Mac OS X "Tiger" Enters Final Candidate Stage 583
Orangez writes "Apppleinsider.com reports that 'Tiger' reaches the final candidate stage. 'With massive software projects such as Tiger, Apple will sometimes seed several final candidate builds before one is declared gold master...'" The final release has widely been speculated to be in the next month or two.
Paying again... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope this release sticks around for a few years and Apple chooses to update it rather than come up with some new cat name and ask people to pay for it. I doubt that, however, since OS updates seems to be a major cash cow for Apple.
They are inadvertently (or purposefully) creating a situation where people are running 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, and now 10.4...makes it very tough for developers. We can't assume that everyone has the money to upgrade their OS all the time (and yes, I know they should).
Upgrade plans for new systems? (Score:3, Interesting)
Running older hardware?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Any word on how it's expected to run on older hardware: meaning, any G4 from the last 4 or 5 years?
Every newer OS X has run better than the previous version on these machines from my experience, and from what I've heard others say. Realistically, how long can that go on though until newer versions start to overwhelm older hardware?
Anyone with their hands on a pre-release version of Tiger have any insight into this?
Re:And the hardware... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Mac Mini (in its default/cheapest config) is perfectly good for surfing the web, checking mail and playing music and DVDs. And it's affordable. I know because I had mine pre-ordered and have been using it ever since it arrived.
Apple's OS software tends to get faster with every release, so you can be sure that Tiger will work fine on a Mac Mini. In fact we have it running on a Mini at work.
If you want a Mac, buy one instead of your next PC. If you really dislike the Mini, iBooks are cheap on E-bay.
Re:before anyone else does it... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other tentacle, this is a case of comparing apples (uh oh) to oranges: OS X is a whole OS, Linux is just the kernel. We should be rather comparing Tiger to, let's say, Debian Woody or Debian Sarge.
Re:And when Tiger is released... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Running older hardware?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Mac OS X is a very young OS, it has been getting better WRT old machines just because first version were painful and there was a lot of places to polish, just like there'd be in any young OS who haven't had time to madurate (a good analogy would be to compare the performance of KDE 2.0 and 3.4)
Re:Paying again... (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't forget the folks running 10.0!
I got off the upgrade bandwagon at 10.2. I have seen various applications that run on 10.2 and 10.3 but not 10.1, so I think the 10.2 move was a good one, but I haven't found a lot of reasons for going to 10.3 for $129. If stuff starts coming out that I want to run and it no longer runs on 10.2, I might think about upgrading. But from the release notes I've seen, it looks like 10.2 and 10.3 are more or less identical from an API point of view, at least for the average application. (Applications don't seem to have separate binaries for the two OS versions.) So if this is the case, developers who support 10.3 will probably inadvertently be supporting 10.2 as well, and so I won't have to worry for a while yet.
Re:Upgrade plans for new systems? (Score:1, Interesting)
My personal gripe about apple... I bought an Imac 19 days before 10.3 Panther was released. Apple refused to give me the new version.
From my experience Apple's customer service reputation is mostly hype. I have dealt with them on several issues and like the one cited above they have fallen flat every time.
But like most people... what? Ooooo... Pretty hardware!
Re:Paying again... (Score:5, Interesting)
They're not. There are some pretty big differences, most notably Bindings, which only work on 10.3, and can save developers a huge amount of drudge word implementing a GUI. Thing is, most apps presently on the market predate Bindings, and switching an app over is a lot of work, so the technology hasn't been widely adopted and a lot of apps still work on 10.2.
With Core Data (which basically takes all the drudge work out of data modeling), Tiger is introducing something almost as significant. Maybe more significant for some apps.
If you're writing an new OS X app now, you'd be crazy not to use Core Data and Bindings -- they'll literally save you hundreds of hours.
Maybe large development houses have the luxury of investing all those hours to support older systems, but small operations and one-man projects generally don't. So, expect to see a lot of new apps from the small guys be Tiger-only.
Re:before anyone else does it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I read in a local PC centric computer mag, that the new sync function requires a
Can someone put my mind to rest on this? This is the biggest feature I am eagerly waiting for. I was going to just use rsync and some scripting, but if Apple has done this, then I imagine it will be much more polished than what I can whip up without a decent effort that results in something which lacks quirks.
Re:before anyone else does it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but for most people CoreImage and CoreVideo is going to be utterly useless. Apple still ships shit, shit, shit video processors on the iBook, Mac Mini and only the latest generation Powerbooks, PMs and iMac have the much-needed Pixel Shader on their GPUs. I'd guess probably 10-20% of the Mac userbase uses a Powerbook latest revision, PM G5, or iMac G5. The iBook was Apple's best selling Mac a few months back and I'm sure that the Mac Mini will replace it.
So are you honestly going to tell me developers are going to bother developing with features that only 10-20% of their already small userbase can use?
