Today, Apple Computer announced the release date of MacOS X 10.4 “Tiger.” Tiger will hit shelves on Friday, April 29.
Apple Announces MacOS X 10.4 “Tiger” Release Date
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Adam Scheinberg
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Phooey … i just got my Mac Mini last week … will I get a free update to Tiger? Or, will I have to shell out >$100 ?
Apple usually offers their up to date program for people who bought in the month before it comes out. They charge $20 for it, but it does include shipping so it isn’t that bad.
Just buy a second mini and get Tiger for ‘free’
With education discount too :-D.
Well I had pre-ordered my G5 and recieved the update CD for 20 dollars shipping cost that is, but I would encourage you to buy the full version as incase you want to re-install your OS you would have to install 10.3 and only if 10.3 is installed would you be able to install the Tiger update. So the choice is yours.
Now I can buy that Powerbook in peace
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/newfeatures.html
Has Apple made any comments about maintaining compatibility with 10.3 code? My previous experience of upgrading 10.2 to 10.3 was very painful to say the least(several applications broke, and some hardware stopped working altogether), and I’m hoping that they’ve done better this time.
I hope that it arrives the day of the release to the stores… that would be nice.
almost all OS X programs have had forward compatibility since 10.2… in fact, I have yet to hear of one that is not. 10.1.x was not forward compatible to jaguar for the most part.. that was fixed in 10.3 from what I saw.
what probably happened was software you had (shareware) was using undocumented code that got removed… how is that apple’s fault?
“Apple usually offers their up to date program for people who bought in the month before it comes out.”
Not true ( http://www.apple.com/macosx/uptodate ). This upgrade is only for people who buy on or after 12th April (today). Currently only the USA and Canadian website shows this, so it’s unclear whether it’s safe to buy hardware now in other countries (and still get the upgrade).
Anyone knows if Column view in the Finder is not available anymore?
I cannot see the icon in the screen shots.
When my office/studio moved from 10.2 to 10.3 the things that broke were things like font-management software, and printer-drivers and the like.
Most *apps* are fine. It’s things that work closely with the system that suffer. Nonetheless, we’ve got to be conservative. I imagine we won’t move to Tiger at my studio until it’s been out for a *long* time and we can be confident that Quark, the Adobe Creative Suite, Suitcase, etc all work fine.
At home, however, I’ll upgrade to Tiger once it’s been out a few weeks.
I can order my iBook now. Woohoo! I started out in DOS and Windows (like most people) and have used BSD/Linux for about 5 years now. I got my first iBook about 2 years ago (then sold if for a used Dual G4), then sold my Dual G4 for the money… Ever since I sold it I feel like something is missing. It’s just an awesome operating system. Even when I had them though, I still play with other operating systems, but I don’t like to tinker as much any more so I think it’s time to go back to my Mac where it “Just Works”. My desktop will still have NetBSD/ArchLinux for the forseeable (sp?) future, but my primary machine will be the iBook again.
Just my two cents.
-adam
It is still there.
???
no mention of java 1.5
the new features for “Developer” – conviently omitted java
http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/newfeatures.html
where is it!!!!
Some parts of Tiger are optimized to use the G5 64bit power. But it’s not a full 64bit OS.
no mention of java 1.5
I’ve been told it wasn’t ready to ship yet, it will come in a later software update “soon”.
The issue with compatability was one that bit those of us that use the BSD subsystem heavily, in most case a simple ./configure ;make; make install; resolved the problem, but there were exceptions (crt0 anybody :-)).
With Tiger the situation is better, as they haven’t changed much in the dynaloader process, that is what broke so many things with Panther.
I will say that from what I gather, the X11 version that ships with Tiger is still a little dated, and anything that used a default ODBC interface of Panther will break :-).
I ordered my First mac ever on the 30th of last month, its slated to be delivered today, I called apple and they said I was not entitled to a free upgrade even though my mac won’t be here till tomorrow.
I told the lady on the phone that I’d probably return the mac as soon as it was delievered an re-order it because It’s not worth buying a new OS, right after purchasing a new computer.
