“Tiger, the latest version of Apple Computer’s Mac OS X operating system, debuts Friday. This is hardly news to the Mac faithful, who’ve been alerted through daily e-mail reminders and a running countdown on Apple’s Web site to the day Tiger is ‘unleashed,'” Dawn C. Chmielewski writes for The Mercury News. “The folks in Redmond are bracing as well. Tiger, Apple’s fifth major operating system upgrade in four years, keeps the competitive pressure on Microsoft, which is at least a year away from introducing the successor to Windows XP, dubbed ‘Longhorn.’
MacDailyNews Note: Microsoft themselves say “late 2006” for Longhorn. That’s really more like “at least 18 months away.” Is Chmielewski attempting to minimize the wait? We’re not accusing, just wondering. What do you think? (Please see the article “Nearly every segment of the PC food chain needs Longhorn to succeed” from April 22, 2005 in the list of related articles below.)
Chmielewski continues, “It’s not that Tiger is about to eat Longhorn for lunch — after all, Microsoft Windows runs 94 percent of the world’s personal computers. Rather, Apple’s history of operating system innovations sets the standard for Microsoft to imitate or exceed.”
MacDailyNews Note: Oh, please. Microsoft may have had a few ideas here or there (Command-Tab for Mac OS X Panther users, for example), but when exactly did a Microsoft OS actually exceeded an OS that was available at the same time from Apple? Never. Not even close. We can even make a pretty compelling case for Apple’s Mac OS 9 over Windows XP today. And plenty of people today still choose that classic old Apple OS over the latest and “greatest” from Microsoft.
Chmielewski continues, “What makes Tiger innovative, rather than merely iterative, is that it breaks down the barriers between the self-contained computer and the Internet. It is the first operating system to incorporate and expand upon the intensive hard-drive search popularized by Google. It also fetches the kind of up-to-the-minute stock, weather and flight information typically found on Web sites like Yahoo. Apple even improved on RSS news and blog feeds and integrates them into its Safari Web browser… Tiger supports the latest high-definition video compression technology, H.264, which yields bright, vivid images from even more compact files. The video trailer we watched for the upcoming ‘Fantastic Four’ movie was crisper than that found in any theater.”
“Benjamin Reitzes, an analyst with UBS Investment Research in New York, predicts the appeal of these new features will be popular with the 14 million Mac aficionados who already use Mac OS X. It might even persuade some of the 10 million Macintosh users who have yet to switch to open their wallets,” Chmielewski reports. “And that could be worth $1 billion in revenue to Apple this fiscal year, Reitzes estimates.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Our own SteveJack wrote the article, “If you aren’t running Mac OS X by now you really are one of the ‘crazy ones'” on September 27, 2002. If you aren’t using Mac OS X today in April, 2005, uhhh, well, let’s just say, “it’s time.” This Friday would be a perfect time to begin your move to Mac OS X with the release of Tiger! Now sit down in front of a mirror and repeat after us, “my old [insert peripheral here]’s Mac OS X driver will never come. It is time to stop clinging to my old [insert peripheral here]. It is time to join the majority of Mac users and move to Mac OS X. I can do this. I’m good enough. I’m strong enough. Etc., etc., etc.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
If you aren’t running Mac OS X by now you really are one of the ‘crazy ones’ – September 27, 2002
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Nearly every segment of the PC food chain needs Longhorn to succeed – April 22, 2005
Microsoft’s new mantra: ‘It Just Works’ ripped straight from Apple’s ‘Switch’ campaign – April 22, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Microsoft’s Longhorn: ‘They are shamelessly copying us’ – April 21, 2005
Apple shows off Mac OS Tiger in Microsoft’s backyard while Microsoft previews Windows XP ad push – April 19, 2005
Apple’s Mac OS X reality vs. Microsoft’s Longhorn fantasy – April 19, 2005
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 think the take that Mac has ALWAYS been ahead of Windows might not be productive. OSX Tiger has moved the Mac WAY AHEAD of Windows and ahead of Longhorn when it eventually arrives. Otherwise why didn’t everyone switch to OS9, when it was ahead of Windows 98??
Macaday,
Always being “ahead” in OS innovation and having everyone switch to your OS are not mutually exclusive.
Macaday, I’d say it’s because people are scared of change. Or maybe they wanted to work out the bugs. However, even when buggy, OS X was way better than Windows anything. Period.
Hardware price, mostly. Also, there are still plenty of people who only know a Mac or Apple by name, but have no idea what they really are. It’s only recently that my family stopped thinking I was full of sh*t when I would talk about how I loved my Apple computers and how wel they worked. It wasn’t until the iPod came out (all over the place) that they realized I wasn’t lying about ease of use, etc. Now there’s a new iMac G5, three iPods, and an iBook in the family. There’s a new iBook being ordered in a few weeks, too.
