Detailed Reviews of Mac OS X "Tiger" Preview

An anonymous reader writes "AppleInsider has been publishing some very detailed articles on Apple's new Mac OS X 10.4 'Tiger' operating system, which include numerous screenshots of the system. So far the publication has discussed overall installation and Spotlight search technology, Safari with RSS, a new Mail revision with Smart Mailbox technology, and a websearch enabled Mac OS X Help application."

Apple Link

[mattyohe]

Here is apple's own "Preview". It contains tons of screenshots and a webcast from WWDC.

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/ [apple.com]

Smart Folder == Opera M2 Mail Client

[RinkRat]

If anyone is interested in checking out 'smart folders' ahead of time, I encourage you to try the mail client included with Opera.

It works under the 'everything is a database' [markschenk.com] premise for email, with 'smart filters', multiple views, multiple email integration, everything controlled via CSS and much, much more.

It's free as in beer, too.

Some common answers to Tiger questions

[hkb]

Is Tiger usable as a daily OS, currently?

No, Safari 2.0 currently does not work with HTTPS sites. Many common apps, including FireFox crash upon execution. Additionally, there seem to be some pretty serious filesystem bugs which can trash your entire hard disk (not just your Tiger partition).

Do I need a DVD drive? My pirated copy of the Tiger DVD crashes upon boot up.

No, you don't need a DVD drive. Visit the following URL for good installation steps:

Install steps [absent.org]

He also has a Tiger FAQ here:

Tiger FAQ [absent.org]

Re:Smart Folders == Labels?

[System.out.println()]

Smart folder and labels aren't quite the same, particularly in that Smart Folders are automatic, and labels aren't. This has both upsides and downsides, but they *aren't* the same thing.

Re:photocopiers?

[2nd Post!]

No, like Window's Help and Support Center, in Windows XP, which also searches the web. The difference is that the OS X Help application is global and applies to all help applications, where in MS's case each app has it's own Help index, and for XP, Office, and Office XP, their own help tools. I'm pretty sure (don't have a copy yet, like you) that in Tiger, any and all apps will be able to search Apple's knowledge base as well as the web for stuff. The difference in implementation between Apple and Microsoft is scope and consistency.

Microsoft's web enabled help applications are selective.

Re:Only DVD?

[cmoney]

This is a developer version. The final copy won't be out until probably this time next year. It's probably cheaper to burn 1 dvd instead of 4-5 CDs. I'm pretty sure Apple's developer program has switched to DVDs for a lot of their software distribution. (I remember starting to get DVDs last year before my membership expired.)

Re:Only DVD?

[switcha]

Um. It' s been quite awhile since Apple shipped a drive that won't read DVDs. Even if you can't burn them, you can install with them.

Re:Grrrr

[Llywelyn]

Cougar, Lynx, and Leopard. No clue what order they will use, but those seem to be the names for their future releases (through 10.7).

Lion is conspicuously absent.

cats-a-plenty

[johnpaul191]

actually as of a few months ago they had a few other cats trademarked for OS name use.... offhand i think puma, lynx and cougar maybe? i may be wrong on the names, but i know there are a few more in the name pool..... even if theya re never used, they were trademarked for use as a name for an operating system...

yes, i know lynx in the unix shell web browser thingy..... but it can still be trademarked for OS use (i think?). whatever the list consisted of, it was found because Apple trademarked the names.

Re:Smart Folders == Labels?

[Hes Nikke]

old news.

Microsoft Entourage [microsoft.com] has been able to save searches for later use (a smart folder) since its debut in 2001.

hmm... thats twice in as many weeks that i've put microsoft in better light... whats happening to me?!

Re:Most inconsistent user interfaces

[BasilBrush]

Given that it doesn't ship till 2005, I wouldn't get too worked up about cosmetic inconsistencies in the developer preview. The developer release is about getting new APIs out to developers. The look will no doubt be further refined before release.

Re:Most inconsistent user interfaces

[Anonymous Coward]

If you look at the screen shots you will notice weirdly blue colored bars, but just in that one application. Honestly I thought Macs were supposed to have a consistent UI. If I wanted a mish mash of colors and widgets I would just get a Windows PC.

I agree. Does anyone think that Spotlight's interface [appleinsider.com], with the smooth blue bars and little ( i ) buttons, looks XP-ish?

