“10.4 “Tiger” is the strongest OS X release yet and a worthy competitor to Windows XP. Though it is marketed by Apple as a major release, Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade [ed: really?] with few major new features, more akin to what we’d call a service pack in the Windows world” says WinSuperSite.
Paul Thurrot reviews OS X Tiger
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Excuse me, but “worthy competitor to Windows XP”? Get real!
Windows XP is four years old (released in 2001) and Tiger is brand new. There is no competition. The tiger eats XP for lunch.
“Mac OS X 10.4 ‘Tiger’ is the strongest OS X release yet and a worthy competitor to Windows XP.
That qualifies as a back handed compliment. Tiger goes well beyond
XP and I’ll wait and see if Longhorn’s promised features catch up with Tiger.
Just have to wait another 2 years (guessing at current projections).
Isn’t this kind of like Ford reviewing Chevy?
“Tiger is in fact a minor upgrade with few major new features, more akin to what we’d call a service pack in the Windows world”
Give me a break! I’m not an OSX user, I don’t own or ever have owned a Mac, but just looking at the Apple website I think it’s very clear that this is much more than just a “service pack” upgrade!
Did the Windows NT or 2000 Service Pack’s have so many new features? I think not, and nor would so many people be as eagerly anticipating, or be willing to pay for such an upgrade unless there is something decent in Tiger. Yes the step looks more evolutionary than revolutionary (which is no bad thing) – isn’t it more akin to an upgrade from NT4 to 2000?
btw – for the record I’m not an anti-MS fanboy, I use Windows 2000, Slackware, Vector Linux and SUSE.
This review kind of puts me off Tiger. I mean, when you think about it, he says that there are 2 major new features, and you can add them with Konfabulator and Google Desktop Search.
I know that there is a lot of new stuff going on ‘under the hood’, but on the surface, well… how is that going to affect me?
Also, I think that maybe OS X is becoming a bit inconsistent with regard to visual styles, icons matching each other (look how BeOS icons match eachother) – in OS X even different apps don’t match! Maybe they should bring back their User Interface group?!
Totally agree. To even have XP mentioned in the same article as Tiger is an insult and a joke. And Im not some religeous apple zealot fanboy either. Facts are facts plain and simple. It won’t be until Longhorn is released in the distant future that they can compare Windows to OSX.
What the?
Oh man, somebody at Redmond must seriously be on the red-pills today….
First there was the “Hey, look at me” thread, trumpetting the supposedly new innovations in Longhorn, like *gasp* thumbnailing icons, *gasp* a working search feature, and tranlucency effects.
Hypothetical Gnome-user: Hmm….how about I go to the top, click the Actions menu (there are only 2 menus), and click Search…wow, the Linux guys must have invented a time-machine, I’m getting Windows features *now*….how cool is that!
Now Thurrot, who’s more or less a permanently-staffed employee of Redmond, write’s another idiotic article with zero journalistic credibility. Personally, I think Eugenia might have overdone the article intro above a bit by taking some of his comments out of context, and trying to drum up traffic, by getting all the Linux people angry with a sensationalist lead-in.
Everybody, read the article – Thurrot does talk about some of the cool features of Apple, and he does commend them on that. Then of course, he uses it as an advertising opportunity to say “hey, Microsoft is working on this too….”. Somewhat pathetic, but at least even he admits Apple’s implementation is here now.
The “worthy competitor to XP”? Okay, that’s just a bogus piece of rot. He’s obviously having to backtrace his steps and trying to restore some credibility to his beloved Windows, after having to concede on all the new features in Tiger. Even his petty snipe about iLige ’05 not being in Tiger is fairly obvious for what it is – another pathetic attempt to try and make Windows one-up Apple.
Nonetheless, in the end, I think Thurrot makes a fairly valid conclusion – read the concluding paragraph, if you can’t be bothered reading anything else. Sure, he takes snipes at Apple, eg about the price-tag, but overall, he does admit that Apple has definitely done one better.
cya,
Victor
I wonder when people stop spreading FUD, and start talking about facts. I’m getting sick of all these biased reviews and flamewars on most technology related websites. And it seems that people from all sides throw with mud.
Every OS has it’s supporters. If it wouldn’t have any supporters, it would probably as dead as a rat. People should respect each others choice for a particular OS.
Anyway, if you have a look at who’s doing this review (an editor of a Windows magazine) you should start questioning if it’s a reliable source.
Another thing that puts me off Mac OS X is blaotedness. He wrote in the review: “A base install of Mac OS X requires over 3 GB of space.”
3GB?! That is totally rediculous! I would like to know what is the base install for Mac OS 9? If the base install for OS X is 3 GB then that suggests to me that it is not so well designed, or it is designed lazily.
I read the feature list from Apple, and have to say that it looks a bit weak.
While (IMHO) Thurrot’s not an MS cheerleader, nor a Mac-basher, and I’ve always senn his supersite articles as objective, you cannot rule out the fact that this is one man’s experiences. If Tiger doesn’t live up to his expectations, that doesn’t mean it won’t live up to yours.
Look to more sources before making a serious buying choice, if you ever considered buying in the first place.
I am an avid Mac user, but no zealot. On the other hand, I would find it difficult to advocate Windows to anyone on any level apart from when it comes to applications that simply do not exist for Mac. (Mac is not short of them, but get particularly specialised, and you soon find yourself without)
The article makes a very valid point – for the consumer, there is not an awful lot to gain from Tiger (I have been using it) – certainly there are improvements. It is faster, and most things have seen tweaks and improvements… but the bulk of work is under the hood… and apple is asking the consumer to pay for it. The value of Tiger will become aparent over the next year or so
I am guessing the 3GB’s is mostly composed of drivers for all of their devices so that when you install it on your existing mac, it will “just work.” 1.6GB apparently is just printer drivers, for example.
