Mac OS X Tiger - Fall In Love All Over Again
Written: May 04 '05 (Updated Jun 03 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Easy installation, powerful new features
Cons: Expensive, system requirements
The Bottom Line: If you didn't think you could love an operating system, think again.
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| prfstars's Full Review: |
I've never loved my Macintosh more than I do today. I installed Mac OS X Version 10.4 this morning, and Tiger truly lives up to the hype.
After ten years of Apple computers and every Macintosh operating system from System 7.1 to 10.3, I started to feel a little jaded. Sure, the operating system is always more elegant and user-friendly than whatever Microsoft is selling at the time, but the computers are (still) more expensive, there have been some stability problems, even with OS X's protected memory, and the yearly "major" OS upgrades cost over $100 each. I never got to the point where I considered buying a Windows box, but I definitely lost some of my Mac fervor. After a few hours with Tiger, that fervor is back with a vengeance.
Mac OS X Tiger - Installation
Installing Tiger is a no-brainer. Slide in the DVD, restart the computer, agree to the legal disclaimer, and the Installer does the rest. The full process took more than a half hour on my computer, but it's fully automated and doesn't require your presence at the computer.
The system requirements are a G3, G4, or G5 processor, built in firewire, 256 MB of RAM, and 3 GB free hard drive space. For a full list of supported hardware, point your browers to:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/upgrade/requirements.html
Once the installation is complete, the computer will restart and prompt you to register the new software.
The New Stuff
Apple lists more than 200 new features in Tiger, including upgrades to the Developer Tools, but I'm only going to discuss the ones that a typical user is likely to notice.
There are three new features that are particularly exciting-- Dashboard, Spotlight, and Automator.
Dashboard is a collection of widgets, mini-application that pop up and then disappear when you move the mouse to a hot corner or hit a function key. The widgets may even replace some of the site you currently navigate to in your browser. There's a weather widget that provides a local six day forecast, a widget for tracking airline departures and arrivals, one with local traffic reports, one that translates between several languages, one that converts measurements between several units, one that contains a dictionary and thesaurus, one with stock quotes, and half a dozen others. There are more than sixty more widgets available -free- from Apple, and several more that are shareware demos.
The Widgets themselves are very attractive, and really make the most of the Aqua interface. You can easily control how many (and which) Widgets appear on your desktop. Widgets have been available from third party vendors for a while, but now they're seamlessly integrated into the Mac OS.
Spotlight is a sophisticated search feature that takes Sherlock to the next level. There's a search box in the finder's menu bar and in every window on your Mac, and the OS begins searching as soon as you begin typing. The results are instantaneous. Spotlight achieves this by indexing your hard drive constantly, and completely in the background. You'll never know it's happpening.
Apple has always made it simple to automate tasks, but Automator is just amazing. As an experiment, I took ten digital pictures of my son, and then asked Automator to resize them, rename them sequentially, and then e-mail them to all the assorted aunts and grandmas in my address book. It took me a couple of minutes to create the "workflow," or list of tasks, but once I did, Automator did exactly what I asked. The cute little robot icon is the perfect representation for this function. Now I'm working on a birthday e-mail that Automator will send to each person in my address book as his or her birthday rolls around.
A Few More Reasons To Fall In Love
I've used Norton Parental Control on my kids' iMac for a few months, but it's a big, bloated program that doesn't work particularly well. OS X Tiger has integrated Parental Controls now that dramatically improve upon 10.3's built in controls. 10.3 allowed you to restrict what applications and control panels the kids could access on the computer itself; now you can restrict who can exchange e-mails and IMs with your kids, and restrict web sites to ones you pre-approve.
The parental controls extend to the built in dictionary, which prevents your kids from looking up naughty words that they probably already know anyway. The dictionary operates just like Spotlight-- it starts to search as soon as you start to type. This is particularly useful if you're not sure how to spell a word. Each dictionary entry has multiple definitions (when applicable), etymology, and a thesaurus entry.
Most of Mac's built-in applications have gotten facelifts. Mail has a new look, and a built in Spotlight search tool. Its Spam-filtering tool has been upgraded, and it's now easier to send photo attachments. You can edit the photo size (and therefore file size) right there in the Mail window, without opening photo editing software.
The Safari browser is now RSS enabled, which allows you to receive news feeds-- simple, ad-free headlines that are regularly updated.
Within the Screen Saver, there's an RSS Visualizer that lets you see the headlines, from a vast list of RSS news servers, as your screen saver. The background looks like a moving blue sky, and the headlines cartwheel across the screen until they settle in the middle.
Tiger has a significant video upgrade for both Quicktime and iChat AV. The picture is really better! I played a tiny home movie, enlarged the window several times, and the picture barely looked pixelated.
Apple used to add new desktop pictures with new OS releases, but they haven't added many since they released 10.1. I was pleasantly surprised to find several new attractive, high resolution photos with 10.4. They've incororated some of these photos into new screen savers, too.
Speaking of pictures, you can now click on any group of photos on your Mac and create a slideshow in the finder or in any window. You can make an even cooler slideshow in the screensaver control panel by selecting one of your picture folders as a screensaver.
There are so many more system improvements than I can list, and I doubt I'll ever notice most of them. If you're curious, you can look them up at:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/over200.html
Stability
Back in the days of OS 7, 8, and 9, my Mac crashed much more often than I'd have admitted to a PC user. Since the early days of OS X, crashes are almost unheard of. If an application hangs up, just use the "force quit" feature to (duh) force it to quit. I've subjected my PowerBook to all sorts of abusive tasks since I installed Tiger, and it hasn't hung up at all. This seems like a good sign of 10.4's stability.
Price
I'm not sure how Apple gets away with charging $129 almost every year for an OS upgrade, but users pay it with minimal angst. Now that I'm back in school, I got my copy for the student/teacher price of $69. If you (or a family member) are in any way affiliated with a school, see if you qualify for the discount before you pay the full price.
Overall Recommendation
If you've ever hesitated to plunk down the money for an OS upgrade, now's the time to give in and do it. Tiger's improvements have rekindled my passion for all things Mac.
As with any OS upgrade, back up your data before you install Tiger, and if you encounter any problems, go to http://www.apple.com/support/tiger/ for technical support.
Update - 5/12/05
I promised I'd be back with problems or conflicts, and here I am. Mac OS X runs hot-- I'm not sure why, but my PowerBook G4 heats up much faster since I upgraded to 10.4. This hasn't caused any problems for the computer, but my thighs are getting tender.
I've been running SETI@Home (http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/) for almost six years without any conflicts, but with 10.4, it won't run in screensaver mode-- only as an application. I'm not worried; 10.4 has only been out for a week, and SETI doesn't update the software frequently. They'll fix it someday.
Update - 5/31/05
A possible conflict-- when I try to save a copy of my data file in Quicken 2003, the application quits. Granted, it's a two year old product, but it was significantly more stable under OS 10.3 than Quicken 2004 was.
I reported a couple of weeks ago that Tiger heats up my laptop, but I found a quick fix from Apple. Go to System Preferences -> Energy Saver -> Settings for Battery, and select Better Battery Life. Even if you customize your settings from there, your computer won't get as hot. I don't know why it works, exactly, but it works.
Update - 6/3/05
Here's an issue with Mail 2.0.1-- it sends mail through Comcast, but has trouble receving it. I can solve the problem, temporarily, by restarting. I checked with Comcast, and there's no problem on their end, but other Tiger users are having the same problem.
Recommended:
Yes
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