“Now that Apple’s Tiger has pounced, there is one question on everyone’s mind: Is this latest release of Mac OS X worth 129 bucks? The answer is yes. The improvements are not just cosmetic, as Mac skeptics are likely to snicker. Rather, new features such as Tiger’s desktop search tool are powerful enough to change the way you use your Mac,” Narasu Rebbapragada writes for PC World.
“The breakthrough feature in OS X version 10.4–the reason to get Tiger at all–is Spotlight. This whip-smart desktop search tool rummages through your files, folders, e-mail, and certain applications, and then displays results neatly by category,” Rebbapragada writes. “Spotlight is fast, and its searches can run deep, making it superior to previous Finder-based searches and Windows searches.”
“Mac OS X Tiger is a giant leap over its predecessor, Panther. In my tests the operating system seemed stable and relatively bug-free, and performance was excellent on both my new test system and my aging Powerbook. For me, the Spotlight search and Smart Folders features are worth the purchase price. That said, if they don’t wow you, RSS readers and widgets are available elsewhere, and there’s always AppleScript as a more technical alternative to Automator,” Rebbapragada writes.
Full article here.
Advertisement: The New Mac OS X Tiger will change how you work, play, search and share on a Mac. Order Mac OS X Tiger today. Free shipping. Just $129.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Ars Technica: Mac OS X Tiger ‘at least twice as significant as any single past update’ – April 28, 2005
CNET: ‘If you’re tired of Microsoft’s promises, Mac OS X Tiger may be your best incentive to switch’ – April 28, 2005
BusinessWeek: ‘Tiger bolsters Mac OS X’s edge as the best personal-computer operating system around’ – April 28, 2005
Associated Press: Mac OS X Tiger ‘provides another excellent incentive to switch from Windows’ – April 28, 2005
Mossberg: Apple’s Tiger ‘the best, most advanced personal computer operating system on the market’ – April 28, 2005
InformationWeek columnist: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘a compelling upgrade’ – April 28, 2005
NY Times: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger is the most secure, stable and satisfying OS on earth – April 28, 2005
Wired News: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘full of welcome surprises’ – April 27, 2005
My vote:
I intalled Tiger last night and have been fiddling with it ever since. The OS is really nice but it isn’t perfect. Spotlight is extremely useful and better than any previous search feature by far and away. It’s already changed the way I find files on my computer.
Dashboard is neat, but not tremendously useful. I’ve only used it once or twice, and I doubt it’s going to change my life significantly.
You’d be surprised how cool Automater is, but it’s more like the rare necessity thing than a program that changes the way you do things.
Mail 2.0 is by far and away SO MUCH BETTER! It makes the old Mail look stupid in comparison.
Safari RSS isn’t bad, but it’s not as comfortable as I thought it would be.
Problems with the new iCal. It crashed right in the beginning of me losing it, and I lost all the changes I had made since the last time I had closed the programs. There’s a bug that must be fixed.
So all in all, Tiger’s pretty good. Although I would not say it’s the most revolutionary change in OS’s, I will say it is much more advanced than any other OS on the market today.
-Russell
M$ must be feeling it now…. PC World giving high reviews to Apple Software and Hardware
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I wonder what knocked off that half a star? The only complaint I read was that a lot of widgets take up a lot of screen space.
Well, it is a PC magazine, I guess.
4.5 in ‘PC Ragazine’ stars. After the conversion (using my new Dashboard Conversion Tool) to ‘Real World Stars’ that’s a whopping 5.0 Stars! Whooie!
I couldn’t agree more PC Rag.
Wonder what they would give Windblow$ XP?
Well, I’m a “point and shoot” user, not a power user by any means. What I noticed immediately was Tiger is FAST. Panther 10.3.9 is pokey in comparison.
Great review. BTW, I can understand why the author knocked off the half-star–the author seemed to view this review as a buying recommendation, and the only new feature that really blew him away was Spotlight, since Panther was already quite decent (stable, secure, etc.). No doubt, Tiger will also be refined further through free updates.
We shouldn’t give this author a hard time over the last half star. PC World readers will know that the magazine almost never gives their top rating.
I can’t wait to get Tiger…
I’ve already crashed Dashboard, but I like it. Downloading a widget gets it placed automatically in ~/Library/Widgets. This is a security risk. Bad form Apple. I like the 5 day weather, local traffic, and the Yellow Pages.
Spotlight kinda sucks. Integrated, my ass. It’s not really a part of the Finder. It’s not really a part of anything. You can’t bring up the dynamic Info panel, you have to select Get Info for each item.
There is no easy way to escape a slideshow. The Escape key doesn’t work, why, I have no idea. During one slideshow, the controls refused to show up, so there was only one way to get out of it – the Force Quit key combination. That sucks. View>Slideshow in the Finder doesn’t work for me.
Mail kinda sucks, too. The buttons blow. I can’t have the mailboxes panel on the right side where I like it. The Read/Unread button is now two buttons. Ick. You can’t nest Smart mailboxes in a normal mailbox, so I’m no longer excited by this feature.
There seem to be a lot of small little bugs. I had none of these kind of problems when upgrading to Panther. I hope 10.4.1 comes out soon.
“I wonder what knocked off that half a star?”
