Tiger Facelift

[Axeon]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/

If you take the Mac OS X Tiger tour, it appears that Tiger has received a face lift in comparison to the screenshots we've previously seen.

 

[mkrishnan]

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/

If you take the Mac OS X Tiger tour, it appears that Tiger has received a face lift in comparison to the screenshots we've previously seen.

Huh. I noticed earlier today that they redid a lot of the Tiger preview pages. Here's an interesting tidbit...any link to the document identifying coreimage compliant video cards is GONE. And I could not find it in search anymore either.

Does that mean anything in relation to the choice in video chipset for the mini? Who knows...

 

[chameeeleon]

I just noticed this as well, and the high-quality videos allowed me to confirm what I'd suspected during Steve's keynote - Mail 2.0 has some very different icons in its toolbar! At the moment they don't really match anything outside of Mail. Plus it looks like they've changed the Apple and Spotlight bottons on the title bar as well (I like the new Spotlight one - leave it!) And the Dashboard has been cleaned up A LOT (the new "add widgets" bar along the bottom is much nicer than that ugly black thing that used to float around"). I'm not really sure why the Dashboard has a dock icon, and hope it can be removed. Tiger's visual style has progressed a lot since the almost-but-not-quite-exactly-the-same-as-Panther looks first shown at WWDC. I wonder where we'll end up.
And speaking of Tiger - that photo slideshow thing that Steve showed from Mail was amazing (when it didn't crash, lol)! The sort of photo expose thing, and the "Add to iPhoto" button. Tiger seriously is going to be a big step up.

 

[mox358]

Mail 2.0 has some very different icons in its toolbar! At the moment they don't really match anything outside of Mail...

...Tiger seriously is going to be a big step up.

When I watched the keynote, this was the biggest thing that stuck out about Tiger to me. They are now (assuming they don't retool the whole system with this Mail 2.0 look) have brushed metal, aqua, and plastic. (what i'm calling mail 2). I would like to see this new look in more of the system, as it looks very pleasing to the eye. But I suspect we'll have several visual styles for a while longer...

P.S. - Just out of curiosity, did this happen alot in the OS9 days? I used OS 7.5 back in the day for a few years, and then came back in at 10.0. So I missed a good portion of Apple Timeline, but I never remember there being so many different types of window styling for apps.

 

[rendezvouscp]

From what I remember, this just didn't happen in pre-Mac OS X. I'm guessing that in 10.5, one of the major features will be that users can switch between all of the different styles, if the app allows it. But, who knows. I think Mail in brushed metal would look absolutely ugly, and I can't imagine the iApps in any other interface form (like "plastic"). So, while I don't think they'll do this, it'd be nice if they did.
-Chase

 

[TigerPRO]

GUI Changes

I desparately hope we are still in major interface shiftings. Because the new mail interface reminds me of M$ Outlook. I don't care for it. It seems very clunckly and ditzy. New styles don't scare me, but I really enjoy the clean, streamlined interface we have at present. With these new bulking toolbars having so much dead space in them, it doesn't look very trim and clean.

Just as a whole I've noticed that all over all the new screenshots. Everything seems to be more "slapped on" and less "neatly packed", organized, and centered. Sometimes things even seem to clash a little with all the different type of UI element being combined. Does anyone see what I mean?

 

[johnnyjibbs]

YUK

Hmmm... where HAS Aqua gone? I might have to put off purchasing Mac OS XP Tiger until they sort that out!

Looks like pinstripes are out!

The GUI is all flat - that search button in Mail seems to suggest we'll see no more of the gum-button blue buttons. And yet the scroll bars from 10.0 remain.

Mail is hideous! What the hell are those toolbar buttons?! And how could Mac OS X get any more inconsistent?! I'm all for evolution of looks, but I thought Panther hit the sweet spot. I hope the rest of the apps don't look like that (although they'll need to be for consistency.. hmm.. strange dilemma).

Everything is suddenly milky white and pretty much untextured!

Apple really has turned this into some sort of milky Windows XP. Shame, because I was getting to like the look of Spotlight...

 

[JupiterTwo]

Huh. I noticed earlier today that they redid a lot of the Tiger preview pages. Here's an interesting tidbit...any link to the document identifying coreimage compliant video cards is GONE. And I could not find it in search anymore either.

Does that mean anything in relation to the choice in video chipset for the mini? Who knows...

