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 i
Re:Voice recognition (Score:3, Interesting)
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: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.
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...)
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: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:Voice recognition (Score:5, Interesting)
Furthermore, I've actually spent less money on computer hardware since I bought my Power Mac, simply because I was suddenly so happy with it, and felt no need to constantly change stuff.
I threw my last Windows/PC years ago, running Linux/OpenBSD on my servers, and OS X on laptops/workstation. I dont miss this fuzz about crappy drivers, PSUs that goes black, noice, having to install a shitload of free/shareware just to be able to do something.
Simply put, I value my time, so I save money (and adrenaline) on my Mac's. If you dont mind all the crap that goes with cheap PC hardware, Apple is simply not for you, so dont "whine" about not being able to buy a cheap Mac.
Re:Voice recognition (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Voice recognition (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, speech commands work amazingly well. You can click a file in the Finder and say "Mail this to (name from your address book)," and it opens up a Mail window with that address, the file attached, ready for you to type or just click "Send."
That's cool. That's really cool. No question. But you know what really blows me away? About two weeks ago, without really thinking about it, I did it while brushing my teeth. Seriously. I was sitting at my computer at home early in the morning, still half asleep, with my toothbrush in my mouth. I mumbled "Send the latest blah-blah file to person-so-n-so," which I have set up to trigger a Spotlight search to find the most recent copy of a specific file and e-mail it to the named contact. (I have to do this often enough it was worth automating.) I said this with my toothbrush in my mouth, with a mouth full of Crest. And it understood me.
Honestly, it kinda freaked me out a little. It was a very "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" moment.
(Just for fun, I tried it again, and it didn't work. I guess I was able to mumble it just right the first time, totally by random chance. Got lucky. Still a pretty funny moment.)
Re:Voice recognition (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Voice recognition (Score:5, Funny)
TV: "...we don't have the time..."
Mac: "It's seven thirty two".
Ok, it's not exactly riveting dialogue, but still.. You KNOW you're getting neurotic when your household appliances are having conversations and you start feeling left out.
Re:Voice recognition (Score:5, Funny)
Good luck getting that recognized by today's speech recognition systems!
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.
W00t, guess i'll go get it! (Score:5, Funny)
unless there's a torrent..
Java 5? (Score:3, Interesting)
If not when will Apple be releasing it?
Re:Java 5? (Score:5, Informative)
Java 5 will be provided as a separate installer, so that folks can upgrade when they're ready.
Re:Java 5? (Score:5, Funny)
Does it run on SunOS 2.10? Sorry, I mean, Solaris 10?
Re:Java 5? (Score:5, Informative)
No Tiger in Tiger (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:No Tiger in Tiger (Score:3, Informative)
How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:5, Informative)
Image ops on powermac 1 ghz g4 (Score:4, Informative)
It even edits video ok. All without the core image.
My understanding of core image api is if the machine can't send the operations to the unsupported video card it just uses the main processor. minis have 1.2-1.4 ghz so they should work prety well for any image task thrown at it.
A g5 would improve things for anyone really into hardcore editing..
Re:How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:4, Informative)
The other thing to note is that even if hardware acceleration isn't possible, Apple has optimized their low-level system libraries to provide a suitable (though not as high-performance) substitute. I have the last non-white/non-silver powerbook, and upgraded it to a G4 550, from a G3 500. The speed increase in things that were purely floating point were about 10%, as you'd expect from the bump in CPU speed. But for things that used Altivec (ripping in iTunes and some image processing stuf), the speed increase was anywhere from 25-33%.
I'm curious to see how Tiger will run on this machine. I suspect that it will probably be the last release that officially supports this machine, but heck, it's 5 years old already, and by the time the next release rolls out, I SHOULD get a new PB
Re:How are Mac Minis with Tiger? (Score:5, Informative)
using the mac mini for onstage use for realtime video software because it's so small.
Stuff like Grid, Arkaos and Modul8 will run fine on a mini.
And for a home user a mac mini should be fine for editing and rendering home videos with DV. New versions of those will have core image filters which we want to use.
