Paul Thurrott starts out his so-called “Apple Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ Review” for his eponymous “SuperSite for Windows” with a confession that rings hollow. Thurrott writes, “Allow me to make a confession that may surprise you. I’ve been a Mac fan my entire life.”
MacDailyNews Take: Does being a “Mac fan” actually require a “confession” as if it were some sort of sin? We guess that if you happen to run a site called “SuperSite for Windows,” it must.
Thurrott’s confession reveals that in 1987, he purchased an Apple IIGS for “an exorbitant amount even by today’s standards.” Thurrott writes that his Apple IIGS “was a work of beauty, allowing the Apple II line to go out on a high note, even as the company basically abandoned the product.” Thurrott writes, “I eventually moved to various Amiga systems and then, faced with Commodore biting the Big One in the early 1990’s, I moved, unhappily, to the PC. I did everything I could to avoid Microsoft for two years, opting for IBM’s doomed OS/2 for a while. But with Windows 95, Microsoft finally got its act together, and the rest, as they say, is history.” Thurrott explains that he purchased his “first-ever Macintosh in August 2001… specifically to test Mac OS X.” Thurrott also writes, “I often wondered what might have been had I adopted the Mac 20 years ago. Would I have stuck with it?”
MacDailyNews Take: Well now, that explains a lot. Thurrott admits dropping an “exorbitant amount even by today’s standards” on an Apple IIGS that Apple “basically abandoned.” Apple did abandon the Apple IIGS — the ultimate Apple II machine which was introduced in 1986 and ran the advanced-for-its-time GS/OS — in favor of the Macintosh. The Apple IIGS was finally discontinued in December 1992. We’ve met a few Apple II users who hung on way longer than they should have and many of them probably felt abandoned by Apple. You really can’t blame them as Apple IIGS owners spent around US$999 (US$1711.28 adjusted for inflation) for the base machine and Thurrott must have spent around $400-$500 (guestimate, adjusted for inflation) for the extra 512KB RAM plus the additional costs of the peripherals. Some of them sucked it up and moved to the Mac platform while others could never really get over it and swore they’d never purchase another Apple product as long as they lived. We don’t know how Paul feels personally, but, while not impossible, it’s hard to imagine anyone being much of a “Mac fan” after being abandoned by Apple and subsequently avoiding the Mac platform for the next fourteen or so years with Amiga, OS/2, and Windows 95 until finally purchasing their first Mac in August 2001. Thurrott explains that he had narrowed his choices in 1987 to the Apple IIGS or a Mac Plus. We, too, wonder what might have been if Paul had chosen the latter instead of the former. And, was Paul really just three years old when he bought that exorbitantly priced Apple IIGS? If not, there’s no way for him to have been a “Mac fan” for his entire life.
Thurrott “reviews” Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger with often comical results, such as his description of “the reviled Dock, which is used to switch between running applications and, confusingly, non-running applications.” Thurrott claims that “Tiger (version 10.4) was then delayed from late 2004 to the first half of 2005,” although Apple first previewed Tiger on June 28, 2004 and stated that day that they would ship Tiger “in the first half of 2005.” Tiger ships on April 29, 2005.
Thurrott spends a copious amount of space on detailing the cost of each previous Mac OS X version as if mentally adding the costs on top of his unfortunate Apple IIGS outlay and writes, “Tiger is a minor revision, like all previous OS X updates.”
Thurrott writes, “Contrary to Apple’s hyperbolic claims of ‘200 new features,’ Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger includes, in my opinion, only two major new features, Spotlight and Dashboard, and both were clearly influenced by other existing products and services.” Of Spotlight, Thurrott concludes, “Not coincidentally, Microsoft is working on similar, if further-reaching, technology for Longhorn. Apple’s solution, however, is here right now and it appears to work quite well. Score one for Apple.”
MacDailyNews Take: We’re not sure what Thurrott means by “further-reaching,” nor are we sure if Thurrott knows what he means either, as he never explains the statement. Perhaps, due to the vaporous nature of Windows Longhorn, Microsoft must have to reach much further into the ether to figure out how to implement system-wide search capabilities into an OS that’s so rigidly shackled to the concept of backwards compatibility with previous and current Windows versions. Score one for Apple, indeed.
