“Mac fans let out a collective roar Friday night, with thousands of eager shoppers turning out at Apple stores across the globe to scoop up Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the latest version of Apple’s operating system, as it went on sale at 6 p.m. PST… [In San Francisco] the line stretched for a block down Stockton Street, past storefronts for Benetton, Fossil, Armani Exchange and Crate and Barrel,” Ina Fried reports for CNET News.
“Not everyone was impressed. ‘What is a tiger?’ asked one woman as she passed by the crowd. When someone informed her it was computer software, she shook her head and scurried past,” Fried reports. “In addition to those lined up to buy the OS, a fair throng of gawkers gathered to see what all the fuss was about. Pizza maker Ivan Ochoa said he likes his Windows-based computer, but probably wouldn’t line up to get a new version of the OS. ‘It’s like they are waiting for their favorite singer,’ he said, looking at the long line of Mac faithfuls. The Apple stores were not the only place to grab hold of Tiger. A block away, amid some balloons but far less fanfare, CompUSA also put the new OS on sale, offering a $30 discount if buyers spent $400 on other purchases.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: What is a tiger? Exactly. We’ll spell it out for you Uncle Steve: A-D-V-E-R-T-I-S-E. Please? Some of OUR own relatives don’t even know what Tiger is — they wanted to know why we were so excited today — that should give you an idea of the total lack of recognition Mac OS X has with the general public.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Forrester analysts: Apple should advertise Mac OS X Tiger on television and in movie theaters – April 29, 2005
Apple posts QuickTime movies of Mac OS X Tiger features in action – April 13, 2005
Why doesn’t Apple advertise Mac OS X on TV? – April 12, 2005
Happy Tigerday, everybody!
my stepsister didnt know
Use a frickin dictionary for chrissakes — Tiger:
W-I-N-D-O-W-S—C-R-U-S-H-E-R.
Man, where did you go to school?
My son, who lives in San Francisco, had no idea that Apple was releasing a new OS today, let alone the fact that he’d never heard of Tiger. He promised me to go to the SF Apple store tomorrow. I believe I have convinced him to buy a new Mac. How is it that the general public are in the dark?? APPLE do some advertising. !@#$@&***!!!
Woo hoo – the missus just won herself a 1Gb iPod shuffle with the scratchies.
She’s already got a 14 month old 40Gb 3rd gen, and a brand new 6Gb iPod mini….
hmmmm…. three iPods, but only two ears… methinks one of these is ripe for the picking.
ron – tell your son to go to the store tonight (until midnight)… potentially 10% off voucher available at the door (if he gets lucky with one of the scratchies). If he’s gonna buy, tonight’s the night.
Spotlight is taking forever to index my iPod. This better be worth it. And it better index my external hard drive also.
So far, .4 is really smooth.
The line in front of the Apple store in the King of Prussia mall was a hellish and sadistic nightmare; all I wanted to do was buy an iBook, now I gotta wait god knows how long.
LOL, yeah we went to the Tampa store; I wound up getting interviewed/photographed for the Saint Petersburg Times and my wife won an Airport Express.
Not a bad night.
What is a tiger? Exactly. We’ll spell it out for you Uncle Steve: A-D-V-E-R-T-I-S-E. Please? Some of OUR own relatives don’t even know what Tiger is — they wanted to know why we were so excited today — that should give you an idea of the total lack of recognition Mac OS X has with the general public.
I think the Dilemma Apple is in is that people would be dumb enough to go buy a copy of Mac OS X (Tiger or some other cat) to try to install on their Dell PeeCee because they don’t know any better. So advertising Mac OS X by itself might add more confusion. Now if they advertise a Mac with Mac OS X (and they should), that would be different.
Exactly what I encountered today DudeMac. A person saw me working with Keynote and was impressed by the overall look and feel of OS X. She then asked how to get her computer to look like that. SHE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW WHAT A MAC IS!!!!! I kid you not – she was sold on OS X until she realized it wouldn’t work on her Win98 Gateway.
