Blog FeedMac OS X Tiger Review
As is probably well know around these parts by now, I’m someone who has had enough of Windows XP and decided (about 2-years ago) to try Apple, mostly because the OS (10.2 Jaguar, at the time) was meant to be very stable and, er, it looked pretty. In the time since Apple has released versions 10.3 (Panther, a wonderful OS) and 10.4 Tiger and it is Tiger that I wanted to review for this article. Originally I had been drafting a review for the new OS after I installed it as soon as it arrived but decided to give it a few months so that I can really express what I think. To be honest, I’m glad that I did because it’s not all Good News and some of the drawbacks I would not have noticed after the initial install.
The review that I’m posting is based on version 10.4.2 and is written from the perspective of a mobile user using slightly older hardware, experienced in Windows, and one who must spend much of their time using OS X within a predominantly Windows corporate network. If you believe that Windows is a great OS and that Apple (or Linux) “sucks”, then this probably isn’t for you. However, I will try to be as unbiased as I can…
Mac OS X has been on the ascendency for a good few years now. The initial releases were (allegedly, as this was before my time) slow, buggy but ultimately showed good promise. Jaguar, back in 2003, was the release that made the OS practical and, from experience, I can say that it was a reasonable alternative to Windows but that it lacked some of the features that I used to use a lot (the Alt-Tab method of switching applications was implemented but wasn’t done very well). Panther, however, was a stunning release as it offered better stability, faster performance and a good number of niceties, such as the Expose method of organising windows, fast user-switching and fast searching. In contrast, the changes made in Tiger aren’t as big and the difference felt between Panther and Tiger don’t seem as big as that between Jaguar and Panther. Much of the changes are, apparently, “under the hood” as this is meant to be more of a developer’s release with the introduction of Core Video, Core Audio, Core Data, etc. made to allow new applications to be developed much faster (Core Data, for example, provides pre-built data models using storage mechanisms like XML and SQLite) and take advantage of new hardware. However, I’m not a Mac developer (yet) so what does Joe Bloggs get with Tiger?
The biggest feature of the release is undoubtedly Spotlight. Spotlight is the primary reason why I bought Tiger as soon as possible rather than waiting for the initial bugs to ironed-out following release. In a nutshell, Spotlight represents system-wide searching by indexing files that it understands when they are saved and enabling the user to tap into this search data through many different means. For example, the primary interface is the blue magnifying glass located on the menu bar in the top-right of the screen (accessed by clicking or pressing Command-Space), but it can also be accessed Open/Save file dialogs or through individual applications that use it (for example, Mail will use Spotlight to perform searches and only return e-mail items). Spotlight is, without a doubt, a complete lifesaver for anyone with thousands of documents to search through. My caveat with Spotlight, however, is that on older hardware it isn’t as fast as I’d hoped it would be. The demonstrations that were performed by Steve Jobs at MacWorld and World Wide Developers Conference clearly used a PowerMac G5 and his results came back instantly with “hits” being displayed as he typed. To a degree I get similar responses on my aging PowerBook but there is a noticeable “thinking time” between keys being pressed and results being displayed/adjusted. It does work very well but it isn’t the instant search facility that I’d hoped for which is a bit of a disappointment. The other kicker for me is that Microsoft Entourage (the Mac Office version of Outlook) isn’t supported at the moment because it saves its data in a database format rather than as files (Mail, for example, saves emails in the MBox file format), so I’ve had to move to a Mail/iCal/Address Book combination for the time-being.
Following on from Spotlight, Dashboard was the next biggest feature and is one that I use daily (not constantly, I should note). Dashboard is effectively a secondary desktop that can be summoned by pressing a hot-key (F8 for me as the default F12 on a PowerBook is assigned to the Eject Disk action) and which is home to Widgets, small applications built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Dashboard has certainly taken off as an idea as I understand that there are now over 1,100 applications and I’ve built-up a reasonable collection of them myself. Tiger ships with a few useful Widgets, such as one to show the weather forecast in your area, a near real-time translator (great when you don’t speak Dutch and live in Belgium), clocks for different time-zones. Unfortunately it also ships with a few crappy ones as well, such as the fairly useless iTunes controller. However, the breadth of applications released by 3rd parties is amazing and I now have such useful ones my daily Dilbert, Widgets to perform look-ups in Google Maps, Wikipedia and Amazon, and place telephone calls through Skype. Widgets are downloaded from websites and can be added/removed to Dashboard via a draging-n-dropping the appropriate icon from a scrolling “dock” that can appear at the base of the screen. Dashboard initially introduced some security fears because its applications have access to your files were initially installed automatically by Safari. However, recent updates to Tiger has resulted in Safari both notifying the user that an application is being downloaded and the OS itself requesting confirmation of the installation before it will permit the Widget to run. What I have learnt from Dashboard is that I would really like a bigger display as I can’t fit on as many Widgets as I’d like without the screen becoming cluttered, as the screenshot should illustrate. I’ve tried dropping hints to my wife that a 30″ display would be a good idea but she curiously seems to think differently…
Following Spotlight and Dashboard the next big addition to the OS is Automator. Automator can best be thought of as a graphical means of constructing batch processes, a bit like UNIX pipes in scripts or Windows batch files. Applications that understand Automator will register with it the actions that they allow (for example, the iCal calendar provides a “Find Items” action that will search for all calendar events matching specified criteria). Actions can be standalone or they can take input from the output of other actions where the output is of an acceptable form. Through this you can drag-n-drop actions for different applications into the main panel to construct a workflow that you can both re-use (executable through Automator, by double-clicking the Workflow file itself, or making it a Folder Action in Finder) and share with others. Theoretically, at least, Automator is only limited by your imagination but in practice it is limited both by the support for it within applications (none of the Microsoft Office and Macromedia Studio applications provide Automator actions) and whether what you do is both repetitive and can be broken down into a workflow. I’ve so far made use of Automator once in order to automate the process of copying files from DVDs and then moving them to another computer via FTP, which it achieved pretty well using the Actions provided by the Finder and Transmit. You could, however, use the Automator to do stuff like downloading, resizing, compressing and storing all the images from a web page. As I’ve noted, your imagination is probably the limiting factor and there are numerous websites (such as Automator World) that provides Workflows for downloading.
