Okay, with only seven day to go until it’s release the question is:
“Who’s going to upgrage?” I’ve been looking at the site unleashed It looks fantastic.
I especially love the idea of the automated comands and Core Audio. Personally I think the Wigets are a bit of a gimmick. It’s $129US mmm…not too many hours at the buxi ban.
What do you think?
L 
Tiger is simply amazing. I can’t say it any more than that.
I could go on for years about the features or the future of computing.
Ok. here’s a summary.
bill joy (find out who he is) says OS X is the best OS in the world - he understands where it will be someday
Spotlight - will change how you use your computer - ALL OSs will have desktop search, and it will get even better. wait and see how other apps like Office will incorporate Spotlight. Wait to see how Spotlight will be in 10.5 in 2006?
Dashboard - use it, you’ll someday understand it’s potential. I’m not a konfabulator fan.
Safari - javascript glue, hella cool. RSS - I’ve tried just about every RSS app on the mac including Firefox add ons. Safari is my favorite. web RSS like bloglines is cool too
Mail 2.0 - finally. I love it.
iChat AV - H.264 - i’ll get an iSight someday. unbelievable quality
Dictionary - New Oxford American - I love the 20 vol Oxford English Dictionary; I run it on Virtual PC. this is a not a bad fast substitute. Can you use other dictionary files with it. I think so. My other alternative someday is the Websters new International unabridged 3rd edition - i think that’s what it’s called. i think you can get it on a mac. I’m into dictionaries. 
xCode - if you program you’ll love it. I only dabble in Cocoa. want to do more someday. for now I love Intellij IDEA. I love Java and want to get better at it.
Automator - yes you will use it someday. automate your computer. just try it. do you use applescripts?
Preview - oh my god, some very important features I’ve wanted are now there. I read PDFs all the time. I use Acrobat Pro when I need to edit them. Preview just got better for reading.
Syncing - finally iSync doesn’t suck
other stuff - tons of little new refinements. i love it.
Tiger Server - it’s looking good. I’ll run it on my future mac server someday.
iTunes 5 - when is this gonna come out? 2006? i want it now.
But I’m me, I want 10.5 right now. I want OS XV or whatever’s gonna be made 20 years from now right now. I’m impatient.
bad stuff - they forgot Bopomofo or Zhuyin. what the… it’ll be fixed soon.
someday - spotlight stuff will exist everywhere. you’ll be able to search for program commands, menus, options, preferences in every program. Word, Excel, Pages, Keynote, Safari. everywhere. I hope this will be in 10.5.
Apple understands people. Microsoft doesn’t. I keep up with Longhorn. I see, hm… finally lots of UI suckities might be gone from Windows. But still, they don’t understand OS X’s aqua interface.
why is every interface element the way it is? use of color, blue scroll bars. blue controls. little color everywhere else. they’re experimenting with new UI features. Take a look at Apple’s pro apps. Logic, Final Cut, DVD Studio Pro. Nice UIs. They have UI concepts we might see someday in Mac OS.
microsoft’s upcoming Aero. i’ll give them credit and say Longhorn will be a big improvement. lots of bad stuff since the invention of windows will be gone. we’ll see. I still won’t like many things about it. There’s stuff even if OS X I don’t like. but Apple is moving. just wait.
Read Tog. He’s a UI guy. I disagree with some stuff he says. He understands a lot; he doesn’t understand a lot. me too.
Dock - hmm. very interesting to talk about. Instead of talking about it’s shortcomings, ask why did Apple do that. Look not at it but it’s concept. what is it? why does it exist? it’s Apples first answer to the question.
If you want more info, watch the Macworld 2005 Keynote.
for 129, just do it… hang on wrong slogan. :s
I’m running konfabulator at the moment (widgets) and it’s great. I have the 4 day Taipei weather forecast widget which updates every 5 or so minutes and also world clock set to Melbourne time so I know what time it is back home. Google it and check it out. PC users can use it too. There are hundreds to choose from. No need to wait for tiger. That said, I’ll still be getting tiger.
Personally, I was never a fan of Konfabulator. When Konfabexpose (or what it’s called), was added, I liked it a bit better.
I wasn’t fond of the menu extra, the way of configuring, or the look of the widgets there. It didn’t seem to me to have the polish of some of the very best apps on the Mac.
Dashboard I love. Very quick to get to and configure. If you have 50 widgets installed, we’ll see how the bottom dock does. maybe not so good. we’ll see.
Coz you cant add 2 hours to Taipei time? 
Sorry mate - couldnt resist! I have mine set up to Taipei time, so I cant have a go at you.
I’m very new to Mac, but I’m really glad I made the switch. I just love the simplicity of things. The layout and the obvious thought that has gone into making it user friendly. Hell, I opened i-movie for the first time the other day, and within an hour made a little montage with titles and a sound track! Cool!
