Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger

Reviewed by: Lianne Reitter May 2005 Published by: Apple Computers Requires: Mac with PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor, built in FireWire, 256MB physical RAM, built-in display or one connected to an Apple-supplied video card, minimum of 3.0GB hard drive space, DVD drive MSRP: US$129.00 (one license), US$199.00 (five license Family Pack) So you've decided that you just can't stand the hype anymore and you must have Tiger, the latest version of the Mac OS X operating system. You've heard from all the experts, you know they all love it but you still are not sure if it's worth the upgrade cost. And let's be clear about one thing too—no matter what version of OS X you have now, there is no deal on the price, no upgrade price. No matter how loyal you have been to Apple Computers, you are going to pay full bore for this (and I just had to get that off my chest). Microsoft—pay attention too. I couldn't be any more of a personification of the Apple end user if I tried. No one at Kickstartnews knows anybody at Apple so our version of Tiger was bought off the shelf, with my own money thank you very much, on the 29th of April. I haven't had 12 weeks of beta testing to discover all the most esoteric goodies, nor did I get any incentive from anybody to say how wonderful an operating system it is so I'm not going to hold back on any criticisms. I say this only because I too have heard all the experts, all those who have had advance copies of Tiger from one Apple contact or another, and I've heard little that goes against the Apple Is Great mantra chanted by the converted. So here goes. Out of the box you get the DVD, which includes PDF versions of the printed materials, the Tiger installation and the tools software developers need to write programs for Tiger, the usual set up and installation guide, software license agreement, and a 32 page color 'manual'. This last document is the only one you are going to read, so put the rest back in the box and open it up. Surprise! It’s mostly empty. The box says that there are over 200 new features in Tiger. Steve Jobs says there are over 200 new features in Tiger. The truth is there are only ten or so that any user is going to notice. The first and most pervasive of improvements is Apple's new search engine called Spotlight.

The bane of every computer user is finding files. Save a file to a directory, in a folder that is named something that will be familiar to you two years from now. That’s how it’s been up until now and I know a lot of people who have come up with some pretty inventive filing systems just to cut down on their search times. Now the need for multi-layered directories will be a thing of the past. Sitting like a little sentinel in the upper right hand corner of your menu bar is a small blue button. Click on the button and a search field will appear. Type something into that search field and almost immediately you will have a comprehensive list of the top twenty documents, be it a picture, text file, e-mail, audio file or document that is on your hard drive and has something in it pertaining to your query. Hit return, or click on the Show All button and the Spotlight Results Window will open showing you everything on your system that has anything to do with your search parameters. This new search engine is extremely thorough too. Spotlight can find the query string in the file name, the body text, an e-mail, an iChat log, even the meta data stored in your digital pictures. If it’s on the hard drive, spotlight will find it for you quickly. Spotlight is customizable, so you can have your results organized by type, date, time or place. Very handy. Apple has integrated Spotlight throughout the operating system including Finder and System Preferences and most other native software programs to round out its usefulness. Spotlight is already an integral part of how I use my Mac now and I've only had Tiger for a week.

Apple's e-mail software (Mail) has been greatly improved. When I first got my iMac, Mail was my only e-mail program and it was adequate, but several factors made me move to Thunderbird (free, from the fine folks at Mozilla). One main reason was the inability to more easily organize my mail. While Spotlight powers the search feature in Mail making finding particular e-mails a breeze, Apple has come up with another ingenious solution, Smart Folders, to help me keep my e-mails organized and it too is pervasive in Tiger. If you are familiar with iTunes’ Smart Playlists, you will know how these work. In Mail, they are called “Smart Mail Boxes” and they are the reason I have returned to Mail as my sole e-mail client. You can use Smart Mail Boxes to filter through and show you only the e-mails from a particular person, subject or date. Say you want to see only the e-mails from today, or maybe all the e-mail you received from your mother, this week. How about all the e-mails you received from your sister that have photos of your new niece as attachments. Whatever the parameters you want to set, you can devise a Smart Mail Box to assist you. Among a few others, I have three primary Smart Mail Boxes: Today, This Week, and Unread Mail. I know I will never look at just my inbox again. Other new features built into this new version of Mail are the abilities to change the size of photos you want to attach to your e-mail without leaving the program and being able to view pictures you receive as slide shows without leaving the program. You can even instantly add any photo attachment to iPhoto with just a click.

