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OS X Businesses Operating Systems Apple

Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Preview at WWDC 935

Posted by CmdrTaco from the isn't-that-special dept.
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."
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Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Preview at WWDC More

Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" Preview at WWDC

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  • cats? (Score:4, Funny)

    by metallikop ( 649953 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:29PM (#9052427)
    I think Steve has a thing for large cats. Whatever happened to the rest of the animal kingdom?

  • Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cuijian ( 110696 ) * on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:29PM (#9052437)
    Apple is on a roll! From Cnet:

    http://news.com.com/2100-1045_3-5205185.html?tag =n efd.top

    If Tiger goes on sale this year, it would mark the company's fifth version of Mac OS X in five years. In the same period, Microsoft has released one major version of Windows--XP--along with various updates. Longhorn, the next major release of Windows, is not expected until the middle of 2006, at the earliest.

    • Re:Yeah! (Score:3, Informative)

      by CelticLo ( 575344 )
      errr
      Windows 2000
      Windows XP
      Windows Server 2003
      All released in the last five years.

      Then theres the free service packs...

      • Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Informative)

        by jlaxson ( 580785 ) * <(moc.cam) (ta) (nosxalj)> on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:01PM (#9052919) Journal
        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:Yeah! (Score:5, Funny)

          by bahamat ( 187909 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @02:33PM (#9054354) Homepage
          On Apple Input Peripherals: They're okay, I guess, but I was really hoping for a one-key keyboard and a 109-button mouse

          No, you set them on the wrong side of the desk. The little round thing is the keyboard and the big long flat thing is the mouse.

        • Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Funny)

          by bfg9000 ( 726447 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @04:37PM (#9056041) Homepage Journal
          Okay, this is sad. We're arguing to see who has the most service packs?

          oh, and btw,

          kernel 2.6.0.0.1 kernel 2.6.0.0.2 kernel 2.6.0.0.25 kernel 2.6.0.0.3 kernel 2.6.0.0.311 kernel 2.6.0.0.325 kernel 2.6.0.0.3658 kernel 2.6.0.0.542 kernel 2.6.0.0.5687 kernel 2.6.0.0.589 kernel 2.6.0.0.654 kernel 2.6.0.0.658 kernel 2.6.0.0.695 kernel 2.6.0.0.7 kernel 2.6.0.0.725 kernel 2.6.0.0.7526 kernel 2.6.0.0.795 kernel 2.6.0.0.79889 kernel 2.6.0.0.851 kernel 2.6.0.0.91 kernel 2.6.0.0.952 kernel 2.6.0.0.961 kernel 2.6.0.1.125 kernel 2.6.0.1.254

          etc.

          And that concludes day one before lunch break.

      • Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by GFLPraxis ( 745118 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:10PM (#9053072) Homepage Journal
        By the time Tiger comes OUT, Windows 2000 will no longer be a release in the last 5 years.

        Service packs don't count- They're about the equivilant of the 10.3.x combined patches from Apple.

        Windows Server 2003 doesn't count either, *unless* you want to count servers.

        If you want to count servers, then we can count the Mac OS X Server editions...

        Meaning Apple will have released TEN operating systems (Mac OS X 10.0, Mac OS X Server, Mac OS X 10.1, Mac OS X Server 10.1, Mac OS X 10.2, Mac OS X Server 10.2, you get the picture) in the time it took Microsoft to release two...

        • Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)

          by WhiteBandit ( 185659 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @02:32PM (#9054347) Homepage
          Meaning Apple will have released TEN operating systems (Mac OS X 10.0, Mac OS X Server, Mac OS X 10.1, Mac OS X Server 10.1, Mac OS X 10.2, Mac OS X Server 10.2, you get the picture) in the time it took Microsoft to release two...

          Interesting point!

          If quantity and release cycle determines who makes the best software, I think we should all bow to Mandrake. They've released about 100 operating systems in the last 5 years!

          Hell, I think they've released at least TEN operating systems in the last year!