Personally I don't see any one feature that Tiger has that I really want. Hopefully it'll be a lot more polished and have some nice performance increases, but the vast majoirty of stuff in Tiger is totally useless to me: I don't need spotlight since I organise my stuff well, I don't use Safari for anything more than basic browsing (I have a perfectly good RSS client already, thanks), I won't be using automator, quicktime or benefiting majorly from the new 'searchable' system preferences.
The only thing I'm really looking forward to is the new version of Mail, but it's not something I would spend $140 on -- I'll be getting it free though.
It's amazing (Score:1, Interesting)
You got to try it!
Re:before anyone else does it... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know anything about whether iSync will require .mac in 10.4, sorry. But I did want to bring a piece of sync software to your attention: Unison. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ [upenn.edu]
It works wonderfully well. It's a little cleverer than rsync in that it will do bi-directional updates (ie syncing) and also merges conflicts if it is able.
I work on two macs and with unison I am pretty much able to work on either one without having to worry about which one is up to date.
I have .mac too and that does a nice job of syncing iCal and Address Book and my Safari bookmarks. But I think Unison would probably do a pretty decent job of that too, although I have not tested that out.
Apparently I didn't whine effectively (Score:3, Interesting)
{rant mode on}
I was very upset to think that they would not offer me the option to upgrade at a discounted rate so soon after I bought a top-of-the-line notebook. I've never dropped $3K on a PC before, and it was shocking.
I subsequently contacted customer relations, the apple store, the apple on line store, and even though I was polite and respectful, I got nowhere.
Today my PowerBook sits running 10.2 and I'm counting the days until I can get the 10.4 discs. A couple of months ago, I was at an Apple store, and told my tale of woe to the employees there while they were demo-ing iLife '05 for me.
I was wowed by iLife '05, and proceeded to buy a copy. I was really frustrated when I got home and it would not install!
Now, before you ding me by saying 'it clearly says 10.3 on the box' remember that I was not dealing with Linux where you'd better check compatibility VERY closely. I was in a high touch sales situation where I expected that the sales team would tell me that the software would not work.
On top of that, I have a PC that is less that 18 months old. I bought the top of the line OS from the vendor, and applications from that same vendor won't run on it? Ridiculous! Even Microsoft doesn't act that way.
I've got apps on Linux that have not been recompiled in 6 years. They run just fine in spite of hardware, kernel, and distribution changes.
The idea that Apple would leave me stranded, and offer me no options other than to drop an additional $129 on 10.3 which will be obsoleted VERY soon seems outrageous!
Oh, and I can't return iLife '05 because I broke the seal on the box. Gotta love Apple's support. I loved the way that during my 90 days of free customer support they told me "we don't support network printing." High touch, and extremely helpful - NOT...
In spite of that, I still love the PowerBook
{rant mode off}
Re:Diminishing Returns (Score:4, Interesting)
You are obviously not a developer
Agreed. Still, I'm grateful it's finally here.
They are not done. CoreData is just being introduced as is SpotLight, CoreImage and CoreVideo. QuickTime is just now being integrated with the Quartz display engine. There are still lots of things to add and make better.
I for one am looking forward to Lion or whatever the next cat's name will be.
It is.
It is.
New widgets and OS features can make you more productive. Just ask some Mac users about Exposé
Andreas
Looking forward to Java JDK5 support (Score:3, Interesting)
I am also interested in playing with Searchlight.
Re:Diminishing Returns (Score:5, Interesting)
That sounds more KDE to me! And that's why I prefer KDE to any other non-OS X UI!
Seriously, the OS X UI and Cocoa frameworks are much cleaner and better thought-out than a munged hodgepodge of paradigms. Apple's value proposition is related to not just the technical underpinnings but the thoughtfulness of design and attention to end users. Apple sweats the interface details.
And the real question now is. . . Where do we go from here? After achieving the OS that everybody wanted 15+ years ago, now Apple's OS team suddenly find themselves without a goal. They've resorted to tacking on a hodgepodge of minor trinkets and calling it a major upgrade. It must be hard to step back and admit that they're done with this OS, and that continually adding new features to it may no longer be the right approach.
I'm not gonna try to push Tiger as a huge innovation, I have sympathy for your point here. However, to a certain extent, if maintaining OS X on the cutting edge (which may be a relatively slow crawl at times, if you're waiting for enough hardware to drive the really revolutionary stuff like voice recog or more miniaturization or whatnot) means putting up with continuous point releases to keep engineers working, that's fine with me. The US gov't does this to a degree with companies like Electric Boat: they don't _need_ new ships all the time, but they need to maintain the ability to build them, and they can't afford to let the skilled people become unavailable. If keeping a solid core of engineers at Apple paid and happy means the occasional softball release, so be it.
And honestly, I don't think Tiger's a softball release. For me, Panther was, and for any particular Macista a particular OSX release may be. But Tiger's got interesting stuff at the framework level, and who knows how useful Spotlight and Dashboard stuff will be?