I’ve been tempted all ready to get i-life 05 and then add Tiger. If you had to pick what would it be Tiger or i-life '05 ( my machine didn’t come with Garage Band; this is why I’m considering the i-life upgrade) ?
Chers,
L
read my previous posted. i added stuff.
Limey. hm. iLife or Tiger?
my answer is Tiger, iLife, and iWork. in which order, hard to decide.
use photos? if yes get iPhoto. honestly I want to switch from iPhoto. iPhoto is an amazing consumer photo application. But I want a pro app. iView Media Pro ($200 US i think) is ok. people love it. it has tons of awards. but it’s so unrefined. it’s not mac like. it’s cross-platform with the PC. There are rumors of an Apple Pro media organization app. rumors true? i hope so. $100? $200? who knows. It’ll be worth it for me.
iMovie, iDVD - make movies? it’s cool. when I start, I’ll use Final Cut Express. I like pro apps.
Garage Band? ah seems great. But I’ll use Logic Express when I get a keyboard. well, really I’ll use Sibelius or Finale for scoring, then someday Logic Express.
Tiger - read what I said above. it really is amazing.
iLife - it integrates so well. I’m impressed. Bill Joy says all programers everywhere can understand a lot from iLife. He knows iLife has simplicity and integration than no program suite ever written has. The only other suite I like is Adobe’s Creative Suite. But integration is far from enough. Adobe just bought Macromedia. 5 years from now I might like Photshop, Illustrator, Indesign, or Freehand’s integration with each other and GoLive or Dreamweaver. Now it’s just bad.
iWork - use Word or Powerpoint? I can’t stand them. True iWork is limited. Pages is only 1.0. But they got it. They understand Style is so hard with a word processor. Insert a picture, format your document. I know how to do that stuff. I’ve done desktop publishing for years. Word sucks. Pages is an amazing beginning. read about it. try it. Keynote. I’ve messed with it a lot like toying around. gonna make my first real presentation with it this weekend. it’s cool.
ah Garageband. yeah. get it. if you need music, you’ll want garageband or a more pro app like Logic Express, Digital Performer, or Cubase SX. Do scoring? Sibelius or Finale is enough. they’re all pricey. Garageband is free and great. NIN just released one of their songs in Garageband format. You can download it and tinker with it.
me, I just want another keyboard (mine is in the US), and then to record sheet music. All I want is to learn the piano for now.
Gary wrote:
bad stuff - they forgot Bopomofo or Zhuyin. what the… it’ll be fixed soon.
So If I up grade to Tiger I won’t be able to input Chinese charachters?
Gary, you seem so enthusiastic about Mac. I can see why. For years I was afriad of getting to grips with computer technology…it was just so “unreal” but having learnt a little on the Mac it inspires confidence! Like you, I’m loking forward to where we’ll be in five, ten or twenty years from now.
Today I’m using an IBM…mmm…could be worse!
L
Tiger sounds promising, but I would get too excited yet. I would suggest to wait a couple of weeks until upgrade, just to give Apple enough time to fix most of the bugs. As I reckon, Panther wasn’t ready when Apple released it. During my first introduction to Panther, just a few days after release showed that their Java VM was not working properly, so I don’t expect that Tiger would be much different. I rather have my OS working, instead of having the latest software. But I will eventually upgrade.
ratlung,
about your concerns. yeah. All software is like that. Would you use XP without any patches at all? What was it like to first install XP the first day it was available? Remember that? Or 95, 2000, Me, Millenium? I remember even Windows 3.1 and DOS. DOS 3 point something I started out with. those were the days. man
so I’m used to it. me, I’m comfortable working around bugs or figuring them out and dealing.
How does Apple compare to everyone else? Dunno. They try. As Jobs says, Apple excels at taking complex technology easy for mere mortals. So bugs, I’m sure they really try. But software is software. It’s gonna be buggy so they can only test, maybe better than others.
Will it be secure? That’s for sure. Bugs? of course like all software. But it is so smooth running. For 10.4.0, it really is amazing. I think the Finder needs to be more threaded. I wish there was no beachball during spotlight ops. I like to click multiple buttons in the same program while it’s busy. I want to select the next step while the current one is working.
Spotlight is really phenomenal. google search and MSN search are great I’m sure. Because they’re introductions. Spotlight goes much further and you’ll see.
So my impression, I need more memory. 768 isn’t enough for me but then I run 10 programs at once and Virtual PC. It was ok on Panther. Tiger by itself needs more memory. But you’re good if you don’t always push your system.
Productivity in many areas is gonna increase immediately. It’s worth whatever little trouble you’ll probably have.
Limey, yeah no bopomofo. Everything else is there like Pinyin. bopomofo should be there very soon.
[quote=“gary”]
Limey, yeah no bopomofo. Everything else is there like Pinyin. bopomofo should be there very soon.[/quote]
Doh! Cheers Gary. I can imagine I would have been pretty pissed having paid for the upgrade and not been able to study! I only use BPMF
How are the Taiwanese Mac users going to get around this problem? Wait I guess.