Thurrott continues, calling Tiger’s Dashboard feature “hard to classify” and writing that Apple has gotten into “in a bit of trouble because it so closely mimics a third party solution called Konfabulator.” We’re unaware of any “trouble” Apple has gotten into over this, especially since Dashboard doesn’t “mimic” Konfabulator. Oh, heck, this is boring. Just read this: Dashboard vs. Konfabulator, it explains it all.
Thurrott then covers what he terms “minor updates,” including Safari RSS, iChat AV, Mail 2 and complains, as usual, that he has to “pay to upgrade to the Pro version” of QuickTime 7. Damn that Apple IIGS decision!
Thurrott winds down by writing such gems as, “Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ is, in fact, a minor upgrade to an already well-designed and rock-solid operating system. It will not change the way you use your computer at all, and instead uses the exact same mouse and windows interface we’ve had since the first Mac debuted in 1984. That isn’t a complaint about Tiger, per se: It’s a high-quality release. But Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) was arguably a bigger advance over the initial release of XP than Tiger is over Mac OS X 10.3.”
Tiger “isn’t a big enough upgrade over previous OS X releases to warrant much excitement. Once you get past the few major new features–primarily Spotlight and Dashboard, neither one of which exactly changes the competitive landscape very much–there’s very little real meat in Tiger,” Thurrott writes. “This is particularly problematic for Apple’s goal of getting Windows users to switch to the Mac. In my opinion, the coolness factor of Apple’s iPod and Mac hardware is far more compelling than Mac OS X itself. The Mac mini and iMac, therefore, will likely cause more people to switch (or at least use both Windows XP and the Mac) than any improvements in Tiger. Don’t get me wrong, please: Again, Tiger is a solid release. It’s just not a major upgrade. And it’s certainly not worth $129.”
Thurrott wraps up by writing that Tiger is “a worthy competitor to Windows XP. Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we’d call a service pack in the Windows world. However, that won’t stop Apple fans from flocking to Apple Stores on April 29 and standing in line to buy it, even at its inflated $129 price.” Thurrott does zing Microsoft with the closing line, “And unlike Longhorn, it’s shipping now. What a concept.”
Full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple still pays the price for abandoning certain segments of customers in the past (ask any Newton user) and would do well to print out this “review” and post it in the boardroom in order to keep the ramifications of such momentous decisions in mind. We can’t help wondering, if Apple would reimburse Paul for his Apple IIGS costs plus interest, would we be able to get a real review of Tiger out of Paul or would he just blow the cash on some box assembler’s PC to run Windows XP?
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Microsoft’s Windows Longhorn will bear more than just a passing resemblance to Apple’s Mac OS X – April 15, 2005
Analyst: ‘Microsoft’s Longhorn is going to have hard time upstaging Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger’ – April 13, 2005
Analyst: Apple in ‘position to exploit Microsoft missteps, claim leadership’ with Mac OS X Tiger – April 13, 2005
Apple’s Schiller: Mac OS X Tiger ‘has created even more distance between us and Microsoft’ – April 13, 2005
Will Mac OS X Tiger add fuel to Apple’s recent momentum in the computer business? – April 13, 2005
Why doesn’t Apple advertise Mac OS X on TV? – April 12, 2005
Analyst: Tiger proves ‘Apple is light years ahead of Microsoft in developing PC operating systems’ – April 12, 2005
Apple to ship Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ on Friday, April 29; pre-orders start today – April 12, 2005
Apple Announces Mac OS X Server ‘Tiger’ to ship Friday, April 29 with 64-bit application support – April 12, 2005
Analysts: Apple’s new Tiger operating system could really impact Mac sales – April 12, 2005
Piper Jaffray raises Apple estimates on Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ release news – April 12, 2005
Apple’s Mac OS X ‘Tiger’ vs. Microsoft’s Windows ‘Longhorn’ – March 31, 2005
New Microsoft Longhorn chief was former Pepto-Bismol brand manager – March 18, 2005
Microsoft’s Longhorn fantasy vs. Apple’s Mac OS X reality – September 14, 2004
Is Microsoft’s stripped-down ‘Longhorn’ worth waiting for? – September 10, 2004
Silicon Valley: Apple CEO Steve Jobs previews ‘Longhorn’ – June 29, 2004
PC Magazine: Microsoft ‘Longhorn’ preview shows ‘an Apple look’ – May 06, 2004
Microsoft concerned that Longhorn’s look and feel will be copied if revealed too soon – August 25, 2003
Windows ‘Longhorn’ to add translucent windows that ripple and shrink by 2005 – May 19, 2003
I wonder if Syndrome in The Incredibles is based on Paul Thurrott?
