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Is Tiger that bigger deal?

D

deanbo

macrumors regular
Original poster
From my understanding, with Tiger, I will be able to search my computer virtually instantaneously (once I index), have a three way chat on iChat, and use something called Widgets (no idea what I would need a widget for).

Quite frankly, I just can't get that excited (or convince myself to part with my money once Tiger is available) over Tiger's new features.

Searching my G5 doesn't take that long, the iChat thing could be handy ocassionally, and widgets, well what would I need to widge?

Or maybe I should just reserve my judgement for when Tiger is actually released?
 
Why don't you look at the Mac OS X section of apple.com that has a preview of Tiger with videos to demonstrate the new features? You can also watch Steve's keynote from MWSF to see Tiger in action (demonstrating a few minor bugs that are probably already worked out).
 
As for Spotlight, you literally see results LIVE, AS you type. It's some cool stuff. Plus you can search metadata too, not just the files themselves (you can search for a particular band, instead of the song name itself for example - on the OS level, not only in iTunes).

Those "Widgets", looks like something you initially think is just useless, but then find you can't live without... *activates expose for emphasis*.

Laugh now, just you wait. 🙂
 
When Apple develops a new point release, the advances in normal computing functions such as networking, user-interface, reliability and intuitive use are often overlooked.

If you are a new Mac user, you may not know the night and day difference between Apple's point releases. 10.0 was nearly unusable, 10.1 became a viable operating system for most users, 10.2 became the foundation for 10.3, and so forth. Each release usually includes significant upgrades to speed, graphics drivers, and human interface improvements (GUI).

For this reason, I have never regretted a penny spent towards these upgrades. After all, they are designed so that you can do more with your machine.

Bells and whistles like Spotlight, while excellent, are just icing on the cake in my opinion. More often than not, they are used to bring new users into the fold. As Steve has already suggested, Microsoft is probably hard at work on their own implementation of a "Spotlight" feature.

It may be of particular interest to you that Tiger will offer some degree of 64-bit optimization... in other words, your G5 will almost without a doubt run faster. Widgets will take a variety of incredibly useful programs (or more accurately, applets) such as weather, stock quotes, and audio and make them more accessible, useful and central to the way you work.

OS upgrades are really a pretty joyous thing for everyone who uses Macs, as you'll see. It's about the user experience -- not necessarily just new features. 🙂
 
Remember the good old Key Caps utility in older Mac OS versions? This would be perfect to resurrect in Tiger as a Dashboard widget. It's the kind of thing you bring up because you need it briefly for something, then put away when you're done with it - exactly what Steve Jobs wants widgets to be like.
 
Personally, I was underwhelmed when I first heard what the improvements would be. SInce then I've realised how far reaching some of them will be. Spotlight for example may end up being one of the most influential developments since OS X was first released.

Say you want to find stuff from a holiday in Paris - spotlight could find the photos you took there, the movies you shot, the emails you had about it and the pdf you saved off the web with the map of Metro - all from your desktop without opening the appropriate apps.
 
caveman_uk said:
Personally, I was underwhelmed when I first heard what the improvements would be.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm still a little underwhelmed. Panther fulfills my needs really quite well. From the screenshots of Tiger, I think I prefer the general look of 10.3 too although 10.4 has been getting a little bit better looking each build release.
 
Key Caps is still available in OS X! System Prefs>International>Input Menu

Turn Keyboard Viewer on and show input menu in menu bar. go up to the little flag in the menu bar after than and click show keyboard viewer. voila! instant access to your Key Caps.
 
mad jew said:
Yeah, I'm still a little underwhelmed. Panther fulfills my needs really quite well. From the screenshots of Tiger, I think I prefer the general look of 10.3 too although 10.4 has been getting a little bit better looking each build release.
Click to expand...

I thought 10.1 was great. Then I went to 10.2 and that was great. Then PowerBook had Panther and that was even better. And then, moving on to Tiger, I expect the same thing....
 
this update is huge, it has 150+ new features (im sure some are still to be revealed, major ones at that)

dashboard is going to help me out a ton, as is spotlight, but core image and core video are what impress me the most
 
well to tell you the truth i am excited for tiger... i think that it will be the biggest update ever....I am looking forward to quicktime and core image the most. those seem to have huge ugrades.

well stay sober
DjVoTeZ......hehe
 
Mechcozmo said:
I thought 10.1 was great. Then I went to 10.2 and that was great. Then PowerBook had Panther and that was even better. And then, moving on to Tiger, I expect the same thing....
Click to expand...