Beyond Spotlight, Dashboard and Automator there are relatively few big updates in Tiger that are visible to the user. Safari RSS is probably the next biggest as it means that any user of Tiger now has a reasonable RSS reader available and the application works, as far as I am concerned, much better than Firefox. Web pages that provide a news feed are highlighted with a blue RSS logo appearing in the address field of the Safari web browser and clicking on it immediately brings up the news feed which is parsed quite nicely. Adding the URL of the news feed to a bookmark location allows you to see how many unread articles there are and adding the bookmark onto the on-screen bookmark bar makes this even more visible (for even more visible notifications, install the Growl notification engine and see a pop-up in the top-right of your screen when new articles are available). Safari ships with a reasonable selection of RSS feeds (such as BBC, CNet, Wired, etc.) and keeping RSS bookmarks in folders allows you to view multiple feeds at the same time with a number of tools allowing you to filter for what you want in real-time. I’m not sure what commercial RSS readers are like but Safari’s implementation means that this is the biggest feature in Tiger for me as I use it ALL the time. To a degree, however, I am somewhat surprised that I have not heard of RSS reader developers kicking up much of a fuss over Safari RSS as it seems to me to be walking in the same direction as the inclusion of Internet Explorer and Media Player do in Windows. Certainly Konfabulator complained when Apple announced Dashboard as their product already delivered similar widgets, although not with the second desktop. Incidentally, if you are wanting to try the widget concept but either don’t own a Mac and don’t want to wait for Vista, then give Konfabulator a go as they also support Windows.
The remaining updates for Tiger are fairly minor so I’ll just list a few of the others:
- Complete Dictionary/Thesaurus application to complement the existing system-wide spellchecker
- QuickTime supports H.264 for crystal-clear video at reduced file sizes. Beats the heck out of my little 1GHz G4 processor…
- iChat AV supports Jabber as well as AOL/AIM chat protocols. 4-Way video conference calls can created with crystal-clear video using the H.264 codec
- Included XCode2 development tools will now produce UML class diagrams of your applications or any that you have the source code for
- Mail and Finder allow you to store Spotlight searches as SmartFolders so you can run common searches quickly
- Finder allows BurnFolders for burning data to CD/DVD that allow sessions to be stored as simple aliases to the files themselves and so that files can be added/removed easily
- Receipts from online stores can be saved as PDF Web Receipts rather than printing
- Screenshots are now taken in PNG format rather than PDF
- Preview allows for easy file conversion and for PDF document to be “marked-up” with comments and highlights
- Spotlight will highlight where system settings can be found within the System Preferences, which is dead handy if you forgot where the Firewall settings were or switching from Windows and don’t know the Mac term for Wallpaper
Overall, I find Tiger to be a good release in terms of its stability and some of the new features that it offers but I don’t think it is as much of an upgrade as Panther was. Gaming performance under Tiger seems better, but not much, while other parts of the system seem more sluggish. In particular it seems to be taking too long for Open/Save dialogs to appear at the moment (10-seconds isn’t unusual) and I suspect that Spotlight might have its hand in this somewhere. Further, while Spotlight is very useful I do find that I miss the Fast Search facilities offered by Panther that, while it only searched the file names, it did return basic results much quicker. The changes made “under the hood” may have made it easier to develop new applications but they also broke a few applications that used Kernel Extensions, such as the Cisco VPN Client application used by my work and which, while now working, isn’t as “good” as it was under Panther. Still, despite a few niggles, Spotlight it genuinely useful for me (I have thousands of files and emails from projects), Dashboard is very handy but its time to refresh could be better, and Safari RSS is fantastic.
Anyway, here’s a quick summary:
Pros
- Spotlight lets me find stuff again, particularly emails!!
