Rave Reviews for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger 1088
druid_getafix writes "The first mass market reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are trickling in with a big thumbs up for the release. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ says 'Tiger Leaps Out in Front' but complains about slowness of some applications - notably Mail. David Pogue of NYT says 'But with apologies to Mac-bashers everywhere, Spotlight changes everything. Tiger is the classiest version of Mac OS X ever and, by many measures, the most secure, stable and satisfying consumer operating system prowling the earth.' In related news Mossberg also covers the rising incidence of spam/virii in the Windows world and says '...consider dumping Windows altogether and switching to Apple's Macintosh...'. Previous reviews of Tiger were covered on /. earlier."
Voice recognition (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Voice recognition (Score:3, Insightful)
As a geek, you want a beige box that you can plug into your existing system. Apple doesn't want people to be using apples that don't look like apples, ergo it's not going to make as much sense to do it that way.
Re:Voice recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
ROFLCOPTER. "Apple need to sell a cheap [$250] computer."
An upgrade to Windows XP Professional is $200 alone. How much computer can you buy for that last $50? Sorry, but if you're going to complain that a $500 isn't cheap enough, I'm going to say you're a biased troll who thinks pirating an OS makes a computer cheaper for comparison purposes. You can't call something cheaper if you're stealing part of it.
"Man, that $2000 PowerBook is too expensive. If they had a $1000 laptop, I'd buy one, but NOT SOONER NO OMG."
"Man, that $1000 iBook is too expensive, but if they had a $700 Mac, I'd buy it. NOT SOONER, though!"
"Man, that eMac isn't cheap enough for me. I can build my own computer for $10 and a pack of paper clips. Wake me when they sell an AFFORDABLE computer."
"What? They're charging $500 for a computer?! Too bad they don't have a $250 computer, or I'd buy one."
Pattern here?
Re:Voice recognition (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Voice recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
I need someone to do some yard work can I hire you for $1 a day? That is your going computer assembly rate. So it won't be much of a difference.
You do reaize that in order to put even a nano-itx board into a mac mini chassis, you can't have a cd-rom drive right?
Re:Please, cut the hype... (Score:5, Insightful)
you can't take a quote, edit it to death to remove the point of the sentence, and then call it hype. "consumer" was the key freakin point in that sentence and you just said "haha no. I shall rewrite this to mean something else and then call them liars!"
Can you show me another consumer desktop OS that's as stable, secure, and satisfying? It ain't Linux, Linux isn't 'consumer' enough. No more than a Ford F-850 is a 'consumer' truck.
Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good G*d, man, in grasping the Tiger's tail let's not lose our grasp of Reality.
OS X may be better than Redmond.*, but 95% of computer users and corporations would rather have a better OS ~that they can install on their current hardware~.
Re:Test of the NYT article (Score:1, Insightful)
If you're trying to invent a bias, you should mention a negative as well as positive influence too in the sake of 'neutrality'.... meh.
Re:Pity (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyway, to get that functionality on your windows network, turn indexing service on - it's off by default. Then define some usage guidelines and distribute them to your users. The reason they can't all work together in a coherent way is that they don't have a coherent plan. Solving the problem with an index is not solving the problem, it's working around the problem.
Nested Folders (Score:2, Insightful)
Er, of course, it was Unix that had nested folders first. Also I was just thinking... I think it would be a pretty horrible world if users just put all their stuff in the same folder - with no attempts to categorize things. That would make for some very horrible folders. Hey, something like some people's inboxes, I suppose.
Unlike desktop search tools that encourage people not to organgize - how about tools that make it easy to organize. Eg easy symlinks.
what a load... (Score:1, Insightful)
This is not to be intreperted as M$ is number one. I question any article that's all flowers and hugs.
Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? Simply to gain market share and get the word out there to the average PC user that there IS a better alternative to Windows. I guess they can also rest on their Laurels, but the world would be a better place with more Apples.
Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Macs because they make me efficient. I feel more comfortable sith a Mac and lots and lots of nifty solutions make it a better platform for me. An example: When I work in Photoshop, all I need to do in order to view all the open pictures is to take the mouse in the lower right corner. Expose kicks in and I can see every picture I'm working on. If I want to see all the open apps and switch to another, mous in the lower left corner. Another example; everything is drag'n'drop. I'm composing an email and need a picture from a website? Just drag the pic from safari over in the email totally seamlessly. And both the email client and safari are preinstalled. Easy-peasy.
There is so much to tell, but just try it. If it is good for you use it. If not, don't.
Re:How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see anyone in their right mind using mini for hadcore image or video manipulation! No one!
And as far as iLife'06 will utilise CoreImage the performance of the mini will be just fine - not too much of realtime effects but enough to make a christmass DVD to send to your grandma.
It is the other innovations in Tiger (i.e. Spotlight, Automator, etc.) that are to make a difference, not the ripple in Dashboard!
Re:Folders (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:spothlight...dashobard...who cares?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, some of us have lives that take us beyond those grimy windows? I LOVE the flight tracker, world clock and currency converter. To me these will be the three top most useful utilities. Having them in one environment instead of two browser windows and the calculator is not a trivial thing, however stupid that sounds.
Apart from that, I agree, there's a lot more to be enthusiastic about.
Proper comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple has got this one right. There is NO "OS X Light." There's just one O/S to serve them all...
OS X comes with web server (Apache), SSH server (where's that in XP anything?), a SQL database, and many other things that you can't get without XP Professional or even Win2000/2003 Server.
Now, most of those "advanced" services are turned off by default, but they are there if you want to use them, and don't cost anything (other than the space they take up) if you don't ever configure them.
I think Microsoft's OS strategy sucks, because it generalizes: I need Win2003 Server Standard Edition--or is it Enterprise Edition?--to get some of the services I need, but need XP (Home,Professional) to get the desktop bubblegum that my kids want. I can't pick and choose--Microsoft does it for me and I don't get a say in their selections!
Of course, you can always get freeware/shareware or commercial add-ons, but that ups the price of the OS.
So... the proper comparison is OS X would be to purchase XP Professional with bits of Windows 2003 Server (total cost, mucho dinero!).
Who wants to bet that Microsoft will continue this silly strategy with Longhorn? I can see it now: Longhorn Home, Longhorn Professional, Longhorn Advanced Server, Longhorn Lite, Longhorn Media Edition, Longhorn Tablet Edition, Longhorn Pocket Edition... And what will developers target? (This requires Longhorn Home, with some bits of Longhorn Server, but is incompatible with the display driver in Longhorn Tablet...)
Re:Test of the NYT article (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Poor Memory Handling? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
You have to give credit to Apple for one thing though, by controlling the hardware that the software runs on, they can pretty much guarentee a good end-user expirience, less possible combinations of hardware to worry about, and makes it possible to include every piece of hardware that apple approves in the O/S. It makes the development cycle alot shorter when you only have one platform with specific hardware to worry about. Granted it's a different way of doing things then every other O/S and computer on the market, but it works for people who know that the product they by will never have driver problems, you just have to pay a little bit more for that quality assurance.
Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry for the bad explanation, but the feeling is difficult to describe.
Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:3, Insightful)
Totally agreed. They will claim KDE and Gnome is the holy grail of desktop computing. Sorry to disappoint you, but it's a far cry from Aqua. KDE and Gnome still requires the console for more than trivial tasks. Aqua, on the other hand, manages to hide the BSD-beast that's doing the crunch work.
as a point of reference, I majored in CompSci, and have used a variety of Win, Mac, Unix/Linux.
Windows - Grandma-usable GUI, and grandma-crashable kernel
Unix/Linux - Super powerful, and only gurus can appreciate its GUI. Most the Linux desktops I've seen are covered with - (1) a web browser, (2) xmms, (3) a huge console.
Mac - best of both worlds
Re:Please do... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Voice recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
of course a "well trained" system will be better. jeez...
the Mac voice control isn't about, say, replacing typing (that will never work properly anyway). it's about commands. that's why it works so well - there are a limited number of words and phrases, though still some flexibility with precise phrasing.
the best use imo is the things like "home phone for Joe Bloggs" which will access the Address Book and display in huge font the home number. dismiss it with "ok" or "thank you" etc.
another good one is to select a file and say "mail this to Joe Bloggs" which open mail, starts a message to Joe and attatches the file. it's good because it actually saves time as opposed to a lot of voice control stuff which ends up taking LONGER than to just do it manually.