That aside, using portions of Spotlight's new look mixed in with the old brushed-metal of the Finder creates a confusing, overcomplicated [appleinsider.com] search window. I liked the old search.

Re:photocopiers?

[NTworks]

actually Active Desktop didn't become available until you installed Internet Explorer 4.0, which came out in 1998 I believe

Re:One feature that I would like to see

[BasilBrush]

I find the adaptive filter in Mail to be as goog as a Baysian filter - in fact it's supposed to be a superior adaptive algorithm to bayesian filtering. But it you really want to run a bayseian filter with OS X [blogcritics.org] as well, you can.

Re:Most inconsistent user interfaces

[Anonymous Coward]

As an attendee of the WWDC, I can tell you that Apple specifically made Spotlight-related stuff look different in the developer copy so it would stand out and remind people to use/test the new features. The Spotlight button itself (top-right corner) looks very shiny and XP-ish (according to complaints from other attendees) and that is why.

This is why it is called a DEVELOPERS release...

[feloneous cat]

It is for us DEVELOPERS. So we can DEVELOP. Sorta' like the development systems I work on here - blue wires, etc. yet it allows me to DEVELOP.

Oh, BTW, did I mention it was a DEVELOPERS release?

Re:Why?!

[BasilBrush]

There's a serious flaw in your argument. You don't need to buy an OSX upgrade every year. You could buy it every 2 years or any other period you choose. Just because there happens to be a choice of a new version for Mac and not for XP that shouldn't be counted as a positive for XP now should it.

BTW, Virginia tech found Apple to be the cheapest fastest option when measured against other PCs. What do you know, a cheap, fast, cool supercomputer!

Re:Any Real advantage to Smart Folders?

[Chucker23N]

Well, as you figured out yourself, Smart Folders are just dynamic search queries. The e-mail physically remains at the same place. Think of Smart Folders as a way to store search queries that you do frequently.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[Chucker23N]

1) Tiger won't be out until spring 2005.

2) Safari 1.3 and Xcode 1.5 will make it to Panther, and Panther will receive at least one more point release (10.3.5). Safari 2.0 and Xcode 2.0 will be Tiger-only, however, as they make use of updated frameworks.

3) If you don't see why you need to upgrade, then just don't - 10.3 will continue to work fine and they will continue to supply you with security fixes.

Re:Search, Indexing

[Chucker23N]

1) Tiger includes a new indexing daemon, "mds", for this purpose.

2) The daemon only becomes active when it notices that files have changed. The performance loss is minimal.

3) Applications obviously need to make use of the provided APIs. That's what they're for.

Re:Smart Folder == Opera M2 Mail Client

[2nd Post!]

You can also see this in action in, of all things, iTunes (for Windows or Macs) in Smart Playlists

Re:Grrrr

[Teese]

I don't think Apple would use eMac
emacs is already a text editor.

I don't think Apple would use Safari
Internet Safari is already a web browser [internet-safari.com].

I don't think Apple would use iTools
iTools is already a Suite [tenon.com] of server applications for macs.

I don't think Apple would use Apple
Apple is already a record label.

I don't think Apple would use System 9
System 9 is already a the name of an OS by Microware.

Anymore out there ;)

Re:Been running it for about a week

[danigiri]

Remember some of the most exciting changes are under da hood [apple.com].

Fix Printing to Linux CUPS Queues?

[Confessed Geek]

Yeah yeah graphics, search, safari... Can we PLEASE Finally fix the HUGE bug where you can't print from Adobe (or any other app that uses PICT rather than PDF) to Linux CUPS queues? Its been in the dev tree since before the last relase...

Contrary to all rules of CUPS when Apple ported it to OSX they decided to add client side filters which means when you send a job to a shared queue hosted on a linux box, the local printbox hangs and the linux box either bounces the job or prints garbage.

For details go here [comcast.net]

Please!?!

Re:Why RSS if Safari is still "buggy?"

[bastardsquadmuzz]

Safari is based on KDE's KHTML rendering engine used in Konqueror, not Mozilla's Gecko engine. While I've seen a few pages go funny in Konqueror I can recall only one that doesn't work with Safari. But then maybe I don't look at enough websites.