He’s such a clown.
I can’t stand that bit*h!
I can accept people preferring windows, I don’t understand it but I can accept it.
This guy is just a prat though.
This is like listening to some guy who bought and has driven a Dodge Dart comparing it to a new Lamborghini and trying to justify his purchase by downplaying all the good features of the Lamborghini and finding as many little flaws as he can so he can feel good about said purchase. This is amazing. It’s like he’s holding back. C’mon paul, you can do it. Be honest with yourself. You love Mac OS X Tiger. Admit it, and your journey to recovery will begin…
What the f@#$ is Paul writing about the Mac on that site for?! Windows’ apologists must be scratching their heads at his schizophrenic behaviour.
I’d much prefer it if MDN ceased linking to Paul Thurrott.
Having initially checked Paul’s opinions, over the years I have come to realize that he has very few valid points and is often a mindless shill for his masters at Microsoft.
Linking to PT only ascribes him a validity and importance he should not be receiving.
What a douche…
He’s the #1 ass-clown of the computer world…
Although I can only go by what I’ve read on the web, the majority of the changes in Tiger happen under the hood. The way the I/O kit works, for example, or the way the pipelines to the processors are handled. Panther, as with all previous OSX versions, is limited to two processors due to architectural problems in OSX’s BSD layers. Tiger is supposed to be far more scalable. Add in the improved 64-bit application handling, and the list of 200 features actually specified by Apple, and the differences between Tiger and Panther are enormous.
Of course, if like Paul you have a G4 iMac, these architectural differences may not be at first obvious. But anyone with a dual machine, especially if it’s a G5, will see them easily. And the hardware that is coming over the next couple of years is going to use these changes big time.
macdaily could sell some ad space to the makers of advil right here. everytime i read the insanity and propaganda that comes out of thurrott’s mouth my head throbs to the point of wanting to tear my face off!!
H.264 is missing. Mentioning the clear superiority of that would piss off MS to no end since media formats are the new OS wars. He played it safe.
The dude is a shill. A backhanded complement.
what apple puppets. you guys have no brains. get a pc which has more expansion. we even have sli. what have you got?
by the way, A64 is far superior to g5
What sort of ‘Mac fan’ slags off Apple 24/7?
If he is a fan, then I am a mass murderer!!
WHAT A TWAT! (as we say in the UK)
Thurrott is actually the American spelling for “Pillock”.
I she actually saying Spotlight is based on Longhorn’s search features? I always thought it was cause then effect, not effect then cause. Back to my physics books.
Dave H: of course, you are correct and your observation gives a clue as to Thurrott’s obsessions.
Quite simply, Paul is obsessed with the shallow and the superficial in common with all people whose interests are a 1000 miles wide but 1 inch deep. He only wishes to see what he wants to see – Spotlight and Dashboard – as major improvements, ignoring the VoiceOver (?) technology, tighter .Mac integration, Automator or anything under-the-hood because it just doesn’t interest him or he doesn’t understand it.
Anyone who compares Tiger to a Microsoft service pack is quite frankly not worth taking seriously.
Effwerd: but what you fail to understand is that Apple has a secret time machine in Cupertino (iTime) that enables it to go forward to 2010 and see WinFS in action prior to travelling back to 2003 to start specifying Spotlight.
The time machine is also quite helpful, as Apple uses it to deny that any of its staff haver to work overtime.
Solar Flare: the problem is that Thurrott can only ever aspire to being a twat.
Yawwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnn!
I don’t care who it is: Mac friend or foe. I’m already tired of hearing that all Tiger is, is Spotlight and Dashboard.
Anyone who spends any time browsing the OS X pages on Apple, will indeed find that many of those 200 features are quite significant in their own right.
Here’s a few of my favorites:
– The upgraded apps for instance. Address Book 4, DVD Player 4.5, Font Book 2, iCal 2, iChat 3, Mail 2, Preview 3, Safari 2,Xcode 2.
Most of these are real apps, not just utilities.
– Whitelist security for children’s browsing, chatting and emailing. This is huge for anyone with kids.
– Laptop battery management with AI.