Nah - Core Image is still there - linky , just looks like they've herded it together with H264, Xcode et al

 

[iGav]

Looks like pinstripes are out!

You say that like it's a bad thing...

The one thing that peeved about OS X 10.0 was those pinstripes...

 

[Diatribe]

Edit: I somehow managed to delete my original reply... oh well
Old post did just say that many more widgets are shown too and that
some of them are U.S. only.

 

[Applespider]

It guess that it will be up to non-US developers to produce a local version of the Yellow Pages widget and other country-specific options.

 

[MrSugar]

Hmmm... where HAS Aqua gone? I might have to put off purchasing Mac OS XP Tiger until they sort that out!

Looks like pinstripes are out!

The GUI is all flat - that search button in Mail seems to suggest we'll see no more of the gum-button blue buttons. And yet the scroll bars from 10.0 remain.

Mail is hideous! What the hell are those toolbar buttons?! And how could Mac OS X get any more inconsistent?! I'm all for evolution of looks, but I thought Panther hit the sweet spot. I hope the rest of the apps don't look like that (although they'll need to be for consistency.. hmm.. strange dilemma).

Everything is suddenly milky white and pretty much untextured!

Apple really has turned this into some sort of milky Windows XP. Shame, because I was getting to like the look of Spotlight...

I understand where you are coming from. However, I remember when I was upgrading from Jaguar to Panther I was really worried about how bad panther was going to look. I thought for sure it would be hidious. Then my friend said something to me that I will now relate onward to you.

"Apple changes the look, and in the end it always ends up looking great and feeling great. They are overly concered with design, trust me it will be great once you have used it."

Well, I have used it.. and it is great. I have faith in the fact that Apple will always make a consistant and good looking OS.

 

[Diatribe]

It guess that it will be up to non-US developers to produce a local version of the Yellow Pages widget and other country-specific options.

Shouldn't be that way though.

 

[TigerPRO]

"Apple changes the look, and in the end it always ends up looking great and feeling great. They are overly concered with design, trust me it will be great once you have used it."

Well, I have used it.. and it is great. I have faith in the fact that Apple will always make a consistant and good looking OS.

Well said. Let's not freak out yet.

 

[whooleytoo]

One of my big concerns is that Tiger is going to seem very 'old' when launched as we've seen it so often now. The actual launch keynote (if there is one) could be very flat.

...unless they're going to update the UI before launch. Perhaps a new theme along the lines of the 'ivory'/shiny white window style of the Tiger System Preferences?

 

[TigerPRO]

One of my big concerns is that Tiger is going to seem very 'old' when launched as we've seen it so often now.

I don't think so. There's a lot more to Tiger than what's being said by Apple. They almost make it look like a small release when they only focus on the big "outward" changes such as Spotlight. But that's what grabs consumer attention, so they don't focus on all the cool new "geeky stuff". I find it interesting that at the keynote on tuesday, they actually changed the "advertised" number of new feature from 150 (used at the WWDC when it was annouced) to 200! This release is huge compared to all the last 4 major releases. Trust me, there will be great plenty of miscellaneous surprise features and functionalities in Tiger that aren't being talked out. We just are getting a little board of only hearing about dashboard, spotlight, and iChat all the time. But there's a lot more to it than that! Just you wait. Patience.

 

[munkle]

One of my big concerns is that Tiger is going to seem very 'old' when launched as we've seen it so often now.

As opposed to the spring chicken that is Longhorn, shipping with only half the features sometime in 200andsomething!

The technology being incorporated into Tiger really is something special. Just because we know what to expect doesn't mean it's going to be 'old', Tiger is going to change how we currently our computers. For example, I can imagine Spotlight and especially smart folders being an integral part of how I interact with my computer. There's a big difference between seeing and using! I'm sure Tiger will feel very 'new' once you start using it, that and the fact there won't be anything else on the market even close! And like others have said, I'm sure there are plenty of surprises too!

 

[mkrishnan]

Nah - Core Image is still there - linky , just looks like they've herded it together with H264, Xcode et al

CoreImage is still there...the list of CoreImage compatible Video Cards is not there anymore. There used to be a list of which video cards fully supported CI, and that list of course didn't include the card that's in the iBook and the Mac Mini....

 

[whooleytoo]

This release is huge compared to all the last 4 major releases..

I wouldn't agree with this statement. I felt Panther's features were much more interesting/useful from a user's perspective (Expose, fast user switching, redesigned open/save dialogs, better performance etc.), while Jaguar was more interesting from a developer's perspective (Quartz Extreme - which so many of the new technologies are built upon, Rendevous etc.).