          8.0, 8.1, 8.2, 9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 10.0.............

          Take that you Mac fanatics! ;)

        • Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @02:54PM (#9054625) Homepage Journal
          10.0 is a joke and 10.1 replaced it. Arguably, 10.1 was also a joke, and 10.2 was the first really usable version of OS X. (I know many people did just fine with 10.1, but it definitely had major "issues". 10.2 is arguably the first release where they got it "right", round about 10.2.3.

          Windows users generally don't count server, home, and professional as different versions. If you did there would be windows 2000 pro, server, advanced server, and data center, then xp media center, home, and professional; there's seven versions alone. We also don't count service packs which Microsoft is happy to provide to us free of additional charge, unlike paying $129 to go from 10.1 to 10.2 - essentially a mandatory upgrade what with all the software which requires 10.2 or later. The service packs lie somewhere in between the minor and tiny version upgrades (n.x.y, where n is major, x is minor, and y is tiny) of OS X, in that they both provide new features and include bug fix roll-ups. (better than bug-fix leather any day.)

          Releasing more often is not necessarily a good sign. Microsoft often releases new features with service packs (such as the upcoming enhancements to the XP firewall, which is more than just turning it on by default) which don't cost you anything to just download from windows update.

          Now granted, I believe OS X to be a superior operating system to Windows in essentially every way but hardware support, but the fact that they release early and often is not the benefit it would be if the releases didn't cost anything, as they do with free and open software.

    • Re:Yeah! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Smitty825 ( 114634 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:46PM (#9052695) Homepage Journal
      I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. It's nice to get new features every year, plus other benefits (more optimized kernel, etc), but each of these releases costs $129! A quick look through Apple's OS X site reveals no details on how long the OS will be supported.

      IIRC, Windows XP Pro costs $199 (for an upgrade), and has been fully supported for those five years, plus MS does have a fairly straight forword support policy for their older OS's.

      (Note: I'm not trying to argue the relative merits of each OS, but just to point out that 5 releases in 5 years might not be a good thing)

      • Re:Yeah! (Score:4, Informative)

        by MoneyT ( 548795 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:07PM (#9053004) Journal
        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:Yeah! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:30PM (#9053439) Homepage Journal
        (Note: I'm not trying to argue the relative merits of each OS, but just to point out that 5 releases in 5 years might not be a good thing)

        Look at it another way. The alternative offered by certain other companies is a subscription based model whereby you have to renew each year or get locked of the system, even if they didn't do anything improve the system in the meantime.

        On the other hand, Apple provides a solution whereby you but the OS and then have the choice to follow the updgrade cycle or stick with what you have. Each has advantages and disadvantages. The one thing that I believe this approach ensures, is a) you see what your money is giving you and b) the developers concentrate on making improvements to a smaller number of features, so making QA that much easier to attain.

        Yes I am a Mac user. $129 is a fair bit to pay per year, but I pay that sort of price on some magazine subscriptions, so it works out be an okay price, comparatively.

      • New APIs, Faster (Score:5, Insightful)

        by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @03:42PM (#9055229)
        Each year we seem to buy machines in May (just in time to miss the free upgrade for the OS), get OS on a developer machine, update our in-house applications, roll out across our small office.

        Yeah, it costs money, but we've gotten functionality and improvements that have made our in-house applications faster and more reliable, so I'm happy.

        Also, there is no obligation to buy the upgrades, we were going to skip Panther, but then Expose was so incredible, we upgraded all our developers. Instead of building on Panther to deploy on Jaguar, we just bought a bunch of Jaguar updates.

        The Jaguar Server -> Panther Server was an INCREDIBLE change, and I look forward to Tiger Server for more polish.

        So it's a GOOD thing. Customers get the option of getting new features/more productive, and Apple Shareholders get to increase earnings by selling more to the same (or slightly shrinking) market.

        So rather then fighting for marketshare, Apple is selling more/customer.

        So all around, it's a good thing.