She went and talked to her supervisor, who authorized a retail box of Tiger shipped to me under thier “Customer satisfaction Program” at no cost to me. While he couldn’t say when it would arrive, he did state “End of the month, like everyone else’s”
Apple gets a big thumbs up from me for thier Classy response to my issue.
The rumor is that Java 1.5 will be available as a seperate download. I hear they did this so as not to break forward compatability for Java apps. Compiling a Java app written to 1.4 with, say, java.util.Vector w/o refactoring to the newer java.util.Vector<Object> will produce a plethora of warnings. Apple therefore decided not to force Java developers into an upgrade cycle (yes, I know you can compile with a backward compatible flag) and will instead allow you to choose for yourself whether to move to 1.5 or not.
Hope that sheds some light on the subject.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/developertools/
Dont know if is 1.5.
My iBook came with 10.3 with iPhoto etc… Is iLife included with the 10.4 update? or will I lose iPhoto and the like?
http://www.apple.com/macosx/developertools/
Java Built-in
Java has never looked this good. Built in to Mac OS X Tiger is the latest, certified release of the Java 2 Platform. With improved Code Sense indexing and Ant project templates, Java users can continue to use their standard Java packages and build tools coupled with Xcode’s key productivity features.
I am wondering do I have to pay again for the pro version when I upgrade to Tiger when it is out? That is my only real concern right now.
“is iLife included?”
NO…
it is not.
let me ask you… is QT 7 part of the QT 6 system?
that is your answer.
but you can still use iLife from the ibook ilife CD. or the ibook CDs.. just look around on the iBook CDs for the .pkg files.
BTW.. if you do an upgrade then you are not erasing your applications.
I have the same question. The mac mini came with a setup disk including the OS, iLife, Quicken etc.
Will I be able to setup Tiger fresh (no upgrade) than install the extra applications from the original mini CD?
Yes you will be able to install iLife once you’ve done a clean install of Tiger. In fact, you will still be able to install everything, Classic, extra apps, etc. Don’t worry about it.
Will I be able to setup Tiger fresh (no upgrade) than install the extra applications from the original mini CD?
Yep.
Install Tiger and insert the DVD. It will put a small “software restore” program in your Utilities folder. When you run this you can choose from the programs that came with your Mac exactly what to install (Quicken etc).
If any are missing, then on the DVD look for their relavent pkg. So for example, iPhoto.pkg will install iPhoto.
Matt
Thank you Viro and Matt.
hello…
TIGER DOES NOT COME WITH THE iLIFE SUITE.
The retail version of OS X can install as an upgrade or FULL installation.
This is NOT M$-land.
The list of 200 new features makes no mention of a fundamental one possibly having a lot of impact because people would then better utilise their high-resolution monitors, namely resolution-independent UI scaling, yet I guess it is in there, because they previously announced early developer support for it.
Obviously, they have decided not to enable it globally, because current applications would be rendered ugly and probably because the functionality itself is not ready for prime time yet.
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=610
http://www.interact-sw.co.uk/iangblog/2004/08/24/osxresolution
As the Longhorn release draws near (which will have this important feature) and more UI independent apps are released, would Apple expose it as a user-configurable setting in Tiger through an update, or will it only be available in the next release of Mac OS?
But when OS X will be 64-bit OS?
Since programs can have 64 bit subsystems in Tiger anyway, why would you care if its a full 64 bit OS?
If a game or Final Cut Pro, say, *needs* 64 bits, it can deploy it as a seperate subsystem (see the Tiger dev docs).
What else do you need 64 bit for? Is there any intristic value in having a 64bit Mail.app or Safari, or have TextEdit use a 64 bit address space?
As the Longhorn release draws near (which will have this important feature)
Longhorn is rumored to be pushed to 2007. Don’t hold your breath. Oh, and by the way, it will probably won’t have ‘this important feature’, since a lot of those important features were held back for future versions by MS.
