OSNews

...the expected April 1st announcement date according to ThinkSecret (http://www.thinksecret.com/news/0503tiger.html) with an expected ship date of April 15th.

Happy April Fools Day, Mac lovers everywhere

Earlier this week, Apple release a "FC" (final candidate) build to developers and other partners to test the operating system for any last minute "showstoppers."

Isn't that a little too quick to progress from FC to gold? Hope this doesn't mean that we'll have to wait till 10.4.1 for them to iron out the major kinks.

While I think it's really cool that they'll be releasing this within a few weeks, the story on AppleInsider did say that Apple are shipping Tiger knowing that there are still a few issues that will be fixed in a downloadable update by the time Tiger starts shipping.

If you are going to upgrade to Tiger, I'd advise to wait until at least 10.4.1, maybe even 10.4.2 to upgrade. There are always going to be bugs that Apple just wont be able to iron out. They have a tiny amount of devs compared to all the people that are going to install Tiger as soon as it hits the shelves.

anyone in the beta know if they are finaly updating the Finder?

I am going to upgrade immediately with no Carbon Copy cloned backup on an external FireWire drive in sight!

I also will not test it using a fresh install on a blank partition.

Yiippii Kii yea mo!

According to everything I have read there are only 2 problems. A carbon problem with relation to Nvidia cards and a problem with the Japanese character set. Both of these problems are supposed to be small and should be fixed by April 15th. You have to beeeeee careful with early versions. Like the other poster said, carbon copy your HD to a firewire drive for backup.

All kidding aside, I have actually been very lucky. I am still working off of the same home folder that I had since 10.1.

It ain't real. Nothing to see here, move along...

Long live "Tiger" !

hasnt it always been that the OS unveiling happened at WWDC, if thats not til June then whats the purpose of rolling out 10.4 in april? There not going to be any software to take advantage of it until after WWDC so whats the rush? I could be wrong though, Apple does pretty much what it wants, but this is lost on me.

Do I wait and pick it up at an Apple store the day of the release, or do I pre order now from Amazon.com and get some money back, but wait weeks after it is release to get it? What to do.

releasing with a few bugs and you're gonna wait? A few bugs is scaring you? they worked their butts off on this, and i'm sure the bugs that are shipping are pretty small, they are in NO position to ship something shotty right now, you can guarentee its pretty solid. If a new os upgrade shipping with a few bugs in it scares you, i'm betting your windows boxes are still running windows 95. You can bet that windows ships with far more bugs than the tiger upgrade will ship with. Hell, MS's PATCHES ship with bugs...

Any chance this will spark the release of an upgraded mini model?

I am going to buy one, but I don't want to buy the 1.0 model, I am waiting for the second generation models to come out. You know they must have them ready to go.

I kinda thought maybe the release of Tiger would be a good time for new models of the mini to come out too.

What do you think?

Han Solo

No, they will update it in 6-12 months. The mimi was just unvailed a couple of weeks ago.

Since it seems the "good news" is that they'll be ready to thip Tiger within 30 days. I only have one question:

What does "thip" mean?

Sorry Han. I think you are going to be waiting some time for a mini update.

I think they are selling like gang busters under the current config.

I don't do much with my iBook short of surfing the web, listening to music and an occasional Excel spreadsheet I take home from work. The new feature list doesn't seem too compelling to me at this time, but I'll likely go for 10.5 next year. On the other hand, my dad is in the market for a Mac and I will recommend that he waits until Tiger is shipping on new models.

That's quite true, however Apple unveiled Tiger at LAST years WWDC. With the other releases it was shown at WWDC and then released later that year. Apple's taken more time with Tiger.

I am waiting on 10.5, that will be the version competing with Longhorn. It will be fair then to make judgement about which Company (Microsoft or Apple), makes the best operating system.

Andre Da Costa

HAHA! You can wait all you want. I'll be using 10.4 and getting my work/play done now. Bye.

As someone mentioned previously, I don't do too much with my Mac to take full advantage of all the features listed on Apple's page. However, I will more than likely purchase 10.4 in the near future as every OS update has brought speed and new life to my aging 667mhz Powerbook. Depending on the system requirements for Tiger, that may be the last OS upgrade this Powerbook can handle.

Why wait for Longhorn? And who says 10.5 is going to be competing with it? For all we know 10.6 or 10.7 will be rolled out before M$ gets it's act together.

Can you tell me the features in 10.5 that you're waiting for?

Why is Slash, er OSnews suddenly reporting rumors?

Since when is a rumor news? If this is the new status quo, I heard about this guy who has this OS that's really really awesome and it's going to be free and it runs on peanut butter.