- Dashboard has many useful applications available that can be run without cluttering up your main desktop and consume practically no system resources
- Safari RSS is great but a bit addictive
- Preview is much handier tool for quickly sending marked-up PDF documents to people
- Gaming performance appears to have increased
- Jabber support in iChat allows me to use it at work
- Dictionary application is more useful than you’d think
Cons
- Spotlight isn’t as fast as I’d hoped on a G4 PowerBook
- System performance seems to have dropped in some areas, such as opening file dialogs
- Automator isn’t as useful for me as I’d hoped
- Dashboard Widgets can be slow to load/refresh
- Cisco VPN Client still pretty rubbish after 4-months
- H.264 codec support in QuickTime makes supporting videos look great but you need a faster CPU than what I’ve got
19th September | Reply
I have 3 OSs runing in my house and the thing that I really find to be true about Apple is it’s the best at nothing and the worst at nothing. At least when it comes to the basics. It’s not as flexible as linux, not as well supported as windows–possibly the best mainstream consumer choice but not available at maintream consumer prices.
I haven’t spent much time with Spotlight on the Emac i now have access too, but how does Spotlight’s Email finding compare with Gmail. GMail is really awesome if you need to find an email. I managed to pull up a gamespy newsletter for 4 months ago the other day really fast out of a sea of Gamespydaily’s with Gmail, just searched for what I was interested in and it found it pretty quick.
I like Dashboard, but does it have Virtual Desktop support for real second desktops like In KDE? I usually run 3 seperate desktops on my laptop in linux and i can switch between them really easily and keep applications availble rather easily across them all or just in one it’s a breeze and really pleasant.
19th September | Reply
Yeah, I’d agree with a lot of that. I went through a frustrating few hours trying to find a handset for using with Skype but almost all of them are only support Windows. The same is true of a lot of things that I’d like to run on the Mac so I can only hope that the increasing popularity of the Mac platform goes someway to addressing this problem. However, I will say that it a fantastic platform for digital media. The iLife software is absolutely stonking and it’s integration with both the software within the family and also 3rd party applications makes managing it a breeze. A bit more horsepower for the likes of iMovie and iDVD would help so a new PowerBook next year when the MacTels arrive will be needed.
For GMail, I have no idea as I don’t have an account. All email is stored locally or on an IMAP server at work so GMail isn’t an option. I expect the effect is much the same but I think Spotlight has advantages in the way that you can configure the search criteria and the ability to save a search as a SmartFolder. However, without direct experience of GMail it is hard to say…
No, OS X does not natively support multiple desktops. However, I bought some synchronisation software from a company that provides a product called You Control:Desktops which will do the same thing. Again, no experience of the product but there is a 15-day trial if you are interested enough. I’ve had a play with KDE with SuSE 9.3 but haven’t used the facility since I am so used to using a single desktop. Old habits die hard and all that.
20th September | Reply
I bought my first mac (a G3 iBook) about four years ago and am on my third now (a G5 iMac). For me personally I don’t care if people like Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris, etc. I tried Mac and wouldn’t touch anything else (at the moment, who knows what the future holds??) but I definately don’t think the whole world should start using Macs. In my experience there has never been anything that I have wanted to do and couldn’t because I am using a Mac, when it comes down to it the only people I know who use Windows PC’s use them for games. I ain’t gonna spend a grand of my cash just to play games! Anyway I touch on this in my in a little more detail.
Besides all that though, nice article! It must have taken a lot of time to compile it all but it’s been a good read
20th September | Reply
OS X is an overhyped bloated crap.
20th September | Reply
Yeah, games has been the biggest kicker with the Mac. Beyond that there really hasn’t been too much that I’ve missed (MS Access in Office, for example) and there’s certainly been a lot that I’ve enjoyed (iLife and Omnigraffle, for example). I can’t see myself changing back to a Windows PC in the near future and I’ve not seen enough in Linux yet that I’ve liked enough to change over to there.
I read through your article and can honestly agree with it. OS X has a number of security benefits over Windows, such as disabling the Root/Administrator account by default (although Vista will finally do this as well) and keeping a lot of the communications within the monolithic kernel. However, I’m sure we know enough to know that “where there is a will, there’s a way”, so if the cracking community ever decides to turn its attention to the Mac then we’d probably be just as buggered as Windows, perhaps even more so because Mac users are typically complacent when it comes to security (sad but often true). My ideal scenario has a pretty even division in market share between the major OSs such that none of them are marginalised (hey, I might actually be able to buy a Skype-compatible handset that supports the Mac then) and we are not tied down to one system. It drives me nuts how many websites REQUIRE Internet Explorer, particularly in my office environment where Windows/IE is the corporate standard. As you note, when you put all your eggs in one basket then you’re on your way to the mother of all omelettes…
Anyway, glad you liked the article and, to be honest, I banged it out in a couple of hours to my shame.
20th September | Reply
I think it very much depends on what you expect from an operating system as to how good/bad you rate OS X or any other. There is no denying that OS X 10.4 is not perfect and that some of the new applications I have found limited use for, and I hope that my review accurately reflected that. However, for doing what an OS is supposed to do (i.e. manage your computer resources) it does do a very good job. Yeah, if games are what you like, don’t buy a Mac - seriously, they’re rubbish for the job as the hardware is more expensive, less powerful and poorly supported by games developers when compared to Windows and, probably, Linux. This is something that I happily admit to and have acknowledged. If this was my primary consideration then I’ve have bought another Windows laptop a long time ago.