My problem isn’t with apps (I only use one app anyway, Photoshop). My problem is with drivers. My Mac has an extra firewire card, a USB2 card, 2 printers, 2 scanners, a compact flash reader, a DVD burner, a non-Apple mouse and a non-Apple keyboard, and if 10.4 causes compatibility problems with only 10% of the hardware out there that used to work with 10.3 I still only have barely better than a 1-in-3 chance of going through the upgrade without losing some functionality.
And don’t tell me that everything eventually works itself out, my USB2 card that was working fine under 10.2 with Apple’s driver never got supported under 10.3, causing me to buy a different one.
Got the family pack!! (We have 3 macs).
@JoeUser:
Generally, the proper way of programming is to separate functionality from representation, so if you do that, for practically for all ends and purposes, Tiger IS 64 bit since the functionality of your program can be 64 bit.
@foljs:
“Longhorn is rumored to be pushed to 2007. Don’t hold your breath. Oh, and by the way, it will probably won’t have ‘this important feature’, since a lot of those important features were held back for future versions by MS.”
I know of last days’ rumour, and I am not holding my breath, but irrespective of that, I asked if anybody has any other information.
OS X won’t be fully 64 bit while Apple is still selling G4’s. They don’t have the resources to maintain to seperate versions of the OS like MS does.
Sorry, in the post above “to” should be “two”.
There was an interesting post by what appeared to be an Apple engineer regarding 64-bit UIs.
He basically said that 64-bit UIs run more slowly than their 32-bit counterparts due to the effect on the caches. The result?
“So we had two choices: Either waste a ton of developer time releasing 64-bit-clean versions of the UI frameworks and then tell our developers not to use them, or just don’t ship them at all.”
Interesting.
Look at me, I have 3 macs to be updated and I am actually honest: I bought the family pack. That is great licensing. $199 (U.S. of course) to buy 5 licenses, what a good deal for a commercial OS. Notice I said Commercial, so I don’t have to hear “Linux is free”. I have a linux box running right next to me so, blah. But, I am sure that someone out there will complain saying “Yeah, but I only need 3 licenses, why should I have to buy 5” . C’mon, you know that person is out there. Sure they can buy 3, for $387.
But, what I am really looking forward to is checking out XCode 2. I hope it is a little nicer to us Java developers. I still can’t get code sense to work, no matter what I have tried. Those Cocoa documents for java are just nasty. I wish they were like real javadoc, yuck. I really dig objective-c, but I am a professional java guy, so this gives me a chance to work on my java stuff, while incorporating it into the Cocoa framework (which interface builder is just darned sweet)! I would love to port that app to a java tool.
Anyway, just rambling…
Now I just have to wait a couple weeks. doh! I am an early adopter, I am not waiting until the 10.4.1 release. I’ll take my chances and love it.
“Apple Remote Desktop 2.1 Client
Easily manage Mac desktops with the latest version of the Apple Remote Desktop client, now integrated into Mac OS X Tiger.”
cool!
Despite what some people are trying to say. Windows 64 bit isn’t fully 64 bit either.
The ONLY benefit of 64 bit is being able to access more memory. Tiger allows any program to be written to do this. Making the whole OS 64 bit is a waste of time. Kind of like taking all cars off the road and making everyone drive a semi.
In other words. Quit trolling.
“OS X won’t be fully 64 bit while Apple is still selling G4’s. They don’t have the resources to maintain to seperate versions of the OS like MS does.”
Apple should consider doing a 64 bit version for the XServe and XServe Cluster.
As far as resources, Apple seems to do very well with the resources that they have compared to other companies which pretty much have unlimited monetary, staff and technical, industry, resources but still can’t resolve security, malware and spyware issues.
I’ve waited since the introduction of the Mac Mini to buy one as I knew Tiger was around the corner. Now, with Tiger coming in a fortnight all I need is a Mini with a 512MB RAM upgrade to become a semi-switcher. 🙂
The 64-bit versions of Windows are fully 64-bit. If you’re talking about having access to a full 64-bit address space, this is a CPU limitation (AMD64 uses 48-bit addressing)not an OS limitation (Itanium uses 64-bit addressing).
