Apple Announces Tiger Release Date 981
GatorMarc writes "Well, it's official. Tiger will be released into the wild on April 29th with more than 200 new features, including Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, VoiceOver, Safari RSS, Core Audio, and Core Image." Additional commentary available on ThinkSecret and MacWorld.
From ThinkSecret: (Score:0, Informative)
List of New Features (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/newfeatur
Re:Mac Mini update? (Score:5, Informative)
Mac OS Up-To-Date Program (Score:5, Informative)
Family Pack Still Exists (Score:4, Informative)
What a deal for multiple computer households. I can't wait. I just wish the free update for new Macs was retroactive to January's announcements.
Re:Crap (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Java 5 (Score:4, Informative)
I just called too.... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple Customer Service
1-800-676-2775
Re:Core Image and Mac Mini (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Java 5 (Score:5, Informative)
64-bit doesn't include graphics! (Score:4, Informative)
While that's all well and good and the Unix Way, its disappointing that graphical apps should be hamstrung in such a way. If you need big memory access and OpenGL, you've got quite a few hoops to jump through. As a linux weenie who made the switch, I'm saddened by crumbs we keep getting as Apple strings us along towards 64-bit land. Linux has been 64-bit for a very long time now and even Microsoft's 64-bit XP is fully 64-bit including graphics.
At least my G5 is still the 'world's fastest personal computer'.
Re:I've ordered mine :) (Score:3, Informative)
Still under NDA (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, some real tests need to be done, but it's looking good so far.
--
Join the Pyramid - Free Mini Mac [freeminimacs.com]
Re:Please explain (Score:5, Informative)
Re:bonjour? (Score:5, Informative)
hot damn! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mail.app subscriptions? (Score:4, Informative)
What's the problem? If you go to "Advanced" settings for an IMAP account, there's a box that you can check for:
"Automatically synchronize changed mailboxes"
Works OK for me...
Re:Mac Mini update? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Adieu to Tray-Load iMacs (Score:4, Informative)
New Feature: XGrid (Score:2, Informative)
Xgrid takes advantage of the power of distributed computing with Xgrid, Apple's easy-to-use tool that turns a group of Macs into a supercomputer.
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these...
Re:Rendezvous axed... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Panther Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)
Re:iPhoto, iMovie removed? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still no Java 1.5? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Department (Score:2, Informative)
More appropriate would have been D, DF, F+high punch or high kick for a "Tiger!" energy wave.
Re:Upgrade or clean install? (Score:1, Informative)
Just do an upgrade, and make sure to select the option that lets you preserve your current home directory and system settings. The Dock may rearrange itself, but you shouldn't see any other major changes.
Re:Panther Upgrade (Score:3, Informative)
Failing that, you have a 30-day money back guarantee with a new Mac, so you can always send it back and get a replacement with Tiger bundled (or just email / 'phone them and tell them that you are going to do this if they don't send you a Tiger upgrade, and see if they agree).
Re:Reviews? (Score:3, Informative)
- Preview now reads Adobe DNG images.
- Preview now reads RAW images.
- Built-in no internet connection needded dictionary.
- Built-in language translator.
- Built-in flight tracker.
- Envelope printing from Address Book.
- Fax status in the menu bar.
- Built-in unit conversion.
- Burn folders.
- Preview slide show (the only reason I still keep Graphics Converter around).
- Inline Safari PDF viewing (about time).
- Wireless image capture.
- Jabber IM support.
- Firewall stealth mode.
- Burn DVDs for other file systems.
Unfortunately, some of the 200 new features that Apple claims on this page [apple.com] are duplicates, or things that were already implemented, like Bluetooth headset support (I've been doing that in Panther for almost eight months). But still, there are a lot of reasons to upgrade, even if you don't have the latest greatest hardware.
Re:Can't Wait (Score:3, Informative)
you should upgrade (Score:1, Informative)
It has been a strictly Apple phenomena that newer version of OS X run faster on old hardware.
I wish this were true for any X86 OS.
google for it. I have to go and pick my son up at daycare but you will find it.
Re:List of New Features (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Upgrade or clean install? (Score:5, Informative)
That's actually the method I used to upgrade my Powerbook from Jaguar to Panther, and it worked almost flawlessly. (The only issue was that my Palm HotSync Manager stopped working, but a reinstall of the Palm software fixed that.) I'd personally say it's the best way to cleanly upgrade your system and maintain your current settings.
