officially) run OS X. Since 10.0 at least, I'm not sure about the Public Beta.

Re:And, for us Unix and otherwise nerds

[Bastian]

The release version of X11, inclusion of some minor libraries and tools that add improved GNU compatibility, XCode (though I still don't understand why I can't install this (or X11 for that matter) on 10.2. Except maybe to force me to buy 10.3 =D

Re:Yeah!

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

XCode - Yes
Safari - Yes
iSync - Yes
iTunes - Yes
iLife - No

iLife costs money. Safari, XCode, iSync, iTunes, Windows Media Player, and the .NET framework are free upgrades.

Re:Yeah!

[macdaddy]

The other poster had a good comment. I disagree with your comment though. Beige G3s were introduced in Spring of 98 (actually announced in the Fall of 97 1 month after my 8600/300 arrived). There's no reason for anyone to expect a fancy GUI OS to support 5+ year-old hardware. Nor would you expect any reasonable person to want to run the latest OS on hardware from 6+ years ago. That would be like trying to run Windows XP or Windows 2003 Server on a PII 333. I would only wish a fate like that to a few spammers I know. The B&W line was introduced the next Spring, 99. That makes it 5+ years old. That would equate it to a 450/500 PIII. Still no where near a machine I'd put XP on. 95 or 98, yes. ME never even on a new machine. 2K? If I stripped it down. XP, oh hell no. :) Now I would be happy if Apple managed to include some support for their newer OSs in the not quite so old hardware. That certainly seems reasonable. I think that will be possible thanks to OS X's BSD underpinnings. The OS should at least run slower and the machine need more RAM to run it. That's acceptable.

Economy of Scale and Computer Whiners

[tyrione]

System Pricing:

People seem to repeatively rehash on the notion that spending $129 per .1 incremental OS update is expensive and not worthy of your hard earned funds.

The 10.x Model is very NeXTish in their 2.x, 3.x and 4.x phase of NeXTSTEP/Openstep before we ultimately merged with Apple.

Here is the rub. The Cost for Openstep User was $799, to go from NeXTSTEP 3.2 to 3.3 and to go from NeXTSTEP 3.3 to Openstep 4.0, so on and so forth.

The Developer CDs were $4999.

Educational User was $249. (I bought this package that was both User and Developer, before I went to work at NeXT)

Flashforward and we now get User/Developer for $129.

All I'm hearing is as the price goes down the Whining Increases exponentially.

DO YOU PEOPLE HAVE ANY BALLS?

HOW MANY OF YOU PISS MONEY DOWN THE DRAIN, DAILY?

Answer: ALL OF US

Apple Resources:

We hear people discussing on how Apple has an Army of developers working on OS X.

Unless Steve suddenly changed years of development philosophy that Avie, John, Bertrand, Peter and others brought from NeXT to Apple such statements are PURE FANTASY.

Do most people know that only 12 Principle Architects/Core Developers worked on Openstep? Do most of you know that SQA @NeXT was a group of no more than 25 people (I know I worked in it)? Is it surprising that after the Hardware Days, NeXT kept only 300 employees yearly, world wide? See a pattern?

There are way more 3rd party developers banging away on the Beta code releases than their are in-house building the next release and there always will be.

Too many cooks spoil the soup.

With the emergence of Applications Engineering that houses all these new iLife apps and Professional apps even those teams will be lean and mean.

We all wore several hats at NeXT and at Apple when I worked there. Steve doesn't believe in bloat and when the IT Group alone, during the merger had over 500 employees with the single largest annual budget of over $40 million, not to mention over 180 in-house only applications built, can you take a guess which group got gutted first?

Within all this fat emerged a new Apple and one that will slowly get stronger, as time keeps showing.

P.S. As you can guess I'll spend the $129, and if I had an extra $1299 ($300 early bird registration) to WWDC--the best place for Business Networking within the Apple Dev Community, bar none. MacWorld is like a Rave where discussions of vinyl suited women on motorcycles (Iomega chicks) appears to be more important than Business discussions. If you are serious about being an Entrepreneur on the Mac platform, than get your ass to WWDC 2004.

Re:Yeah!

[John Starks]

That's incorrect. 10.2 and 10.3 both cost $120. We shall see the price of 10.4, but I am betting yet another $120.