I think the mac community on this board is too quick to start bashing. Thurrot made a lot of positive comments for Tiger; yet all you do (the windows bashers) is try and find the things he doesn’t necessarily like. He is obviously a mac user too, so you cannot disregard his personal views about Tiger.
The only think I wish he would have gone into more is the use of Core Image.. but I guess Tiger really doesn’t use core image itself then, maybe only third party video and editing apps, that have yet to be released.
does xp has spotlight ?.. no
does google desktop search performs like spotlight ? ..no
is longhorn a service pack ?…no
lets go biaised.. what did the last winxp SP added ?… a working firewall and a new little icon in your systray.
Not if you consider Windows XP has had two service packs since it’s release.
Now, you can go and rant about how Service packs are not like OSX $129 upgrades, but I am not.
How can you review something that isn’t out yet, and where you need to sign an NDA to get an advance copy?
I am an Xp user. It gets the job done but to compare XP to OS X Tiger is a f***ing joke. Idiots like Paul Thurrot give XP and XP users a bad name. I know where its limitations are and I definitely KNOW it is not a match to OS X. Things could be different when Longhorn is out but not right now. My 2 cents.
I think we can all agree that anyone referring to Expose as “weird” and comparing it to hot keys in old DOS apps has zero credibility. If there is a better solution to Window and Desktop management than Expose, I’m all ears.
On the comment of 3 gigs of hdd space? Are you kidding have you seen the amount of bloat that a regular XP Home edition has when installed from scratch?? Thank smart people for tools like nLite which enabled me to trim the fat from a cd of 550 mb with SP1a to a cd of 130 mb with SP2 slipstreamed. And that too resulted in 1.9 gigs of my hdd space being taken up!!
Also, service packs do not an OS make. M$ has never released an SP as far as I can remember that added more features that make the system more usable. All that was added in the SP2 was a properly working firewall, and recompiled binaries that dealt with a lot of buffer overrun problems.
my friend had an HP computer + XP and finally he got a Mac after he lost some data and his computer got a virus. He got tired of it and after spending a lot of money on Antivirus software, last week he bought a Powerbook. No complains so far…everything runs very smooth. Also he got hooked up with Garageband.!!!
-2501
Charles Arthur (who writes a technology column for the British newspaper, the Independent) has written a review of this review on his blog <a href=”http://www.charlesarthur.com/blog/index.php?p=398“>here</a>….
How many major new features did XP really add? Apart from the tellytubby theme and a few tweaks I can barely tell the difference between XP and Windows 2000. I still use Windows 2000 as my main OS without any problems and I see no reason to upgrade.
Tiger adds more to the user experience than any of the service packs for Windows. Whether it adds enough to be worth the money is another argument…
Yeah, I’m not comparing it to XP, I know XP is also a bit bloated. I have used nLite too, and before that 98lite.
But I was expecting Mac OS X to be well designed, and ‘clean’ and ‘efficient’ and so on, but when I think that it might be 3 GB then it seems that it is just stuffed with unnecessary bloat, like Windows to an extent.
Just look at BeOS, or RISC OS or EPOC/Symbian etc – they are quite cleanly designed and ‘slim’.
He compared both
Changes in Win2003 SP1
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/824721
and
Changes in Tiger
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/newfeatures.html
Then he concluded that Tiger upgrade is similar.
I dont know check it yourself.
“Mac OS X 10.0 also included a few flops, which continue in the product to this day, including the reviled Dock, which is used to switch between running applications and, confusingly, non-running applications.”
Is he on drugs? Confusing? How is this confusing. You get to arrange all your apps you use a lot in one place in a consistant order. When the program is running the is a triangle pointing to the left showing that app is running. Is this too hard for him to figure out?
I love the Dock the way it is. What is frustrating is the very inconvient and inconsistant way that Windows shows running apps. You have no choice as to what order they are in except by starting them in a particular order. If you want to change the order (for consistency) you have to close one or more apps and restart them. Totally stupid. That goes for Linux and OS/2 also.
because thurotte said it…..
blah..
BTW.. Google desktop search is NOT like spotlight. Spotlight is a CONTENT search engine that then allows you to organize files by content. one file might be a member of 50 different organizational layouts without replicating the file. GDS does not do any of that. GDS is more akin to what OS X search is like now. GDS is certainly better than the abomination called Find files in XP.
and Konfabulator is not like dashboard DB widgets are not omnipresent on the desktop. there is a greater explanation of the differences between KF and DB.. I do not have the link but you can google it easy.
making the comparison to a windows service pack – if I recall correctly Microsoft was strongly critisiced for adding new “features” to the os through the service pack. This was back in the day of Window NT4…
never the less – mister Thurott – Mac Os X.4 is surely not a minor update…
why does he compare it to something a bit more comparable and current like X.3
The 3GB “bloat” is probably with everything installed including extra apps, speech voices, printer drivers, etc. When I clean installed Panther it only took up a little over a gig and that includes many of the apps that I use everyday like Mail, Safari, Address Book, iTunes, plus all the other apps that are installed by default. OS X is definitely a “clean” system if you do a custom install and only install what is needed.
they also do not have the drivers that OS X and Windows have. I do think that if OS X would query the system before installing drivers so it knew what you needed and only install those drivers (that is what Windows 98 use to do but people hatted putting their CDs in) that it would reduce the bloat.