I agree an easy symlink tool would be interesting (Score:4, Insightful)
However I do agree that for those that seek a cleaner path, a tool that made the creation of symlinks much easier for normal people would be cool. To some extent Smart Folders in spotlight and other systems fill this role in that a smart folder is sort of like getting a directory with links to all of the files from one subject. But I think you might end up with results not quite exactly what you want at times - like too many files or perhaps missing a few. So a tool that let you build a set of symlinks using spotlight as a base might be pretty interesting and has the possibility of eliminating the need for photo management apps for many people.
Interface for the blind (Score:2, Insightful)
Now at first you might think "so what" but consider this. To get a voiced interface in Windows that the blind can use you must buy one of two add on products WindowEyes or Jaws. The retail price for either of these products is $850.00 for Jaws and $760.00 wor WindowEyes (WindowEyes will breaks under WindowsXP SP2.)
So consider this, for less that the price of either one of these products, and I've used both and neither one is a good as Apple's built in solution, you could BUY a new MacMini and get the screen reader built in. That's right folk you could get a NEW COMPUTER and the screenreader for less than the cost of the screenreading software alone under windows.
I predict here and now that Microsoft will buy one of the two screen readers for windows and bundle it with Windows. The makers other screen reader will promptly go out of business.
Re:Voice recognition (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem, of course, is that people look at the cost of the hardware alone, and not the cost of the OS, upgrades, and applications and the value of the security and usability advantages provided by Apple. Windows piracy (and Windows applications piracy) probably hurts Apple more than it hurts Microsoft.
Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have Macs and Win boxes in both my home and work offices. I've got a Debian box at home as well.
There are very specific tasks that work better on the PC in my opinion. For me, those tasks are games and Maya. This is coming from an artist's perspective primarily, a coder's perspective second and gamer's third.
Everything else, I use my Macs for because they just 'feel' right. It feels like I'm drawing with my left hand to use Photoshop under Windows with an identical interface and mostly identical key commands. Mouse acceleration curves feel funky, and I loathe -- nay -- LOATHE the fact that the majority of apps I use have to have a second desktop behind them (that gray background you get when 'maximized'). I like seeing my desktop. I like having a palette monitor that's got my email client in the non-palette space. I like the Mac's implementation of drag & drop. I like the lack of reliance on the second mouse button to do everyday tasks.
Quark Xpress 6+ is flaky on any platform at any speed, however type is significantly more manageable and supported on the Mac.
BBEdit is reason enough to buy a Mac, all by itself if you're a coder. It's rocked my world for years (network-wide find & replace from circa '95 -- maybe earlier) and just keeps getting better.
Don't even get me started about Windows and CMYK support, professional level color management, search functionality ("find" was practically instant across all drives and servers BEFORE spotlight -- now we have instant filename, content and context-sensitive metadata). Coupled with 45 minutes on my 3ghz P4 to search just my frigging C: and D: drives.
Once you get yourself immersed in the Mac, it fits like a tailored suit -- there's an astounding amount of tiny bits of polish and subtle features that have been cloned to the Win side by someone who didn't understand the meaning of elegance or subtlety (see the Longhorn 'Glass' demo that's surfacing for a prime example).
Anyhow, at home I choose my relatively slow 17" flat panel iMac G4 over my screaming and fully loaded gaming and Maya PC for almost every task because I'm more productive and happier. YMMV.
Re:Voice recognition (Score:3, Insightful)
A common error in economics.
Your time is only worth something if someone is PAYING you for it.
Unless you have other paying work you could or want to be doing instead of building a computer, the time you spend on the computer is worth exactly zero in money terms.
Oh, and if you use Fedora Core 3, and follow Stanton Finley's [stanton-finley.net] setup guide, you end up with a great OS, that was both free and Free, (you don't have to steal it.)