A Mac Mini with 10.4 and (hopefully) 512MB RAM as default makrs the sweet spot when I venture into Macland.

Wont be out for a while, Tiger is here for the next few years.

"Sorry Han. I think you are going to be waiting some time for a mini update.

I think they are selling like gang busters under the current config."

Just go order one Han, I picked mine up from the Apple Store last friday. The thing is solid.

Expose is the coolest and excellent in the mac workflow.

yeah, the mini is solid, thanks in part to it being based on other hardware (pb, ibook). Super solid. I've had zero problems. (!)

Any Mac resellers taking trade ins on pcs for macs?

I'm also pretty stoked about XCode 2 as well. Thankfully, Apple hasn't taken a page from Microsoft's book and continue include all the development tools with the OS, as it should be.

According to everything I have read there are only 2 problems. A carbon problem with relation to Nvidia cards and a problem with the Japanese character set. Both of these problems are supposed to be small and should be fixed by April 15th. You have to beeeeee careful with early versions. Like the other poster said, carbon copy your HD to a firewire drive for backup.

First thing I do after install is move my home directory to another disk.. Problem solved.

A tale of two cities, or in this case, Operating Systems.

Today Tiger Goes Gold GM

And today in the Windows world...

'High Risk' Flaws Found in IE, Outlook

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1781171,00.asp

Imagine you're working in an Apple Store. I've been in one, it's a really cool environment [I think so anyway] and you have all these nice and shiny new toys and great software just beckoning at you.

A prospecting new Mac user comes in and wants to trade-in his old PC. Depending on who made it, it can be 'pretty ok' over 'nice try but no cigar' to 'get that thing out of here!'.
What do you think Apple is going to give you for your computer? It's not a car, it's an old computer. By default less cool than anything you're going to be buying at the Apple Store. I'm not deriding you for the attempt, actually I wish you all the best of luck.

Now, get yourself a Mac and enjoy the experience.

Since Tiger went gold, I would most definitely hold back buying a new machine until it comes with Tiger, which won't be long now. Conversely, you'll probably be eligible for a free upgrade if you buy your new machine inside of a certain window [! ] before Steve holds the shiny striped disk in his hands and officially releases the new kitty into the world. In that case get your Mac now, Panther is a great introduction to the Mac world.
Do yourself a favor and put a gig of RAM into the box [don't buy it at Apple though ], you'll love it. Does anyone know what the system requirements are going to be for Tiger? It should run ok on older Macs [I'm fondly hoping ] but it needs memory like a CEO needs stock options.

I'm also pretty stoked about XCode 2 as well. Thankfully, Apple hasn't taken a page from Microsoft's book and continue include all the development tools with the OS, as it should be.

That's mostly because XCode wouldn't sell. Honestly, it's one of the worst IDEs I have ever used. VS.NET or CodeWarrior are faster, more stable, less confusing and create much faster binaries. I had cases where applications compiled in XCode/gcc3.3 -O3 ran at only half the speed of the same code compiled in CodeWarrior 8.

XCode is great to have bundled with the OS, but it's certainly not an IDE I'd pay money for.

Even though I use XCode, I agree that it isn't as good as VS.NET. If they sold it separately, it probably wouldn't sell at all. But then, I'm glad it's included free. I like it better than KDevelop or Anjuta but it's definitely no VS.NET.

Could someone clarify whether the Tiger windowing system is resolution-independent. Is it at the same level as or better than Avalon?

Yes, the GUI system is resolution independent. However, most Carbon apps look quite bad with enlarged windows (everything is simply enlarged). Cocoa apps work better. However, most GUI elements are still only resized bitmaps, making them look a bit borky.

It is more accurate to say that support for resolution independence is in 10.4, however it is preliminary at this point. It's really only there for developers to test and update their apps for resolution independence, or for adventurous users. It will probably be available in default settings come 10.5.

I heard that 10.5 codenamed "Lion" will have a Start Menu.

I doubt that will happen Windows fan boy.

http://spaces.msn.com/members/adacosta

//A tale of two cities, or in this case, Operating Systems.
oday Tiger Goes Gold GM ... And today in the Windows world...
... 'High Risk' Flaws Found in IE, Outlook //

Er ... thanks for the pointless post.

"I am waiting on 10.5, that will be the version competing with Longhorn. It will be fair then to make judgement about which Company (Microsoft or Apple), makes the best operating system."