      • I'll Gladly Drop $129 (Score:5, Insightful)

        by wls ( 95790 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @06:40PM (#9057501) Homepage
        When I upgrade Microsoft, I feel like I'm simply getting patches and ugly window dressing. When I upgrade Apple, I feel like I'm getting tons of new features and capabilities. Bottom line, Apple is providing significant value -- I'm willing to put hard money behind that kind of corporate behavior. The complaint I have toward Microsoft is that I don't get $200 worth of value, productivity, interest, or entertainment for the price tag. In fact, the XP "experience, the licensing, and lack of new features has turned me off from using Microsoft until I absolutely have to. Apple, who seems to trust their users not to pirate, gladly gets my repeat business. And will continue to do so.

  • What's improved? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LittleLebowskiUrbanA ( 619114 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:31PM (#9052466) Homepage Journal
    All I can think of is better browsing of Windows/Samba networks. That's it. Panther does everything I need it to do and quietly and competently.

    • Re:What's improved? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SewersOfRivendell ( 646620 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:45PM (#9052679)
      Come on, you're not even trying. A decent, powerful, extensible Finder replacement (cf PathFinder)? A more flexible dock for us power users (DragThing is invaluable, but there's no way to replace the Dock itself for things like notifications, icon updates, minimized windows)? Ability to "check out" home directories from a server? Polishing more of the rough edges off Xcode and the other bundled apps? More consistent UI (eliminate -- or make universal -- the metal abomination)? A universal metadata layer so that everyone can -- for example -- easily and simply access iPhoto and iTunes attributes on files? A Cocoa component architecture for sharing third-party Cocoa views? Garbage collection for Cocoa? Support for PDF annotations in Preview?

    • Re:What's improved? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:55PM (#9052844) Homepage
      How about doing what KDE has been doing for years? When I log out of my KDE user account or I reboot all of the applications that were open when I left start up when I log back in. Even better applications like Konq even load the tabs/websites back up! If OS X is all about consistency then this feature will be there soon. How about your editor loading up the file that you were working on when you quit? How about your terminal loading up the tabs and even the directories you were in when you left!

      -Benjamin Meyer
      • And if you get a rogue app' that hogs all your cpu how do you get rid of it? Re-booting don't work- it just starts up again! Personally I'd prefer my OS not to do that.

  • Cat Got Your Tounge? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:32PM (#9052472)
    So, my question is, what the heck does Apple do when they run out of large cat names for their OS? Or, are they going to start naming it after the domestic versions of our feline friends?

    ...I don't know...somehow "Russian Blue" just doesn't have the same kind of ring to it...

  • I may skip this one ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) * on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:35PM (#9052508) Homepage Journal
    Mac OS point releases seem to have an even-odd curse just like Star Trek movies, only the other way around: the odd-numbered ones are much better. 10.0: unusable. 10.1: a huge improvement. 10.2: eh. 10.3: very nice. So maybe I'll wait for 10.5.

    This trend goes back to at least the System 7 days, in my experience.

    • Re:I may skip this one ... (Score:4, Informative)

      by ev1lcanuck ( 718766 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:46PM (#9052711)
      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).

  • Glad to hear it... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hot_Karls_bad_cavern ( 759797 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:35PM (#9052523) Journal
    ...and here's why: After this last semester of dealing with linux and windows in the house, cheap x86 hardware, school, and work, I HAVE HAD IT!

    i will be buying Apples for both me and my girlfriend and an older dualproc Sun server to chain SCSI drives off of.

    I HAVE HAD IT WITH SHIT NOT WORKING OUT OF THE BOX, FIRST TIME! i am not dealing with Windows nor linux for any of our serious design work anymore. i know this a massive linux crowd here, and honestly, i really love linux for my firewall and server stuff and my run Gentoo on the Sun (doubt it though...gentoo-sparc is nice, but Solaris 9/10 it ain't).

    i don't have the time to fuck about with things anymore. i have to be able to plug it in, turn it on, and let people get to work. i say more power to Apple and they can have some of my cash too. You take the power of *nix (yes, i know what is under the Apple hood, i'm speaking general here) and put a slick, smooth, beautiful, easy-to-use GUI on top, have Adobe compile the must-have apps for it and i'll buy. Apple has done this. Now i will buy. And no, i don't have loads of cash laying around, i'm going to have to scrape to do this, but you know what? It's worth it.