If you want more info on Archive and Install (as of Panther), just click here [apple.com].
Just my $.02...
With correct math (Score:3, Informative)
Just to correct the strange math in the parent post:
DVD (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Core Image/Core Audio (Score:5, Informative)
I'm gonna make this fast because I'm sick of writing the same comment in every Tiger article. Core Image is Apple's implementation of hardware-accelerated 2D image processing. It's comparable to SGI's ImageVision Library, which you should look up right now.
Core Audio is a hyperlow-latency audio-processing framework.
Neither of these things is in any way related to Direct X, Open GL, or any form of 3D programming.
Re:EDU pricing? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Still under NDA (Score:5, Informative)
After the one-time full indexing, files will be indexed as they're created on-the-fly.
Re:Adieu to Tray-Load iMacs (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reviews? (Score:2, Informative)
Of course, on such an old machine you wouldn't expect all the glory of Aqua, but I appreciate how Apple designed the OS to degrade gracefully. By default, Tiger comes up on our box at an sh prompt.
Re:Liger (Score:3, Informative)
Re:JPEG2000 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Apple envy (Score:2, Informative)
- The firewall isn't just turned on by default, it was improved. It has an advantage over a third party software firewall in that its turned on before the ethernet device and turned off after the ethernet device, so its on the entire time your connected.
- Security Center is a centralized location to check status of firewall, anti-virus, and windows updates.
- IE6 now has an add-on manager, blocks pop-ups, and monitors downloads to protect against downloading malware
- Outlook Express has updated spam-blocking features
- "out of the box" wireless support
- Support for the NX bit. The NX bit has only very recently been available on a x86 platform.
Since most of these cover things that weren't around yet or problems 10 years ago, it's disingenous saying that they should have been resolved 10 years ago.Re:Upgrade or clean install? (Score:3, Informative)
This takes your
Note, that your
Then, when the OS installs, it replaces any items
The magic lies in letting it also restore your users. Your
Because the filesystem is pretty strongly 'scoped', an archive & install essentially swaps out your current
You'll find it a very reliable process. There's rarely any need to re-initialise (think 'format') the entire drive. I'd recommend backing up
I've only once started from a completely clean drive -- and that's because I replaced the system drive with a larger capacity unit. That's in 3 1/2 years of Mac use, upgrading (using Archive & Install) all the way from 10.0.3 to 10.3.8.
Short story -- Archive & Install works very well indeed, and should do exactly what you're after. Enjoy the fact that the system enforces clear divisions between System, Applications, and User Data & Settings.
Re:Reviews? (Score:1, Informative)
On the build I have (8A425, one of the lasts if I'm not mistaken) it's actually a noticably bit faster. Some stuff hangs around a bit (especially when I start to log into the shares on my Windows box. Hopefully they'll fine tune the net stack, for some reason it seems to get bogged down. There used to be a massive memory leak in Tiger back in the WWDC release, where you couldn't be on wireless more than about 30 minutes until the connectivity sputtered out, but they've definately made some progress.
Info about Widgets (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.dashboardlineup.com/ [dashboardlineup.com]
Re:Family Pack Still Exists (Score:2, Informative)
Mac OS X 1.4 Tiger [amazon.com]
Rebate Form [amazon.com]
They were cool (Score:4, Informative)
Apple you rock
Re:FINK with Tiger? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Upgrade or clean install? (Score:3, Informative)
If you don't know what's in there, app reinstalls work just as well.
Tiger Available on CD-ROM (extra cost) (Score:2, Informative)
(I don't know if the family pack is dual-media.)
Re:H.323 in ichat (Score:3, Informative)
Re:[CD-ROM Version of Tiger Avaiable] (Extra Cost) (Score:2, Informative)
(I don't know if the family pack is dual media.)
Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics! (Score:3, Informative)
Your 64 bit KDE does the same "silly
In the case of AMD64 and Intels clone the architecture gains new capabilities beyond just 64 bit integer math and addressing support. For example it gains additional registers that programmers can use. This results in the ability of 64 bit applications on AMD64 to actually run faster then a 32 bit equvalent (focus on just 64 bit pointers).
In the case of PPC the architecture was designed from the start to support 64 bit and it always has had 4x the usable registers as x86 architecture and I believe close 2x what AMD64 supports.