Yes 10.5 would be a better comparison but Tiger will soon be shipping with some of the features that are promised in Longhorn so I expect 10.5 to be as good or better than Longhorn. With the way Apple has been executing lately there is no way I expect to be worse.

yes yes OS X is awesome...I know that you know that we all know that...but it is still not fast...UI is dog slow...I will surely hope that Tiger has gotten some of the fat trimmed off...I am gonna go to an Apple store and check out a dual 2.5 ghz and see if Tiger has improved any from Panther. I am in the market for a new comp but looks like Apple definitely wont be it...because their hardware is stagnant and not very flexible...only 1 damn processor that is slow as heck...at least it looks good on paper. Give me dual core AMD FX's anytime...and a Windows platform...I know what to do to make it secure enough for my needs at least...though OS X is a better alternative from a security point of view. Other than that nothing much appealing. Am I mistaken in thinking that?

it's not the hardware that is slow, it's the software (OS and Apps) that is far from gaining optimum efficiency.

The current G5s sport a 1GHZ bus(the top-models bit faster, the low-end a bit slower), no excuse here too... CPU is blazing fast, GPU is fast enough since years, it's ALL in the software... Even a single 1,6 ghz G5 would be fast enough to deliver a complete realtime gui/OS-experience. It's ALL in the software.

i'm a macuser.

"would be fast enough to deliver a complete realtime gui/OS-experience."


...do you even know what "real time" even means?

Jeez.....

And what exactly about the UI is dog slow? I run many apps on my Powerbook. At any one time I have Safari (8 - 12 tabs), Mail, AdiumX, Terminal, Jedit, Eclipse and NetNewsWire. Occasionally I've got a few PDF documents and Powerpoint presentations open. OS X doesn't feel slow to me. It always perplexes me how people always claim the UI is slow. What exactly is slow?

There are loads of reason to use OS X over Windows. The integrated X11, good command line tools, and Expose. But it sounds like your mind is already made up.

omfg, i used the word "realtime" for describing a complete responsive behaviour without ANY lags, slowdowns, hiccups, esp. regarding a GUI and the surrounding OS.

i do KNOW that a socalled realtime-OS is something completely different. it's about guaranteed timings/time-shedulding/answer-responsive-timings/ inside and so on... excuse my lousy english.

Hi Viro,

To be fair and balanced, there is one part of OSX which is slow: window resizing.

I hope Apple really fixed this in Tiger. Because outside of that, OS X is fast as hell.

Everyone once and awhile, I've got to give Apple a hard time too. :-)

I know windows resizing is what many criticize Apple for, but I've run GNOME and KDE and OS X is not visibly much slower than either of these. Plus how does that affect productivity anyway, unless you spend all day resizing windows.

To be fair, there is something you can criticize Apple for. Fonts rendering. They are far too blurry, and not as good as what you have on the latest Linux distros.

Agree on the font rendering. Shocking for Apple. Also, when KDE. et al., are about the same speed, they are all to slow. Windows is much better, but I hope Tiger cleans this up.

The funny thing is the PC guys always accuse Linux and Mac guys as being zealots and unable to fault our OS's. The funny thing is the opposite is true. Go to a Mac board, and they are brutal on Apple, for example. And I know this makes Apple better. Linux is one better. People actually can go out and make Linux better...

viro: the real advantage of kde or gnome is that the user can DISABLE those realtime-resizing features and by this gain more cpu-cycles for the important stuff.
it's still not possible in X and i fear it will never be, because crapple wants to sell hardware in the first place.

did i mention, i get non-realtime-windowresizing using itunes (good idea apple), but finder-windows still resize (cough, cough) realtime ...err, i mean choppy.

to offer non-realtime-resizing (just like os9) for lower end machines is just excellent, since it speeds up workflow. but its implemented non-system-wide and inconsistent.

i agree about the font-rendering, too. X is not top-notch, some recent gnome-desktop-fonts beat OS X font-rendering with ease.

Plus: Humans can get used to nearly anything, all it needs to break this is a free and open view on other solutions. eof.

i am still a macuser

I don't think I get what you're referring to by 'realtime resizing'.

window resizing that instantly draws the entire window as long as you resize....

Realtime does not mean instant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realtime

No GUI provides instant resizing. This isn't much of an issue since it doesn't affect productivity in a noticeable way. OS X, GNOME and KDE all do window resizes in under a second. How much productivity will be gained if this were shortened?

Yeah, window resizing is improved in Tiger, just like it has been in every major OS X release. It's noticeably smoother. Still, it could be better, but I won't complain.

The effects Core Image makes are quite amazing. The water effect when dropping Dashboard widgets... wow.

The gui is not dog slow, but it is not fast, it sort of feels like JDK Swing on JDK 1.3.1, fast enough, but the speed sort of is annoying.
I have a mac mini here running osx and ubuntu side by side, while ubuntu under the sort of slow gnome feels very good and fast, the osx gui sort of feels like a rubber band being torn.