If it was up to me, I would focus on maintenance, bugfixes, security, optimization. . . and de-emphasize the OS as a product. Put the OS back in its proper place, I say! An operating system shouldn't be a featured product, it should be merely a component -- a part of the computer, just like the hard drive, the RAM, the processor, etc. -- that is required for running applications.
Work for Intel then?
Seriously, when it comes to defining the place for an OS, you have to take the user into account. This attitude is great for hardware folks and embedded developers, but for desktop people it's toxic. As an end user, I want someone _else_ to make a lot of these decisions, because I don't want to waste my time on them. Having an 'advanced user' preference pane to offer finer-grained control of things is nice, but it shouldn't be necessary for normals.
The goal should be to provide a stable, efficient foundation for apps to run on, because apps are where your work gets done.
Sounds like a kernel to me, and Darwin does a pretty decent job of this. Cocoa frameworks also contribute, and Apple's OS releases typically contain a ton of interesting framework improvements (like CoreImage and CoreVideo for Tiger for example.. Imagine realtime SGI-like stream filters for video and image effects) that make upgrading worthwhile (and mandatory for the new apps enabled and/or improved by these new optimized libs).
Re:Running older hardware?! (Score:3, Interesting)
I made the mistake a couple years ago of playing with a Power Mac G4 back when all I had was a 500MHz iBook G3. CompUSA offered a trade-in shortly thereafter (which, frighteningly enough, was nearly market value), and out the door I went with a new Power Mac.
I made the mistake recently of playing with an iMac G5. But I've got other things I need more, so I'm safe from the upgrade bug for the moment. If $1100 magically dropped in my lap, though... That said, the bigger part of my iMac experience was screen envy (I'm stuck at 1024x768 because my freakish eyes see flicker below 85Hz) -- the 20" is downright immersive and the 17" is plenty gorgeous and capacious.
So yes, if you go to the Apple Store, don't touch the computers unless you're shopping for one. Wander around the gadgets and the software and don't make eye contact with the systems. Just plug your ears and shout "la la la" when some customer gasps over how fast the G5 is or how big the display is.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Will it cost money? (Score:3, Interesting)
I understand what you're saying, but a few points:
Re:Question: (Score:2, Interesting)
Well TeX is at 3.141592. Donald Knuth is converging the version number to PI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX/ [wikipedia.org]
Re:before anyone else does it... (Score:2, Interesting)
I paid for the program. As a paying customer, I wish that they'd spend a little more time streamlining their code, and a little less time whining about how Apple stole their idea.
New releases getting *faster* on old hardware? MS? (Score:4, Interesting)
I would think Micro$oft would want to take a look at this....Of course this would mean people wouldn't have to buy PCs as often...I wonder how Micro$oft's relationship with PC makers compares with Apple making their own hardware...
Something to think about. Any thoughts?
Re:Looking forward to Java JDK5 support (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:before anyone else does it... (Score:3, Interesting)
What's great about it (and many of the things Apple has done) is that it uses the fastest available hardware to do the job.
You don't have a GPU that can handle the job, Altivec will do it.
Don't have Altivec, the core of the CPU will do it.
On other systems, either you have to have the hardware "required", or each developer has to handle checking for hardware and writing/optimizing all the code to handle the different configurations.
That's a huge feature IMO. Its not so much doing things that can't be done on "lesser" hardware, its about always using the fastest hardware available for the job.
Re:Yes, you can get an upgrade (probably) (Score:3, Interesting)
How soon after a new Mac OS is released does it appear on new Mac inventory? I assume current Mac Minis ship with Mac OS 10.3.8 installed. How soon after Mac OS X 10.4 is shipped will I be able to buy a Mac Mini with Mac OS 10.4 pre-installed?
Fewer kernel panics, I hope (Score:2, Interesting)
I love OS X but it still isn't quite 100% there as far as stability from my experience.
Re:Looking forward to Java JDK5 support (Score:2, Interesting)
New Hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
There is some new hardware coming out, sometime between "now" and "the end of 2005" (how is that for vague). This new hardware will require extra drivers and code to support some new features. The beta testers have only been able to run Tiger on this hardware, released versions of 10.X don't work much, or at all.
Since releasing Tiger before the hardware is announced means that legions of Mac fanatics will be picking it apart, they will quickly find the code relating to new hardware names. So it is almost a certainty that Apple will release Tiger at the same time they announce the new hardware. The hardware might ship later, but at least it will be announced by the Tiger ship date. Tiger may be announced as much as a month in advance of its ship date, if past announcements are any guide.
So the speculation is centred around which events in Apple's calendar would be good for announcing a new round of hardware upgrades and new models, as well as releasing Tiger. The WWDC has been a favorite target until recently, as it is now approaching rapidly and Tiger is still in beta, MacPsychics are looking further into the summer for good announce dates.
the AC
My money is on the WWDC for a ship date
Re:Yes, you can get an upgrade (probably) (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Looking forward to Java JDK5 support (Score:3, Interesting)
http://developer.apple.com/java/faq/ [apple.com]