Sadly, my family, despite being fairly educated simply had it’s attention on other things. I think this is true for a lot of people.
Advertising would help…
arent there over 25 million people using OSX?
Hmm. OS-9 over XP ? Not so sure about that. If I still had to use OS-9, I would probably have switched back to the PC by now. I would probably have a dual boot Linux / XP machine instead.
I think I paid over the odds for an unstable OS when I got my first Mac back in 2000. I wasn’t entirely happy with it then. Now I’d probably hate it.
Fred Mertz,
What you just said is: It is not impossible for an OS to be “ahead” and for everyone to switch to that platform. I don’t think that’s what you meant.
As far as I remember command-tab has always been there, only in the earlier OS X versions it was implemented by highlighting items in the dock instead of a bezel in the middel of the screen.
Not sure, but I think even OS 9 allowed for command-tab. Right?
re: R
HARDWARE PRICE!
Are you having a laugh?
You can now get a mac as cheap as any windows box!
Hardware price is NOT an excuse anymore.
When Apple launched the mac mini that historical ‘myth’ died with it!
1) With Mac OS X finally becoming a mature OS, Apple has let the developer community that future upgrades are going to slow. IT managers, developers and many individual customers do not like major changes to the OS coming so quickly.
2) Each week, more and more commercial-grade software vendors deliver or announce Mac OS X development or support. Application software drives hardware sales.
3) Tiger has finally brought Macs to parity when working on Windows servers. That may not be important to the average Mac user, but it is huge to many who have been on the sidelines saying “if only…”
4) The launch of Longhorn 64-bit and WinFS will break a ton of legacy applications and require a hardware upgrade cycle in the Windows world. WinHEC released minimum specs for Longhorn and WinFS list Dual Processor or Dual-Core CPUs, which eliminates 95%+ of all of the existing PCs currently being used. This eliminates the disadvantage that switching to Mac has had because of the need to replace hardware.
“It is time to join the majority of Mac users and move to Mac OS X.”
Heaven forbid someone should do something *different* from everyone else. Why not join the majority of computer users and move to Windows?
Your idea that a perfectly good peripheral should be trashed just to keep up with the latest-and-greatest OS geeks shows just how much you’ve mindlessly bought into the throwaway consumer culture.
OS 9 was fine if you didn’t have many extensions and understood the file system. Problem is that people don’t understand a file system and lose their stuff all the time, or forget where they put it, or didn’t pay attention when saving a file.
I always spent alot of time setting up OS 9, 8, 7 so that applications and common directories had alias links on the desktop. It was silly then as it still is that Apple stuffs the Applications folder in the file system insted of putting it in an easily-accessible location like the Dock.
iTunes and iPhoto are finally getting it right. Apple needs to make the “finder” work like those iApps. Spotlight will help, but the Finder still needs help. Apple is going in the right direction though.
One thing Apple always had right was bundling executables with their resources. That makes things a whole lot better. I couldn’t go back to OS 9 though. Security didn’t exist. Even with OS X it can be bypassed locally, but perhaps that is usually a good thing.
I think Apple is on the right track. Jaguar was getting polished, but Tiger is looking downright innovative. If I can just get out of this Windows network where I’m the only crazy Mac user in a thousand Windows users I’ll be even happier.
“You can now get a mac as cheap as any windows box!
Hardware price is NOT an excuse anymore.”
But since he was replying to the question regarding OS 9 versus Win98, the mini doesn’t count, does it? We’re talking four or five years ago here.
Windows 95 owned Mac OS 7-9. Sad, but true. Now, OS X owns XP. OS X will also own Longhorn. Steve Jobs is the man.
re: Dennis.
I know it’s probably and alien concept but…
It’s called ‘PROGRESS’.
You know – moving things forward for the better of society/humanity.
Humanity is built on evolving to the greater good – if it weren’t we would still be living in caves!
Or more likely died out by now!
Mac OS 9.x was an improvement over 8.x, but Win98 wasn’t that far off by comparison. In fact, I found it more stable. OS X was none too soon in arriving for Apple. I was really getting tired of a crashed application taking down my whole box rather frequently. At least Windows didn’t do that (as much).
Thanks goodness OS X arrived!
Mac OS Classic over Windows? maybe. But even at those times you had a choice. If it weren´t for Mac OS X I still would be using NeXTSTEP!
A New Mac User,
There’s a fine line between forcing progress and forcing people to pay more than they need to. And who’s to decide what is better for society and humanity? I agree that Apple is pushing the technological side of mankind forward, but I would hardly say that Apple is evolving manking to a more perfect state of being.