What I like about Apple and OS X, however, is how well it fits into my life. I needed a solid, all-round performing computer and I think I got it. I’ve never had problems with it (first time with a computer in about 15-years), it runs some great software, plays well with Windows and UNIX-based networks, and it suits my Java development nicely. I don’t think I can ask much more from a laptop OS.
Still, if you’ve got some specific gripes with OS X then it’d be interesting to hear them.
20th September | Reply
A couple of hours?? I wrote an article for ATPM that was probably half the length of this and took about a week!! Maybe I’m just a slow typist :p
20th September | Reply
Gmail has POP support. I use Apple Mail to read, send and receive my gmail. It works perfectly.
20th September | Reply
Maybe I was “in the Zone” or something. If it helps, I’d been meaning to write a reasonable bit of this for a while and found myself with some time while I was waiting for my web hosting provider to give me some support (yes, as usual, the no-help help desk…). The only issue I encountered writing it was the remains of a hangover after my wife and I had friends over the night before…
20th September | Reply
To be honest, I’ve heard a lot of good things about Gmail and been offered an account a number of times. However, since I’m tied to a corporate IMAP server for my day-to-day work and a .mac account for home, I’ve never really seen the need for such a large quantity of email space. Still, if you haven’t already installed it, the GmailStatus application for your menu bar is supposed to be pretty great.
20th September | Reply
Mac is actually better supported offically by games publishers than Linux thanks to Aspyr. That said, Linux has a system called WineX which gives it a bit more flexibility when it comes to running Windows apps including games as you can simulate DirectX pretty well without having to do all the pain in the ass power of a full on windows emulator.
The biggest problem I have with OSX in general is more tied to Apple’s hardware than anything. I mean if you have an Old Mac it’s really just not viable to run OS X on it. Conversely I took a 50 dollar used PC, bought a bit of cheap memory for 20 bucks and got Linux Running very well on it. My linux laptop cost me about 200 bucks because it was pretty old. Also it ships with a bunch of multimedia stuff i don’t really need but not with a bunch of stuff I do need, like a quality ICQ and IRC client and an office suite. Any good distro of Linux will give you an option to install the latest version of Open Office, X-Chat, Gaim, LICQ etc. I know you can kinda back end into ICQ with Jabber but that’s more of a pain than it ought to be. It ought come with a meta like Gaim, and IMO an office suite too. But they do ship it with stuff to make movies and take pictures something i have 0 chance of doing anytime soon. It seems more people would need a spreadsheet and a word processor program and a meta-im client than Imovie. So it’s sort of bloated and underfeatured all at once.
20th September | Reply
Speaking of Google and Skype does Google talk work in Mac?
20th September | Reply
OK, that’s a fair comment. TextEdit isn’t exactly Word (or any other full-featured word processor you’d care to mention) and it doesn’t come with any other productivity software. iChat, to be fair, is a reasonable ICQ client (I was surprised when I logged to my AIM account that I got my ICQ contacts as well) but I do tend to use AdiumX instead and there’s definitely no IRC client. In much the same way as Windows you are pretty left to paddle your own canoe when it comes to getting software installed, although there are plenty of portal sites to help. For me it was definitely a learning experience and I can quite see what you mean as I was surprised at the quantity of software that came with SuSE 9.3. I’d suggest possible legal issues but then OS X already ships with a reasonable quantity of open-source software already, although mostly accessed through the Terminal.
To be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if iWork wasn’t bundled with new Macs in the future, although it needs a spreadsheet application (the rumour mill suggests that one is coming since Numbers was patented by Apple not that long ago) and Pages apparently needs a lot of work still. Keynote, on the otherhand, is meant to be pretty good (export to Flash and Quicktime can’t be sniffed at) but presentation software is the least useful member of an office suite.
Anyway, I totally agree but must note that digital media is probably Apple’s most important market these days, so the inclusion of iLife makes a lot of sense, although its not strictly part of OS X anymore.
20th September | Reply
That’d be a “no” then. Windows 2000/XP only, although other chat clients can communicate with Google Talk users via the Jabber protocol. Bit of a bugger but I wouldn’t rule out a Mac and Linux version in the future. Skype was Windows only but their Mac client isn’t bad these days, although not as good as the Windows version, IMO.
20th September | Reply
Yeah I have tried Virtual PC but like you say there’s a lot of pain in the ass stuff it has to emulate which slows it right down. So I don’t bother with it now. On the point about Apple’s hardware to me that is Apple’s biggest advantage & disadvantage. It’s an advantage if you are prepared to keep up with Apple & the latest technology but a disadvantage for the reasons you state. Surely though you could still load a Linux distro on an old Apple box??