Beyond that, the OS runs the CPU in 64-bit mode (for Itanium, that’s the only mode you can boot in). 32-bit application compatibility is achieved through emulation (WOW64).
Well, it seems that our favorite trolls are sleeping on the job. Come on someone, please tell us how much you hate Apple for “forcing” you to upgrade every year and pay the 129$ “Apple Tax”. Come on, just a little bit…
Well it might be a school night so there may not be a lot of responses til the weekend.
Damn you Apple, how dare you force me to put down my hard earned cash on your 1 button using OS! Screw you Mr Jobs, you and your reality distortion field! Apple skucs! <SOME OTHER OS> is t3h 1337!
Anyway pre-ordered my family pack the second it turned up on Apple Australia’s website, can’t wait!
You do NOT want the OS itself to be 64 bit. There is no reason that kernel space needs to access that much memory. User space apps can do it fine and that is where you want it. I’ve been using tiger & tigerServer for a while now and from a developers standpoint, it is an excellent progression.
“The ONLY benefit of 64 bit is being able to access more memory.”
Such a statement can only come from someone who didn’t work first-hand on an advanced kernel and therefore didn’t bump into limitations of address space.
“There is no reason that kernel space needs to access that much memory.”
Actually, for performance reasons you very much want it – otherwise the kernel will have to play some costly tricks each time you pass pointers from user space to kernel space. And even if you run user-space processes in 32-bit mode, it would allow to give user-space a full 4GB of address space without having to put strong limits on the size of kernel space. It would also allow to map the entire RAM in kernel space without concerns about reducing the available address space or of being able to handle more than a few GB of physical RAM. It would even allow to leave the kernel-side stack of every single thread mapped in all processes, allowing easier synchronization with interrupt handlers.
Thinking that 64-bit systems are about putting more than 4GB of RAM in a machine is short-sighted – there’s little doubt that an x86 CPU running in IA32 mode is a 32-bit CPU, yet those CPUs have been able to access up to 64GB of memory since 1995 (through PAE), and PAE could trivially have been extended beyond 64GB by adding bits in each entry (there is plenty of space left).
I’m not complaining that Apple is doing so. I’m probably going to complain that I won’t have a choice when one of the pieces of software that I need gets upgraded and the latest version requires 10.4 – and at that point I will even have a doubt whether it’s the developer’s fault for being lazy (quite a possibility in a number of instances), or whether it’s Apple’s fault for not providing an easy way for software to dynamically adapt to different versions of the OS.
cant wait for core image-core video. These days I am playing on an app called final touch. It allows “real time” color correction on 10 bit hd video on macs (1080p). I saw this app running for the first time last week, everyone in the demo room was saying “wow” every other minute. They are basically doing with their app what core image-core video will do system wide. There will be a lot of happy people in the compositing-video-digital artist crowd, once the behemoths plug their apps into these libraries. On the other end, a lot of high end film-video post house will have major troubles. This is pretty much like the second coming of the desktop video revolution.
i think the subject explains it
Sorry to hear it. So sad when people buy the wrong hardware.
The reason why people in the x86 world are so crazy about the 64 bit modes are different, than in the PPC world.
Besides the obvious marketing hype (AMD were geniouses there)
it is just that they get a speed boost. But the speed boost does not really come from the 64 bit mode (which in fact as others have pointed out, is memory addressrange wise only 48 bit). It simply comes from the fact that AMD finally gave the idiotic x86 architecture more general purpose registers, something Intel never really did, because they were selling the processors only over raising the frequency.
So the speed boost the x86 64 bit processors mainly get is from more general purpose registers, which are still much less than every PPC has, no matter if it runs under 64 bit or 32 bit.
Going to straight 64 bit in the PPC world does not make too much sense, except maybe for the kernel, if you need the bigger address range, as others have pointed out, you wont get any benefits, but more likely a speed hit due to caching problems you will run into.
