My experience with Tiger

grabberslasher · Jun 30, 2004

Installed The Tiger WWDC Preview on my Sawtooth G4 Dev machine - 400Mhz - 640Mb Ram. Unbearably slow. I mean unbearable!

Then installed on my TiBook 800. Better, but still slow and buggy. The Dashboard special effects don't work with my Gfx card (Radeon 7500M 32Mb) - unfortunately they need a DX9 card (like the CoreImage requirements).

Now, whilst typing in Safari my fans are on overdrive. Some disgusting graphics errors in menus. Live resizing is definitely much better but not perfect.

Dashboard is F12 to activate (programmable).

Search (spotlight) feature is cool but doesn't work as advertised yet. No, you can't type "find presentations that Phil gave me last week", or anything of the sort yet. More like "presentation phil this month".

Type Apple into the search and it gives you all of Apple's Apps.

No Automater in this build - but Pipeline (in the Applescript folder).

Spotlight in Sys Prefs is very laggy.

Very hard to change volume in the dashboard itunes gadget (yes, in this build they are called Gadgets), and the gadget takes about 6 seconds to recognise itunes is open and playing.

Some gadgets you can open more than one of (stickies, etc.), others not.

Cool setup assistant - transfer files & settings from previous mac over firewire, cube transition for all the pages.

Smart folders are kept in ~/Saved Searches

Font smoothing has changed again with this release - more red/green pixels visible for me.

Slight pause (understandable) when opening a smart folder.

That's all for now, will put up a screenshot or two.

reaper · Jun 30, 2004

Thanks for the initial report. I can't wait to see some screenshots of it in action off of the stage.

- reaper

grabberslasher · Jun 30, 2004

Ran into problems trying to make a screenshot. Preview no longer exports to any other type of image! I had to use the Panther Preview app to convert to JPEG.

I also tried using Pipeline to convert the images to JPEG but it gave me some weird error - although it should work by the time tiger's released.

Anyway, smart folder:

MacsRgr8 · Jun 30, 2004

Build 8A162 ?

I expect that the demoed version of Tiger is a later build.
I have 8A162 installed (on a Dual 533 G4, 512 MB RAM), and it runs pretty smoothly.
iChat 3.0 (v 323) works exactly the same as 2.1 AV on Panther (thus no multiple AV connections), and in the "Get Info" (COMMAND - I) states version 2.1, and also the pretty little app "Fun House" (orso.. ya know, the demo by Phil) is also not around....

So probably the leaked version is a couple of builds earlier than the real demo deal ?

reaper · Jun 30, 2004

MacsRgr8 said:
I have 8A162 installed (on a Dual 533 G4, 512 MB RAM), and it runs pretty smoothly.

I realize that it's an early version, but what would you say is the speed comparison to Panther on the same machine?

- reaper

grabberslasher · Jun 30, 2004

Way slower on the single 400Mhz G4, about as fast (maybe a bit slower) on the 800Mhz single Powerbook.

MacsRgr8 · Jun 30, 2004

reaper said:
I realize that it's an early version, but what would you say is the speed comparison to Panther on the same machine?

- reaper

Finder is about the same, so is mounting AFP volumes and browsing through the files, which is IMHO too slow still...
The "Spotlight" search is incredibly fast... very nice.
I'd say window-resizing is about the same, too.

In short:
About the same, maybe a bit slower on some occasions.
Dashboard does take up quite some CPU time and memory.
The new features are absolutely gr8, and work very fast!

If you have a Mac which has a Core Image supported grfx card (which I have at home...) it should be faster.
I'll know tonight.

reaper · Jun 30, 2004

MacsRgr8 said:
Finder is about the same, so is mounting AFP volumes and browsing through the files, which is IMHO too slow still...
The "Spotlight" search is incredibly fast... very nice.
I'd say window-resizing is about the same, too.

In short:
About the same, maybe a bit slower on some occasions.
Dashboard does take up quite some CPU time and memory.
The new features are absolutely gr8, and work very fast!

If you have a Mac which has a Core Image supported grfx card (which I have at home...) it should be faster.
I'll know tonight.

Nice! I have a DP 1.25 MDD FW 800 and I can't wait to get this baby installed next year!

- reaper

reaper · Jun 30, 2004

grabberslasher said:
Way slower on the single 400Mhz G4, about as fast (maybe a bit slower) on the 800Mhz single Powerbook.

I guess that's acceptable given the status of the build and all of the eye candy. Thanks for the info.

- reaper

grabberslasher · Jun 30, 2004

Just a little more info - Quicktime is version 6.6.

Very impressed with the way the apple installer works -

I hooked my Powerbook to my Sawtooth, with Sawtooth in Firewire Target Disk mode. I booted the powerbook from the sawtooth's hard disk.

I then removed the System and Library folders from the Powerbook's HD, leaving my applications and users folders.

I ran the OSInstall.mpkg package from the Tiger DVD, chose to install it on the Powerbook's volume.

It installed perfectly.

Rebooted the powerbook, went into the setup assistant. Eventually I got to entering a username, so I used the username that I had used in Panther on the powerbook (thinking that it would replace my home folder and settings that I had left on the machine). It managed to add my user account to Tiger, preserving all my files and settings.

VERY IMPRESSED I am. The only other thing that was needed was to copy the contents of my application support folder.

Seamless install if you're not able to boot from the DVD. You can just install it from Panther.

Chaszmyr · Jun 30, 2004

Tiger runs very slowly on my 1ghz PowerBook with 256mb RAM. It is usable, but really too slow. In a week or so, I will see if it runs better on my G5.

broken_keyboard · Jun 30, 2004

grabberslasher said:
Font smoothing has changed again with this release - more red/green pixels visible for me.

