I stood in line with the rest of the Mac nerds to see Tiger at my local Apple store. Had they told me it was still in beta testing I would have left and spent 2 hours of my life doing something better.
Tiger is very very disappointing in my eyes. To me it is an unfinished product, it feels unfinished, it acts unfinished, and the more people I see talking about it the more problems I see coming up.
I have done a clean install of Tiger, because the upgrade install messed up my entire system and I had to do a clean install. But even with that fact, Tiger still has tons of problems. I have noticed problems with preview, problems with safari, problems with dashboard, problems with Ichat, and so on.
These aren't just minor annoying bugs either, they are frustrating bugs that force me to restart, login and out, or not be able to use an entire program.
I find myself anxiously awaiting for 4.2 to come out. A few weeks ago I was waiting for 4.1 to come out, even with 10.4.1 I still feel like we are beta testing this OS.
The fact is my school's VPN doesn't work for wireless anymore, so I can't use it. iChat is so horrible with my iSight that it just comes back saying "user did not respond" even though I am talking with them on the phone with the person and we are both doing everything right! My safari quits more often than I ever remember it in the past. Preview loses it's borders and completely and locks up every now and then. I can't create new windows in safari, they just don't appear, and finder windows sometimes get cut in half and go completely buggy. The OS feels slow and runs slower than I ever remember Panther. Even with the 64 bit "claim", Panther ran faster on my G5. And still, I find myself trying to justify that Tiger is good. The problem is, it's not! Dashboard widgets don't run as fast as they should, they don't refresh until I hit F12 and then I am stuck waiting for my weather to appear for several seconds. It doesn't work nearly as well as advertised.
Realistically Tiger has a lot of problems. I use it worrying that it's all of a sudden going to crash or mess up. This isn't how an Apple OS should feel. Panther never felt like this! Panther felt stable even with 10.3.0, I never had a doubt it was worth it. Tiger feels like an operating system that shouldn't be out until this fall.
What happened Apple??? This is the first time I have ever used Apple software and felt that it wasn't what it should be. I have put thousands of dollars into Apple, I bleed white plastic blood, I profess my Apple view upon the world, and my car happily holds an Apple sticker. With this dedication I expect the best of the best. I expect that every time I turn on my computer for it to stay on without problems until the power fails. I expect it to run every program I want, and do it perfectly. I expect that the Apple made programs will work when I first open them, if I want to video conference I just hit connect, and BAM ipto facto there it is. I expect Apple's OS to increase my workflow, and make me feel like the thousands of dollars I have given them are going to a good cause.
Tiger is not what it should be, plain and simple.
And please don't tell me to re-install Panther, I shouldn't have to downgrade just to achieve a worry free computing experience.