I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:I for one... (Score:5, Funny)
Well the kittens got fed up.
Pity (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pity (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pity (Score:4, Informative)
The main innovation in Spotlight is incremental searching, not waiting until pressing enter. This allows the user to refine the search on-the-fly, which is a big usability improvement. OK, incremental search is not new. But system-wide incremental search? Now this is a new feature.
Re:Pity (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pity (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Pity (Score:5, Informative)
A year ago, my friend George e-mailed me a funny picture of an elephant walking through snow. (It had snowed at a zoo. The picture was funny.) The other day, I wanted to see that picture, but I couldn't remember where I'd put it, or even if I'd put it anywhere at all.
I tried Spotlighting "elephant" and "snow," but the photo was probably named DCS1003 or something, and I never got around to annotating it with a caption or anything. So that didn't help.
Then I tried searching for George's e-mail address. That didn't help either, because George has sent me thousands of e-mails.
So I typed the following query into Spotlight: "George kind:image".
Poof. There was the picture. Spotlight knew to associate the picture with George because he's the one who e-mailed it to me. So it found it.
(This whole example was totally made up. But I just tested it on my Mac, and it really does what I said it does. George is not his real name, but part about the elephant is true.)
Re:Pity (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, all my bar-room conversations end up that way.
Re:Pity (Score:4, Funny)
I'm clearly not Steve Jobs.
Re:Pity (Score:3, Funny)
unfortunately, spotlight won't help you find your files if you name them dyslexically...
Re:Pity (Score:4, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How do the judge so fast?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How do the judge so fast?!? (Score:5, Informative)
Journalists, especially high-profile ones like Mossberg, get preview versions of new gear long before the rest of us specifically so they can review it. They sign non-disclosure agreements to make sure the technology doesn't get into The Wrong Hands, and the vendors generally know the journalists will behave because the journalists have their entire career invested in it. If Mossberg tried to distribute pirated versions of Tiger ahead of the release date, Apple would stop giving him advance copies, and he'd lose prestige as a journalist.
Re:How do the judge so fast?!? (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember reviewing for GameSpot (back in the dot-com days), receiving a game and having 1 week to write a review. You may be thinking "One week, so what?" but you've got to paint a picture of the game accurately enough that it answers a key question for the consumer: "Should I buy this thing or not?" I remember a few times I gave low review score to certain magazines on games that should've been higher (Twisted Metal 1, why did I rate you so poor
Re:How do the judge so fast?!? (Score:4, Informative)
Once Tiger was running I still had to install a few drivers, such as my Unitor 8, and Delta 410.
After that, I reinstalled all my necessary apps like Logic Pro 7 and various soft-synths (Vanguard, Atmosphere, Stylus RMX, etc.) and started beating the hell out of this system.
After a few hours without any problems I concluded that, for my purposes, Tiger kicks ass.
Gloat (Score:3, Funny)
Apple Tech
NeXT Tech
Dual G5
iPod/iTunes/iTMS
OpenGL
unix Layer
and my copy of Tiger is riding around in a FedEx van at this very moment.
Everything I've ever wanted in a computer system is a few hours away from becoming reality.
You forgot something (Score:5, Funny)
Expose - Slowness (Score:5, Informative)
One thing I have noticed so far is that Expose seems a lot less fluid than in Panther. Has anyone else noticed this, or am I going mad? The difference is noticable even with only a couple of windows on the desktop.
Other than that it seems nice. My Vodafone 3G card works, and most apps that I have tried. The only thing I can't get working yet is OpenVPN - as the TUN/TAP driver isn't ported yet.
Re:Expose - Slowness (Score:3, Informative)
http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~nissler/tuntap/ [uni-kl.de]
Could you just grab the source and build it under Tiger?
Re:Expose - Slowness (Score:5, Funny)
Well, iPods don't have the best graphics accelerator, so that's probably your difference.