    • Re:Glad to hear it... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by greygent ( 523713 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:44PM (#9052665) Homepage
      I carry a similar train of thought. I fuck with shit all day at work (as a net/sys admin drone) and when I come home, I certainly don't want to fuck with more stuff.

      However, UNIX is my bread and butter and I prefer a UNIX environment. Bam! Apple walks onto the scene with perhaps the best GUI (imho) on top of a UNIX environment. I'm in love.

      Warning: This post may contain gratuitous expletives. If you are offended by such material, please do not continue reading this post. Thanks.

    • Re:Glad to hear it... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:47PM (#9052732) Homepage
      You should do what I did: buy a Mac to go alongside an XP desktop and a Linux server at home. I'm vehemently against "switching", but I'm more than happy to "try multiple things". No point getting pigeonholed into a single OS.

    • Preach on, Brothah Karl! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by revscat ( 35618 ) *
      That is the Word right there, my brother! My last straw was when I got my wife a laptop for her grad school work, decided I'd put Linux + OO.org on it for her. She likes her music, and listens to headphones while she works. Long story short, I found out that in order to get Linux to work with the laptop's (proprietary) soundcard, I would have had to recompile the freaking kernel.

      Uh-uh. No thank'ee. I ain't got neither the desire nor the time for that shit. I just want something that freaking WORKS.

      So I in

      • Re:Preach on, Brothah Karl! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by rabel ( 531545 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:12PM (#9053117)
        Even though they say it's a no-no in Usenet land... "Me Too!"

        I'm piping up just so all the Linux heads can see that we're out there. Before you complain, know that I have no problem compiling the Kernel, I have a couple of Linux boxes running web sites in my home server closet and a very active postfix mail server servicing a bunch of different purposes and etc.

        I'm no expert, but then again, I don't want to be. My 13 year old daughter has an iMac and an iPod and she loves them. I'm a convert. My next "main box" will be an iMac or a G5 or something, especially now that I'm getting into the digital video thing.

        In any event, thank you Apple for saving me from Config File Hell. I'm sick of editing obscure, unique, hidden freaking config files, recompiling this and that and all the rest of the headaches associated with using Linux. I want the security and performance of *nix, with the ease of Windows. That means, OS X.

    • Re:Glad to hear it... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Paulrothrock ( 685079 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:56PM (#9052849) Homepage Journal
      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:Glad to hear it... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bdowne01 ( 30824 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:41PM (#9053580) Homepage Journal
      ME THREE

      I started using a mac cautiously about 3 years ago, and haven't looked back. I finally convinced my boss to get me a singleproc-G5 for the sysadmin drone work I do for a living.

      I think it has something to do with getting older and gaining more non-computer related responsibilites (kids, houses, in-laws :) but the last think I want to see when I go to check why Countrywide didn't get my mortgage payment is something wrong with mmap() for 000EFx768 on DIMM B J3200. Ya know?

      Yes PC fans, Apple hardware is generally more expensive. But two factors make it worth the extra dough:

      1) It works. No complaints, no "my video card has a conflict with the on-board video/NIC IRQ"

      2) Apple users are willing to pay a little more for quality and consistancy. The difference between a typical auto and a luxury auto.

      Overall, there's nothing wrong with PC's, and Unix/Linux in general. They have their place, but for me personally having a machine that I can seamlessly pull in DV of my nephew from my camcorder and turn out a DVD-R in a few minutes? Record a quick riff that I have stuck in my head and take it to practice? All with no drivers, no kernel recompiles, or package dependancies? Priceless.