The third most useful feature in Tiger is Dashboard. The idea behind Dashboard is completely new to the Mac OS X but not to the Macintosh platform. In a nutshell, Dashboard is a compilation of many smaller programs that sit on your desktop and give you information. These microprograms are called widgets and each widget performs a separate job. One widget will give you the weather, one the latest stock reports. There is a widget for the time, one for the date, one will give you measurement conversions, one the yellow page directory. Apple ships Dashboard with 14 standard widgets but there are another 35 or so that you can download from the Internet, with more appearing almost every day. You can have as few or as many as you like on your desktop. While Dashboard is a great addition to the operating system, as I said earlier, it’s not such a new thing. Konfabulator is a similar suite of widgets that has been available for the Mac for years and it only costs about $25.00 for a shareware license. The Konfabulator community is large and there are literally hundreds of widgets that you can download for free (after the initial Konfabulator license fee that is) and new ones are written every week. So, if it’s the eye candy of Dashboard that has you thinking you might want to upgrade to Tiger, save your money and install Konfabulator instead.

The Safari web browser has been updated with the ability to view RSS feeds. This is not a new feature to web browsing, just to Mac’s web browser. If you are a massive news junkie this small improvement may be appealing to you. Powered by Spotlight, Safari has the ability to filter down through the hundreds of articles you may receive in your RSS feeds enabling you to read just the topics which interest you. Change the search parameter and Safari will immediately reshuffle the RSS deck and give you a whole new set of articles to read through. Safari now also has something Apple calls Private Browsing. This allows you to use someone else’s computer and browse the web without leaving any important information behind like cookies, or passwords or bank account numbers. A nice feature, but I wouldn't upgrade my operating system just so my friend can use my computer in stealth mode. While Safari also boasts the ability to save web photos directly to the iPhoto library and easily e-mail the contents of web pages, these may not be enough of an improvement to justify the upgrade.

iChat AV has been upgraded to allow for as many as three people to simultaneously voice or video conference with you. That’s nice if you happen to know three other people with Macs that have cameras and that you want to talk to over the Internet, all at the same time. This is best for family far afield I think, or work if you happen to use Macs at work. It's a nice feature, if you are among the very few who would use it, but probably not a consideration for the average Mac user thinking about making the upgrade to Tiger.

The final major change to OS X Tiger is Automator. Automator is an easy to use program designed to help you automate tasks you perform regularly. For the average Mac user, a regularly performed task might be renaming photos. Spotlight may help you find a file easily, but if all your photos are named DSCxxx finding the right one will be difficult. Using Automator you can easily rename batches of photos so you'll never have to do it one file at a time anymore. Maybe you create thumbnail size versions of your pictures for your web page, or e-mail colleagues regular reports? While Automator clearly has it’s uses, I'm just not sure what the average Mac user will really do with it or how they will incorporate it into their daily lives. I suppose that just knowing that you can automate tasks will get you thinking and if you can use it, you probably will. On the other hand, SOHO and small business users will find lots of applications for Automator.

Something every computer user needs is a good dictionary and Apple has included the Oxford New American English dictionary and thesaurus in Tiger. You can use both as a little widget in Dashboard, as stand alone applications, even as a pop-up widow in web pages. Depending on what software you use, you may already have the benefits of a good dictionary so upgrading to Tiger may not improve your English very much, or at all, or whatever.

Besides the obligatory new high resolution graphics for your desktop wall paper and screensavers (it wouldn't be a bona fide operating system upgrade without them now would it?) Tiger has one more important improvement and that’s some very nice parental controls so you can protect your kids from the perils of the Internet.

So the question remains, is Tiger worth the very hefty sum of $129.00? I hesitate to say yes. Not because I don't think Tiger is worth purchasing, but because I think that if it is a question of cost, then you best go over each improvement and decide if it’s something you think you need in order to better your computing experience. There are some aspects of Tiger which you may already have—the dictionary for example. Some new features can be purchased for far less or even obtained legitimately for free. Some of the new features are just eye candy really. Some others fall into the "if you haven't needed them up to now, what’s the rush" category. I'm glad I made the purchase after all is said and done. I can say without hesitation that while the need was not there for me, the improvements are welcome and they really will make my own experience with my Mac far more satisfying.

Good luck with your decision.

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