*gets coat*
Sounds great, get it out there! (Score:4, Interesting)
If Tiger indeed blows away XP, so they should try to advertise it more, get it out to as many people as possible in order to increase their popularity and inspire more people to use and develop Apple software. If everyone had a better alternative to Windows for say just a fraction more in price, people would start buying it. The iPod has already convinced people Apple is a good brand, all they need is a price incentive to switch to Apple PCs.
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: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:5, Informative)
It should be mentioned that these prices are not comparable directly since Apple split their stock. The current pre-split price is over $70, so its a 7 times gain, not just a 3 times.
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: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.
Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Interesting)
For reference, I don't have problems with virii, my system never crashes, and all of my main programs (mainly design programs from Adobe and Macromedia) run very nicely. So what would I gain from switching?
Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:5, Informative)
That's the top one reason I always keep hearing from multimedia professionals who've switched. What makes them more productive? Workflow management, which seems to be easier in OS X, better handling of files and more freedom and consistency in setting up the perfect work environment. This includes scanning, printing and all color-proofing issues.
For some things it's the difference between one click versus four. For some things it's simply features not available on Windows.
And today it's a lot easier to set keyboard shortcuts just the way you want them and adapt your workflow to your taste. So switching has for the most part become trivial.
I'd say coupled with the cross platform apps you use, there's at least not a compelling reason not to switch. If you personally would gain a lot by switching is another issue.
I know, a pretty wooly answer. In the end it's down to your preferences and way of working. Best talk with fellow designers, see what they think about it, and see if what they say applies to your situation.
DON'T ask the geeks here at
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.
Wi
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:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just checked, and the same happens here at work with IE and Outlook.
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, Informative)
I can't tell you why to switch, although the fact that you "would love to" is probably a start.
I got an iBook G4 at home, because I was intrigued by OS X, and because it was actually competitive on features and price for its part of the market. I bought it shortly before I became more interested in digital photography, and iPhoto has been a nice bonus.
The petty annoyances (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of windows? Taskbar has two modes, neither of whcih work very well - either fold your icons together and make it really a bother to get to, or have the taskbar go to multiple lines. Expose is just SO much better a way of dealing with finding multiple windows.
Macs don't ever hide menu items just because you've not used them for a while.
Ever had a Windows Window no respond to you because a modal dialgue has popped up somewhere and that window is now obscuring it? Well, I have and Macs do not have that problem due to a much more intelligent way of handlind modal popups (it's embedded in the window that spawned it).
Config files for every app that are really text and editible (or removable) by hand.
UNIX utilities as first-class members of the OS and not something that clings to life within the system. Yeah I'm looking at you Cygwin!
Usable simple text editing app (TextEdit). Both Wordpad and Notepad have unique issues that means you can't just automatically use one or the other (why do you think they are both still there). Heck in Tiger you can just use TextEdit for 99% of your word processing since it reads/writes Word files and supports things like tables.
Everything supports save as PDF through printing interface. No need to use Acrobat.
A home directory that reallly is in one place!!! You don't have to search the whole hard drive to REALLY back up all your app settings. They are all under ~/Library.
When people talk about being more productive on a Mac, these are the kinds of things they mean. It's all the little annoyances that are part of using Windows day to day... you don't notice them after a while but each one makes you just a tiny bit slower and interrupts your workflow. In my experience Macs have a better sustained throughput for humans. Sure if you're just sitting there typing a letter one may not be faster than the other, but it's when you have to stop typing and make transitions when your odds of being interrupted are lower on Mac.
And for less subtle reasons - Spotlight? Dashboard? Automator? These are pretty compelling reasons all on thier own, especially if you can write code at all. And if you can't then Automator should be even more compelling.
Re:Is there really a reason to switch? (Score:3, Informative)
So what would I gain from switching?
I use Adobe and Macromedia applications regularly on both systems. First, you need to make sure your particular applications are well supported on the mac, or it is a non-starter. Adobe has several projects where they have mostly abandoned the mac.
Asssuming you do not use any of these the main advantages are:
Better GUI - UI elements have better feedback and make a lot more sense. (buttons pulse and when the system is working stay lit so you the system registered
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.