I hate the stupid way windows has their running apps…. it is annoying as heck. the taskbar is something that should be killed ASAP.
“How many major new features did XP really add?”. I don’t know much about windows operating systems but I do know for sure that atleast they made a much faster TCP/IP-stack for XP/2003. There are probably a whole bunch of other improvements to. I wouldn’t consider 2k.
Also I to hate it, it’s better than alt-tab but that’s all. The stupiest thing is the default group option. Windows would be so much better and easier to use with real screens (or as you guys call it virtual desktops), MDI is better than nothing but it’s not great.
What an abomination of a review?! How in the world can he even compare it to the likes of XP. And only two significant features? What sort of tecvhnologist does he claim to be if he can’t see the backend stuff as features? Granted its not directly visible, I mean he doesn’t even mention the Core technologies.
The least he could have said is Quartz 2d Extreme. Both the compositing and 2D managers are now offloaded into the GPU. Thats an effing significant perfomance boost that Windows can dream about, what in 3 or 4 years from now.
Core Data is a dream come true for developers. With an SQL database built right into the OS, complex and sophisticated software will be easy to build. (eg: imagine how easy it would be to build sophisticated libary type funtionality into new and existing programs) The OSX crop of software will be alot higher quality than Windowsland is used to.
Core Image will give ordinary joe developers the power of realtime photoshop effects rigt on their doorstep. Yet another boon for qualiy software. Core Video does the same thing for Video software. Even the most basic shareware type programs will now be miles ahead in leverage to Windows equivalent programs.
Automator alerady looks to be damn useful already. Scripting for the masses, everthing is GUI driven. The Windowsland has nothing like it.
And hundreds a whole slew of other backend feaatures that make Tiger miles ahead of XP. “a worthy competitor to XP”. Phui! Thurrot tries to gives a couple of Captain Obvious praises to OSX to make it seem like he’s impartial. Your effing tranparent Paul.
“I hate the stupid way windows has their running apps…. it is annoying as heck. the taskbar is something that should be killed ASAP.”
yeah I know I hate being able to glance down at the bottom of my screen and see all my apps and what they are doing. I mean christ is it annoying to see one instance of mozilla is on osnews and one is on wikipedia and OH MAN is it stupid to be able to see what song winamp is playing right now and what document abiword has open. I HATE being able to quickly find the exact instance of an app i want.
You can get a 250gig drive for under $200 and you’re kvetching about 3 gigs?!
OS X non-users find the crazyiest things to bitch about, but this takes the cake.
Doods and doodettes, a huge part of it is drivers, and about 100mb of it is languages.
If you’re *that* paranoid about disk space, do a custom install and then run delocalizer.
Or, better yet, spend a few bucks and get a bigger harddrive.
I just inherited a bunch of of the original ‘toilet seat’ ibooks. Bondi and tangerine in color. Excellent. We’re giving them to some graduate students to write papers on in their spare time. Well these babies topped out at 300 MHz and a 6 GB HD! Naturally, we were interested in minimizing the OS size. I threw 10.3.5 on them, dumped the tremendous amount of alternate languages that are bundled by the OS and all the printer drivers (I figured that a grad student that accepted one of the babies would be able to figure out a driver or at least print to a network printer) and the memory savings were tremendous! Have you ever seen the number of languages that are installed by default for EVERY application on the OS? Tremendous. Needless to say, I kept a tangerine one for myself and occasionally take out to run XCode on and type memos. Retro, no?
well . . . i guess if you see the point/benefit of having more than one instance of the EXACT same program running, the task bar would make sense. but that is the joy of using X, not xp. if you want to have more than one window open, go for it. minimize it and a label pops-up and tells you what is on the page you are hovering over. i use xp at work and school all day; i get to use X at home. i always knew it was better, but how much better . . . it takes having to use it for that understanding to mean more. smile.
I ddi not say that seeing what your apps are doing a bad… windows just screwed it up. the taskbar simply sucks. you cannot actually tell what you have going on in the task bar because when to many apps are loaded they become these tiny little buttons…. what? turn on the grouping? it does not help when I have 20 applications running at a time, still squished.
on the dock.. I see what apps are running… then I can right click on an app… open a new file, close the app… switch to what instance I want, or do any number of functions that the app developers provide me.
if I need to see what my apps are doing.. I kick my mouse up to the top right corner and expose shows me all my windows… I need to see all the windows of the current app.. kick the mouse ti the top left and I see them all.. i want something on my desktop…. kick the mouse o the lower right hand corner.
I not a fan of Thurrott, but I still say he has a point.
When you consider that Microsoft updates IE, Outlook Express, Messenger, Mediaplayer, Movie Maker, DirectX, and .NET, separatedly, for free, and hence wouldn’t need to include those updates in a service pack (although IE, .NET and DirectX 9 were included in SP2), Thurrott has a point. OS X Tiger is basically equivalent to Microsoft packaging IE 6 SP2 (Safari), MSN Toolbar Suite (Spotlight), MSN Messenger 7 (iChat AV), Mediaplayer (Quicktime), DirectX 9 (CoreImage/CoreAudio), .NET and SP2 (all the system level updates) on one DVD with Windows XP and selling it as $129 upgrade. (Which would, of course, lead to public outcry.)