And progress in the way you use it is a relative term. Everyone has their own idea of what’s important in their lives. Is technology progressing? Yes. Is the basic stability of the family unit progressing? Debatable, I would say no. Is general health and general life spans progressing? Yes. Are people happier now than before? Debatable, some would emphaticaly say no. See, it all depends on what you value. There are many people that don’t like the way in which the world is “progressing.”
Apple is doing wonderful things but can hardly be credited as being an important step in the evolutionary process of mankind.
I keep on hearing MS came up with “Command-Tab.” Apple had a software called Switcher, which used Command-[ and Command-] to switch between applications (four applications). Switcher came out in 1985 and had to be acquired from Apple separately. Multifinder introduced drop down menu to select the application. I believe they did continue to support keyboard shortcuts to switch between applications, but I’m not sure. Mac users tend to have multiple windows from different application shown on desktop and switch application by clicking on appropriate window, while Windows users tend to have one application take over the whole screen (full screen mode), so they have to use short cut like Alt-Tab to switch (If you worked on Windows, you will know why they tend to run full-screen mode all the time. I think most Windows application developers assume users are running in full-screen mode.).
http://www.mac512.com/switcher.htm
smegdude,
there are 25 million mac users but not all are OS X. I think SJ said in one of his last keynotes that there were over 10 or 12 million users of OS X. Is that right?
RE: camus
APPLE IS NOT FORCING ANYONE TO UPGRADE.
I pre-ordered Tiger and at no point did an Apple Employee put a gun to my head saying ‘you have to buy this or else!’
To be honest, if you havent upgraded to OS X then you don’t know what youre missing.
Ive been using Macs for over 14 years and believe me – I was sick to death of the old OS crashing 16 times a day and all because I put a floppy disk in the mac.
I installed OS X 10.1 and it was a shock I agree – but I was so pleased that they had totallyditched OS 9 and re-written the OS from one (something Microsoft should have done years ago!) that it made learning OS X exciting.
It was either that or go over to windows – AND THAT IS A LAST RESORT!
a new mac user,
First of all, forcing a person to abandon perfectly usable hardware because the new product doesn’t support it can be considered progress, or it can be considered an unnecessary expense for the consumer. But that’s not the point I was trying to convey. My argument wasn’t that Apple is forcing people to buy Tiger, rather, what some people view as progress, others view as an inconvenience. And I’m not trying to say that Tiger is an extra expense or the source of inconvenience to anyone. My statement was more directed at your implied thought Apple’s business decisions are an important step in the evolution of mankind.
Another point to remember with Longhorn is that when it comes out it is likely to be in a similar, if not worse state than 10.0.0 when it came out. ie it will have a whole bunch of issues simply because it is a new OS, and it will probably be worse because it has to support a wider range of hardware. So on top of the minimum 18 months until it is first released, it will probably the same again at least before it is is as solid and mature as OSX.
I think MS was ahead of Apple technically when NT came out – since OS 7.5 or whatever it was at the time was below average behind the scenes (memory protection, multitasking etc). Copland was vaporware at the time too. (According to Apple Confidential 2.0), Apple even considered purchasing NT, but luckily for us (and them) went with NeXT.
I switched in fall of 2000 for the following reasons:
Hatred of Microsoft stemming from the Great Windows Fiasco of 1995 (re: pre-ordered Evil Beast of Destruction and its 11 month reign of terror on my PC).
Seeking a viable contender to the afore mentioned Evil (Linux is and was also cool, but it wasn’t there yet).
The coming of OS X.
Godzilla told me to in “Godzilla 2000 Millennium”, the world’s greatest Apple switch commercial starring Apple’s biggest fan.
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Since I couldn’t wait, I got a Snow iMac and got acquainted with OS 9. Quite frankly, I was surprised at how much Apple was able to accomplish with a little microcomputer OS, and how many advanced features it had. I occasionally had problems with a renegade driver or piece of software gave the poor little OS a lot of grief, but unlike Windows 9.x, I was always able to find the problem, and fix it.
There is one incident that proved, to me anyway, OS 9’s superiority to Windows 98. I had some files on my Windows 98 PC I wanted to transfer to my new iMac via a Zip drive. The PC crashed three times trying to write the files. The iMac didn’t even crash once!
OS X is everything I expected and more: a thing of beauty, and a joy forever. True, it is light years ahead of OS 9 and anything Microsoft can dream up (MS only dreams of world domination, not new innovations, which is its big problem). But I am glad I had the honor of knowing the venerable OS 9. I wish OS 9 many pleasant dreams as it sleeps in the cradle of eternity.
Now the future belongs to Tiger. Yes, Tiger is a mighty leap, into 64 bit computing, distributed computing, etc. But one thing will always be true:
OS X Tiger: now and forever the Apple of Mothra’s Aqua eye.