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And let the embarrassment of Microsoft officially begin!

Over 200 new features! Yeh-heh-heh-hessssssss. I mean really, Microsoft -- when's de last time anyone considered anything that Windows did a "feature"?

Look at the recent news: That skank Britney Spears is pregnant and Apple is mere days away from shipping Tiger. What can happen next? Hey, maybe Ballmer will resign! Yeh-hesssss.

Life is good.

Zat ees great video. I am going to be starring in a video. Eet is of me using Tiger... to POOP on!
First Post!
Yeh-hehh-hessss!!

What's going on in Wall Street?

yeah, i wasn't so gung ho on Dashboard...then I saw that movie and flipped! It's a VERY nice alternative interface to Watson, Sherlock, etc.

"What's going on in Wall Street?"

People are taking your money and using it to do things you wouldn't like...

Okay, I know we're all excited, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking this is something it's not. It's a VERY few actual OS improvements, and then a bunch of new integrated add-ins.

From what they've shown us, Mail has no new functionality -- just integration with Spotlight. Very disappointing. Mail needs HELP to play with the big boys.

Quicktime's big new bell seems to be that you can resize while you watch. Raise your hand if you're so happy with quicktime that you ever took the time to request this feature? They claim h.264 does wondrous things with file sizes, but you'll notice they never SHOW you the file size of that House of Flying Daggers preview, do they?

Dashboard is just an integrated version of Confabulator, which you already have if you want it, and Automator is just macros. Windows has been doing this since Win95 and its' embarrassing that Apple's only just getting around to it.

Fast User Switching and Expose are not new. Why do they insist on putting them on all the "new features" pages?

To me, Spotlight is the only potentially great change. h.264 if it turns out to be as good as they say, but they've spoken in such vague terms about it that I doubt it will deliver.

They're dressing a couple of new features up in pretty clothes and counting each button as a separate feature, and youse guys are drooling over it. Do NOT believe the hype. This is a maintenance upgrade to 10.3, with some application upgrades thrown in.

As I sit at my wide screen 17" Powerbook, I've noticed the proportions of the screen used in the Mac OS X Tiger videos. It's not from the current 16:9 wide screens Apple now sells. The aspect looks more like twice as wide as high, 2:1 ?

Apple posted these MONTHS ago!

Those videos have been avaiable on Apples site for a pretty long time. How long I can not say, but weeks at the very least...

These are newer, i think. And iJavaJoe is right -- I think we're looking at some new superwide display. New product?!?!?

From what I've read, Tiger offers a significant speed boost over Panther. It sounds like along with the eye candy, there are a lot of enhancements under the hood. I don't understand how someone can criticize the OS without actually using it first.

<drooooooooool>

As far as MS and features go, there's a rule on software:

"Bugs that are documented are no longer bugs: they become features."

These videos are new because the Dashboard demo clearly has the Apr. 29 date shown on the calendar widget.
I like the new "waves" effect in Dashboard. I wonder if this will be available for other apps like the Genie effect. Also, the widget flip motion and widget selection bar are new to the OS. I wonder if these effects have been transitioned to other apps as well.

I've looked at the old videos that were posted pre-Tiger release date announcement. Those videos were not done in wide screen format. These new videos are wider and different from the originals. Either these were done on a wider screen or they have been doctored to look like there from a wide screen.

Mac Skeptic,
I suggest that you do a little more reading on the Mac OS X pages.
> Mail has been dramatically updated from the interface to performance.
> Dashboard is similar in looks only to Konfabulator. Ever try to make on of those widgets? Dashboard is HTML and CSS - any half competent web designer can make countless widgets, quickly. Less experienced people can grab Dreamweaver or GoLive and get to work. Konfabulator has/has its own little javascript-ish closed way of working. Dashboard uses open standards and technology.
> Quicktime 7 and H.264 is SCALABLE. This means that significantly smaller files can deliver higher fidelity and resolution. Think streaming video and movie downloads. Video on phones. Video iPod. High qaulity content with web delivery. For the record, I frequently resize the player window and it is already amazing that it handles it as well as it does. Try it with Windows Media Player or the RealPlayer. Hah!
> Automator is waaaay more than Macros. It is building on the solid base of AppleScript which allows an user to make custom scripts or apps to make the OS and Apps do almost anything. No it is earier and more powerful to basically build your own apps.