In terms of lines of code, what Microsoft has offered for free over XP’s lifecycle has probably been in excess of what Apple has included in its point releases (at cost). Microsoft’s releases don’t have the impact and visibility of Apple’s, of course; sometime’s that’s because Apple’s offering is better and more polished, sometime’s it’s because Apple makes a big deal out of not much at all.
(Forgive my extremely bad english)
As a switcher from Linux to Mac I’d like to see more co-operation between Mac and OSS. While Apple isn’t open source, we have more than a lot in common, and I’m ashamed that OSS folks port their applications natively to Windows(gimp, open office, etc etc) while Apple ports their apps to windows also(iTunes, Quicktime etc etc). We both lose this way. Konqueror and Safari has already proven that when can do something better that excellent alreay. So let’s do that!
Windows kernel etc will never be free, while we an together fight against the eveil empire!
(heh, yes I do sound like a freak, but forgive me for my Powerbook Linux bias
)
The difference being that, those stuff that you say MS gives free are half baked ideas compared to what OSX gives.
IE 6 SP2 (Safari) … Right now both has pros and cons, (being that safari isn’t the malware attracting ActivX riddled POS that IE is, but has problems with some sites due to non standard compliant website that write IE favoring stuff) But then again Safari isn’t really being trumped by Tiger anyway.
MSN Toolbar Suite (Spotlight) … You. Have. Got. To Be. Kidding. If you think that Spotlight is just a measily slapped search indexing layer that msn deskstop is, then you really don’t get it. Spotlight is an integretaed solution in the OS the exposes its API to all programs. This means even indide the programs, they will be spotlight like facilities, like in iTunes, iPhoto, Mail and third party programs. Dynamic metadata searching is a pain in the ass to do yourslef. We will see alot of quality programs to use this stuff. Dynamic folders if Finder and dynamic playlists in iTunes are just an example of the sort of things you can do with spotlight in an app.
Messenger 7 (iChat AV) … get real, have you seen the quality of video in iChatAV? betatesters have leaked that it’s not really dependant on bandwidth either, nor4mal adsl broadband will give you high quality videoconferencing for the masses. Messenger 7?! What a toy in comparison.
Mediaplayer (Quicktime) … Where h264 in mediaplayer? The Most advanced video codec to date.
DirectX 9 (CoreImage/CoreAudio) … What a gawd awful comparison, Core audio is a stadard set by the audio industry. They’re demands are way more than the average user. It has to be super low latency to be truly realtime sampling. It has to have an easy to use channels manager kit. These advances make OSX usable for audio professionals, let alone joe user. Core Image, just the give you an idea of how much more powerful CoreImage is than the simple DirectX, this is actually an easy app to make in OSX now. HighRes video running, add all sorts of color distortion effects on the video, do a lens bump effect on the video, add some graphics over the video, distort the graphics in realtime, add a lens flare effect, all while the video doesn’t skip a frame. This can be done by simple joe shareware developer. Lets see how long DirectX developers need to do that.
How about the Windows equivalents of Core data, Automator, Unix improvements, modified and faster Java vm … of course Tiger is a big deal. These so called upgrades form MS that you talk about are mere patches compared to Tiger’s imnprovements.
I don’t think it is fair to simply call it a service pack because service packs generally make few if any new non-security features. Nonetheless if one already had a copy of 10.3 I would have to agree that $129 is a bit steep for such a minor update. Minor updates to some middleware? That certainly isn’t worth much. Btw, didn’t private browsing for Safari already existed? Of course it did! See features for Safari 1.2 which is available for 10.3. (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/) As you can see that isn’t a feature new to 10.4.
Other from Bluetooth 1.2 Specification Support I don’t see any new hardware support, which is always a reason to upgrade.
Do I think that XP is on par with Tiger? No, but I am somewhat skeptical that for those moving from 10.3 to 10.4 that they are getting enough improvements for $129. Those using pre-10.3 users I think would get reasonable deal by getting the new features from both 10.3 and 10.4 for the same price, but I don’t think 10.4’s new features by themselves are worth $129. Some the earlier updates such as 10.2 were worth $129, but I am skeptical about this one being better enough to justify the cost.
maybe it’s because i am biased, and i know that fact about myself, but what features does XP have that are more appealing to new users? from where i stand, X is many times more appealing.
I am a 10.3 user… I bought 10.4 because of automator, dashboard, and Spotlight (oh how I wish I had this before).
everything else that comes with it just makes it an even better deal for me.
1) is a paid MS supporter
2) is not a qualified person to debate anything related to real technology (such as OSX or even Windows) because he does not understand “how it really works”
3) is good at ONE thing only…
Marketing
—–
Quote from Paul…
“But Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) was arguably a similar advance over the initial release of XP compared to what Tiger offers over Mac OS X 10.3. My issue here is with marketing, not with reality.”
Who’s marketing for MS here Paul?
—–
People, learn the facts and decide for yourself. You’ll find that the facts and your own conclusions won’t line up with anything this guy talks about.
>>Btw, didn’t private browsing for Safari already existed? Of course it did! See features for Safari 1.2 which is available for 10.3. (http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/safari/) As you can see that isn’t a feature new to 10.4. <<
Actually the page you linked to shows information only about Safari RSS, the version that comes with 10.4. There currently is no Private browsing feature in Safari 1.3(latest version that just came with 10.3.9)
Use BeOS, dump Windows and Mac.
Fastest browsing experience.
In reference to Bloat: http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10314#362100
Actually, the BASE install for 10.3 is a bit over 900MB, so I doubt the minimum for 10.4 is much more than a gig.
