With the release of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, “Apple’s acting like a bunch of jerks about how much better they are at these things than anybody else,” Andy Ihnatko writes for The Chicago Sun-Times. “I mean, they’re really rubbing Windows’ nose in it with this one. Which is hardly sporting, but it’s undeniably Good News for users.”
“There are plenty of brand-new features in this new release (200, according to Apple’s press release) but the true superstar is Spotlight. It’s capital-R Revolutionary, making the whole concept of organizing your data into folders and volumes seem, well …quaint,” Ihnatko writes. “Use it for just a couple of days, and you’ll imagine a future visit to Colonial Williamsburg where you can watch re-enactors churn butter, make candles and manually manage their files.”
Ihnatko writes, “Spotlight is more than a search utility because it’s actually a system-wide resource, just as important as Tiger’s printing system or its networking features. Its benefits aren’t limited to just files, or even the Finder. Nearly every new feature of 10.4 includes some sort of Spotlight-powered enhancement. And if software developers begin to understand what this new resource can do for their own apps, Spotlight could become the most transformative thing to happen to desktops since the drop-down menu.”
“Clearly, the folks at Microsoft have their work cut out for them. The next edition of Windows won’t ship until 2006 — maybe — and while the company certainly has the sort of smart and creative talent pool that’s required to produce such an OS update as jubilant and successful as Tiger, is that part of the company’s nature? Every past edition of Windows emphatically indicates the answer is no,” Ihnatko writes. “All I can tell you is that with Tiger on store shelves, and a new Windows a mere shapeless dot shimmering vaguely over the horizon, there has never been a more compelling time to switch to a Mac.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, Mac OS X Tiger is getting some good reviews, huh? Do you think Windows users are noticing?
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Dan Gillmor: ‘With Mac OS X Tiger, Apple is plainly in the lead today’ – May 05, 2005
Jupiter Research VP: Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger ‘runs rings around Microsoft Windows’ – May 04, 2005
The Independent: Apple’s ‘faster, smarter, simpler’ Mac OS X Tiger ‘a must-have’ – May 04, 2005
Mac OS X Tiger review for a Windows PC audience finds Tiger’s ‘far, far better than Windows XP’ – May 03, 2005
Longhorn mentioned in nearly every Apple Mac OS X Tiger review to assuage Windows masses – May 02, 2005
Boston Herald: Mac OS X Tiger should compel Windows PC users to think about switching to Apple Mac – May 02, 2005
Mac OS X Tiger will likely improve performance of your Macintosh – April 30, 2005
PC World review gives Apple’s Mac OS X Tiger 4.5 stars out of 5 – April 30, 2005
Forrester analysts: Apple should advertise Mac OS X Tiger on television and in movie theaters – April 29, 2005
Ars Technica: Mac OS X Tiger ‘at least twice as significant as any single past update’ – 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
Apple posts QuickTime movies of Mac OS X Tiger features in action – April 13, 2005
Will all this publicity really make people switch or get more determined to stay with a flawed system?
First Post!!!
Yeh-heh-hesss!!!
Not. I don’t think that they’re noticing.
But that’s their problem.
Sorry, Triumph, but the first post is mine!
I once emailed a list of 50 reasons OS X was better than Windows to a PC user I know. Yeh-hessss.
He told me he stopped reading after #12.
I asked him if that was because he was already convinced and didn’t need to read the other 38 reasons.
He said no — it was ’cause he couldn’t count any higher.
WHAT? Hey, come onnn. I keed de Patchers!
Gee, yet another great review for Mac OS X Tiger. Yawn.
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It’s funny that although every review of Tiger (and God knows there are a bunch) starts with “Spotlight”, the opinions about the relevance and usefulness of it runs wider than the Grand Canyon: Andy believes it’s “revolutionary” while others think it just o.k.
Personally, I believe that it’s closer to the “revolutionary” side of the spectrum (especially if third party developers start to exploit it to its fullest).
BTW, love this system wide spell checker. Makes me seem half educated.
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Post Man? Costner, is that you?
Come onn, Kev — you know that movie blew. I’ve seen celluloid put to better use in Microsoft training films.
Re: “Will all this publicity really make people switch or get more determined to stay with a flawed system?”
A week and a half ago, I took time out of my hectic day to take a colleague and his wife down to the grand opening of an Apple store to help them get the right Mac for them. They’re Dell machine (hence forth pronounced “Hell) died a week prior. He was ready to order another Hell box when he remembered how ‘Madison Avenue’ slick my presentations were compared to the other corporate climbers.
Anyway, after spending a fair amount of time with them at the new store (and enduring personal peril from the legions of people at the grand opening), the “boss”, his wife chose to go get another “Hell” because she was “comfortable with windblow$).
Just one anecdote I know but there are an awful lot of these rubes out there.