20th September | Reply
Some misunderstanding about “Linux” is very common, many “Linux” users believe the Apps that come with a Linux distribution are part of the operating system itself, which are not . Mac OS X and iLife Apps (iMovie, iTunes, iDVD,etc.) are two different things. An operating system or a computer you buy may or may not include apps you may want to use. Linux distributions tend to make people believe that an Operating System should include thousands of Apps. While that is a good value added, Linux apps included in some distributions are not part of the operating system. You can download them later. The same thing happens with Mac OS X and Windows. Office is not a part of Windows, it is included in some machines as part of the deal, but it is not part of the operating system, it is part of the “deal” you make with the computer seller. The iLife Apps, are part of the deal of buying a Mac computer, and they are not included when you buy a MacOS X Tiger license alone. Open office is also available for Mac computers as well as almost all the software that comes with a Linux distribution, since most of the software that comes with it is not a creation or exclusivity of “Linux” but from other sources. Mac computers, according if it is a PowerMac, iMac, Powerbook or something else includes some bonus software (Games, AppleWorks (An office alike), enciclopaedia, Omnigraffle, GraphicConverter, etc.) which is not part of the operating system. The author gave a review of the Mac OS X 10.4.2 explicitly and its bundled software (Mail, AddressBook, Dashboard,etc.). You can later download versions of Linux software for Mac OS X, at no cost either (Openoffice, gimp, AbiWord, etc.), it does not look as beautiful as software designed especifically for OS X, but it certainly works and works well. To the author: Good review! Very honest.
20th September | Reply
For those looking for virtual desktop switching there’s a free app called Desktop Manager that does a great job. The only thing I miss about it from linux is not being able to drag apps to different desktops via the pager. Still… check it out.
http://desktopmanager.berlios.de/
20th September | Reply
I understand they aren’t part of the OS but it’s transparent seperation if they’re on the discs. They’re not part of the OS but from a purely practical standpoint as a user the distinction is a rather trivial part. My Mandriva Linux comes with everything on the discs, that i need for my notebook, my windows XP and OS X do not, but they both do come with lots of things i don’t really need.
20th September | Reply
Yes, Google Talk works with MacOS X, it even works with the standard iChat app.
And BTW, quit bashing the Mac on games, if you want games you shouldn’t buy a PC either, you should get a Playstation or XBox. That’s the logical conclusion if you want to use the criterion of software availability.
20th September | Reply
One thing not mentioned here is the poor internationalization of Mac OS X in comparison to Linux or M$ Windows. Using Cyrillic is kind of problemmatic in some shipped applications. Dang it even M$ figured out how to deal with i18n stuff in OS X, why Apple can’t?
20th September | Reply
I have to disagree with the comment from Vermouth (20th September @ 7:06 am). I have Tiger running on a 2001 PowerMac G4 466MHz very well, I must say. No part of the OS does not work. I upgraded the RAM to 256MB, where it ran but not as briskly as I might have wanted. After pushing it to 512MB, its perfectly useable and I am not wanting as that machine is a web/email/word processing box. I use iTunes, Apple Mail, Safari, Photoshop Elements 3.0 as well as a few other applications with no problems. I use my G5 for video and heavy photo editing, but the PM G4 is a fine computer, not too shabby for a 4 year old box. I cannot say the same for my multiple HP machines that are plagued with cheap parts that are now taking turns quitting after less that abusive use. I think Tiger is a wonderful OS and now that I have switched and own 2 macs I only use the XP and Win2k boxes for work VPN and apps that dont have a mac equivalent. Just my two cents. This is a good article and I agree with many of your points.
20th September | Reply
BTW, about there being no Mac IRC client, you might want to check out Snak. http://www.snak.com . Seems serviceable to me.
20th September | Reply
We use Cisco’s VPN for work and so I have it on my XP computer at work and my Macs at home. I can tell you that CISCO VPN is CRAP on Windows AND Macs. We have had nothing but STRANGE problems with it - plain inconsistant performance and issues on BOTH platforms.
20th September | Reply
People are asking for apps that will make their life easier. As a hardcore unix person I can’t live without Desktop Manager. For IRC chat xchat Aqua is what you are looking for. I am not a fan of the iChat implementation of Jabber so use Adium in place of it. NetNewsWireLite for RSS(I need to pony up as I like this one and need to support the author) Firefox and Camino(when Safari is quirky on sites and plugins “Citrix”) Eclipse and Xcode 2 for Java. Sybase Developers Ediition(Free download) for Database. Tomcat JSP. Mono for cross platform .Net(OSX/Linux/Windows) Keynote 2 with Sailing Clicker(For presentations at work)
I love all computers and use and have all the majors at home. Got my first Mac two years ago and now own 3 of them. Mini, G5 tower and a Powerbook. I am now in the fold and plan on staying. I will continue to use my Windows box(.NET) Linux boxes(Database/Java/Apache) They all have a place for me.
Use whatever tool gets the job done best for you.. Be it Mac with OSX, Linux, Windows, Solaris, Amiga OS(I loved the Amiga) or whatever. Happy computing.
20th September | Reply
True. The other way to look at it is that it removes some degree of choice from the user in that the bundled software will most likely be used rather than an objective selection from the available market. This, in effect, is the IE/Media Player argument but in an open-source form. SuSE, for example, came with Open Office but I wasn’t given any other alternatives, such as Star Office, which may or may not be a good thing. Yes, you are given the choice to install/not install what you want but when you are new to the OS and its applications you’ll pretty much take the default options and worry later. However, a portal site that immediately opens on installation and that is able to offer a selection of competing products that can be evaluated/reviewed would be nice.