You don't even mention the improvements to iChat whcih is already head and shoulders above any other chat or video conference app. It now blows them all away.

This is all about both Security and power in the hands of the User. Tiger is big - there is a lot under the hood that looks very simple on the surface.

Those parental controls are sweet.

MacSkeptic

You're trying to hard.

I think anyone that looks at just the feature list of OSX is going to miss the big picture. THe biggest key feature of OSX.4 is how easy it makes it for developers and bored college kids to make wonderfully killer apps. The Key features that make this happen are: Dashboard, CoreAudio/Image, Spotlight, and Automator. These pieces make it so that it isi easy to develope applications for the mac. This is where Tiger will take off.

Case study: Firefox
FireFox alone is an ok browser it does many things well but by itself it is just a better option then IE. Now add in extentions and my passion for FF changes dramatically. I cring everytime I have to launch IE now. With out Adblocker, Imagezoom, Google preview, and a slew of other additions my browsing expereince is clumsy and frustrating. Extentions in FF allow developers the ability to easily improve the browsing expereince. It also allows me (the nontechie) to build a browser that fills my needs and needs I didn't even know I had.

This is why these core technoloies are huge. Maybe not sexy in a Quicktime video but in the long run it will just take a few killer apps to make more people relize that the Macs is a very strong option. Soon it There could be a large cataloge of MAc only apps and people talking about how there isn't any good software for the PC.

Check out the iChat demo... Kathy is a babe! She could be our new Ellen Feiss!

In news from the BBC, is this new graphics environment going to be part of Tiger?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4430000/newsid_4437700/4437717.stm

Okay, I know we're all excited, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking this is something it's not. It's a VERY few actual OS improvements, and then a bunch of new integrated add-ins.

Really?

It is just that OS improvements are under the hood (in the kernel and OS tools) and they don't show them, because only geeks and techheads are interested in them. However, if you check the Tiger pages at Apple, you'll see some mentions of OS improvements (like 64 bit vm support, 64 bit libs, and such).

If you count system services such as windows sharing (SMB) and such as "OS level features" there are improvements galore to those as well.

Not to mention the system is based on a later and improved FreeBSD subsystem (check it's changelog for improvements to that).


From what they've shown us, Mail has no new functionality -- just integration with Spotlight. Very disappointing. Mail needs HELP to play with the big boys.

Like what? What are the big boys? Bug ridden and virus ladden Outlook?

Search was there before, but now it is Spolight-fast.
But aren't "smart folders" not a new functionality for Mail?
Image attachment previewing as slideshow?

Quicktime's big new bell seems to be that you can resize while you watch. Raise your hand if you're so happy with quicktime that you ever took the time to request this feature?

I'm not so happy with it due to its lack of support for other movie formats, and also the lack of decent codec packs for it.

Since I don't do Image editing, all I can use Quicktime Player for is a) for trailers, b) for the occasional web video. It would be nice if it also supported all the codecs VLC and Mplayer do.

(While we're at it, Apple could get rid of the f*****ng DVD Player, and have QT Player play DVDs also. And provide the Pro version for FREE, for christ's sake, it only has rudimentary editing support and full-screen video to offer).

They claim h.264 does wondrous things with file sizes, but you'll notice they never SHOW you the file size of that House of Flying Daggers preview, do they?

Why should they? h.264 indeed does wondrous things with file sizes. It's not an Apple specific thing, it's the next step for the industry.

Dashboard is just an integrated version of Confabulator, which you already have if you want it

Yep, only it is a) integerated, b) easier to develop for (basic developing needs just standard DHTML).


and Automator is just macros.

LOL, in the way that Rolls Royce is "just a car"?


Windows has been doing this since Win95 and its' embarrassing that Apple's only just getting around to it.

WTF? Can you show me the Windows XP (never mind ...Win95) equivalent of Automator? And, no, recording macros in Office et al, won't cut it. (Oh, and do you remember the Macro viruses?).

Fast User Switching and Expose are not new. Why do they insist on putting them on all the "new features" pages?

They don't. They put it on the features page, period. Not on the "new features" page. You must have missed that.