Yeah thanks Mechcozmo, that's a little reassuring. I've only ever worked on Panther in the OSX series but I'm told it's quite a step over the previous versions - especially in Windows networking which is what I use all the time!

Are there likely to be more (major) changes other than the ones Steve's already mentioned? I've checked out the site and it just doesn't look like it's as much of a leap as Panther was (sorry 'bout the pun!)?
 
Cyanide I love your sig!

I am looking forward to Spotlight and Widgets. As I switched recently, this will be my first upgrade that I will be buying and installing on my Macs. I think I am going to play around with developing my own widgets as well...

Spotlight is actually quite incredible. Live, instant searching of not only file names but content as well, with clear documentation for developers to not only implement Spotlight in their programs, but make their program data Spotlightable as well. That is truly sweet...

Microsoft promised the same thing in LongHorn, which as we know is not coming out for a long time. On top of that, I think they still pulled the feature, didn't they?

It certainly won't be a mandatory upgrade by any means, but that's a testament to how good Panther is.
 
madmaxmedia said:
Spotlight is actually quite incredible. Live, instant searching of not only file names but content as well, with clear documentation for developers to not only implement Spotlight in their programs, but make their program data Spotlightable as well. That is truly sweet...
Click to expand...
An Apple guy demonstrated Spotlight to me at MacExpo - that was the point I went 'Oh, I get it now....'
 
For me it seem's as if everything is going to be better than Panther and for me Panther is amazing as well 😀
Spotlight evrything comes so fast and so nice
Dashboard all the nice widgets 😀
Also as other versions it will make everything faster
And the new technologys like core image and more 64Bit development all just sums up, this I must get when it is out 🙄
 
cyanide said:
Key Caps is still available in OS X! System Prefs>International>Input Menu

Turn Keyboard Viewer on and show input menu in menu bar. go up to the little flag in the menu bar after than and click show keyboard viewer. voila! instant access to your Key Caps.
Click to expand...

Even quicker, open your Utilities folder, and lo-and-behold, what have we here? a small application called "Key Caps"
 
Cybernanga said:
Even quicker, open your Utilities folder, and lo-and-behold, what have we here? a small application called "Key Caps"
Click to expand...
You must not be using Panther - I am, and it isn't there. The only way I know of to get to it is through the keyboard menu, as posted earlier.
 
I have a ton of email. The spotlight feature with Mail is worth it for me alone for searching work related email. I don't have to create hierarchies by hand. I'll be using the smart folder and just keep my email stored in one location physically.

I think the integration between mail and iPhoto and having a better way to view photos are nice too. iChat is another must have for me. I want that quality to be super nice and be able to chat with multiple people at the same time.
 
I am not that jazzed for Tiger either, but I just got my first Mac in September and am very satisfied so far and can't see how things could get any better!

And I still don't get Core Image and Core Video? If one searches the forums, there are way too many threads that mention these to find a defintive answer...but, as a regular consumer with an iMac G5, are these featues going to do anything for me? I still haven't seen a "regular user" answer to what this even is. And a quick look at Apple's website doesn't turn up anything.

In fact, the only thing I know about Core Image and Video is that a lot of people here are worried about the video cards not being "Core Image Compliant", whatever that means. It seems that the video cards are never good enough. 😀
 
Slu: in Panther, most things are rendered by your CPU. The GPU does some work, but not most of it. In Tiger, things will be offloaded to the CPU, and there will be new real time effects. To you, this'll mean cooler effects, a generally faster interface in intensive apps, and applications that can use the built in renderers for effects. Overall, it'll speed up your machine a little bit and allow you to use cooler apps (that's a bit of a over-generalization though).

The features in Tiger are absolutely fabulous. Back in July when I got my hands on the first developer preview, I was stunned. Spotlight was very fast and very helpful. Dashboard seemed to have a lot of potential, and the system did feel a bit faster (even after a few months of use, not just from a new install). Tiger is going to be an awesome upgrade that most of you will end up loving.
-Chase
 
Safari RSS -- Finally I'll be able to dispense with ugly Firefox, its live bookmarks, and Sage which make my browsing experience beautiful (except for the ugliness...).