Gary could you post an update on this, when you get a date?
Cheers,
L
I just got Tiger and I can’t say enough…
Spotlight (once it finishes indexing your HD) finds everything (including files with Chinese characters in the titles). Chinese input is A LOT smoother than in 10.3…in Panther my 1.5 GHz Powerbook would lock up momentarily if I switched to Chinese while running other applications…this one is a lot smoother. The input menu is basically the same, except now you get to choose characters from a vertical menu rather than the horizontal one (I’m referring to Hanyu Pinyin input here…not too savvy with typing Zhuyin Fuhao yet, but that, Cangjie, Jianyi, Dayi and Hanin are still there, too).
Dashboard…holy shit. I used Konfabulator and loved it, but this could blow it out of the water once developers start putting out more Dashboard widgets. Tiger comes loaded with about 12 widgets and you can get more from the Apple site. While it won’t change your life Dashboard is yet another piece of useful candy to pop wheelies with in front of Windows users… Especially the dancing Hula Girl widget.
The new Mail app was a bit buggy when I first loaded it, but after realizing that it doesn’t play well with any pre-installed bundles like the Hotmail retriever, I trashed the offending app and everything works fine (more or less–one downside is that you can no longer see how far along large messages are going).
I haven’t messed around with Automator that much but it looks like it can do a bunch of cool stuff like automatically open Mail and send mom sepia-toned versions all that hot online porn you downloaded 14 hours earlier. Cool stuff like that.
Other stuff like a simpler, smarter photo capture that takes care of drivers and recognizing devices, and the MUCH improved video quality in iChat AV video chats (despite the fact that Jobs failed to mention the Magic Online 3-Way feature requires a goddamn G5 to host the meeting) definitely make it worth the upgrade.
Haven’t messed around with the new Quicktime yet, but from the previews its also a giant improvement upon an already good thing. Safari’s RSS feature is helpful, although I’m kind of confused about how to add new feeds into the pre-loaded list. You can also finally post in Chinese using Safari, too. Another cool feature they didn’t advertise is a new screen saver that features RSS headlines of your choice swooshing and swooping around your screen. Again, nothing that will solve life’s problems, but it definitely is something that’ll make you forget about them for a few minutes.
I haven’t noticed a big speed bump like i did upon installing previous version of OS X, but I would rather hear from a G5 owner about whether things have sped up.
Overall I’d say this update wasn’t as important as 10.2 was, but it is about neck and neck with the upgrade Panther represented. Go get it, its worth it.
PS: Mac-using Chinese language students, I found a cool little US$25 Safari plug-in called Livedictionary that can instantly translate Chinese characters and phrases (among other languages) into English when you move the cursor over it. Definitely a great way to build that Apple Daily vocabulary you’ve been slaving away at.
cool. yes LiveDictionary is awesome. I think all the stores have it now because I showed it to one store many months ago.
Curious if your Tiger has Zhuyin. Mine doesn’t. Both of ours should be the same. version 8a428. If you click About this mac in the apple menu, then in the about box, it will say “Version 10.4.” keep clicking that text and it will change to say what the build number is. If it’s not 8a428, then Taiwan must have gotten something else. Mine is from the US.
Spotlight searches inside files too, in any language.
As for adding RSS feeds, just bookmark them as usual. If they’re in the bookmarks bar–I put them in a folder–you’ll see the folder name update with a number showing the number of new articles
[quote=“gary”]ratlung,
about your concerns. yeah. All software is like that. Would you use XP without any patches at all? What was it like to first install XP the first day it was available? Remember that? Or 95, 2000, Me, Millenium? I remember even Windows 3.1 and DOS. DOS 3 point something I started out with. those were the days. 
man[/quote]
You say true, so I learned my lessons and not jump at everything that is out there. I am in no rush, and especially my Powerbook is needed, and I won’t be able to work around bugs all the time. I need it to be working. And I never criticised Apple for being less cautious than others, but that Java thing really bugged me when it happened. So I am more careful now.
Hmm, those are not as good news, especially for my poor little Powerbook. I will probably have to wait even longer until I found some nice 2x512MB modules for it.
i think memory requirements may not be that much worse. If you don’t use dashboard–each of those apps can take 5 10 or 30 megs–then it might not take up that much more.
Hmm, I will see what the first test will report, and then check it out at some Apple Store. I was think about upgrading anyway, but don’t know if it is worth it for my old Powerbook.
ratlung, what powerbook do you have and how much memory do you have?
what kind of apps do you run?
More memory is worth it. Like I said, if you don’t use a lot of dashboard widgets, Tiger may not take up that much more memory. Probably more. But you could be ok. Each app, mail, safari, whatever, could take up a bit more. Not sure. It’s definitely worth it as you can see from how people react.
Once you use Spotlight and all the little new features, you’ll be hooked.