So the side benefit that you see with AMD64 doesn't take place with PPC since PPC already had it. The means that switching an application to 64 bit on PPC can actually degrade its performance since you have no side benefits coming into play to offset the loss do to having to pass around pointers twice as large (focusing on 64 bit pointers here because as of the G5/PPC970 Mac OS X application have been able to use 64 general and integer math, the later aspect of the G5 can greatly increase performance of some classes of application).
Re:Not yet in Mail.app (Score:3, Informative)
Woohoo!
Re:I've ordered mine :) (Score:3, Informative)
I use OS X almost exclusively through my tablet and used Ink for "typing" when I first got my Powerbook. It worked fabulously, and the only reason I switched back to keyboard was because I finally realised that I can actually type faster than I can write.
Re:In in! (Score:5, Informative)
Taft
Re:Upgrade or clean install? (Score:3, Informative)
I've even upgraded to bigger drives without having to do a full install. Carbon Copy Cloner [bombich.com] will quite happily copy your boot disk to another drive that you can have sitting, say, temporarily in an external USB or FW enclosure. When it's done, you power off, replace the boot drive with the new one and you're done.
Re:Adieu to Tray-Load iMacs (Score:3, Informative)
Tiger, iLife '05, iWork for $249 (Score:1, Informative)
The offer is only available directly from Apple [apple.com].
Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics! (Score:3, Informative)
Your missing the point once again. 32bit UI is faster and that is what the average user will care about. This all doesn't mean that the application can't take advantage of 64 bit pointers. It just means that Apple's interface elements were not upgraded to use 64bit pointers. There are still methods for allowing these pro apps to use 64bits in their complex computation. My guess is that the pro apps will have a 32bit GUI that talks to a 64bit backend with something similar to what apple refers to as Shared Objects now. This way you have your 64bits for complex computation and your 32bit fast GUI, the best fo both worlds
Remember: 64bits doesn't make computing 1+1 faster, but it makes computing (2^32) + 1 faster
Re:Core Image/Core Audio (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Core Image/Core Audio (Score:2, Informative)
That, and the fact that GLSL is part of OpenGL itself. ;-) Seriously, CoreImage uses OpenGL's GLSL/fragment program capability, it doesn't write directly to the GPU or bypass OpenGL or other nonsense. (I'm an OSX programmer, specifically games.)
RendezVous may not be 'new' but its GREAT! (Score:3, Informative)
Why don't I read more about ZeroConf here?
I love being able to print to any printer that's hooked up to any machine.
I love being able to get my tunes from and to any machine that's running iTunes (2 Macs and a Win2k, [my Linux box is deficient there.])
RevdezVous is great use of the technology.
Re:In in! (Score:1, Informative)
Re: Apple envy (Score:5, Informative)
Yes you can. Just do a force quit (Command + Option + Esc), select the Finder, and click Restart. The Finder will terminate and restart.
Re:Core Data (Score:1, Informative)
Nope. Core Data, like Cocoa Bindings before, are the bait for developers. It's almost too good to pass up. So, you make your app only work on 10.4, giving people more incentive to upgrade, Apple wins, developers win, users pay ~130, but they still win.
Re:Upgrade or clean install? (Score:3, Informative)
Unlike Windows, MacOS X upgrades tend to be pretty clean. If they go bad, though, they're catastrophic (FileVault, anyone?).
These days, I tend to back up, clean-install everything, drop all my documents back, and reinstall my 3rd-party apps. But archive & install does work pretty well (I did that on another one of my Macs). The only reason to clean install is the upgrade process seems to use more disk space than a clean install (old files?).
ENjoy!
Re:H.323 in ichat (Score:3, Informative)
No, you don't. Many pro videoconferencing systems use IP addresses to connect directly.
Apple says you can use either a
Allow me to use my own server, instead of relying on Apple or AOL?
Re:In in! (Score:3, Informative)
That is unfortunately not true. They have access to your address book and other local data that it would be criminally negligent[1] if it were available from Safari-displayed web pages. Since I don't believe Apple is that stupid, I don't believe that they are just web pages.
[1] I'm not speaking figuratively here, I mean someone should go to jail if they've screwed it up this badly after all this time...
Re:64-bit doesn't include graphics! (Score:5, Informative)
Please note that "64-bit" encompasses two completely different things:
Note that you can already use 64-bit registers and do 64-bit math. This is more of a compiler issue than an operating system issue. (The only change needed to the kernel is to save the full contents of the registers on context switching, rather than only the low 32 bits.)