Re:Sounds Familiar

[dasmegabyte]

If you don't like it, keep 10.2. This isn't a forced upgrade. Besides Quartz Extreme, there haven't been any earth shattering interface changes since 10.1, and only a few increases since 10.2. Shit, I still compile with compatibility to version 10.0, just in case somebody's still running that three year old OS. Most commercial software is 10.1+ (though many free and shareware tools assume you have 10.2).

New machines get the newest OS. Everybody else can buy it as an upgrade if they like. Where's the problem here? If you aren't willing to pay $130 for a fully 64 bit version of the MacOS with a few extra features, don't pay it.

Re:iTunes as a Teaching Tool

[blugu64]

Perhaps I'm falling for a troll here, but what are you talking about? I'm running XP Pro, with iTunes 4.6.0.15, and the "right click" is working pretty much everywhere. I can right click on songs, playlists, most everything actually. The joy of contextual menus huh? Just for what it's worth, at least make sure you know what your talking about before making unfounded, and blatently false claims.

wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

"iTunes doesn't use the right mouse button"

Incorrect. Right click is enabled for everything that it is in OS X, which includes clickable items such as playlists and songs. Whitespace is not clickable.

"iTunes requires you use the menu to perform simple tasks like adding a new playlist"

Incorrect. The "+" button at the bottom of the playlist pane adds new playlists. If you're talking about adding smart playlists, hold down shift while clicking. This feature is itentical to OS X iTunes except you hold down Option in OS X.

"It also wouldn't work with my iPod until I allowed it to delete every song on my iPod"

Probably because you:
A) Were using an OS X iPod on a PC or vice versa. Duh, they're formatted differently.
B) Switched the management styles. Duh, iTunes can't track stuff when it doesn't know where it came from.

Otherwise, that's preposterous.

"iTunes becomes non-responsive for long periods of time when used with my iPod"

Sorry your computer can't keep up with the data transfer rates. Perhaps you should consider reinstalling windows or updating your I/O drivers, because the 15 people I know that use iTunes for windows don't have any of the complaints that you do. If you're using USB 2.0, I'm not surprised you're having problems.

Re:Can't Wait

[dasmegabyte]

Incidentally, if you're willing to wait 6 months after the release of a new Apple OS, you can usually get it for half price. You can get the previous release for even less (just saw 10.2 for $20). Or get four of your friends together and buy a "family" license (5 licenses with one DVD for $250 or so).

This is quite a contrast to Windows -- the Windows 2000 Upgrade is still in the $190 range 4 years later.

Re:Upgrade questions

[Henriok]

You can upgrade from any previous OSX version. The system requrements will probably be the same as Pather, but the Tiger beta has some limitation, like a DVD drive (it will install from an image) and FireWire (probably due to the new migration tool), but it installs just fine on every machine that Panther supported. Some feature will require special hardware, stuff like CoreImage and CoreVideo.

Since Apple continues to opmitize and hone the operating system I would guess that Tiger will be quicker that previous versions och the same hardware. I've noticed significant speed ups on a PowerBook G4/400 compared to the previous Panther install. This is consistent with the history as Jaguar was quicker than Puma (10.1) that was quicker than Cheetah (10.0).

Re:Why?!

[archen]

Wheither XP is more expensive than OSX is up to debate because it varies depending upon the situation. XP home is around, what $99? If you want better conictivitiy, XP pro is $199. Next upgrade is due a long time from now. Most of the time people are expected to have antivirus on a Windows machine: that's $50+ each year. An upgrade in windows can actually require an upgrade in the hardware as well.

Mac OSX costs $125. For a 5 computer licence it's $199. Upgrades happen once per year, but you are not REQUIRED neccesarily to get them. Each upgrade of OSX (thus far) has made speed improvments on the same hardware - if you're okay with the speed now, then an upgrade will only make things better. Of course the hardware is usually[1] more expensive as well.

Which is actually cheaper? As I said, that depends.

[1] An iBook often works out to be cheaper than an equivelant PC laptop.

Re:Only DVD?

[Have Blue]

It doesn't support GPU-accelerated Core Image. CI has a fallback path for hardware that doesn't support fragment programs, which almost certainly involves AltiVec.

Things like Final Cut Pro can already do real-time image and video effects on the CPU, CI is just exposing it as a system library alongside all the traditional bitmap manipulation libraries.