Some dates: OS X was first released end of March 2001. Windows XP was released October 2001. Both were kind of breaks with the past. You can argue that XP was just an small increment over W2K, but that’s not how it was marketed – W2K was supposed to be an enterprise solution, while the whole Win9xx line was targeted at the home user. With XP, they took the NT platform and grafted some GUI paradigms from the Win9x heritage on top. So, really, for the _home user_, WinXP was NEW – distinct from the Win9xx heritage.
Same with OS X – a big jump from 9. So, both XP and OS X were big changes. Now, nobody would argue that XP when first released was vastly superior to the first OS X.
Now, since then, XP has had two upgrades SP1 and SP2. I would argue that in that time, OSX developed faster – but it had to come from behind to catch up with XP. I think that by late Panther, there was essential platform parity between OS X and XP (I’m not saying that they are equal in every way, some stuff is better in one compared to the other and the other way around). With Tiger, I think OS X is clearly pulling ahead of XP.
MSFT’s response, is to now do a real platform change again. Longhorn is supposed to be as big a change from XP as OS X was from 9. Jobs actually alluded to that about a year ago, when he said that only with Longhorn is MSFT putting themselves on a platform which can grow for the forseeable future, and that Apple had a jump because they already did their “Longhorn” with OS X. And now they’ll hav a year’s jump on Longhorn. I’m sure Apple will not sit still, while Longhorn gets developed. Apple is supposed to lengthen the OS development cycle, so we may not see 10.5 until 2007 or even 2008, but at that point it is Longhorn that’s merely trying to keep up with 10.4, while 10.5 races ahead again.
So, I think Paul is simply not understanding that MSFT is now obliged to chase Apple and not the other way around (which was what happened up till now). Panther already has parity with XP. Tiger pulls ahead, and odds are, MSFT will never catch up, because Apple will keep moving ahead. I’m already looking forward to 10.5 (Lion?).
The least he could have said is Quartz 2d Extreme. Both the compositing and 2D managers are now offloaded into the GPU. Thats an effing significant perfomance boost that Windows can dream about, what in 3 or 4 years from now.
Windows wasn’t – and isn’t – in the desperate need of a GUI speedup that OS X was pre-Quartz GL (I refuse to call it “extreme” – use of that term should be punishable by death).
And I believe that the GUI effects in XP are accelerated by the video card, at least with most drivers.
I don’t mind a Windows fanboy reviewing Tiger/MacOS X 10.4, however, it would be nice for Paul to show as much enthusiasm about Tiger as he would for Service Pack 2 of Windows XP.
When Windows XP Service Pack 2 was going through beta, we had Paul running around like the second massiah preeching the ‘good news’ of his lord – Bill Gates, and how it was better than sliced bread.
He needs to STOP comparing to Windows XP, and actually LOOK. You’d think he’d want to *ATLEAST* give the new H.264 CODEC a work out, try Spotlight out, check the Mail app, possibly even try a few software titles to see if current applications take advantage of new technologies; Quartz Extreme 2D is one new feature in Tiger I want to see.
If he *MUST* do a comparison, be with the previous operating system, just like he did with his reviews of Windows.
Another thing that puts me off Mac OS X is blaotedness. He wrote in the review: “A base install of Mac OS X requires over 3 GB of space.”
3GB?! That is totally rediculous! I would like to know what is the base install for Mac OS 9? If the base install for OS X is 3 GB then that suggests to me that it is not so well designed, or it is designed lazily.
Do you actually HAVE a clue about MacOS X? May I also suggest a clue in regards to the use of bloat; bloat is used to describe excessive amounts of space required for software when compared to the number of features that particular piece of software may have.
For example, if one were to have a calculator, and it took up 30MB of storage, that would be classed as bloated, if all the thing *COULD* do was basic functions BUT if that particular calculator inclued engineering graphical functions, then one could justify the amount of code required.
Dhanesh R, GO HOME!
if they were accelerated by the gfx card then you would not have lank windows and blank menus.
Service packs from Microsoft are free! Apple really found
a market where they can charge alot for a computer that it’s hardware does not measure up to the Pc hardware, and charge $129 for service packs, no thanks. No wonder Windows still owns the desktop market.
Service packs from Microsoft are free! Apple really found
a market where they can charge alot for a computer that it’s hardware does not measure up to the Pc hardware, and charge $129 for service packs, no thanks. No wonder Windows still owns the desktop market.
Nice rant, but please tell, why would I want a PC? having seen the hell family, friends and neighbours are put through; no thank you.
I’ll have my stylish, over priced, price gouged machine *ANYDAY* over the problematic thing that is called a Wintel.
Oooh Mac this, and oooh Win that. Get a life, get a productivity tool that well… increases your productivity, get a mac with VPN and RDC and you have the best of both worlds…. with style, and its as stable and secure as inperfect humans can make currently.
Mac business unit…. You guys are swell. Look at what can be achieved with combined efforts and teamwork. You are an example of what the IT world should be doing.
MS shake the hand of your brother Mac. You guy’s can learn a lot from each other.
Oh, sorry Linux, sisters are invited too.
If PCs were problematic which they are not. Then the whole world be running macs,and Windows would not own the desktop market share, but there is something that is holding macs in the shadows of Windows. Why?
I think Apple makes these upgrades only because OSX doesn’t have enough 3rd party applications, utilities, etc. These upgrades include mainly “new” (usually reinvented) features.
