“Despite all the advances in personal computing, one problem has remained constant: It often is really hard to find a file months or years after it was created. To have any hope of doing so, users have to create a logical, structured system of folders, and take care to give consistent, descriptive names to their files. But few have the patience to do that,” Walter S. Mossberg writes for The Wall Street Journal. “Tomorrow, Apple Computer will introduce a new edition of the operating system for its Macintosh computers that finally solves the missing file problem, and introduces other features as well, including a new ‘Dashboard’ that instantly displays small, frequently used programs like a calculator, dictionary and stock tracker.”
Mossberg writes, “Spotlight is vastly better than prior built-in search functions on either the Mac or on Microsoft’s Windows operating system. It also beats the add-on search programs for Windows. Spotlight can rapidly find almost any file, any time — even years after it was created, and even if it is hidden among tens of thousands of other files. So as users learn to trust it, they no longer will have to worry about where they store files and what they name them.”
Mossberg writes, “Overall, Tiger is the best and most advanced personal computer operating system on the market, despite a few drawbacks. It leaves Windows XP in the dust. It also adds to the Mac’s general superiority over typical Windows computers as the best choice for average consumers doing the most common computing tasks. Apple’s hardware already was the best in the business, and Mac OS X has, so far, escaped the virus and spyware problems that plague Windows. The new Apple system boasts some key capabilities Microsoft won’t introduce for another 18 months or so, when it finally rolls out its long-awaited next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn.”
Mossberg cites “slight, but greater-than-normal, delays from time to time,” writes that in his opinion Automator’s “too complicated for most average users,” and says that Mail “offers less information on what is happening in downloads of new mail, unless you bring up a special window” as drawbacks. Mossberg concludes, “Still, Tiger is a beautiful and powerful operating system that advances personal computing. It is a big gain for Mac users right out of the box. If Apple can wring out the delays, it will be a home run.”
Full article with good descriptions of Tiger’s key features here.
Advertisement: Pre-order Mac OS X Tiger today for delivery on April 29th and get access to an exclusive online seminar. Free shipping. Just $129.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Associated Press: Mac OS X Tiger ‘provides another excellent incentive to switch from Windows’ – 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
Revolutionary! It will change the world!!
Can’t wait for Tiger. I hope it is everything we wanted, and more…
Businesses that adopt Apple technologies in their enterprises (particularly Apple’s new operating system Mac OS X Tiger) will have a distinct competitive advantage over those that don’t.
Apple’s Tiger ‘the best, most advanced personal computer operating system on the market’
I know!
So you thought you’d wait for Longhorn and upgrade our systems then did you….?
YOU’RE FIRED!!!!
Now get out of my office….
And no after interviews either…
Longhorn will be real…
– not in one year or so
– not in more than one year
– not in 18 months or so
– but in 20 months: they hope
Tiger has 20 months to eat it
Can’t wait for Tiger, either! I gotta go get that Windows machine RIGHT NOW!
Delays? What delays? I’ve been running Tiger on a dual G4 (1.4GHz) for several days now and have not experienced ANY delays, doing ANYTHING. Well… except maybe when encoding from DVD into H.264. Wait till you guys see this. A 376MB DVD file, 720×404, transcoded into H.264, same size, resulted in an 80MB file AND YOU HAVE TO GET A MAGNIFYING GLASS TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE IN QUALITY! Very impressive. Oh, and now, Quicktime allows you do continue watching a movie while it is encoding. Before, you had to wait till it was done. I like that.
I have seen one bug. I don’t know if it’s my Logitech mouse or Tiger, but several times my mouse has just quit – the LED even goes out. If I unplug it and plug it back in, it works again.
Safari is awesome. Speed, speed, speed. Still haven’t figured out how to make it do what NetNewsWire does tho. Seems it will accumulate RSS feeds from only web site at a time…. but surely that can’t be right. Still looking into it. BTW, at this java test site: http://www.24fun.com/downloadcenter/benchjs/benchjs.html Safari 1.2 ran thru the tests in 70 seconds. Safari 2.0 in 10.
Mossberg and Pogue are the only two tech journalists whose opinions I trust. All the other idiots are just filling paper/space.
Can’t wait for Tiger to get here tomorrow!
“users have to create a logical, structured system of folders, and take care to give consistent, descriptive names to their files.”
If you’re doing any kind of multimedia work (video, Internet, animation, etc.) you have to learn this early and learn it well, or you’re doomed. Spotlight wasn’t around when I started, and I doubt it will help with such files. Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait to run Spotlight and the rest of Tiger through its paces. If Spotlight can generate index documents of unmounted drives or archived CDs and DVDs, I’ll be very impressed.
Do any of you know what happens to the index system of Spotlight if you must re-install the OS in the future? In the event you need to format the drive, due to failure etc.
Will Spotlight “forget” the location of files, say that were stored on a second drive?
Metryq: Index UNMOUNTED drives? Not likely. But what it will do is index that drive the first time it sees it (when it’s first mounted), then update that index dynamically whenever anything is added to or removed from that drive. While the drive is unmounted I’m pretty sure it doesn’t give you search results, although I could be mistaken. I have a couple of disk images that I mount from time to time and when I dismount it, Spotlight no longer gives me results for it. It would seem that it would work the same for a real life hard drive. Looks to me like Spotlight’s purpose is more for whatcha got rather than whatcha had.
I hope that APPL goes down or that funnymoney ($) goes down..
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I need some more shares of the Apple pie