Gilbert and Sullivan! (Score:5, Funny)
The Safari browser now subscribes to R.S.S. news feeds,
And its "private browsing" mode conceals the tracks of online deeds.
There are archives now, and log files, when you send or get a fax;
You can make the pointer bigger on those Jumbotron-screened Macs.
You can start a full-screen slide show from some photos on demand;
And the voice that reads the screen aloud can lend the blind a hand.
There's a password-phrase suggestor meant to make yours more secure,
And the Grapher module draws equations simple and obscure.
Then the Automator program is a geeky software clerk -
You just choose the steps you want performed, and it does all the work.
There's a lot of miscellany, lots of spit-and-polish stuff,
But it works and doesn't slow you down - and these days, that's enough.
Rising incidence of parasitical software... (Score:3, Interesting)
"What percentage of Windows PCs are 0wn3d by one or other parasite?
By multiple parasites? By spammers working with crackers working
with corrupt web site designers and pornographers? Enough, I think
to ensure that within a short time - say 6 to 12 months - we will
hit infection levels of 50% and more. The vast majority of home
PCs, happily connected to the Internet, will be hit, and a large
proportion of office PCs, insufficiently secured and protected,
will also succumb."
This was written in September 2003. And it's just starting to hit the general consciousness now?
I don't understand nobody's talking about (Score:5, Interesting)
(Well that's how it seems to work at least). It looks like the equivalent of unix pipes for desktop apps.
Something i've been waiting for for years.
Re:I don't understand nobody's talking about (Score:4, Informative)
The fundamental object in Automator is the action. Think of an action like an old-fashioned Unix command-line utility like "sort" or "uniq." Each one has an input and an output, kind of like "stdin" and "stdout" but more discriminating.
Using Automator, you string together actions to create workflows. Workflows are kind of like pipelines. You start with one that generates some kind of output, then pass that output to another action, then to another, then to another.
Example: Let's say you have ten pictures on your desktop, and you want to resize them all and add metadata like a copyright notice, something that's common to all 10. You go to Automator and start with the "Get selected Finder items" action, then click on the "Scale images" action, then click in the "Add Spotlight comments to Finder items" action. When you select the files and run the workflow, it does what you want.
A more complex, real-world example. I use InCopy a lot. One of the things I always have to do is take an InCopy document, map styles to XML tags, export the document as XML, then run the resulting XML file through a little utility to strip out some InCopy weirdness that Adobe inserts. This is a fairly manually intensive process. I automated a chunk of it with an AppleScript about eighteen months ago when InCopy 3 first came out, but I still had to do the fiddly stuff by hand. Last fall, I created an Automator workflow that would let me call that AppleScript ("Run AppleScript" is an Automator action), then pass the output on to a pipeline of actions that processed it in just the way I needed. I now use that workflow several times every day.
Like I said, normal people get it pretty quickly. Geeks seem to try to overthink it, to think about it in terms of object models and scripting.
Looking forward to Automator, Dashboard, and iChat (Score:5, Interesting)
As with lots of scripting languages, sometimes it is just plain faster to brute force what you are doing than sit down, recall a language syntax and function set, write a script, give it a test, and then run it. What I see as cool about Automator is that it makes building a script so freaking easy and fast and since you can call scripts with scripts, you can build a nice function library of scripts to make the process even faster.
I am also digging on Dashboard. At first I didn't like the idea of a second desktop that is different than the first, and I will have to try before I agree that it makes sense to keep these on a different desktop, but I love the idea of the small applets (I used Konfabulator breifly) for small tasks like weather, itunes, stock tickers, and calculator. That they take minimal system memory means I will be more apt to keep them open and within easy reach without having to launch the applicaiton.
Lastly, I am totally excited about iChat AV supporting up to four people (including me) in a video chat. It just looks so cool to see three people sitting around the virtual room like that and this feature is making me finally break down and buy the iSight. It looks like the best autofocusing camera available for $150.