Windows doesn’t need these kind of features because Windows is a placeholder or a battlefront for (usually great) 3rd party apps, utils, etc – and there are a lot while OSX has only a few 3rd parties.
And most ppl wouldn’t allow to make Windows full with new features that’s why they forced to rip WMPlayer from Windows.
I wonder why they don’t force Apple to remove iTunes…
I think XP vs Tiger comparison is stupid because OSX and the Macintosh will always remain a nice little kitty. Windows won the OS wars and it will remain the most popular OS until the end of client based operations.
Google is the real competitor of Microsoft…
If PCs were problematic which they are not. Then the whole world be running macs,and Windows would not own the desktop market share, but there is something that is holding macs in the shadows of Windows. Why?
PC’s are the status quo. Look how difficult it is to get Linux on the desktop, and thats on EXISTING hardware, now try to get someone not only to move operating systems but move hardware platforms as well! good luck!
There is also the perception of incompatibility – I know a number of users who would have purchased Macs had they known that they could have continued using their office files from working using Microsoft Office for Mac.
Just a follow up; PC’s are like the recent US elections. Sure, there was discontentment with GWB, but the reality is, people chose to stick with the devil they knew rather than taking a gamble with the devil they didn’t.
Nothing to do with whether the alternative was superior; its the whole idea of change, and the possible problems that *could* occur and the possibility that they could be worse.
What Apple needs is greater presence on the street – encourage users to come into their stores (as well as expand their stores outside the US) and give their products ago; ask questions etc.
I would rather call that SucksSite rather than SuperSite, it’s not even valid HTML.
At least it displays well in IE
I think this guy needs his head examined.
Here’s what a Microsoft Service pack does:
– Makes the system run SLOWER
– Breaks a LOT of Software
– Promises better security( for a couple of weeks ).
comment
By sen (IP: —.vnet.hu) – Posted on 2005-04-16 10:02:32
I think Apple makes these upgrades only because OSX doesn’t have enough 3rd party applications……
I think XP vs Tiger comparison is stupid because OSX and the Macintosh will always remain a nice little kitty. Windows won the OS wars and it will remain the most popular OS until the end of client based operations.
Google is the real competitor of Microsoft…
Ok, Microsoft includes a ton of default Windows Applications and does not include more only because they are the default “monopoly” and understand they will just get in more legal trouble. It has nothing to do with the wealth of 3rd party apps. Microsoft does NOT want a wealth of 3rd party apps. They would much rather selll it all to you and control it alll.
As for the Google comment its good to see someone reads that nonsense hype-focused crap editorializing typically included at Cnet and Zdnet.
Kinda actually makes me wanna upgrade my Mac. I would agree with the Service Pack analogy.
Kinda actually makes me wanna upgrade my Mac. I would agree with the Service Pack analogy.
Hmm, personally, I’m waiting 3-4 months; let the first time adopters get burnt, and hopefully by then, 10.4.1, possibly 10.4.2 will be released. Most of the major bugs would have been kicked out, and hopefully there will be some applications to take advantage of the cool new features like Core Image/Core Video etc.
you logic is wrong. just because something is better does not mean that more people would use it.
Microsoft got a break by being the OS of the IBM PC and back then “no one got fired for buying IBM”. that means their market share was huge in business. then since everyone was using an MS product, everyone who bought a computer said “I need to be compatible”… and the MS dominance began. if the cp/m guys had gotten the deal we would not be talking about microsoft except in developer circles because they would have grown their basic interpreter into a nice dev tool outfit.
http://alge.anart.no/ftp/pub/Solaris/OpenStep/Images/OPENSTEP-Deskt…
the good way :
A real dock and no miniaturized app in the dock.
More usefull again with the Fiend app addition
>Tiger includes, in my opinion, only two major new features, Spotlight and Dashboard, and both were clearly influenced by other existing products and services. In this section, we’ll examine both of these major new features.
So true… No to mention both are available on Windows.
Btw: Sherlock, Dashboard, or how to steal ideas from its own developer community to kill them… Who’s next ?
Leo.
spotlight is NOT available on windows.. everyone knows that GDS is NOT anything like spotlight, unless you are a moron.
as for dashboard….
http://daringfireball.net/2004/06/dashboard_vs_konfabulator
windows does not have ANYTHING like that either…. but what do you care.. your just some one who likes trolling.
The dashboard vs konfabulator article was tedious junk. Mac OS person trying to convince us that it doesn’t matter if the UI is identical, it’s all about the underlying arcane implimentations? WTF is up with that? Hurray a 10% more efficient Konfabulator! All hail Steve Jobs!
Michael
did you grow up under power lines??
Konfabulator uses ONLY Javascript and XML to define the interface.
Dashboard uses HTML and CSS and it is tied into web-core so it has access to the entire OS X subsystem.
Dashboard LOOKS like Konfabulator… but so friggen what!!!!
you need to get over looks and realize that how a thing works matters more than how it looks…. BTW.. you really think that the OS X look that was used by another company would not be used by OS X developers?
Could you tell the morons why GDS or MSNDS worse than Spotlight?
Dashboard is really great, yes. If Apple reinvents the wheel mac zealots like you aren’t ashamed but when Exposé becomes available on other OSs you are whining all the time.
I will speak slowly for you….
spotlight indexes the content of files. spotlight exposes system level APIs for developers to leverage. Spotlight will allow developers to leverage sqlLite databases for their programs. spotlight provides saved queries that automatically update the contents when ever a new file matches the query.
what GDS and MSNDS do if offer what apple does now.. a live updated search so when you type the search begins, it reduces the items as you type, it returns the date as soon as it finds it rather than after like XP search has done for so long.
you are looking at spotlight as a file finder, it is not… it is a content database, just like WinFS. most of the morons who keep saying GDS is what spotlight is are about as sharp as some one who puts ice in their wine at a wine tasting party.