What would 64-bit pointers give you if you could use them?
How many apps actually need to address more than 4GB of RAM at once? Usually they're only doing that if they are dealing with big files. A process using 32-bit pointers can do this using mmap() and if used correctly the kernel can load the whole file into RAM (if possible) and just adjust virtual memory tables so that the same chunk of 32-bit address space points at different parts of the file as needed. The app just has to make the right mmap() call to cause the kernel to shuffle around the virtual memory mappings to change which physical page is mapped onto which virtual page in that process's virtual memory.
If you do need 64-bit addressing for some reason (although it's extremely rare for it to be actually necessary, nearly everything can just mmap() files instead), then fork off a separate process and let it do whatever needs to be done with that huge amount of RAM. Use your favorite form of IPC or shared memory to talk to that process.
What does Tiger give us that's not already in Panther? Well, all apps will see some performance improvement as various system libraries now use 64-bit operations for arithmetic where appropriate. Processes using 64-bit pointers now have some important libraries available, most notably libsystem (Apple's combined libc and libm) which was not available for processes using 64-bit pointers in Panther. Not all libraries are available in 64-bit versions (Carbon and Cocoa, for example) but there's no good reason for them to be. There's no good reason for it. Apps run slower when using 64-bit addressing on current systems, so only those rare processes which really need the extra addressing space should be using it, and user interface code certainly doesn't fall into that category.
Apple's information on 64-bit computing in Tiger is available here [apple.com].
So you see, the full capabilities of your 64-bit CPU are being used. 64-bit math is up to the application writer to use the appropriate compiler options (and in Tiger the system libraries will also use 64-bit math internally) whereas 64-bit addressing is already used by the kernel (even in Panther) to handle virtual memory, allowing the use of more than 4 GB of RAM (although most processes will use 32-bit addressing and will thus be limited to only 4GB each).
Re:H.323 in ichat (Score:1, Informative)
Allow me to use my own server, instead of relying on Apple or AOL?
Well, then you could always buy a copy of Mac OS X Tiger Server. From http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/ [apple.com] :
iChat Server
To ensure secure instant messaging in your organization, Tiger Server enables you to host a private iChat Server that integrates with your existing directory services for user accounts and authentication. iChat Server uses the XMPP protocol popularized by the open-source Jabber project and SSL/TLS encryption to protect internal communications. And because it's based on open standards, iChat Server works with Tiger's iChat AV and with popular Jabber clients on Windows, Linux and PDAs.
Re:In in! (Score:1, Informative)
Some widgets (like the address book) contain actual plug-in code for local data access and will display (but but access records) within the browser. I just tested this.
Others (like the weather widget) are pretty much purely html, css and javascript and can display and work within the browser. Also tested.
It appears that Apple has already thought of the security implications.
Re:Reviews? (Score:5, Informative)
A slightly longer answer is No, but you can effectively disable it by simply excluding all or most of your system from the spotlight database.
The spotlight Preference Module contains a Privacy Tab. In this panel, you can add directories which are to be excluded from the index database. Presumably, adding / here would suffice to both save disk space and ongoing CPU costs. However, doing so broadly seems rather pointless. Certainly if you have confidential data on a network accessible volume you would be prudent to omit it. Likewise, if you have a subtree containing a large database, or collection of large files whose content is not usefully presented by spotlight, It might be worth excluding them.
On the whole, though, the incremental cost of maintaining the index is trivial and is correlated to the addition/modification of the files. This, in most environments, is both sporadic and requires negligible CPU and disk resources. If parts of your workflow have a file access pattern which makes spotlight less valuable to you, simply tailor spotlight to meet your needs.
Also, both system wide, and application specific spotlight queries are astonishingly efficient. Performing real time queries and displaying the results uses very little CPU and happens quite quickly. Even long queries (lasting seconds) do not appear onerous, since the result list is updated frequently as the search occurs, and incremental results are available.
The user decides which kinds of data are displayed for searches, and can tailor searches to a subset of volumes or systems when multiple disk (and remote volumes) are mounted.
Anyway, you can tailor the system to index less (or effectively nothing). Doing so, however, is unlikely to be of benefit. The system once primed appears so efficient that you would not save enough disk/time to make it worth your while. I suggest that rather than worrying about how to disable it to save processor cycles, you try it out for awhile and discover how it can save your brain cycles.