      It's worth it. Anyone who is serious about to getting work done with the computer and doesn't consider working on the computer a very high priority should at least consider trying a Mac.

  • Incremental or Major... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by clichekiller ( 665320 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:41PM (#9052614) Homepage
    The big question I'm waiting to answer is whether this will be an incremental update or a major update. Panther added some nice new functionality Fast User Switching, Expose (which I don't use nearly as much as I thought I would the first time I saw it), and better networking support. It was a tough call but I believe it was worth the upgrade, fast user switching alone has made my life a lot easier.

    What's left, quite a lot actually. The Finder for one thing could use a lot of enhancements. Forgoing the whole brush metal fiasco, I care little about, there is the whole underlying functionality. Why is it that the OS can't update the window's contents without being pushed to do it. This is something that is fundamentally critical to an operating system. Additionally browsing folders across a network with a large number of files in it is painfully slow, and I'm talking my 100MB network at home.

    Lastly I would like to see a decent integrated development environment. XCode is a nice upgrade from previous tools but I'd still like to be able to work on the GUI and on code at the same time. CASE tools have come a long way, but Apple's tools still have a very antiquated feel about them.

  • Logic Board Extension Program (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ann Coulter ( 614889 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:41PM (#9052621)
    Apple is very kind. When I brought in my iBook for repair because of that nasty Logic Board problem, Apple serviced and delivered my computer free of charge for me. On top of that, they sent me a copy of Panther when the repairs were over. Apple must be selling their operating systems not based solely on a profit basis. I would assume that the reason Apple is charging the $130 for each "upgrade" of their operating systems (they are not upgrades but full versions only) is because they assume that the only people buying them are not upgrading, but buying from scratch. 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.
    • 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.

  • Well, they ARE a business, after all (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amarkham ( 153845 ) * on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:46PM (#9052699)
    Do I *WANT* to pay for an upgrade every year? No.

    Do I *HAVE* to pay for an upgrade every year? No.

    However, who on earth can blame Apple for launching new releases on a regular basis and charging for them. If they don't have enough features to justify *YOU* paying for them (it is, after all, completely subjective), then don't get it. Wait until enough releases go by that you feel justified. On the flip side, Apple is trying to make money and apparently there are enough people willing to pay for these annual releases to encourage Apple to keep doing it.

    I'm not sure how many they sell each year, but if they waited every 2-3 years, that's a TON of money being left on the table that a TON of consumers are apparently more than willing to part with.

    Enjoy,
    Andy

  • It's still year off (Score:4, Insightful)

    by cbuskirk ( 99904 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:48PM (#9052743)
    I imagine that the release date will be at least a year from WWDC. They have been setting the release dates about 18 months apart. This is the developers conference of course they are going to pull out the next OS and preview it. Oh and two paid updates in the past 5 years each of which has been a significant advancement is worth $250 dollars.

    • Re:It's still year off (Score:4, Insightful)

      by CatOne ( 655161 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:52PM (#9053760)
      Where do you get the 18 months? 10.2 and 10.3 were about 14 months apart.

      10.0 to 10.1 was 6 months, 10.1 to 10.2 was 18 months, and 10.2 to 10.3 was 14 months. So where's 18? Pulled from a hat?

      I really doubt Steve's going to get into a feature play-up and then the OS won't ship for 12 months.

  • what a story (Score:5, Funny)

    by Triv ( 181010 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:50PM (#9052778) Journal

    So...It's been announced that Steve Jobs will announce what will eventually be in 10.4.

    I don't know what's more disturbing, that this is a story or that my heart started beating faster as I read it.

    Triv

  • Please tell me they've pamified LoginWindow (Score:3, Interesting)

    by illtud ( 115152 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:51PM (#9052791)
    Could somebody please tell me whether they've pam_ified LoginWindow on OS X after 1.28? What's the point of including pam in your system, linking ssh and the rest of them against it, but not linking LoginWindow (the main login screen on OSX) to pam, thus making it useless for centralizing authentication.

    pam_smb [csn.ul.ie] works a treat on OSX, I can authenticate ssh logins to our NT domain, but the actual local login window on OSX takes not a blind bit of notice of pam, making it not-so-useful.