They're dressing a couple of new features up in pretty clothes and counting each button as a separate feature,

Yeah, "buttons" like ...Automator, Spotlight, Smart Folders, Dashboard, Core Image, Core Video, Core Data, etc. I mean gee, it sure must be very easy to implement those...

and youse guys are drooling over it. Do NOT believe the hype. This is a maintenance upgrade to 10.3, with some application upgrades thrown in.

Riiight.

Has anybody heard about MS updating Entourage so that it supports Spotlight? This will be a big help for me...
- RG

The Narc
It is a shamelessly demographically perfect demo - the geek, the clueless hag, the marketing dude and the new blood creative babe.

Apple must not believe that Asians and blacks make up enough of a market dent to be included.

But yes she is a babe -

What will be truly great about tiger (for me) will be when applications really start to make use of the features and specifically meta-data. It'll be interesting to see what happens with iPhoto for example, many of its functions are now available to some extent through the os itself - no need for a library as such, just use smart folders via spotlight. Keywords are I gather addable via preview now as well. The integration possibilites are mouth-watering.

These demos are great. Very slick. Apple.com is the top website among computer manufacturers in terms of traffic so Apple is clearly leveraging that fact to get the word out on Tiger.

And to the clueless individual who thinks Tiger is just a bunch of integrated "add-ons" (e.g. Dashboard = built-in Konfabulator), stop it before you embarrass yourself any further. Are the following just add-on "utilities?"

* Advanced metadata filesystem via Spotlight (what Microsoft promised would be WinFS, but curiously dropped from the Longhorn feature set last year)
* CoreImage
* CoreData
* CoreVideo
* Updated BSD kernel

Most significant for developers will be the new Core services, in my opinion. Next week is the NAB conference where Apple will no doubt be showing off new apps that will utilize these features. My prediction is that the Mac will have apps within a year that will be impossible to match on the Windows side.

In fact, I think we will see a flurry of great, extremely powerful new apps that could threaten Adobe's reign on the market. For years now, Adobe has been holding back on optimizing their Mac apps to take advantage of Mac features to maintain a rigid Mac/Win common feature set, but if Adobe ignores Core services, I think you will see competitors with new apps start to chip away at the monopoly. Not to say that I'm expecting a Photoshop or Illustrator killer, but I predict there an app or two will emerge that will become as important as Photoshop and Illustrator.

And a CoreImage/CoreVideo-enabled Final Cut Pro HD will start killing off Premiere Pro, as video artists realize using Premiere - no matter how "powerful" the PC rig - will be like driving a Model T against a modern day BMW.

MacSkeptic: Thanks for the "Automator is just macros. Windows has been doing this since Win95" line. I hadn't laughed that hard all day!

Thanks MacHead for replying to the obvious troll MacSkeptic. Saved me 15 mins anyway.

I personally think this is a huge release, and the work behind the scenes is substantial.

Core Data is a sleeper technology which hasn't gotten a great deal of press, but which promises to make development of data-rich software easier. Why a relational database hadn't been included before is beyond me. It's really needed by the enterprise, and this tech will only get better. Think of all the crumby MS-Access apps out there. Core Data could be used to replace many of the "used by one person" apps (I won't say networked/multi-user b/c I don't know how or if that type of functionality works with Core Data.) Whilst idiots won't be able to develop apps using Core Data (at least as it currently stands - go read up on the dev pages to see why), developers will finally be able to build apps with a real database underneath which will work on any Mac running 10.4.

Core Image is very "Wow", just the screen saver alone is cool. For about 4 minutes. After that you wonder what it can do - it's like having Photoshop filters in any app willing to take advantage of it - still image or movies. Adobe won't be impressed.

And let's wait and see if Redmond fires up their photocopiers and produces something as good.

> However, if you check the Tiger pages at Apple, you'll see some
> mentions of OS improvements (like 64 bit vm support, 64 bit libs,
> and such).

Yup. 64-bit support and the Core services. That adds up to about 10 "new features" of the OS. 190 to go.

> If you count system services such as windows sharing (SMB) and
> such as "OS level features" there are improvements galore to those
> as well.

What did they do to SMB? I don't see it mentioned on their Tiger pages.

> Like what? What are the big boys? Bug ridden and virus ladden
> Outlook?

