You know, I was thinking... why are we so excited about Tiger anyway? I thought I'd go down the list of new features highlighted here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/
Now, there are also a lot of things Apple fails to mention. Such as how the finder is a clunky piece of junk. (If you don't think it is, go back and use OS 9. It was much cleaner and more elegant, although it lacked a column view). As many would agree, the Finder is crap. The FTP integration is crap. Window settings recall when they feel like it. Folders from other users and websites override your default settings without a care (thanks to .DS_Store crap). Giant metal toolbars take up valuable screen space. Turn them off, and certain folders will just ignore your settings anyway. Hell, browse the package contents of a bundle, and it will ignore them completely. Mail is still sad. iChat is still sad for IMing. Safari is only useful because of its integration. You still need Tinkertool to do basic things like seeing invisible files. Etc etc etc. Personally, I am not impressed. Personally, I'm hoping Gnome gets more polished. It already has a better file browser than OS X. All it needs now is more UI consistency amongst its apps and better panels. Not to mention -- It doesn't cost $129 every year!
- Spotlight. Now at first, I was quite excited about this. The reason is that I love Quicksilver (http://quicksilver.blacktree.com/). However, I quickly began to think: If I already have Quicksilver, why do I need this? I cannot think of an occasion where I would want to use it. When was the last time you ever thought, "Darn, I wish I could find all the documents on my hard drive with the word 'Paris' in them?" On rare occasion, context searching can be useful, but even OS 9 had this. The Spotlight integration in system preferences is needless. How often do you really ponder which pane a setting is in? I know I've never had any trouble locating anything. As for the metadata stuff, it may be useful on a very rare occasion, but even then it will only work with certain types of files, namely Photoshop documents and MS Office documents (besides the obvious Apple-related documents). For all other programs, it is useless. And yes, it can read metadata from mp3s and such, but iTunes is already better for this sort of thing. All in all, Spotlight is one of Tiger's best new features, and it is fairly boring and only marginally useful. Be honest with yourself -- Will this really substantially improve your computing experience?
- Dashboard. This is nothing more than a gimmick. How often to you really need to have a special screen come up with fancy faux-analog clocks? How often do you need to plan your flights instantly through an oversimplified interface? How often do you need sticky notes that are just too important to make with the Stickies application? As someone who drooled over Konfabulator, I can say that after you use it, you realize it is largely a waste of your time. It is a very rare occasion that it is not easier to just open a bookmark via Quicksilver to do whatever I want in a normal browser window. And even if you just love this feature, so what -- It is already available via Konfabulator! I can honestly say that I feel I will enjoy this for a few days, and then end up disabling it.
- Safari RSS. There are already a number of great RSS readers/tickers out there. The fact that this is the only major thing Apple added to Safari is just sad. If not for Firefox's un-maclike interface, it would easily be a better browser. Hell, you can already get RSS integration in Firefox if you want to, which is a fast, popular, proper Gecko-based browser.
- Mail. As many people here know, Apple Mail is a sad application. It is slow. It spasms when you lose your internet connection. And now in Tiger, it is hideous. Alright, perhaps not hideous, but it certainly doesn't look like the rest of OS X. Yes, it now has Spotlight features, but I can't think of anything that I can't currently accomplish with a normal mail filter. Other mail programs already have these so-called "smart" folders as well.
- iChat. The video conferencing is nice. However, it only works (and works well) if everyone is using iChat. Often, this is not the case. As for the IM side of things, it is just pathetic. No tabs (which if you are talking to 5+ people at once, you really do need as otherwise you have windows all over). Barely any options. No built-in log browser. Etc etc. Adium is a much better client all around, and other IM clients allow you to use more than the AOL network. Many people here who do serious IMing are already using something besides iChat.
- Automator. This is nice stuff, but it has a serious limitation: It is only good if it already has actions built in for what you want to do. Now I will admit that this is one of the most impressive things about OS X. It is bringing some pipe-like functionality into the GUI realm. However, if you really need to get down and dirty, a shell script is going to be more flexible and less reliant on built-in actions. For many of the more common tasks (like hauling down all the images on a webpage and renaming them), there are already freeware apps available. Once again, this is nice, and it is probably the best part of Tiger. However, most likely you will not use it more than once every month or so. To be honest, I can't really think of an instance where I'd want to use it. Perhaps this is because I am not a huge iLife person. Besides, this is only going to work with apps that have built-in actions and such for Automator. Most apps will not, which means that it is worthless if you want to do something involving one of those apps. It is nice in an idealistic sort of way, but I doubt it will prove to be too useful.
- VoiceOver. If you need this, you need this. If you don't, you don't.
- Parental controls. Same thing.
- .Mac Sync. I'm sure as hell not paying Apple $100 a year when I can get 4GB of space and 100GB monthly bandwidth for $69 a year from hasweb.com, along with a *ton* of extra features and one-click install forums, mailing lists, etc etc. Hence, this is useless to me.
- Quicktime. The new technology is nice. Too bad Apple refuses to support Linux.
Now, there are also a lot of things Apple fails to mention. Such as how the finder is a clunky piece of junk. (If you don't think it is, go back and use OS 9. It was much cleaner and more elegant, although it lacked a column view). As many would agree, the Finder is crap. The FTP integration is crap. Window settings recall when they feel like it. Folders from other users and websites override your default settings without a care (thanks to .DS_Store crap). Giant metal toolbars take up valuable screen space. Turn them off, and certain folders will just ignore your settings anyway. Hell, browse the package contents of a bundle, and it will ignore them completely. Mail is still sad. iChat is still sad for IMing. Safari is only useful because of its integration. You still need Tinkertool to do basic things like seeing invisible files. Etc etc etc. Personally, I am not impressed. Personally, I'm hoping Gnome gets more polished. It already has a better file browser than OS X. All it needs now is more UI consistency amongst its apps and better panels. Not to mention -- It doesn't cost $129 every year!