– VPN on demand: VPN that stays connected when you logout or switch user! Plus automatically connected VPNing
– Network and Airport diagnostic tools
– Scalable cursor: I reckon that’s gonna be popular with more than those with accessibility problems.
– Built in Thesaurus (as well as the dictionary)
So there’s a few to get you started.
Service Pack?! Pfft!
I would have paid at least half the cost of Tiger for the Parental Controls features alone.
Yes Spotlight is the eyecatcher. (And so it’s not new. No Google didn’t invent it. There’s a product called ISYS that has been doing the same thing as Google Desktop since 1987. Yes EIGHTY seven. 17 years. And I bet they weren’t even the first.)
Apple, I think, I the first to fully integrate it onto the OS. Something that MS was desperate to do with WinFS but have had to drop it.
So anyway, any reviewer reading this – please talk about more than the eye candy when you review Tiger.
It’s not a one stripe animal
Fight fire with fire. I think MDN should write a review of Longhorn.
I’ll even send in the Longhorn floppy.
Ok, if this tool actually believes that XP2 was a greater advance from XP than Tiger is from Panther, then he truly is beyond hope. Nobody with even the slightest bit of objectivity could make such an asinine statement. I’ve had it with reading these Thurrott troll articles, I simply don’t have the time to waste on this tool any longer…
Isn’t he supposed to be a “Tech” writer? Why was there no mention of any of the technical advancements in Tiger? No technical comparisons between the search features of Tiger & Longwait? A bunch of superficial, visual observations is all he had to offer.
I don’t remember my aunt’s computer getting new features and functions when I installed SP2 on it!! It does crash a little less frequently now and there hasn’t been quite as much ad/spyware, but still no expose/dashboard or even a respectably functional search feature.
I think Apple should get a restraining order on Mrs. Thurrott so he can’t get within 100′ of an Apple product… Or at least they should sue him for libel!!
Hey,mac sucks,G5s have SLI,and the only reason windows is expandable is because its needs thrird parties to make it look good.
Thurridiott The tech writer you love to hate. This guy is so ridiculous taking apart his blather is like shooting fish in a barrel. I wonder if anyone really takes what he says seriously. If so I pity them.
He confused “features” with “applications”.
The Dashboard Widgets were not taken from Konfabulator, and Apple did not take any “heat” for doing so. Apple was the originator of widgets in the original Mac when they added a 6 kilobyte calculator at the last minute. YOU make a calculator within a 6 kilobyte file size.
He called Exposé “Expos”. This is probably due to the fact that making something as simple as an accented e, “é”, is actually quite difficult on MS Windows if you don’t have the ASCII codes memorized. Even then, it may not show up on a MS generated web page.
Thurrott’s IQ is definitely in question. He opted to do a clean install of Tiger, rather than an easy one, and then complained that it took him 45 minutes to install it and reconfigure his settings. He also didn’t like the fact that Apple’s configuration options were so limited and almost hidden. He fully misunderstood that if you DID blow past those options, that it would be a quick and easy install that saved all of your settings; the correct and safest choice for 99% of all users. Should Apple have made the install default the more complex and confusing one that will waste time and possibly destroy data and settings? And he’s an “expert” in computers?
Every compliment he gave was quickly followed by a sarcastic comment. This was hardly a balanced and fair review, definitely not a technical one, and is precisely how falsehoods and myths are generated through the Wintel community.
It is obvious that he wrote this “article” to feign professionalism, and give the appearance of being versatile and balanced. If you knew absolutely nothing of Mac and only of MS Windows, he probably succeeded.
If Service Pack 2 was such a monumental advance, why then have so many people avoided it, Paul? Outside of some half-hearted attempts at security, it brought very little to the table in way of features; it still works as badly as ever. Oh, you say all the improvement was under the hood, huh? So, that under the hood stuff is more important that the flashy new features; kinda like all the unseen new technology that’s under the hood of Tiger? So Tiger really is a major new release after all, huh? Oh, what’s that? Tiger comes from Apple, so it’s really not all that important? So, what you are basically saying is what you’ve been saying all along—you think Apple sucks, Windows is always better, and that Apple should just go away.
Bad news buddy, this nightmare of yours is gonna last a while, better find a more comfortable seat.
Do you ever wonder about what you would do if Windows REALLY started to lose market share? Gives you chills doesn’t it?