Just being honest. I do play a few games on the Mac (Call of Duty mostly) but there’s no getting past the fact that not that many major titles get ported to the Mac due to the issues with DirectX (an entirely different bitch). There’s nothing wrong with the titles that are available, just that the selection isn’t much and stating this problem hopefully gets the article taken a bit more seriously rather than being seen as some sort of Apple Zealot. To a degree the importance of this very much depends on the types of games that you like. If console games are your thing (hey, I’m still happily playing the original Ratchet & Clank) then you are quite right, neither a Windows, Linux or Mac system will be right for you. However, if FPS or RTS games are your thing, it’s generally best to look to a PC of some variety.
It’s all Apples and Oranges but I sometimes find it annoying that Apple keeps adding stuff about how well their systems plays games in the adverts when in reality there isn’t that much available. It’s the same when they claim that OS X never crashes. It does. Just not very often. For this I am thankful.
Hmm, I didn’t know that (I’m English by origin so everything works great for me) but certainly worth considering. Is the OS itself the problem or the applications written for it? I seem to recall a bit of ho-ha in Catalonia because Apple wouldn’t make a localised version of OS X for there but wasn’t aware of other localisation issues.
20th September | Reply
People are asking for apps that will make their life easier. As a hardcore unix person I can’t live without Desktop Manager. For IRC chat xchat Aqua is what you are looking for. I am not a fan of the iChat implementation of Jabber so use Adium in place of it. NetNewsWireLite for RSS(I need to pony up as I like this one and need to support the author) Firefox and Camino(when Safari is quirky on sites and plugins “Citrix”) Eclipse and Xcode 2 for Java. Sybase Developers Ediition(Free download) for Database. Tomcat JSP. Mono for cross platform .Net(OSX/Linux/Windows)
I love all computers and use and have all the majors at home. Got my first Mac two years ago and now own 3 of them. Mini, G5 tower and a Powerbook. I am now in the fold and plan on staying. I will continue to use my Windows box(.NET) Linux boxes(Database/Java/Apache) They all have a place for me.
Use whatever tool gets the job done best for you.. Be it Mac with OSX, Linux, Windows, Solaris, Amiga OS(I loved the Amiga) or whatever. Happy computing.
20th September | Reply
To be honest, I haven’t had a problem with Cisco VPN Client (v4.6) on Windows 2000/XP or OS X 10.3 but the Tiger implementation is still screwed. Specifically, the 4.6.04.0061 version does not play with the proxy server at work (so no external Internet access) while the relatively recent 4.7.00.0510 version causes Safari and Mail to throw errors (I suspect that its something to do with the WebKit or whatever it is caused that underpins both), although Firefox seems to work OK with Internet sites. I’m waiting for a version that fixes both issues but in the meantime I have reverted to v4.6 so that I can at least pickup my email. In a bizarre twist, if I want to use the Internet while being connected with the VPN Client I am currently using Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection sofware for OS X so that I can control my Windows XP system in the office from home…
20th September | Reply
Very balanced review. I have never used Windows in any form, so have to have an outside perspective is both interesting and informative. I agree with those who say that there are not a lot of games titles fof Macs, but even Bill Gates understands that a specialised platform is better than a personal computer for game playing. From a Mac user of twelve years, and a Sony playstation for games.
20th September | Reply
I’m a 27 year old IT Director with 14 years of computer experience.
a few years ago, I bought my first Mac (15″ iMac G4 800MHz) with Mac OSX 10.1
Since then, I never touched any other PC running Microsoft OS on it.
I’m real happy with my current 12″ iBook G4 1.2GHz with OSX Tiger.
- once you use mac, you’ll never go back.
This review is great!
20th September | Reply
SPOTLIGHT…. Lame.
Save a file “A1234″, try to find it by typing “1234″ and it won’t find it.
How in the world could a search function not parse out a line.
Idiots at apple. They always miss the obvious.
21st September | Reply
Ben, you’re right. Spotlight returns WRONG results. I tried to find pictures from my digital camera names OLnnnn (OL9876) by just typing the numbers and it won’t find them unless I know the entire first part of the name. It only searches by exact unless you click a dozen more times to get to the advanced search, which by them you’ve forgotten what you ae doing.
SPOTLIGHT CANNOT BE TRUSTED. I’ve lost all faith in it. Had to go to easyfind from devon to get search back that I can trust.
There’s so much to like but so much to hate. It’s like they hobble the OS full of someone’s pet peeves, like no trash on desktop. You can’t even alias it. They prevent that. Also, why are there all these Services that are never available. The UI is a utter mess in most cases.
Too bad Avie evian decided to completely re-write everything because the old Mac UI was so elegant, small, and reliable. Tiger is the pinnacle of design BEFORE function. I yell every day at Tiger.
21st September | Reply
To a large degree I think you are correct but I don’t think that it is fair to say, at least in my experience, that Spotlight is wrong. Spotlight, as best I can tell, is right if you understand that you need to search for complete words rather than partials. This makes a lot of sense and I’m not sure I really want it to return partial matches. However, I have found it to be annoying that the Fast Searching facility from Panther has been removed (I think as I can’t seem to replicate it) because that would have done what both you and I want, and it does it faster than Spotlight does (assuming that it would do it anyway, of course).