That’s so they can give Longhorn a five.
More hopefully it’s just for the minor issues in Tiger. It’s a sign that PC users are finally more demanding of their products; it’s like a car reviewer knocking half a star off because the cup holders aren’t in quite the right place.
If Apple addresses the early complaints with a Tiger 10.4.1, there’s no reason Tiger shouldn’t rank a full five.
maybe PC magazine just took off the half star for the fact that it doesnt work on PCs.
Interesting. Until recently, Rebbapragada used to write for MacAddict.
Good review, at any rate.
PC = Patcher Computer
effwerd, try this for Mail button replacements: http://otierney.net/cagefighter/
The Unit Converter widget doesn’t have pixels/points. Boo.
Conflicting Helvetica Neue fonts cause every Dashboard widget that uses the font to display poorly.
All my applications show the .app extension. The Show All File Extensions preference didn’t work that way before. Boo.
Did I mention Mail is underwhelming?
Stealth Mode is awesome, though. I’m getting a lot less network chatter.
Preview looks a lot better. Annotation tools, yay! Maybe now I can switch back to Preview to read all of my PDFs. (Well, maybe not, still no text highlighter.)
Er, Spotlight is telling me it will take two hours to index an empty external hard drive. What a trooper. I wonder what it will find. Very unresponsive while indexing, too.
I can only define my user pic in Sys Prefs by using the Choose.. button. No drag and drop. It doesn’t work at all in Address Book.
It’s been said many places and bears repeating: The UI is all over the map. Apple needs to cut that shit out.
Out of 5 stars, I’d give it 3.
I used that Melanie, thanks. The buttons are now very small. Not cool. It also made me notice that I can no longer paste my password into the Authenticator. Very not cool.
My bowels are really giving me a hard time today. Maybe I’ll just give Tiger 2 stars.
that question that’s been on my mind is, So what’s next? When will OS 10.5 come out? When will Steve start talking about it? And what will they introduce with 10.5?
PC = Playing Catch-up
That effwerd at 12:54 is really clever.
With all the glitches and other feedback from posters. I’m surprised it got 4 1/2 out of 5. It sounds like it should have got a 4.
I’m not saying it’s not good, as I have not used it… but bugs need to be worked out and some user feedback changes are in order. I’m sure updates will be quite welcome in a month or so. Once Apple irons out the wrinkles a 5 out of 5 may be in order.
I respect magazines that don’t freely hand out 5 out of 5’s.
The fact that you can’t paste your password is a security issue, just like the warning every-time you download a application in safari. Tiger is moving in the right direction, its too bad you got used to taking advantage of a weaker security model.
Cagefighter is a blessing, thank you! The buttons are kinda small now, but its much better than it was. Mail is otherwise awesome.
As to the .app extension always showing is an isolated bug with your computer/machine type. I don’t have that issue, and haven’t heard that complaint before. Same thing with escaping a slideshow- works here, although i’ve heard some reports of problems (and saw it crash during the stevenote).
Spotlight SHOULD NOT be a part of the finder. The finder can access spotlight, but the finder is JUST AN APPLICATION. Spotlight is a system-wide service, which any (and many already do) app can access.
Safari’s best feature (besides speed/new webkit) is actually the mail contents of this page command. Its so easy and such a powerful tool. RSS is probably better saved for netnewswire or some other dedicated reader app. Not that i don’t welcome the feature.
Scrolling and window resizing once again gets a significant speed boost.
The reason i would give Tiger a 4 is the lack of a good finder. Looks like i’ll have to wait till path finder 4 comes out. Bad apple! I know this will be the #1 feature of 10.5: some new finder paradigm wrapped up in a whole new breakthrough finder app that just blows up all away. Features and UI consistency abound.
Plus apple should implement its own growl like service for notifications.
I realize Spotlight should not be a part of the Finder but I think it should or could be more integrated. It already brings the Finder to the front if you choose Get Info from the contextual menu. Command-I still brings up the Info window. But Command-Option-I doesn’t bring up the dynamic Info panel. It seems arbitrary.
I’m not a security guy so I don’t know about best practice for password entry. Why is pasting less preferable to typing?
Some things I like so far: Bookmark an RSS feed in Safari and you can then choose that feed in the RSS screen saver.
Script Editor has a new dictionary browser that is far better than the old one.
love it.
spotlight makes Mail useless except for showing new emails. The rest of the time if i need an email…i use spotlight. why look in mail? spotlight is faster.
safari RSS has something annoying: no way to refresh your list of RSS feeds. Other than that, pretty sweet program and nice RSS views.
automator is great. i just created a workflow that found all wma files on my external drive, converted them to MP3 (with EasyWMA) and added them to iTunes…all in one step. Awesome!
Dashboard is very useful once you add the right widgets. This is really going to take off.
I give it 99 out of 100 stars….
and for the coolest shizzle ever go check out the QT 7 H.264 trailers at Apple. This is going to change the world…. wooo!
“spotlight makes Mail useless except for showing new emails. The rest of the time if i need an email…i use spotlight. why look in mail? spotlight is faster.”
Hey johnny boy, how do you SEND emails, or can spotlight do that too?
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Just curious
effwerd – if you would give Tiger 3 out of 5 stars, what would you give Panther or Windows XP?