Pshaw (Score:4, Informative)
From Beagle's webpage; "Beagle is a search tool that ransacks your personal information space to find whatever you're looking for. Beagle can search in many different domains:
documents
emails
web history
IM/IRC conversations
source code
images
music files
applications
Have a look at uber hacker Nat Friedman's [nat.org] videos of hot Beagle Action. [nat.org]
In short, beware teh Gnome.
Re:Pshaw (Score:4, Informative)
SpotLight is not just metadata plus content. It's also about relationships between objects. You can create relationships by dragging objects about (say a picture of a dog onto an email to family members) and SpotLight remembers them in detail (the dog metadata in the image is then in a relationship with the people in the email address fields, as well as the email itself and any objects inside it).
This seems like a new thing to me.
WHAT THE HELL (Score:3, Funny)
Coleman
PS It scared the crap out of me.
The trouble with Tiger (Score:3, Interesting)
My problem with it is that it fragments the new mac users more than 10.3 did. Here is why.
They give the developer new tools/frameworks for easier better application development. These are great. HOWEVER, if you a developer choose to use those new features your software ONLY works on 10.4 (tiger) not on 10.3. core data for example [apple.com]
. Also it looks like apple won't make java 1.5 work on older versions of the mac OS, meaning they won't work on older versions the the OS either. This further fragmenting apples small market share, adding frustration to developers and software purchasers alike. You have to code with the older frameworks or compel your users to update. This is a not required but "strongly compelled upgrade"
Holding out for OS 10.9.8 Liger (Score:5, Funny)
Price Point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Test of the NYT article (Score:5, Interesting)
Which Karma Whore are you? (Score:5, Funny)
You wear wraparound sunglasses, even indoors. You wish your mother would let you ride a motorbike. You tell your friends you're pulling in $50,000 a year and $2,000 a month "playing the stock market" but in reality you're only bringing in half that and your dividends from MSFT havn't been good in years. Your non computing friends all turn to you for help; you only charge $30 an hour. Your collegues talk about you behind your back. Your workplace nickname is likely to be "The Asshole". Unlike the Linux fanboys, you actually try to pick up dates in bars but women laugh at you.
You think you're so cool you hurt. You have mirrors on every wall in your "loft apartment", which is really a grimy little apartment next to a guy who plays Guns 'n Roses at 3am. All of your furniture is from Ikea. You sometimes think that changing your name to "Steve" would be "pretty cool". When you go to bars you only drink Miller Lite. No body ever asks you for help with their computers because they know you don't know anything but OS X, even if you do tell them you "run Unix" now. Your friends openly laugh at you.
You regularly give $10 bills to homeless guys because you have too much money. Computers baffle you, but you enjoy looking at pictures of naked women. You don't know what Linux is, but you continually bugged the IT guy at work about your computer so he installed Linspire on your machine.
You shop at GAP. You probably used to use a Mac. When you saw the multiracial image used as a desktop picture and heard that this operating system came from the same country as Nelson Mandela, you knew it was for you. You meet with your friends in fair-trade coffee houses and talk about the eventual overthrow of evil corporations such as Microsoft and Starbucks. Like the Linspire user, you have very little real knowlege when it comes to computers but you would never use your computer to look at pictures of women degrading themselves.
You've been "into computers" for ohh, one or two years now and fancy yourself as "a bit of a hacker". Wouldn't know C from C++, or even Perl for that matter. Older Gentoy users may be building their homes from matchsticks. You've explained to all your friends that your matchstick house will have an "optimised floorplan". They've tried to tell you that your house violates every known building code and law in your area, but you've ignored them so far because you can't read those complicated regulatory documents.
Much like the Gentoy user but you'd also be into sadomasochistic sex if you could get it. You're not just building a house from matchsticks, you're planing to grow the trees to make the matchsticks. You've cleared some land but don't know what to do next because you havn't read the books you've got, so you've posted to alt.arborists.newbie asking for help. It's been three days so far and no one has replied. You remain hopeful.