Sans the bugs and viruses, yes. Exchange still being the big player in corporate mail servers, let's take the simple ongoing problem of Mail's reluctance to pass NDR and other system notification msgs. through its Exchange mailbox conduit. The alternative being its IMAP tool which is major ugh-factor attaching to an exchange mailbox. Add support for things like AD/OD directory browsing (not just lookups!) and even simple straightforward features like receipt request handling, and you'd be improving Mail. "Smart Folders" aren't a new Mail feature - they're a Spotlight feature, and they've integrated it into Mail. Like I said, Go Spotlight. Viewing my email attachments as a slideshow? I'll repeat myself: raise your hand if you were so happy with Mail that you requested this fluff feature?

> Why should they? h.264 indeed does wondrous things with file sizes.
> It's not an Apple specific thing, it's the next step for the industry.

True, but they're selling QT7 entirely on h.264 and live-resizing. Okay, I see that the live-resizing works. And you say h.264 is great. Show me that if you can. "this stunningly clear piece of video is 400K/sec. Okay, yeah. Cool. They haven't done that.

> WTF? Can you show me the Windows XP (never mind ...Win95)
> equivalent of Automator? And, no, recording macros in Office et al,
> won't cut it. (Oh, and do you remember the Macro viruses?).

Yes. Windows Scripting Host. There are a dozen dummy frontends for it.

I hope there's more, is all. They've missed and missed and missed opportunties to turn iCal and Address Book and Mail into real desktop collaboration tools, preferring instead to create one new feature and add it 10 existing apps, and call that 11 new features. I'd be happy with 50 *NEW* capabilities, if 20 of them had actually been REQUESTED by end users.

I haven't used it yet. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm not. It's not all that. Spotlight and (hopefully) QT are going to be the only changes of lasting import. I hope they'll just let me buy QT7 for $30 and not bother with the new OS version.

MDN magic word "show" -- if it's so much better, SHOW me.

MacSkeptic (or is it Bill?),

You really had me going for a minute. I thought you were serious that Tiger didn't impress you...

Oh, wait, let me guess, you have cast your lot with Windows and cannot be impressed with Tiger or else your entire life is meaningless, right.

I understand, I used to feel the same way. Now I know better. Stability is a good thing, trust me. Modernity is a good thing. Don't be afraid to throw off the shackles and experience something better.

Let me guess, cars weren't really an improvement over horses because now there were no pets in the stable?

Microwave ovens weren't really an improvement because now you didn't have all that extra time to do laundry while you waited to heat up the leftovers?

CDs weren't an improvement because they were too clear?

I'm not a techie, but I know I like a system that just flat out works. The fact that it is gorgeous is just gravy. No viruses, no spyware, no Trojans, no freezes, no illegal operations, no blue screens and my up-time is only limited by the next software install restart.

I use both platforms, but only because work got those PC's so cheap, granted they do provide jobs for lots of people just to keep them running. At home, on my time (and my dime) only a Mac will do.

I can't wait for Tiger, and you can say what you want, but it's easy for anyone to see how much better it is than anything else out there. Remember, you might say there are already programs that do similar things, but all of these are right on the OS.

MacSkeptic (or maybe I'll just call you Bill), if you just can't allow yourself to admire Apple, that's understandable. But if your tired of waiting for LongHorn, give something else a try.

And Bill, if your scared, say your scared.

~M

MacSkeptic = Paul Thurrott

Everyone's ranting on about how Dashboard is like Konfabulator (spelling?) - like DUH! I used to use Konfab quite a lot, but found that the little widgets didn't always behave themselves on the desktop. They also cluttered up the desktop - something I do not like thank you very much.

Ah.... sigh.... relief.... along comes Apple and allows you to make them appear and disappear at will. Surely this is the 'magic' that we have all craved since birth? The ability to make appear and disappear in a cool way. Feels like control. And that's what OSX is all about; boundless, integrated, 3 dimensional control.

I rest.

OK hands up, it's over for me. I was a Windows user/enthusiast, but this week is the last straw for me. After it was revealed that Microsoft's association with Ralph Reed ( http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/221811_msftreed27.html ) has apparently led to them withdrawing support for a gay rights bill in their home state of Washington, we have the debacle of WinHEC 2005 and the disaster that is Longhorn.

My next computer was to be a Longhorn PC, I don't think I'll live long enough for that, so it'll have to be a Mac.