  • Accessibility Improvements (Score:5, Informative)

    by markyT ( 680385 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:57PM (#9052859)
    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:Accessibility Improvements (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Aetrix ( 258562 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:25PM (#9053357) Homepage
      Hey - Accessibility isn't just about the blind. I actually use the screen reader for a lot of purposes. For example, I am curently using the screen reader to help me audit a bunch of data files. The computer reads, "1000 mhz 10 db, 1250 mhz 15db..." and I check everything on paper while it's talking. The spoken interface is also great for when I'm using my bluetooth mouse from WAAY across the room (i.e. watching a DVD) and I need to know what time it is.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @12:59PM (#9052899)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:quit your bitching (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RzUpAnmsCwrds ( 262647 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:47PM (#9053687)
      Right.

      Because Windows Media Player 9, Windows Movie Maker 2, the new firewall, pop-up blocking, IE extention manager, PowerToys, the new security center, the new wifi interface, bluetooth support, support for hundreds of new devices, DirectX 9, the .NET framework, Windows Journal Viewer, and the compliance API...

      Were all jsut bug fixes.

      Right. Microsoft has improved the media player immensely, improved the video editor immensely, added a whole ton of new features to DirectX, and released free power-user tools. Plus, the whole compliance API (makes it easier to use a 3rd party IM program/media player/web browser/mail reader/java VM.

      With SP2, they are adding a new firewall (incoming/outgoing), popup blocking in IE, a new extentions manager in IE, bluetooth support integrated, wifi support greatly improved, and a new security center. Plus, there are UI improvements to IE and the rest of Windows.

      Microsoft does add features to their OS.

  • .Mac and OS X Upgrades (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ol2o ( 746375 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:04PM (#9052963)
    They ought to suck up the price of the upgrade and roll it into their .Mac subscriptions. Make it cheaper to get .Mac + the upgrade vs. just the upgrade alone.

  • A use for those OS upgrade coupons? (Score:5, Funny)

    by himself ( 66589 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:05PM (#9052970)
    Is this when we finally get to use that sheet of three paper coupons that came in the shipping box with all new Macs throught the 1990s? Remember, the ones that indicated the OS we'd bought and which said they'd be used for upgrades, but NEVER WERE?!

  • Things I'd like to see... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by danielrm26 ( 567852 ) * on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:05PM (#9052979) Homepage
    I am a recent convert and I am *utterly* pleased with 10.3. With that being said, there are a couple things I'd like to see improved/fixed:

    1. Give me the option to have my quoted text in Mail.app appear at the top of my cursor when replying to an email. Few types of miscreant are worse than top-posters, and Apple doesn't need to be aiding and abetting.

    2. Speed. I'll take OS X over Linux/X11 or XP any day of the week, but I'd love to see XP's responsiveness in the Tiger GUI. Again, I prefer the stability to the speed, but having both would be rich.

    3. As mentioned, SMB interoperability can use some tweaking in the areas of both speed and ease of use.

    4. This is sacrilegious, but the Finder still isn't there for me. I *hate* the spacing of the icons in icon view (they are like 3 feet apart), and the viewing of directories and files simply isn't as intuitive to me as it is in XP. Pathfinder does a much better job, in my opinion.

    • Re:Things I'd like to see... (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:45PM (#9053638)

      Honestly, I don't know what the big deal is with top-posting.

      1. Give me the option to have my quoted text in Mail.app appear at the top of my cursor when replying to an email. Few types of miscreant are worse than top-posters, and Apple doesn't need to be aiding and abetting.