There is also the perception of incompatibility – I know a number of users who would have purchased Macs had they known that they could have continued using their office files from working using Microsoft Office for Mac.
I second that. The first question I get asked when I suggest a Mac as a platform choice is “what about all the software”. When I ask what software on the PC they use that they can’t get on the Mac or find an equivalent. The answer usually is silence.
Of all the people I know who are first time Mac buyers, including myself, not a single one has complained about incompatbility or lack of software.
“Mac OS X 10.0 also included a few flops, which continue in the product to this day, including the reviled Dock, which is used to switch between running applications and, confusingly, non-running applications.”
Right… and the newfangled “smart start menu” that was introduced in XP or whatever the heck it’s called is WAY more intuitive. I believe that’s exactly what it does – place recently used items there even if you don’t want them. With the dock you can control what you want on there. I personally use each app that I have on my dock at least once a week, and if I don’t use it I remove it. With the start menu, everything gets thrown in there. If there’s one thing that OSX has always been great for, it’s been its remarkable way of staying the heck out of your way so you can get your stuff done. So some people may enjoy clutter… I guess that’s what windows has always been good for anyway.
I will speak slowly for you too:
MSNDS has “a live updated search” as well…
You answered your own question. I didn’t ask if GDS = Spotlight.
I asked why do you think Spotlight is better? Why is it important? Why do you speak like a prig? Who are you?
Dashboard is really great, yes. If Apple reinvents the wheel mac zealots like you aren’t ashamed but when Exposé becomes available on other OSs you are whining all the time.
I take it you meant to say Dashboard is a rip off of Konfabulator. Apple had a dashboard type feature in the earlier MacOS classic. Think of a Dashboard as OS X’ed version of “Desk Accessories”.
http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Desk_O…
i saw the folklore.org page.
OK. “Apple had a dashboard-type feature in classic MacOS.” OK.
Here’s Exposé-“type” concept from Microsoft made before 2000:
http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/pages/design.htm
So what?
“spotlight indexes the content of files. spotlight exposes system level APIs for developers to leverage. Spotlight will allow developers to leverage sqlLite databases for their programs. spotlight provides saved queries that automatically update the contents when ever a new file matches the query.”
Do not forget that Spotlight indexes only certain filetypes…
I asked why do you think Spotlight is better? Why is it important? Why do you speak like a prig? Who are you?
Spotlight also is a sreach API for apps to use. For example, System Preferences in Tiger uses Spotlight to shine a spotlight on all the settings wizards that apply to your search parameter. Say, I type bluetooth modem, a spotlight is pointed to “bluetooth assitiant” and possiblly “networking”. Indicating that one might be able to configure thier bluetooth modem using those two.
This is just an example. Hope you get the idea. I don’t think GDS or MSNDS support or allow for such innovative features.
Here’s Exposé-“type” concept from Microsoft made before 2000:
http://research.microsoft.com/ui/TaskGallery/pages/design.htm
So what?
Apple actually shipped said feature.
And Task Gallery is not an Expose type feature. Most people actually brought that up in talks of Looking Glass, this is a first.
Tiger indexes anything it can read… if it is plain text.. it indexes it… binary apps like word docs, excel docs etc.. already in there.. pdf already in there.. exif data in there.. emails, there… and developers can easily add their binary file type via adding a filter file to the spotlight support library folder.
and why is spotlight better? because as I said in my post.. it goes light-years past where MSNDS and GDS go…. BTW.. MSNDS and <DS do not have live updating indexes, they have to rebuild the entire index every so often which means that the search results are NOT reliable.
as for the expose comment.. are you joking? that is not what expose is at all.
I think you have shown your GROSS misunderstanding and ignorance of the new apple technologies.
panther users could have searched by content already, however, it was clumsy and hard to get to and did not expose any apis to the system.
GDS is about the same level as panther search. when JDS and MSNDS lets you save your searches as folders (like WinFS stacks and spotlight smart folders), then it will begin to have some of the more important features of winfs and spotlight.
…But I think he should have mentioned apps like automator. I am SO waiting for that application!! I could care less about Dashboard… and I don’t know that revamping the file system to make better use of meta data should be considered as a minor update.
Task Gallery is an “Expose type feature” the same way as Mac Classic “Desk Accessories” similiar to Dashboard.
I don’t understand you, guys. Apple is not better/worse than any other software company so you don’t have to fight for them. OSX is not better than any other OS as well. And i think they provide simplier, reduced solutions to customers if they’re in hurry. Sometimes i feel they would rather release a new upgrade with a lot of half-finished “features” than being 2nd on the market. When Panther/Tiger were vaporware everybody said it WILL include great features, it WILL be nice, it WILL be the best. Windows6 WILL be good too.. And if Windows6 WILL be finished we won’t have to say “WILL BE” anymore. So what?