You can work with it, but it is not snappy. Sort of the same effect I had with Swing pre JDK 1.4.

I honestly don't know what any of you guys are talking about. My experiences with GNOME and CDE have been quite the opposite. I feel like I'm working on a turtle.

I also don't really comprehend what you guys are talking about when you go on and on about fonts. Again, I feel like I'm straining my eyes everytime I'm on one of the unix boxes at work. EVERYTIME.

People try to show me screenshots of what they mean, but the fonts always look like ass, IMHO.

Aqua on my old 450MHz G4 tower (with a paltry Rage128) runs circles around GNOME. The only slowness I can complain of is AFP connections over my DSL.

There's good news for you *nixers, I'm getting a new G5 as soon as the new towers are announced and will be putting a linux distro on the old machine, for S-A-Gs.

The font rendering in Linux is dependend on the Distro, it really can and has done so Windows and OSXs ass.
The trick is, that the stuff has to be turned on. Often in XWindows subpixel rendering is turned off due to patent issues.
Often the installs still are set to the gruesome bitmapped fonts.
Fonts themselves are not a big issue anymore. The Microsoft core truetype fonts are in the wild and can be accessed legally (Microsoft failed to torpedoe the web core fonts project back then hence the possibility to access the fonts)
there are bunch of very good core fonts already officially dedicated to linux from Bitstream and also various openfont packages have become very good.
The font renderer itself is a non issue nowadays if the distro has turned on the subpixel rendering.

As for speed. Recent gnomes are faster than osx on the same machine. KDE already has become blazingly fast, thanks to lots of optimizations done especially the last year.
There is not too much speed difference between a blazingly fast rox and kde anymore and gnome slowly reach the speed of xfce nowdays (2.6.10 I mean)

Check out a kde 3.4 and you have a real eye opener on what is snappy and how rubber like OSX feels compared to that.

People concerned about the speed to the gui should watch this movie. Suffice to say that things should be much better in Tiger.

http://stream.qtv.apple.com/events/jun/wwdc_2004_qt_sotu/wwdc_2004_...

P.S. The improvements described in the video are in builds from last summer. Things may very well be even better in the GM.

Check out a kde 3.4 and you have a real eye opener on what is snappy and how rubber like OSX feels compared to that.

I did,and i'm very pleased with kde3.4
Although kde3.3.2 performs just as fast on my Gentoo AMD64 box,(i have the impression it's even faster).
Can't wait till kde3.4 goes stable on Gentoo x86_64.

-> the osx gui sort of feels like a rubber band being torn.

wonderful discription, it's exactly what I always think but this genious phrase didn't came into my mind.

my opinion about os-x fonts...

http://smithz.org/x/os-x-blurryhell-beta.gif

linux-desktop using excellent fonts, i think it's gnome. using freetype2 and hard hinting

http://www.smithz.org/x/15607-1.png

sure, freetype2 CAN produce crappy rendering, but it also can beat OS X rendering with ease. It's all about correct configuration, proper fonts, explicit sizes of fonts configurable on the desktop. Most of these possibilities are not in OS-X, so fonts still stay mediocre. THis is apple's one-solution-fits all crap...

Andi, have you ever seen OS X using sub-pixel rendering for text? Looks much better.
The font rendering in that Gnome screenshot looks good, but the fonts themselves look like ass. Without nice fonts, good rendering is useless. :-)

After setting the "Font Smoothing Style" on OS X to Strong, fonts look better, and I think I like it just as much as GNOME font rendering now. Apple should change the label in the options. Strong font smoothing should be recommended for LCDs instead of Medium font smoothing.

tom, i disagree about the fonts in gnome, i think they look better because of the constant quality rendering. And yes, i've seen all kinds of rendering on os-x, because i occasionally use os-x and try out everything to make the fonts look better. sadly you can't choose a custom font, and IF you do this by a haxie it looks *worse* than apples default font.

tragically, at some sizes, os-x CAN deliver a constant rendering quality. I noticed this when surfing the web and increasing/decreasing font sizes in the browser. Rarely one size look excellent, pixel-perfect smoothed. A small increase in size results in mediocre rendering.

It may sound strange to you, but i can see the blue and reddish blur when sub-pixel-rendering is active. So this is no option for me.

Gnome, or i should better say, freetype2 offers the user more choices, one of the most important for me is hard hinting which leads to constant crisp fonts.

Of course, i agree with tom, good fonts are must. Especially at small sizes little changes in fonts can alter the appearance drastically from excellent readability to crappy readability.