  • A Word From A Sysadmin (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $criptah ( 467422 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:26PM (#9053377) Homepage

    I work as a system administrator for a small non-profit. I have enough work and dealing with configuration of yet another Linux box is not something that I would like to do on my free time. Do not get me wrong, I love what I do for living; however, I do not want to do my work at work and at home.

    When I switched to Mac OS X I was fairly pleased with the fact that I could work from home on a system with a stable GUI that hasn't crashed on me in more than one and a half years. I can do all my work on a system that does not require a lot of maintenace; that increses my productivity. I am impressed by the quality of Xcode and how much you can do with it without installing a ton of new things. I can do OpengL programming, write user interfaces and do all sorts of things out of the box -- install Xcode and you're a done! Did I mention well-integrated Java support?

    With that in mind, I am looking forward to the new version of the operating system that I love to use. However, I hope that Apple incudes more than new icons and new GUI features in 10.4. Here is my small wish list:

    Update CVS to the most recent version.

    Add better group and user management. For example, make sure that every user is a member of 'staff' and the admin user is a member of 'staff' and 'wheel.' It would be cool if UNIX inclined people could have a set of advanced options when it comes to user creation.

    Fix passwd. I would like to use it in order to change my passwords; it is faster for me that way. I am sure that this command can be updated to change my KeyChain password.

    Add more fonts.

    Add tabbed sessions for Terminal. I know that there is iTerm, but it choked on me way too many times. I like Terminal better.

    Add virtual desktops as a part of the window manager.

    Provide a stable front end to firewall that supports both TCP and UDP rules. Currently, only TCP traffic can be managed.
    Well, I guess that is it for 10.4.

  • Please stop whining. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gabe ( 6734 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @01:37PM (#9053526) Homepage Journal
    Apple spends loads of money paying an army of developers, designs, testers, managers, artists, support staff, etc. to develop these new releases. It costs money to run a business. Most businesses like to have income to offset the costs, and if they can, reap a profit which they can reinvest in their products. It's not like they're taking your $130 and buying golden toilet paper to wipe their asses with.

    I paid $20 or 30 for the Public Beta, I got a kickass new OS to play with. I paid I don't remember how much for 10.0 and got a mediocre (but still better) version of the OS. I got the 10.1 upgrade for free at the Apple Store (score!) and finally had a truly usable version of Mac OS X. I paid $130 for 10.2 and got a kick-ass version of Mac OS X. I paid $130 for 10.3 and I've been totally wowed by it. 10.3 breathed new life into old hardware. Each time my money went towards making the next release even better.

    Apple has every right to charge for their OS. Whether you agree with $130 being worth it is irrelevent. Just because you can get Free Software for free, does NOT mean ALL software should be free. Yes, it'd be nice if they had an upgrade version, but the last time they did that it was poorly devised and you could rip the CD, remove a single file from the image, and re-burn a full installer CD, which obviously cost them money.

    If you want an upgrade version, make your voice heard. Go to http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback [apple.com] and let them know what you think.

  • Tiger wishlist (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tim1724 ( 28482 ) * on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @02:40PM (#9054455) Homepage Journal

    I want

    improved Finder
    I think all Mac OS X users will agree with me
    better feature parity between Cocoa and Carbon
    every release improves this for older features, but every release also adds new features to one or the other w/o adding them to both
    better integration of Cocoa and Carbon
    Let me put an HIView in an NSWindow (no, the child window workaround is no good, because it doesn't work with keyboard navigation and it causes visual oddities such as disabling controls or taking away key window status.). And let me create custom menus in Cocoa.
    rpc.quotad
    I'm setting up an Xserve (w/ 3.5 TB Xserve RAID) running Mac OS X Server to serve files via NFS to some Solaris boxes .. but Mac OS X Server doesn't include an NFS quota daemon, so I'm going to have to port the FreeBSD or NetBSD one myself. Yuck.
    Cocoa Bindings
    the bindings layer is pretty cool, and they finally posted some decent documentation recently, but it has a lot of bugs, quirks, and missing bits which need to be addressed before we all start using it
    cool stuff from Apple apps made available in libraries or sample code
    There's a lot of cool stuff in iChat, Mail, the iLife apps, etc. which could be moved into AppKit, or at least published as sample code.
    Fix keyboard navigation
    It's not bad in Cocoa, but sucks ass in nearly all Carbon apps. I'd think this could be fixed at least for the Carbon apps that use HIViews.
    Make more of the Core Graphics API public
    There's a lot of cool stuff in Core Graphics.. but it's not all public yet.