Ahhh.. that's great news, I was hoping they would work on the font smoothing. In Panther it is more like font fattening than font smoothing.

James L · Jun 30, 2004

Remember these are EARLY developer builds, which in my experience tend to be very unoptimized.

Cheers!

AHDuke99 · Jun 30, 2004

true, but this is slower than Panther was at WWDC, not only that, here are some differences between the build the developers got and Steve's that he demoed

Apple menu bar isnt inverted and Apple logo not blue highlighted
iChatAV doesnt support multi-audio/video chats, and no new icon
Automator is called "pipeline" and has an old icon
It's slower
Safari doesn't pick up RSS feeds except the ones on their list (not macrumors)
The dock has the same triangles to indicate active apps rather than the "pin" shaped ones Steve had
I don't even know if Quicktime has the H.264... new codec cause the trailors I played looked like LOWER quality than QT 6.5. And in the keynote it looked much better on QT 6.6 quality wise

That is what is different so far, i know it's early but I wanted the same build Steve used and not a clearly older one

AHDuke99 · Jun 30, 2004

did I mention it was slower?

jsw · Jun 30, 2004

Not exactly on-topic, but related:

I'm thinking of becoming an ADC Select member so I can start fulfilling my year-old promise to my wife to use my G5 to develop software.

However, I don't want to trash everything because of buggy preview software. I very much want to get my hands dirty with it, but I want to be able to "wash off".

Any recommendations (external HD's, etc.) as to a good, clean way to install developer-grade OS and app preview software, then revert or switch to working Panther stuff?

edesignuk · Jun 30, 2004

How long did it take to install? I'm just *cough* burning *cough* my copy now, not sure if I should try and install it before going to bed

FYI, I'll be testing it on a 2nd HDD in my DP 1GHz Quicksilver, GF4MX 64MB

, 1GB RAM.

grabberslasher · Jun 30, 2004

It takes about the same as Panther (about 15mins on this Powerbook).

I'm all for Tiger, I just love it now that I've got it installed on here. Although it was a bit surprising how slow it was on the Sawtooth. I was also sad that I couldn't see the ripple effect with gadgets.

Now I much prefer it, spotlight is so cool. Although I've gotten 3(!) kernel panics in Safari so far!!! 'Though that was fixed by trashing my prefs.

edesignuk · Jun 30, 2004

Setup went fine, and it is very fast for me, as fast as Panther in fact

I'm amazed to see that the effects in displaying dashboard are perfectly smooth on my shi**y GF4MX

It's a damn sight better that my current early build of Longhorn (4078 I think) I can tell you!

(and for those of you that don't know me that's not just mac fanboy talk, I'm in no way a mac zealot

)

Sauron1440 · Jun 30, 2004

I'm installing it as we speak on my G4/933 - it has one of the aforementioned sh***y Gf4MX cards, so we'll see how that goes. I'd try it on my new PB, but I don't have an extra partition to put it on - the 10 gigger is for linux. Maybe I'll do that Firewire boot thing.

Sauron1440 · Jun 30, 2004

Got it installed. Seems nice, but less... different than the keynote video made it seem. To their credit, this is a really early build, but I was still hoping for some more radical improvements. Oh - and the widgets are neat, but kind of underwhelming. The 3D ripple didn't show up on my GeForce4 MX, but the genie-esque 3d effects worked fine. No CoreImage, I suppose. Mail looks to have some more features, but not the complete rewrite I was kind of hoping for. iCal seems identical. Spotlight definitely finds stuff, and quickly, but I can't really test that until I have more files I need to find. I keep everything pretty organized as is, so I don't use "Find" much. The ability to import basic settings via Firewire on first boot was cool though - didn't try it, but it seems like a neat idea. I'll probably wait a few revisions, then download it again later - as is, there just doesn't seem like enough new stuff to warrant an upgrade. Especially on that machine.

veedubdrew · Jun 30, 2004

Can anyone get Tiger installed on a 17" 1.5GHz PowerBook? I have the WWDC DVD and it kernel panics before even getting past the initial grey screen (on boot) and the first line is something like "panic: no profile for PowerBook 5,5"

Any ideas?

-Drew

Nermal · Jun 30, 2004

The current build doesn't seem to support all systems. You might be able to copy some sort of driver across from Panther, or you might have to wait for the next version.

LimeiBook86 · Jun 30, 2004

Same here!

veedubdrew said:
Can anyone get Tiger installed on a 17" 1.5GHz PowerBook? I have the WWDC DVD and it kernel panics before even getting past the initial grey screen (on boot) and the first line is something like "panic: no profile for PowerBook 5,5"

Any ideas?

-Drew

This happens on my PowerBook 12'', 867mhz. I dunno why. It installed on my brother's Clamshell iBook SE but it didn't create a user account for some reason and now I'm stuck.

Here are my Kernel Panic Photos to prove it:
http://homepage.mac.com/ibook238/PhotoAlbum37.html

mcdermd · Jun 30, 2004

well, I think iCal is different somehow. I have iCal as a startup/hidden item so that the date changes in the dock. On Panther, you see the iCal pane open, then hide. On Tiger it never shows up, the iCal icon in the dock just changes.

Second - someone already talked about installing on G4 PB's, etc and getting kernel panics. The solution I used was to install onto an external FW drive (this way I also don't lose my Panther installed HDD to who knows what). Simply open the OSinstall.pkg file from the Tiger disc while in Panther and choose the FW drive as the install point. then select the FW drive as the starup disc in Sys Perfs or hold down Option at startup. Worked like a champ.

My experience with Tiger

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