Re:Any Real advantage to Smart Folders?

[evenparity]

The whole duplication thing is kludge, which is why I don't like it. I use folders as a means of filtering information -- it is a cognitive lense. But duplicating a message is more of a physical act than a cognitive concept.

Moreover, it just doesn't make sense to have duplicate information. What happens when I want to delete a message that has been cloned into several folders? Or maybe add or delete something from it? That's why the virtual folder idea is useful. I love having folders that say "Today's Mail", "Yesterday's Mail," and "This Week's Mail."

When I switched my primary machine from XP to OSX, I loved OSX, except for not having a suitable email client. Exceptfor security problems, I loved using Outlook with the Nelson Email Organizer (NEO). NEO added virtual folders and really changed the way I worked. I could file things under "To Do" and also under "Project1", etc. Of course, the security problems with Outlook were impossible to ignore.

Right now, I'm running Evolution at work on a Dell laptop, but it still seems pretty buggy and unpolished. Whenever I get around to getting X working on my Mac, though, I'll probably switch from Entourage. (The MailApp lacks calendaring and Entourage implements it poorly.)

Re:I'd like Mail rules like those in Pine

[Johnathon_Dough]

For example, if I receive e-mail that contains at least one e-mail address containing mycompany.com, then I want the mailer, upon selecting Reply, to auto-set the From header to my work e-mail address rather than my home e-mail address.

I use PowerMail [ctmdev.com] on OSX, and it allows a filter to be set up with the following rules.

FROM contains XYZCOMPANY.COM then SET ACCOUNT to XYZCOMPANY.COM

As the program automatically responds using the designated accounts e-mail address, that should work.

Oh, and it has to be able to support IMAP over SSL and SMTP AUTH too.

Yes, it does.

System Requirements

[ravenspear]

It appears from this photo [rr.com] of the install screen that the current system requirements for Tiger are:

G3, G4 or G5 processor
a DVD Drive
builtin Firewire
128 MB Ram
2 GB disk space

Re:research & development

[mbessey]

Microsoft's research budget is nearly as large as Apple's annual income.

No, really. For 2003, Apple's income was $6.2 billion. For the same year, Microsoft's R&D spending was $4.7 billion. That's almost exactly 10 times as much as Apple's R&D spending of $471 million

-Mark

Re:iTunes as a Teaching Tool

[Johnathon_Dough]

My apologies, my initial message was not meant as a troll

No worries, didn't take it that way. I refuse to start assuming that because some one does not know something they are a troll, just figured I would answer your complaints.

do want to use it with other software, primarily Linux software.

Not sure about that, but I would give a shot to the manual manage function, if you have not already.

I had been trying to right-click on the playlist area to add a new playlist and was annoyed that it did not work.

That would make sense though wouldn't it? On a side note, under the file menu is "Make new playlist from selection" (Ctrl-Shift-N) which is a really nice handy feature, which also seems to be lacking from the song contextual menu.

Are you really saying that iTunes continues to be responsive for you during this time? I just checked that I really am using iTunes 4.6 and not some early beta version.

I just tried it, and it worked fine, but, I did not have a large amount of data to sync. But, my experience is irrelevant, how it is working for you is what matters, try apples support docs, they have some answers to some pretty esoteric questions and situations in them.

Re:Much more under the hood...

[Xyde]

Since I pirated it (flame on), I'm not under NDA, so I took some screenshots of a feature which interested me. Resolution independant UI.

It's still quite buggy (lots of graphical glitches) but apart from that everything works as expected. The OS X GUI is made up of bitmapped tiff's at 72dpi at the moment, so scaled up it doesn't look too crash hot, but this could easily be changed with a quick revision to quartz, and I expect it will be. Because changes only affect newly opened applications in the present implementation, I was able to make a screenshot with different programs running at different scalefactors.

I'm more excited about being able to scale everything down - yay, more usable space on my 1024x768 12" PowerBook!

quartzdebug.png [purrrr.net]

applications.png [purrrr.net]

Re:Most inconsistent user interfaces

[GregChant]

From the Apple Human Interface Guidelines [apple.com]:

You can use a brushed metal window if your application:

• Provides an interface for a digital peripheral, such as a camera, or an interface for managing data shared with digital peripherals--iPhoto or iSync, for example
• Strives to re-create a familiar physical device--Calculator or DVD Player, for example
• Provides a source list to navigate information--for example, iTunes or the Finder

I think that's pretty strict, and it provides a great way to distinguish between iLife-type applications from other non-"life experience" (that's a technical term) applications. Additionally, I challenge you to find an Apple-made program using brushed-metal that doesn't conform to the above guideline.