    There's more, but I can't remember all of it right now.

  • Thank God (Score:5, Insightful)

    by superdan2k ( 135614 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @03:39PM (#9055188) Homepage Journal
    You know what? I'll snap this thing up right away. It's worth the cost, just as 10.2 and 10.3 were worth the cost. (Though I suspect I'll be buying a new Powerbook about the time 10.4 is released.)

    I'm of the same school as a lot of posters here -- Redhat, Windows, and Mac OS X are part of my daily life. Redhat runs my webserver/small biz, Windows is the ball-and-chain of my day job, and Mac OS X does everything else.

    My development work (PHP/MySQL, Ruby, Perl, etc., all of which are part of the OS X distribution), all done on OS X before deploying to the server. My design work? Fire up Photoshop on the iBook. My writing? I just installed PHPWiki a few days ago and have been using it to organize and build the notes for the sci-fi trilogy I've had rolling around in my head for years. Family? I just custom-rolled a photo book for my father-in-law that had restored copies of all his photos (gracias, Photoshop) and it arrived in hardcover (gracias, iPhoto). Road trip? Burning off CDs like mad from iTunes, including the ones I purchased from iTMS.

    I'm a Mac OS X user for life. Period. I don't have to fuck around with all the annoying shit that amounts to day-to-day life on Windows/Linux.

    Like an earlier poster, I used to bitch about the price of Macs. Then I got an OS X machine. The price is worthwhile -- it's no different than a car, a house, or any other consumer purchase -- you get what you pay for. And I'll happily shell out $129 for 10.4, or a few grand for a new Powerbook with 10.4. Because I have a computer that I use to work, not a computer that I have to spend hours or days trying to keep working.

  • Economy of Scale and Computer Whiners (Score:4, Informative)

    by tyrione ( 134248 ) on Tuesday May 04, 2004 @11:47PM (#9060118) Homepage
    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.

  • Quartz Extreme (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dominic_Mazzoni ( 125164 ) * on Wednesday May 05, 2004 @01:51AM (#9060751) Homepage
    I have no idea what it will be, but I'd be willing to bet that 10.4 "Tiger" includes a new major OS feature that takes advantage of Quartz Extreme.

    For those that aren't familiar with it, Quartz Extreme, which was introduced in 10.2, uses OpenGL to "composite" your screen image. In other words, all application windows are bitmaps on your graphics card, and your graphics card puts them together to make the overlapping windows that you see.

    In 10.2, the result was a 30% speed improvement for many operations, because the CPU no longer needed to spend as much time redrawing the screen. Eye candy like soft drop shadows on every window and on the mouse cursor, the Genie effect, and Dock magnification got a lot faster and smoother.

    In 10.3, they added Expose and Fast User Switching (with a cool rotating animation) - neither of which would have been realistic without Quartz Extreme. Thanks to Quartz Extreme, my 733 MHz G4 had no problem Expose-ing 18 windows instantly, perfectly smoothly, including continuing to play a QuickTime movie while rearranging the windows! (Hint: hold down Shift while you press your Expose shortcut to watch it in slow motion!)

    So anyway, in 10.4 I expect to see some major new OS feature that takes advantage of Quartz Extreme. Just think: they have the ability to instantly make any window partially transparent, rotate any window in 3-D, warp the whole desktop under the mouse, you name it - so I think there's a good chance they've come up with a clever new way to exploit this. Anyone could implement Expose on any OS - but without Quartz Extreme you couldn't possibly make it so fast and so smooth.

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