Spotlight is a very useful tool, but I don't believe it's quite as earth shattering as it's made out to be. Will most people pay $130 to search faster? Some certainly will, others will require more.

The most interesting thing about Dashboard is that it could lower the bar for developers entering into Mac development. It seems squarely aimed at people with design talent but relatively little technical/developer know-how to develop for the platform. But in the end, it's another widget (in the loosest meaning of the word) architecture like desk accessories, docklets, menulets or Sherlock plug-ins, just prettier. We'll have to wait and see if it turns out to be genuinely useful or just eye-candy.

After that, there are a lot of things to appeal to developers, but only time will tell if we'll see the benefit of these in Tiger or in the next big OS release.

 

[munkle]

I wouldn't agree with this statement. I felt Panther's features were much more interesting/useful from a user's perspective (Expose, fast user switching, redesigned open/save dialogs, better performance etc.), while Jaguar was more interesting from a developer's perspective (Quartz Extreme - which so many of the new technologies are built upon, Rendevous etc.).

Spotlight is a very useful tool, but I don't believe it's quite as earth shattering as it's made out to be. Will most people pay $130 to search faster? Some certainly will, others will require more.

Tiger has the best both of worlds. For the user, you have new features like dashboard, spotlight, automator, an improved UI, smart folders etc, etc.

And for the developers you have spotlight again, core image, core data, 64 bit developement, H.264, XCode 2 etc, etc.

Tiger is definitely not just about faster searching!

 

[TigerPRO]

Spotlight is a very useful tool, but I don't believe it's quite as earth shattering as it's made out to be. Will most people pay $130 to search faster? Some certainly will, others will require more.

Keep in mind how much longer the development cycle has been (and will be) for Tiger. If this was merely another Panther-like addon of a some much needed features, it would have been released by now. No, there are some major, world first, core system innovations taking place. That's why Apple is working so much longer on this release. From a simple user's prospective, OS upgrades are taken in an overly simplistic fashion, where new features appear to be nothing more than extra code with an addition of some new GUI elements. Nothing is wrong with that, but it underestimates the real power and significance of some of the other "behind the scenes" and "under the hood" enhancments.

The Janguar upgrade was an important milestone, the Pather upgrade was a mainly a feature "gag", but Tiger is another milestone plus the feature "gags".

 

[ravenvii]

Personally, I think the new mail looks great. I have to admit that I didn't really like the current Mail's interface, but the new one seems to appeal to me much more. I look forward to using it!

As for features and upgrading, before Panther was released, I felt the same way as some of you do now - it doesn't have enough features to justify upgrading, etc etc. But now, I just can't imagine going back to Expose-less Jaguar. Expose has truly revolutionized the way I use my computer. Using Windows XP is such a chore without Expose. I keep thinking "I need that window right behind this one... Expose... oh that's right there's no Expose... What's that window's name? (looks at the taskbar)"

Maybe Spotlight and Dashboard will be like that.

 

[wwooden]

found the coreimage part of the Tiger Preview, here . It was under the finder preview icon.

Interesting though, I could find anything on corevideo.

 

[TigerPRO]

I just can't imagine going back to Expose-less Jaguar. Expose has truly revolutionized the way I use my computer. Using Windows XP is such a chore without Expose. I keep thinking "I need that window right behind this one... Expose... oh that's right there's no Expose... What's that window's name? (looks at the taskbar)"

Maybe Spotlight and Dashboard will be like that.

That's really funny. lol. I have this odd syndrome where when I hop on an XP system, I'll find myself constantly bumping my mouse up to my normal screen corner for exposé and getting nothing. Then I proceed to drag windows here and there to find what I need. Either that I attempt to read and itentify the window by it's 5 character abbreviation (i.e. "intern...") among the other gazillion windows in the task bar. I know exactly what you mean about exposé, I really start to appreciate it when using a windows machine for more than a minute. It's become such a subconcious activity that it's seems as normal to me as being able to do something simple like minimizing window.

 

[TigerPRO]

found the coreimage part of the Tiger Preview, here . It was under the finder preview icon.

Interesting though, I could find anything on corevideo.

Corevideo is actually hidden under the description of Coreimage. If you read down the page there, you'll see a paragraph or two about it. That first caught me by surprise too when I went looking for Corevideo; but it's there.