Overall, if you actually read the AHIG, you'll find the guidlines make sense and serve a specific purpose; they aren't just some willy-nilly part of the system that changes at the whim of Steve Jobs or some apparently AD/HD influenced designers.

I for one welcome our Apple Human Interface overlords.

Re:Can't Wait

[payndz]

The iMac - running OS8.6 - I'm typing this on is five years old, fairly stable (apart from an intermittent USB glitch reading the mouse, and the occasional Mozilla crash - far less frequent than when I used IE, though!) and hopefully still has a couple of years in it. Fingers crossed!

My four-year-old iBook (9.2.2) is even more stable, reboots needed months apart rather than weeks or days.

Macs are more cost-effective in the long term, partly because the hardware and OS don't need upgrading as frequently, and partly because you don't have spend half your time installing patches and fighting viruses and worms...

Re:Smart Folders == Labels?

[bluk]

Smart Folders are dynamic from what I read and Labels are applied by incoming mail filters on Gmail only so far (or applied manually). So if you wanted to store a new "view" of your e-mail for all Apple e-mails, you'd just create a Smart Folder in the Mail app versus having to do a search in Gmail. A very minor detail but something that I wish Gmail could implement as an option since I usually would like a filter to apply to all the old e-mails as well as to the new ones.

Re:Why?!

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, the only discount they received is the long-standing educational discount available to any school. Many vendors turned in a bid including Dell and Apple on cost and performance.

Re:Most inconsistent user interfaces

[GregChant]

You can see my response [slashdot.org] regarding Safari. Another questionable program is iChat... many people say that its because iChat AV is an interface to iSight, but we all know iChat pre-AV was also brushed metal. What's the reason? The contact list is again, a source list.

Didn't realize pointing out your lack of understanding regarding the AHIG would hurt your feelings, but your second paragraph is again, addressed in it. If you actually think about what you're doing when you use configuration panels, you'll notice that if the program conforms to the AHIG, the functionality makes sense.

A lot (and a I mean a lot) of third party developers do not even bother to skim the AHIG: how is that the fault of the system? Apple merely puts the tools in the hand of the developers, and makes a list of recommendations. Short of only allowing Apple-approved programs run on the system (akin to what Microsoft seems to be doing with Longhorn), you can't possibly force developers to follow the AHIG.

Re:Why?!

[BasilBrush]

No, on both counts. Quotes were taken from Dell and other PC companies as well as Apple. Apple quoted list price and still beat the other quotes. And 2 other Big Mac super computers have been ordered for other organisations since.

Re:I'd like Mail rules like those in Pine

[Guy Harris]

When reply to an e-mail it brings up the right from address.

At least in my experience, it often does, but it doesn't always do so. From some experimentation I just did, it appears to base it on the address to which the mail was sent - but if it was sent to a mailing list, so that none of my e-mail addresses appear in the To: or Cc: header, it doesn't pick the address I happen to use on that list.

If it could be given rules to say "if it's to any of these addresses, use address XXX in replies", as I infer (perhaps incorrectly) Pine can, that could be fixed.

Re:Only DVD?

[TheXRayStyle]

True, but the original poster said he had a flatscreen iMac (screen-stick-blob). Was a non-DVD reading drive ever an option for that family?

The very first original 15-inch ones shipped without a DVD reading drive.

Re:Any Real advantage to Smart Folders?

[Dwebb]

If you receive an email from your bank regarding your recent registration to access your home mortgage online, which folder do you file it in? Home? Finances? Registrations? Smart Folders solve the problem. That email can appear in multiple folders at once.

Aliases don't solve the problem because you have to decide which folder to store the original file in. If you delete a folder containing the alias, you're fine. But if you delete the folder containing the original, you're screwed.

Use iPhoto keywords for a while, and you'll understand why smart folders are superior to traditional folders.

Re:still can't import bookmarks

[nuggetman]

Run in a terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1

Then use hte debug menu to import them