There are some peeves that I have in the OS interface but, to be fair, there’s a lot that I like. I haven’t used OS 9 or any of the previous Mac OS iterations so you’ll have to bare with me on that (Windows and DOS was my background for many years) but there are many features in the OS interface (especially Finder) that I do like, such as the Columns View and the ability to add any folder to the sidebar. However, I did just discover today that I can’t scroll the Finder window when it is in List View while I have a collection of files selected (I wanted to scroll the window down to a folder at the bottom but the window just refused to scroll). So, yeah, the interface is still far from perfect.
Now that I think about it, why doesn’t OS X Finder offer a Move File option? I can move by drag-n-drop, or using the mv command via the Terminal, but there isn’t a Move command in the same way that there is a Copy command, or even the Cut command from Windows. That’s always bugged me.
21st September | Reply
why not also review Windows ME since you’re reviewing old software. I hear Red Hat is coming out with 7.0 soon!
21st September | Reply
You present a balanced review on the pros and cons of OS X. Very much appreciated. I come from an Amiga background and switched to Apple about a dozen years ago. I never owned a PC and don’t plan to although I have very extensive experience on most Windows iterations.
It’s true that there are some quirks in OS X that raise an eyebrow every now and then but in all honesty, they’re far less annoying than some I could mention in Windows [not bashing Windows, I know why I don’t like it but that doesn’t mean nobody else should]. Overall, the user experience I get from OS X is truly awesome. I never have the feeling that the system is in my way when I want to do something. I just do it. Your mileage may vary. I’ve been using Apple OS since 7.5.1 and I can honestly say that I’ve never liked working with a Mac more than I do now with 10.4.2 [although I do think Panther was maybe a tad more spunky].
Apple’s increased market share is going to mean more software will become available on the platform and I think that’s a good idea. You want diversity.
The only thing that -really- annoys me is when I want to send a photobook to the printshop in iPhoto [it’s cheesy, I know, but it’s a truly unique gift to make], it doesn’t send the data for some reason that I haven’t managed to figure out yet [and it’s not the bug where you don’t see the progress bar progressing although the upload is. Data transfer cuts out after about 20 to 30 seconds with an error message]. If I could get that fixed I’d be in hog heaven.
Good things: Spotlight / Automator / Expose / iLife / iWork / all the stuff that keeps the motor running
Not so good things : Dashboard / not being able to send photo books
Overall, there’s nobody here who’s going to claim that any OS is so free of problems or issues that it’s the only sensible choice to make. I’m not making that claim either. For me, for the range of things I need my Mac for, I haven’t found a better user experience yet [although I will love the C64/Amiga experience to my dying day]. Of course the first thing is that I need to get the job done, and it doesn’t hurt that it looks great either but for the rest it’s absolutely great fun to use a Mac these days [and some people here who have made the switch seem to share my enthusiasm too].
In the end you’re going to use what you love to use, live like you want to live, baby. For me, a Mac just rocks.
J.
21st September | Reply
I would do but that dratted blue screen keeps getting in the way… Seriously, though, I’m not sure what you mean. OS X has its roots in UNIX which is by far the oldest operating system in circulation still. However, since so many businesses depend on it for mission-critical applications (my company, for example, will not use Windows for such applications but rather uses the likes of HP-UX and Solaris) then I see no reason to hold its age against it. What should be of more interest is its maturity. Most people familiar with computers know that only a fool uses the newest hardware/software unless they particularly wish to the ones to encounter the bugs. Never hold the age of software against it if it is proven to reliable.
Hmm, I owned an Amiga 500 back in the day but must confess to never really using Workbench. Embarrassingly I used mine mostly for playing games and the occasional foray into Deluxe Paint…
21st September | Reply
A very useful set of comments- great job by all. I am a fairly new (six weeks) Mac user with nearly 20 years prior experience in various Unix and PC systems. I like the Mac very much; the interface is both seductive and, for a Windows user, sometimes irritating. I’d give a lot to have a simple “Open new text document here” context menu option, and I’d like to be able to use some of the more esoteric applications that I love on the PC - without running the system-hogging VPC.
I have used RedHat and Suse extensively too. I guess I hoped the Mac would avoid all the hassle you get when you have to recompile the kernel or do something strange on Linux (I gave up trying to get the wireless card on my laptop working with Suse even with an NDIS wrapper). The Mac doesn’t have that hassle - oh, wait - as long as I want to do it Apple’s way.
A lot of time since I got the Mac has been spent on Google trying to find out how to do stuff that I guess most Mac users just take for granted. Lots of ‘good grief, I have to hold down WHICH keys?’ and ‘wow, that’s REALLY neat!’ More happy-happy than doom and gloom overall. The main thrust of my work is Adobe Photoshop and the Mac is just perfect for that. Fast, clean, and very few lockups or glitches.