Re:Which Karma Whore are you? (Score:5, Funny)
Your devotion to the One True Editor is such that you (secretly) don't care what manner of kernel/windowing system you use to light off to run brilliant stuff like Gnus, ECB, or ERC.
You like the substance of the GPL, even if you fall short of the full-on reactionary "ethical" style that some are capable of achieving.
You wonder why the OS can't be as unobtrusive as the BIOS, and just serve Emacs quietly.
Re:Which Karma Whore are you? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Which Karma Whore are you? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Test of the NYT article (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Test of the NYT article (Score:3, Interesting)
It's also the birthday of former Japanese Emperor Hirohito, now known as "Midori no Hi" or "Green Day" (no relation to the band). It's an important national holiday as it kicks off "Golden Week," which consists of three other national holidays including Japan's national day and Boy's Day. So, if you were thinking of vis
Re:Test of the NYT article (Score:3, Insightful)
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:Please, cut the hype... (Score:3, Funny)
ah, calm down... (Score:5, Funny)
Writing "virri" doesn't make you look clever, educated people will laugh at you.
Speak for yourself. Not all of us trot out our soapboxen for such little things.
Re:Poor Memory Handling? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why can't they test unix for what it is? (Score:5, Informative)
Java 1.5 isn't available yet, but will be soon.
64-bit memory addressing is available for 64-bit backend processes. As the PowerPC can handle 32-bit and 64-bit at the same time, there's no performance cut at all.
I wasn't able to test the final GCC 4.0 yet.
I don't know what you mean by performance problems, outdated hardware and expensive prices.
Re:Folders (Score:3, Interesting)
It will be a lot easier to just add the project information into the metadata than rely on a fixed directory structure. For example, if I want to view files related to projects A, B, and C then I can just search for all three. If I want them conviently grouped, I'll create a smart folder. When I don't care if they are grouped anymore, smart folder is gone.
Sure it's goi
Re:Folders (Score:4, Informative)
Um. I really don't want you to buy Tiger and then be disappointed.
Spotlight isn't a general-purpose annotation system. In order for you to apply metadata to files, you have to have three things. First, a file format that supports metadata. (Metadata is actually stored inside files.) Two, an application that supports adding metadata. And finally, you have to have a Spotlight importer that extracts the metadata.
Example: Adobe has not yet shipped (for some bafflingly reason) their importers for their file formats. These importers will be able to read XMP metadata and store it in Spotlight. But right now, they're not available. So if you want to add Spotlight-savvy metadata to an InDesign file, you are completely out of luck. It can't be done, no way, no how.
Spotlight is great. I love Spotlight. Spotlight has changed the way I work. But if you go into it hoping that Spotlight is gonna do a whole bunch of things that it's just not equipped to do right now, you're going to be pissed. And I don't want you to be pissed.
Now, that said, you can group all JPEG files together based on width and height criteria. That works fine. And you can use Spotlight comments to store free-form, unstructured metadata. But don't hope that Spotlight is a general-purpose file annotation system. It's not. At least not in this release.
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
Re:port to x86? (Score:3, Informative)
A bit of a write-up on the Mac OS X architecture: http://www.kernelthread.com/mac/osx/
Re:So what's really new?? (Score:3, Informative)
for the developer, I think CoreData, CoreImage, CoreVideo...
the thing there is that when developers take advantage of this, you will need to upgrade to use the neat new features in those new applications that take advantage of them.
CoreAudio, from panther, made creating audio plug-ins (for logic, live, etc.) relatively easy to build functions that work in a variety of applications as they are based on the architecture of the OS r
Re:Slowness (Score:3, Informative)
For what it's worth, I don't find that to be true of iTunes on OS X. Not knowing what you mean by "limited features", I can't address that, but having used iTunes on both Windows and OS X, I can say that OS X is the better environment to run it in. Which shouldn't be surprising to anyone.
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.
Re:How is Spotlight any different.. (Score:4, Informative)
Spotlight also has a plugin architecture so that developers can add new file format parsers.
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!