Use the setup guide to install apt and Synaptic, and you will have a system which is insanely easy to update and install software on.
How do you know what is barely used? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that's an unfair statement unless you use a Mac day to day. Some of them look like eye candy but really are not. Rondevouz really is useful if you have two or more computers. I use Expose pretty heavily as it's a great productivity tool. And while I do not yet have dashboard I know how often I turn to the calculator or calendar to know I'll find it handy.
And while yes you can get a slower older no-name computer for less and put Linux on it so it's usable, it's still a lot of bother. I ran Linux for a long time as well, and still do at work (on one of two computers) where it's either that or Windows. But I really enjoy not having to spend time fiddling with a computer at home and just working on it, that's what Macs excel at.
Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, once their sales hit a certain level, their incentive to keep dropping prices goes away, and there's only so much growth a company like Apple can reasonably expect to support in a given period. So, in other words, ignore me completely.
Re:Poor Memory Handling? (Score:3, Insightful)
Go to the Apple store, play with a computer in your price range. Edit some photos, browse the web, launch some apps, mess around. And then do the same on a comparable system at (Best Buy, Fry's, etc) and see what you think.
Or go to CompUSA and hit both in one store.
Re:Voice recognition (Score:2, Insightful)
But that's the thing...when you start discussing alternatives to the Mac Mini, you are implying that the features of the Mini, including its size, are a consideration. You're paying a premium for the small size, as you would pay a premium for the small size of a laptop. The Mini (and other SFF PC's) are a distinct line of products than regular towers.
It's the equivalent of comparing a compact car to a pickup truck, when your needs can only be met in the first place by a pickup truck. In which case, you should have been comparing various truck lines to one another in the first place.
Price Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sleeper hit feature - parental controls (Score:4, Insightful)
On a lighter note... my Tiger shipment is on the FedEx truck for delivery today. Woohoo!
Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:3, Insightful)
But Apple seems to be of the opinion that they can maximize profits by maintaining good margins with relatively small market share, rather than trying to increase market share substantially with much lower margins (at least for computers- portable music players is a totally different story; Apple seems to be able to command pretty good margins *and* high market share; good for them).
It's too bad, b/c the world could use more Macs, but it's a sane strategy. Apple has picked their niche and is nailing it. It'd be insane for them to try to challenge Dell and/or MS head-on; they'd get crushed (again).
That said, I will watch the evolution of the Mac Mini, presumably poised to be the (cliched) household digital hub, with much interest.
Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:5, Insightful)
I dare say they know what they are doing. That's like saying Daimler Benz should drop the price on their high end cars to compete with GM.
They aren't even in the same Market.
Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true. That's true for geeks like us. Most people have absolutely no what an operating system IS, and upgrade their lifestyle by buying a new computer. I am currently finishing a masters degree with a bunch of people that complain they need a new computer, because "this one just doesn't work anymore." They're using P4s and Windows 2000, and are going to upgrade to XP, not aware you don't have to get rid of your existing hardware. For that matter, they could speed up their machines by simply reformating all the spyware off and starting with a fresh system, but no. They're going to Dell.com to pick out a "better" machine.
Thank God for those people. I get lots of good quality, 1 year old hardware from them for cheap. Not my fault they didn't take the time to learn about their computers.
Re:Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:1, Insightful)
However every other part of the market is nicely catered for:
You've got the Mac Mini starting at $500, the eMac starting at $850, and for people who like a bit of style, the iMac starting at $1300. You can add an extra $75 to all of these to upgrade to 512MB of RAM, but otherwise that's it. The software bundle is quite respectable, and if AppleWorks doesn't do it for you, you can get iWork for another $80.
For the overall quality of the system you get, that's pretty decent.
All those systems are rubbish for games of course, but Macs aren't made for gamers. One thing I'd like that change is the graphics card in the low-end MacMini and eMac models, the Radeon 9200. Core Image doesn't support it, but does support the Geforece FX5200 which is only about $15 dearer in retail.
The fact is, that for the first time in some while, Apple actually has a fairly decent spread of hardware for all the major markets. The low-end PowerMac's a bit of a joke, but that's the only issue in an otherwise respectable store.