I don’t know if it’s good to deify these “features”. Apple tries to add new explanation for the word: Operating System. In the near future OS will mean a subsystem packed with a lot of widgets. Tiger is here with a lot of new features but it’s not a 64-bit OS yet.. what a pity…
Oh, and WinFS concept is a new way of storing files, it’s not about searching files like Spotlight. Tell everyone, please…
it is not a new file system like ntfs, it sits on top of ntfs and lets ntfs handle the hard drive. winfs can handle the storage of your files, but that is just a trick. all winfs will do is index your files data and names and place them in the root of the hard drive in a hidden folder or some other kind of obfuscated way. then it will just deal with the files there.
what winfs will do that is more than spotlight is that it will have much better network transparency.
and when longhorn is released, the only thing that winFS will have is feature parity with spotlight.. the network transparency is not there yet and that tis what is causing the problems.
keep talking though.. because I am having fun here listening to you talking about technologies with only a surface understanding.
oh.. and BTW.. dashboard is much more like desk accessories than that garbage room thing that you said was expose like expose is not even of the same paradigm as that 3d room thing. expose is meant to enhance the management of windows in a 2 dimensional desktop metaphor that room thing was meant to give an entirely different metaphor… more like walking through a art gallery… “where did I put that document.. is it down this hall?”
dude.. what on earth are you going to do with a 64-bit gui?
OS X is 64-bit enough.. why make the entire OS 64-bit when a 64-bit calendar app will simply run slower than a 32 bit one?
need to address 48 bits of memory? fine.. got a library for that, implement it in your program subsystem were the work is done. need to do 64 bit integer addition? fine.. implement it in the subsystem where that work should be getting done.
again.. you show our foolish hype driven knowledge.
Ok, you prig nerd. I have the surface understanding but you don’t know anything just talking about OSX as a perfect solution for everyone and you always misexplain other comments*. Maybe OSX is good for you but not everyone. Why do you advertise it here? Are you an Apple employee?
* I didn’t write WinFS is a new file system.. i wrote it’s a new way of storing files. That’s different. You are trying to be the local wikipedia but you’re not able to understand sentences written by others.
You think Apple’s developers are only able to write quality code and you call anything else “garbage”. Can’t you write diplomatic opinion?
I didn’t want to answer but your first comment was so rude…
“OS X is 64-bit enough.. why make the entire OS 64-bit when a 64-bit calendar app will simply run slower than a 32 bit one? ”
All i can say is: ROFL.
bye, have a nice offtopic.
Task Gallery is an “Expose type feature” the same way as Mac Classic “Desk Accessories” similiar to Dashboard.
How so? Desk Accessories and Dashboard have been productized. Task gallery was a proof of concept 3D windowing environment designed to replace the 2D interfaces a la explorer.
Expose aguments the 2D desktop environment by making managing multiple apps and thier windows efficient in a way never done before.
I don’t understand you, guys. Apple is not better/worse than any other software company so you don’t have to fight for them. OSX is not better than any other OS as well.
That is your opinion and you are entitled to it. I am not defending anything. I am merely correcting your incorrect notion of Apple’s techology and to a certain extent Microsoft’s as well.
And i think they provide simplier, reduced solutions to customers if they’re in hurry. Sometimes i feel they would rather release a new upgrade with a lot of half-finished “features” than being 2nd on the market.
You are talking about Microsoft here. right?
Apple, to my knowledge has only rushed to market something once, The first release of OS X.
When Panther/Tiger were vaporware everybody said it WILL include great features, it WILL be nice, it WILL be the best. Windows6 WILL be good too.. And if Windows6 WILL be finished we won’t have to say “WILL BE” anymore. So what?
I think you missed the barage of articles on longhorn features beeing touted on OSnews and the barage of posts claiming Avalon was way more advanced that Quartz. It is a two way street, deal with it.
The only contrast here being Apple has delivered every feature it has made public for Panther and Tiger with quality at the time of release. Microsoft on the other hand changes the release date and feature list for longhorn on an almost hourly basis.
I don’t know if it’s good to deify these “features”. Apple tries to add new explanation for the word: Operating System. In the near future OS will mean a subsystem packed with a lot of widgets. Tiger is here with a lot of new features but it’s not a 64-bit OS yet.. what a pity…
Care to point out the many number of customers Apple has that are hurting because tiger is not fully 64-bit. How many of apples customers are actually unable to utilize in full the amount of memory thier fully populated G5s can hold? Zero.
Oh, and WinFS concept is a new way of storing files, it’s not about searching files like Spotlight. Tell everyone, please…
WinFS is vaporware. Spotlight is real. Bring up this discussion when a version of Windows actually has WinFS.
Sorry to say but I think you mean apple got a break when Microsoft gave them $150 million, because apple was going down the flusher. Please kindly thank Microsoft for the donation.
your funny… you have no idea what you talk about and you are laughing at me? 64 bit code is slower than 32 bit code in places that 32 bit code is all you need. it is a fact.
And please tell me where I advertise OS X as a perfect solution? I was simply expressing what a total lack of understanding you have about any of the technologies when you say that MSNDS/GDS and konfabulator give you everything that dashboard and spotlight provide.
funny joke.
you are aware of the details are you not? it was the settlement agreement for apple to drop their interface lawsuit.
regardless.. I could care less about that since Apple’s OS blew big chunks back then.
http://images.apple.com/education/science/solutions/images/powermac…
lol
Sorry to say but I think you mean apple got a break when Microsoft gave them $150 million, because apple was going down the flusher. Please kindly thank Microsoft for the donation.
I think that was a Win-win situation and what is called a Nash Equilibrium in negotiations. Thank Steve Jobs for that.
Did you Thank Microsoft for the big $150million dollar donation made to apple in the year 1997. Steve Jobs was the one blewing big chucks when Microsoft donated the money to apple. Do not forget Microsoft likes apple and wants to keep it around.