That said, I have managed to crash Tiger a couple of times - now I understand the phrase “Spinning Wheel of Death - and I wish I could configure some of the things where Apple seem to think they know what I want to do better than I do. Fact is, I probably can configure them, but I expect to take a long time understanding the layers of BSD, Mach, OSX before I can do that. I haven’t quite figured out how an application can hide in a folder with a .app extension and why it crashes if you try to execute it from the terminal. List of arguments? And what on earth are Carbon, Cocoa, etc.? Right now even those Applescripts and Automation are almost incomprehensible to me. I’m really not stupid, it’s just a radical departure from the environment with which I am familiar. Give me time… But it’s very pretty and at least it works wonderfully well if all I want to do is use standard applications.
I won’t buy another Windows platform, but I won’t be throwing my XP away just yet either. I will stick with my not inconsiderable investment and no doubt I’ll get there eventually. The learning curve is not as smooth as I’d hoped.
21st September | Reply
Yeah, I think it’s fair to say that if you have been used to Windows/DOS then Mac/UNIX is, at times, a completely different world. The terminology is different and paradigms themselves are often completely different such that you have no idea what you need to do. To take a simple example, uninstalling applications is completely different on Mac than it is in Windows but much simpler (i.e. you just drag the application into the Trash). However, those who come from Windows are completely used to the concept of uninstalling via the Control Panel that you initially find yourself trying to replicate the same on OS X because that’s what you were used to. Regardless of whether one approach is better than another the important point is that both are different (occasionally radically different) and moving from one to another is often quite difficult. DOS to UNIX commands, for example, I have found to be a bit of a struggle but have to admit generally preferring UNIX now and have started forgetting the old DOS commands.
Hmm, I never really did see a use for those commands in Windows but I’m glad that people were using them. However, one of the Finder options that I WISH Windows would give is either a keyboard shortcut to creating a new folder or adding the option to the first context menu that you open rather than hiding it under the “New…” option. That drove me nuts ever since Windows 3.1 where, if memory serves, this option was available.
Anyway, I do agree that if you have a Windows background, you knew what you were doing there and that you’ll miss some applications. I suspect the same is true if you go from Mac to Windows (I know I’d miss Omnigraffle) but I think it’ll be interesting to see if more applications cross-platform applications become available on OS X when the transition to x86 happens next year. That’ll be interesting to watch.
Best of luck with OS X. I studied it for an OS course at university last year so that was a great opportunity to “get to know my OS” and, if you are interested to know more about the likes of Carbon and Cocoa, I can recommend reading some of the introductory on Apple’s site as they, for me, were really quite excellent.
21st September | Reply
Very good and unpartial review!
Regarding the need for expensive hardware (vermouth 20 sept 7:06am and Hossbud 4:50pm), I’ll do hossbud one better. I have a 500 mhz G3 powerbook and I’m doing fine. I’m going to up my RAM from my rather measly 256 mb and would like a bigger HD, but the latter is purely due to my rather large music collection. And I earn my living on my computer, so it’s not just a e-mail and surf box.
Having said that, I do get a nostalgic tear in my eye thinking back to OS8/9 (which incidentally my SO run on our even older original iMac). I actually think OS9 was more elegant, in some sort of subdued way. OSX is a completely different beast. Taken as a whole maybe as nice to use, and better (not nicer, better) in many ways. But still, after one year on OSX I miss a few things from OS9. The trash can that Stephanie mentioned is one of these. Fortunately that particular gripe can be fixed. I now have a very aqua-esque trashcan in the lower right-hand corner of my screen, thanks to DragThing (which is a godsend in may other ways too).
No OS can be everything to everyone. It may seem an obvious statement. But I feel that it’s a point that’s often overlooked. I think that’s where most opinions of which OS is “best” derails. Best for whom? Really. Think about that one.
Otherwise, I have to agree with Jorge. OSX (like OS9 before it) gets out of my way and lets me do what I want. During my several years with windows as my workplace OS I never got it out of my way. The objective difference may or may not be huge, but Apples OS’s stays on the right side of the line for me, while windows doesn’t. I get bugged by windows. Usually with the little things, like the “cancel-ok-apply” thing. Why both “ok” and “apply”? It’s simply confusing me. Others may feel otherwise, and that’s cool. What’s definitely un-cool though, is people staying with an OS just because of inertia. But then, that’s life.
22nd September | Reply
It’s nice to see a Tiger review a few month later, many early reviews commented on that the dashboard was not very useful but now loads of widgets have been released I’m using the dashboard more and more.
I agree what you said with the automator, its a great idea and fun to play with but its hard to think up useful situations where you would use it.
22nd September | Reply
Yeah, this statement it coming home to roost today. I have a highly repetitive task to do (replaceing identifier numbers in XML files for use in test cases) and I’d LOVE for Automator to be able to do this job for me. It’s a relatively easy to explain problem but, I believe, too complex for Automator and even programmatically it is likely that the task will take much longer if I try to avoid this manual task. This said, I have seen some new Automator actions that will be incredibly useful when testing web applications (as long as they are based on HTML/JavaScript), so things are looking promising.
To be honest, when it comes to Dashboard, I liked it right from the start and things have only gotten better. As a British National living in Belgium and having very little in the way of foreign language skills, the real-time translator has come in incredibly useful, particularly since Dutch is a supported language.