As for iPod sales, that markets going to turn down pretty soon (that kind of growth isn't sustainable), and I suspect it's already subsidising the iTMS. Apple Corp. doesn't take chances: why do you think it's still not dead after 25 years of dying? Further, they've a huge internal R&D department which most likely sucks up a large amount of cash earning through hardware as well as software; they don't see the economies of scale that Microsoft does.
Re:Jesus called again (Score:1, Insightful)
You seem to have your God confused with someone elses. Unless Thor rely is Jesus, which would at least make Christianity slightly interesting.
Re:Virii doesn't make you look clever. (Score:1, Insightful)
Virus::Virii
Close enough, don't bitch about silly things like that. I use virii in common speech when I discuss it, so what is wrong with typing it?
Google was once just a name, now it's a verb etc due to it's now accepted meaning as a verb (i.e. "to search").
In fact, if you look up the word "word" in a decent dictionary you'll note that it is any spoken or otherwise communicated utterence, symbol, or series of symbols that conveys a meaning.
Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:2, Insightful)
To add to what the parent is saying:
IMO this will start exactly when you purchase a two-button mouse for your Mac.
And you can take that as funny, but as for giving advice to anyone who has been using Windows for the past 5 years and is planning on switching to a Mac, I'm serious. I tried to make myself use the one button mouse for a few weeks and then I went out and bought a nice MS scroll wheel laser light one and OS X stopped feeling akward and everything fell into place.
Everything in OS X has support for right click so you might as well take advantage of it.
And for work flow and stability... There are a few nags and oddities, but after a while you start saying to yourself "This makes a whole lot more sense this way instead of what I used to do!"
Re:When will Tiger ship with new Mac hardware? (Score:2, Insightful)
Preinstalled, probably a week or two from Friday.
You get what you paid for (Score:3, Insightful)
So has the quality, the security...
Somethings are worth paying good money for, somethings are cheap in more ways than one.
Re:The trouble with Tiger (Score:3, Insightful)
And the momentum behind Tiger is considerably higher than it was behind the previous release.
Expect adoption of Tiger to happen very quickly.
Apples to Dell comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
The hardware you're talking about has the same capacity hard disk and RAM. There's a 2.3GHz celeron compared to the 1.25 GHz G4. If you're talking about raw GHz, I guess you have Apple beat.
Video? I'm sure that the included video adapter is superior on the mini. Does your server have a modem? A DVD player, CD burner? Audio in or out? USB? Firewire?
But Linux has free software! Those free applications push Linux ahead, right?
Photo management? gPhoto has pretty good camera support - if you're using the right USB drivers. That gets the photos from the camera - now, what about organizing and editing photos? Slideshows with transitions, audio, etc? iPhoto kicks butt here.
Video editing? First find and configure the firewire card drivers for the chipset you have, then go get what? Cinelerra? Too hard for a linux geek to make work. VirtualDub, Kino? WAAAAY too limited in terms of features and ease of use.
DVD mastering? Don't get me started...
Music software? XMMS is pretty handy for playing music, but organizing, sorting? Grip for capturing the data...
OpenOffice and GAIM on linux are fine tools. NeoOffice and Adium are fine tools on my Mac, and they work almost identically on the Mac.
The point is that it's POSSIBLE to do these things on linux. On my Mac, it's EASY.
Write a letter, print it to a remote printer, rip a CD and copy it to a USB or firewire equipped MP3 player, take digital photos, create a slideshow with music, export it to a readily available format (doesn't have to be quicktime, but find something equally easy for the recipient to use.... Compare start-to-finish time on both platforms. My Mac clobbers linux in this.
Don't get me wrong here I'm a big Linux geek. My Mac makes desktop computing useful and usable.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
Re:Sleeper hit feature - parental controls (Score:3, Insightful)
It is always the same old song and dance. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
strike
There is "no" os x light? (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has two OS product lines. Targeted differently and priced differently.
OS X [apple.com] - $129 (equivalent I guess, to XP Home [microsoft.com])
OS X Server [apple.com] - $499 (equivalent to XP Pro [microsoft.com]).
So really, apple is doing exactly the same thing microsoft is doing.