Thinking that 64-bit systems are about putting more than 4GB of RAM in a machine is short-sighted – there’s little doubt that an x86 CPU running in IA32 mode is a 32-bit CPU, yet those CPUs have been able to access up to 64GB of memory since 1995 (through PAE), and PAE could trivially have been extended beyond 64GB by adding bits in each entry (there is plenty of space left).
PAE never took off. It brings back the horrible segmented memory model of the old 16 bit days, something many of us are keen to forget. Not only was the addressing more complex, there was a performance hit too.
Simply put, for the majority of people, 64 bits aren’t needed yet. The performance hits normally associated with going to 64 bits aren’t really worth it for no visible returns.
As far as I remember, ARD ‘client’ is in fact already integrated in 10.3. The ARD product that allows you to remotely manage other machines is what they call the ‘server’.
What they probably mean by this is that they included the latest version of the client, which was available as a separate download.
Looking forward to the new kitty soon.
Not sure now is the right time to upgrade though. I’ll wait until 10.4.1 [or 2], which no doubt will have mucho bug fixes and drivers.
The Panther is purring quite nicely. I wouldn’t actually buy the new OS at all, but there’s Spotlight and H.264 in QT7 which by themselves are yummie enough. The rest of the features are just so many cherries on the pie
.
If I have more than one hard drive, say 3 and I want to install the OS on all of them, this is one machine only, do I still have to buy a family pack? I can only use one OS at a time.
I’m also interested to hear about Longhorn being pushed back to 2007. William Gates III won’t be too pleased with that news. Is it true? If it is, Apple has more than a year to work hard on the next iteration of the system. They’re going to have to teach the cow some really fancy tricks to be on a par with the Tiger [not advocating the Windows crowd to “Join Us”. You guys know why you keep putting up with the trial-by-fire. You’re very welcome to it].
I don’t know what else they can put in X to make it more attractive… a barbeque grill, scuba gear, a remote for the space shuttle? A license to drive the mars lander?
Well, Apple has done it again. Pushing the envelope and giving us another fantastic release to an already amazing operating system.
And Windows people should rejoice too. It forces Microsoft to make Windows better, so we all win. (Just the Mac community wins a little more, but such is life.) 🙂
I read that Tiger’s kernel is still 32-bit. I wonder how much of a performance impact that would have. But as I wrote in my earlier post, the good thing is that with if the GUI code (representation) is separate (running in a different process) from all the other functionality of the application, then the latter can be 64-bit, and it’s all that matters from developer’s perspective (who needs 64-bit GUIs??). However, this separation is difficult to do for existing programs who do not have that separation, because they may have to be considerably modified and it may be cheaper to just keep the 32-bit version. I read they kept the kernel 32-bit in order to be able to support all current drivers without problems, unlike Microsoft’s 64-bit kernel for WinXP Pro x64 which cannot accept any 32-bit drivers.
Of course, Apple could have released 64-bit support for GUIs and still preserve a 32-bit kernel, but they obviously didn’t have the time / resources.
does anybody know if qt7 (not pro) is going to have fullscreen option?
for me it’s completely useless because of the lack of this important feature. this and bad support for many popular codecs like xvid.
I use QT daily for divx/xvid it’s just a matter of installing a codec, check google! There is even a FREE hack to give you fullscreen in QT.
yeah, i did find some xvid codecs. even two and on the website i found them it was written that one nneds both for both have some problems. it worked though. i will look for fullscreen hack. still whereas i do understand they charge extra for editing fullscreen is a basic function.
Quicktime 7 is a new version so you’ll have to pay again for pro
Check with Virginia tech to see if they have any issues with the kernal being 32 bit. None that I can see on any of their web pages. And yes, they do run through tons of data. But this is in their Apps not the core.
use mplayer or vlc for decent fullscreen playing….
mplayer works best for me, bc. of responsive movie-controls (skipping short/wide)… works like a charm, apples qtplayer (and vlc, too) stutter along in comparison.
Not as cool. It is the client version as in Panther. You still need the admin version to take control of remote MAC. No change since panther …