As an aside, he claims he will get a Power Book in a couple of months for himself.
I haven’t upgraded to Tiger yet but planning to. For those who have, I ask: has anyone played around with the feature in Tiger that allows users to manipulate images using the built in graphics editing plugins similar to the plugins found in Photoshop? I don’t hear anyone talking about this at all since I saw it in a Keynote last year.
A positive review by Andy Ihnatko is not really a “positive review” — he’s been a long-time Mac journalist, just like David Pogue. It’s more important for NON-Mac users to be reviewing the mac positively in the mainstream press.
ok, so we’ve been seeing a lot of good reviews lately. That’s good, but just for fun, here’s a really irritating review from someone that apparently no clue what he’s talking about
“the giant from Redmond has proven many times since its founding that it knows to innovate.
So, Longhorn might offer more than what Microsoft’s officials are willing to declare.
Microsoft is too experienced in operating systems not to use this time to come up with a better and more interesting alternative to what Mac OS X 10.4 is offering right now. And where will Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger be 18 months from now? Will Apple be able to keep up with our demands 18 months from now?”
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Longhorn-might-kick-Apple-in-the-Tiger-1665.shtml
I’m sure the writer would love to hear your comments.
Apple still needs to keep the pressure up for the next year. It will take a long time to get people to open up their wallets. Right now they’re at the stage of really wanting a Porche and yea it is better than my Corolla, but do I need it? Then Practicality sets in and outweighs the “want it “.
Apple needs to advertise the practicality of the machine over the sexiness of the machine.
They have the info to make it a “need it” device. Let’s hope they advertise it as such.
Prisoner 24… er, … Eric24601 – there is a tool with Tiger called “Quartz Composer”, which is installed with the developer tools. I don’t know if that’s the tool you were referring to or not (I remember the keynote and it didn’t look like QC to me, more like a “proper” app, but this is pretty good anyway.)
Most reviewers probably miss it because it’s not installed by default.
They probably also miss the RSS visualizer screen saver too.
I disagree with the statement “there’s never been a more compelling time to switch to Mac”.
I seem to remember back in March of 1984 when I bought my first Mac to replace my TRS-80 Model III. THAT was a very compelling time to switch to a Mac!
I used automator to rotate an image. You use Finder to select an image and preview provides the rotate function. My first attempt used a .gif, but it wouldn’t work. Automator just beeped when it failed, but offered no alert. Console is empty. When I used a jpg it did the same “hero” beep, but completed. I think it just blindly runs the script and if it works, it works.
It was easy to do. Surprisingly so, actually. TRUE drag and drop programming. Bravo Apple! Error feedback would be good to have, but for a 1.0 release it is really neatoh. I’ll have to find an excuse to use it again.
“Do you think Windows users are noticing?”
No, they are too busy patching Windows to keep their PCs running.
Windows users can kiss my ass! I luv u MDN!
Chicago Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune being quoted earlier…
Apparently, Chicagoans know what a good computer should be. But that is to be expected. Chicagoans have never been the mindless trend followers or lemmings that both coasts seem to be. I like Chicago for its lack of attitude; the people are much more real, less plastic personalities.
CNBC report on Tiger.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/cnbc
Post man
Do you make a habit f taking credit even for silly things like first post?
pathetic !!
MDN – while I am an Apple fanboy, your take is complete BS!
Andy Ihnatko has been and always will be a Mac evangelist. For those of you that don’t remember MacUser, he was one of their columnists and reviewers.
MDN – you act like he is some impartial journalist. He isn’t. Andy is as much in the pocket of Apple as Enderle and Thurott are for MS.
Since the M$ tax payers freely compare Mac OS X Tiger to a non-existant OS, Winblows XP SP3 (code named longhorn), I think it’s fair for us to start talking about the next Mac OS X:
I can’t stand the wait for the next OS X code named Cheetah due “1st Quarter 2007”. The features are truly impressive but I’m most interested in ‘Flood Light’:
‘Flood Light’, is the massive upgrade to ‘Spotlight’. Forget about simple desktop search; now you can get Human Knowledge Search (HKS). Flood Light gives you instant access to all knowledge of man – updated in real time! Amazing, some kid in San Juan just finished his term paper and Flood Light has already added it to your live index in Houston, TX.
Let’s see Winblows XP SP2 top that!
MacMania, I don’t think you are too far off. The world needs an intelligent program that can scour the planet’s available databases and compile them into a useful collection, and do so with normal human language.
For example, “List all of Abraham Lincoln’s non-political activities from 1845 to 1850.”
Right now, the likes of Google merely dump off a truckload of data with tons of trash mixed in with it, and to have it filter out some of the trash, you have to have an expert knowledge of the best way to formulate your query.
Google also displays the info backwards. I’d like to see what I was looking for and its surrounding context as the first line in bold, and then display the link(s) trailing it.