Spotlight is not a specific function or program. Rather it is a pervasive system. The base system provides a daemon which creates an initial index of all files, and subsequently handles requests for updating new or modified files. This process runs heavily niced in the background. While you can access a general Spotlight query tool using Command-Space, the real benefit of spotlight is its pervasiveness. Use the spotlight tool in the Preferences app to find out where a particular setting lives. (Note that Windows converts searching for a Windows-centric name will be presented with the Mac-centric counterpart.) Likewise in mail, the finder, and other programs, spotlight is available to help you find the context specific data you seek. Since developers can easily create spotlight plugins to parse data formats and export metadata, expect that most future applications will integrate well with the system.
It is important to note, that I found spotlight to be quite useful for a number of tasks, even though I only used it sporadically for testing purposes. Thus, I am inclined to be favorably biased towards it. On the other hand, I usually use a dual G5 Powermac and a fairly recent G4 17" powerbook. The fact that most of my use of spotlight was on a 400Mhz G3 powerbook suggests that my assessment of its efficiency is likely credible.
As always your time and your mood are the only true measures of a software tool, not my opinion.
Re:Dashboard (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In in! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Core Image and Mac Mini (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Apple envy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Still under NDA (Score:4, Informative)
I can "first-and-a-half-hand" report 2 hours to index about 55 GB on a powerbook. After that, it is indeed quite fast.
Re:In in! (Score:3, Informative)
Shit. We are going to be SO boned when people figure out how to fake out the Safari equivalent of security zones.
Re: Apple envy (Score:4, Informative)
Well, that's a universal problem with any networked file system, including NFS and SMB.
The problem (as I understand it) is that you have all these network file system calls happening in kernel mode; if one of these calls takes a long time to complete or timeout, the process is stuck in kernel mode and cannot be killed.
The "no kill" problem happens on any OS, including Mac, Linux, and Windows. Try this on Windows: Open notepad, Select File->Open, and type \\google.com\foo. Notepad will hang for 5 minutes, and Task Mananger will not be able to kill it.
Using a network file system over an unreliable network is very painful. I used to blame Windows for this, but it really is a universal problem.
The unique problem with OS X is that there is only one Finder process, and most other applications depend on this process in some way. If Finder gets stuck in a system call and cannot be killed, your desktop becomes quite unusable. Microsoft has mitigated this problem somewhat in XP by running multiple Explorer.exe processes; it's harder to get the desktop and taskbar to hang, but it's still easy to lock up individual Explorer processes.
I access network drives on my Mac all the time without any trouble. But you're right, if the network goes down it is perhaps more of a pain than it needs to be.
Re:H.323 in ichat (Score:3, Informative)
The version of iChat in Tiger supports Jabber servers. (They're bundling a Jabber server in Tiger Server, in fact.)
You only have to use AOL or .Mac screennames if you want to talk to the AIM server.
On your local subnet you don't need any central server .. iChat can use Bonjour (formerly known as Rendezvous) to do peer discovery.
Re:RendezVous may not be 'new' but its GREAT! (Score:3, Informative)
In this type of office setup, it makes so much more sense to integrate rendezvous into anything that would benefit from collaboration, as your apps can see whoever else is running the app, and provide a dynamic way for finding and communicating with colleagues.
I believe subthaedit (or another mac editor) already uses this to enable people to work on the same document/code/etc at the same time.
Reasons why it is amazingly cool... (Score:4, Informative)
QuickSilver was written by an individual who orignally developed the app for himself and then decided to share it with everyone. I imagine he'll (some day) make it shareware, but it's free till then.
Did you look at the Preview page? [blacktree.com] It gives a nice, simple explanation of some of the abilities of QS.
But I digress
The reason that it isn't described well is because it cannot be easily or simply described.
Instead, let me give you a few details.
For example, if I select a document on my desktop, I can pick "e-mail" then select from my address book who to e-mail [blacktree.com] (just by typing part of their name) and QS will launch mail, start a new e-mail and attach the file I selected. You can even FTP this way too [blacktree.com].
All that said, you cannot really understand how QuickSilver will improve your OS X experience until you use it. I cannot live without it and often find myself wanting a Windows version as well. Give it a try - it's a drag/drop install and is removed just as easily.
I recommend the plugins [blacktree.com]: Mail, Clipboard (adds multiple clipboards), iTunes, Flashlight, Dictionary, Address Boook and Calculator. Most of these can be installed automatically when you run the app the first time if you choose.