Can’t say I was excited about the new Mac OS, but curiosity got the better of me, and I bought it about 1815hrs Australian EST, and the verdict?
The original white iBook G3 500 went from being virtually unusable under Panther to pleasantly usable, and a lot of things are quite snappy again.
Apple, I’m impressed.
So agree with MDN on advertising the OS. How can they build brand awareness without decent advertising campaigns. A few bucks can go a long way.
my girlfriend and i went to the shadyside store in pittsburgh, and i walked out with a free itunes song, and she (the luckier one, of course) walked away with a brand new 30gb ipod photo. minutes after we walked into the store, another lady won a 15″ powerbook. it was a very exciting nite. and tiger was definitely worth the hype!
Steve:
Thanks a lot, buddy.
I had pretty much made up my mind to wait for a while before coughing up the $$$ for Tiger to put on my asthmatic old iMac (yes, I’m one of those waiting for a souped-up PowerBook).
Then you go and tell me I’m gonna like what it does.
Damn you!
Mike
PS Yesterday and today I was installing OS 9.2.2 on some old 233 mHz iMacs (even older than mine!!!). I gotta tell ya. OS 9 is fast.
Then, for a giggle, I took one of the machines and loaded OS X 10.3.9 on it (4 gig hard drive, 160 mB memory) and it actually ran! As long as one confines oneself to one activity at a time, it is astonishingly useable. I have on old 13 gB drive lying around. I might just see what some more memory and a bigger drive would do for one of these babies.
Hmm. Must be late. The person I am damning is Stuart, not Steve.
Mike
tiger works so much better than jaguar did. everything is a lot faster and the performance of my powerbook g4 17″ seems a lot better so far. i have not noticed any glitches since last night (friday)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/30/technology/30apple.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print&position;=
This Tiger thing is turning into the most successful OSX upgrade I’ve done. It’s certainly much quicker than Panther, even with the crappy old ATI Rage 128 in my G3 iMac 400 (768MB RAM). Can’t do my PowerBook yet, as Cisco VPN Client doesn’t work with Tiger, and that’s pretty essential to my business.
Non-Apple apps I’ve successfully tested so far on the iMac :-
Office v.X
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Adobe Photoshop 7
Adobe Golive 6
Virtual PC6 (although virtual switch networking doesn’t work)
Palm Desktop with a m515
RealPlayer
MSN Messenger
EV Nova
My Epson scanner now turns up and works with Image Capture, and my little D-Link Wi-Fi adapter only needed a driver reload to get me back on the network. Spotlight is quick as hell once it’s indexed your drive.
Damn good.
> “what is tiger?”
ah yes, tiger. now isn’t that a florida-based computer hardware and software outlet ?
i did a search on google…
>’What is a tiger?’ asked one woman as she passed by the crowd. When someone informed her it was computer software, she shook her head and scurried past,”
best that people like that don’t get it… you’d only end up providing technical support to them. i don’t really want to get involved with people that scurry
Just a general word to the populace…
10.4’s Mail truly hates some mail plug-ins like Mail Enhancer, Appetizer etc.
You’re going to want to remove those until new versions come out!
I have to say, as much as I like Apple, i am growing to hate their seeming arrogance when it comes to advertising. Like people should just “know” what they are selling and it is “better” than any other product on the market.
If Apple came up with “iGold” a device to turn lead into gold- they would sell to the established customer base while the general public goes on by unaware.
All because they seemingly are “above” adevertising to the masses.
Of course not that it would radically change the public but it certainly would not be hurting them in the least. If it grew their marketshare how is that a bad thing?
Loved seeing the Apple store packed. Made some young guy happy when I gave him my 10% off ticket. Envious, though, of those walking or carting out a small boat-load of iMacs and such.
Loving Tiger. Or until the lawsuit is settled: igerTay