Ihnatko's Tiger Report: Introductions

by - April 29th, 2005

 

 

Holy Zarquon's singing fish.

Yes, I'm going to go with that quote as my lead paragraph in my Tiger review. (a), because the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie is opening tonight and I am indeed seeing it later today; (b) as a sigh of relief, because for the first time since I signed an NDA in October and started receiving seed releases, I am actually allowed to acknowledge in public that I know anything at all about it; and most importantly, (c) Tiger is just the kick-assiest release of the Mac OS since the days when we first clicked a word at the top of the screen, watched a menu drop down, and then worried about what sort of pact with the Coven-Hooved One had been struck to bring such a thing into reality.

I really think it's the first release of Mac OS X where Apple felt free to really shine in the Freestyle portion of the competition. X had to go through three major releases before it was up to the exact same standard of usability as the final release of the Classic OS. With their fourth release, they were just so relieved to finally have an OS that was capable of, you know, actually printing documents and stuff that it didn't occur to them to start kicking some real ass. The Big Deal of Panther was metallic Finder windows, and having a gutter on the left side of Finder windows and open/save sheets. It was full of little, incremental changes like that.

Tiger's attitude is totally different. It's almost as if the OS developers believe that the punishing schedule of A Major Update Every October is over with, and this will be their last opportunity to truly pummel Mac users with new features.

I hardly know where to begin. Surely you know what most of these new features are by now, so I'll just cut straight to my reactions. Sit tight and let the sputtering begin.

Ihnatko's Tiger Report

• Introductions
• Spotlight
• Automator
• Dashboard
• iChat 3
• Safari

digs the Mac, and has been writing about the Mac for longer than most of us could tell the difference between a bite of Apple Sauce from a byte of Apple code. You can read his monthly column at Macworld magazine, and his blog at the Colossal Waste of Bandwidth.

Andy's latest book is The Mac OS X Tiger Book (US$16.49 - Amazon).

You can send your comments directly to Andy, or you can also post your comments below.

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