Smart Folders

These things excite me...
 
rendezvouscp said:
Slu: in Panther, most things are rendered by your CPU. The GPU does some work, but not most of it. In Tiger, things will be offloaded to the CPU, and there will be new real time effects. To you, this'll mean cooler effects, a generally faster interface in intensive apps, and applications that can use the built in renderers for effects. Overall, it'll speed up your machine a little bit and allow you to use cooler apps (that's a bit of a over-generalization though).

The features in Tiger are absolutely fabulous. Back in July when I got my hands on the first developer preview, I was stunned. Spotlight was very fast and very helpful. Dashboard seemed to have a lot of potential, and the system did feel a bit faster (even after a few months of use, not just from a new install). Tiger is going to be an awesome upgrade that most of you will end up loving.
-Chase
Click to expand...

well that wasn't exactly for the average user... let me try

CoreImage and CoreVideo provide hardware accelerated image and video processing. Look at it this way, your video card is GREAT at playing games right? It can process polygons and colors like mad to make those games look good (maybe not YOUR card but the new cards anyway). How would you like it if you could take that processing power and apply it to every day applications rather than just to games? This is exactly what CoreImage and CoreVideo do. They hardware accelerate certain aspects of your every day experience.

For example, say you're doing some image processing in photoshop. you want to add a cool effect but it's pretty processor intensive. using CoreImage this processing can be sent to a specialized processor... your graphics card! It's BUILT to handle images and the math related to editing and managing images. It's perfect for it. Same goes for editing a movie in iMovie or Final Cut Pro. You want to add effects or do things with Final Cut Pro and make your movies but you're tired of the waiting .. you can have the video card do the work about 20 times faster than your computer's processor could. It's really THAT fast. It's built for images, so why not throw some images at it? All that power and it's only used for games? Please, it can be put to good use all the time, and that is what Tiger is going to provide.

From a user perspective you will see faster usage in Image and Video related processing from applications that take advantage of it. From a developer point of view you have a lot more at your disposal to make really cool applications that just weren't possible before. There's a lot of power to harness there and Tiger will make it possible
 
stevietheb said:
Safari RSS -- Finally I'll be able to dispense with ugly Firefox, its live bookmarks, and Sage which make my browsing experience beautiful (except for the ugliness...).

Smart Folders

These things excite me...
Click to expand...

www.newsfirerss.com

great little RSS reader.. i use it full time.. though i'm writing my own "replacement" for it.. since the developer doesn't seem to think some of my ideas are worth putting in.. that's fine i'll just clone it and add my features to it 😉 .. all he's using is WebKit 😛 (not sure if anyone else has noticed that)
 
Logik said:
well that wasn't exactly for the average user... let me try

CoreImage and CoreVideo provide hardware accelerated image and video processing. Look at it this way, your video card is GREAT at playing games right? It can process polygons and colors like mad to make those games look good (maybe not YOUR card but the new cards anyway). How would you like it if you could take that processing power and apply it to every day applications rather than just to games? This is exactly what CoreImage and CoreVideo do. They hardware accelerate certain aspects of your every day experience.

For example, say you're doing some image processing in photoshop. you want to add a cool effect but it's pretty processor intensive. using CoreImage this processing can be sent to a specialized processor... your graphics card! It's BUILT to handle images and the math related to editing and managing images. It's perfect for it. Same goes for editing a movie in iMovie or Final Cut Pro. You want to add effects or do things with Final Cut Pro and make your movies but you're tired of the waiting .. you can have the video card do the work about 20 times faster than your computer's processor could. It's really THAT fast. It's built for images, so why not throw some images at it? All that power and it's only used for games? Please, it can be put to good use all the time, and that is what Tiger is going to provide.

From a user perspective you will see faster usage in Image and Video related processing from applications that take advantage of it. From a developer point of view you have a lot more at your disposal to make really cool applications that just weren't possible before. There's a lot of power to harness there and Tiger will make it possible
Click to expand...
Don't forget Core Graphics! Its job is to hardware accelerate the rest of the user interface - even more so than Panther did (only if you have a programmable graphics card, though).
 
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