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Tiger - What's the Verdict?

Looks like I'm in the minority here ... I ran Tiger for a day, then returned to Panther.

What I liked:
Spotlight
Improved BT support
Performance increase

What I didn't like:
Safari crashes when using tabbed browsing
iPhoto crashes when manipulating large numbers of files
Canon Imagebrowser crashes while generating thumbnails

...I'm very crash intolerant - one of the main reasons I switched was to avoid the world of windows hangs and crashes!

I'll return to Tiger in a couple of patches time I think.

Adam
 
I think the verdict is not in yet. I hear some small to somewhat significant bugs in Tiger as it is a newly updated OS. So far, all of my PBs are running 10.3.9 without any issue so far. All of my software I installed on them are working without any noticeable problems.

I will keep reading posts on Tiger on this forum and others to see how the early adopters are doing with the Tiger.
 
I think Tiger is cool... but worth the $130? I'm still leaning towards "No". It's fast, (though not much faster than Panther on my machines) Spotlight & Dashboard are nifty and all that, and there are little things added here and there, but I still have this feeling like "Uh yeah great but that's it?"

I've been lucky in that nothing has crashed yet, except Safari a few times. When something does it adds a "reopen" button to the "Send a report to Apple" dialog box.

Also when it couldn't find an internet connection (I had forgotten to plug the ethernet cable back in) Safari launched an Internet Connection Trouble Diagnosis program that was cool :cool:
 
My Impressions

I think tiger is great! Although it freezes every once in a while on me. It might be my computer. I love mail and safari! Safari is freakin sweet! MUCH faster! The whole system feels faster as a whole. I think this is a much better update than 10.2-10.3.

Verdict: A-
Buy or wait: BUY!
 
I'm enjoying it. I can see Dashboard being more useful that I expected; particularly as more useful widgets come out. The UK trains widget has already proved very useful and flicking f12 to check whether my train is late is likely to become a morning ritual; it's much faster than navigating through the National Rail site ever was.

I've had no crashes of any app or system (yet; touch wood!) and the only bugs seem to be minor like minimised apps in the Dock not restoring when you Command Tab to them. I'd prefer Spotlight to show me the iPhoto title rather than the file name for image results. I'd like the weather widget to have access to all the place names in Accuweather rather than just the US ones. The US database has the major international towns/cities but not the postcode level ones that the Accuweather UK one does.

The dictionary has lots of interesting information (and at least it identifies the UK spellings of things and gives some interesting etymology). Yes, I'd like a UK version but it's pretty useful at the moment. I also hadn't realised that it would pick up on WTF and RTFM (if you do the command/ctrl +d trick)

From what I've been reading, it appears that those who had lots of modifications running on their Macs in startup items etc and those who did a straight upgrade have had the most problems.
 
well my verdict is if you can afford it now then BUY. But be warned at this time a lot of 3rd party apps do not work with Tiger. Yes there are a few minor glitches but nothing that will kernel panic your mac. Well...

I've had no issues with Safari (yet) except once it said i was not connected to the 'net which was false. But it promptly reloaded. Tabbed browsing seems to be working fine. PDF files seem to be working fine although I haven't really opened many (only two so far).

^Spotlight good, works very well.
^Dashboard cool as **** but its again a novelty
^Automator I haven't had the pleasure yet
^QT7 Pro is awesome BUT running it on Tiger it has glitches, running it on 10.3.9 it ran perfectly!? Not sure.
^Mail looks cooler and it works better (for me)
^Safari RSS : I'm not really sure what this is to be honest but will play with it later
^iChat A/V : no use for me so...

I have noticed a few minor glitches but nothing that interferes with the system. I find that my iMac G5 is running quicker at certain tasks. Safari loads a tad faster than 10.3.9 iPhoto ran fan, iTunes ran fine, iMovie/iDVD ran fine...

a few of my 3rd party apps no longer work. Transparent Dock and OnyX to name a few. Toast 6 Titanuim works fine.

Overall yes Apple needs to start working on the fixes ASAP for the consumers but I say if you can afford Tiger get it. But if you can't then its no prob to hold off.

I think if you have a G5 you should really upgrade to Tiger but if you have a G4 maybe its not needed (right away at least).

My friends all have had some issues with Tiger but they are all running G4's. I'm not sure what's up.
 
iMetalG5 said:
well my verdict is if you can afford it now then BUY. But be warned at this time a lot of 3rd party apps do not work with Tiger. Yes there are a few minor glitches but nothing that will kernel panic your mac. Well...

I've had no issues with Safari (yet) except once it said i was not connected to the 'net which was false. But it promptly reloaded. Tabbed browsing seems to be working fine. PDF files seem to be working fine although I haven't really opened many (only two so far).

^Spotlight good, works very well.
^Dashboard cool as **** but its again a novelty
^Automator I haven't had the pleasure yet
^QT7 Pro is awesome BUT running it on Tiger it has glitches, running it on 10.3.9 it ran perfectly!? Not sure.
^Mail looks cooler and it works better (for me)
^Safari RSS : I'm not really sure what this is to be honest but will play with it later
^iChat A/V : no use for me so...

I have noticed a few minor glitches but nothing that interferes with the system. I find that my iMac G5 is running quicker at certain tasks. Safari loads a tad faster than 10.3.9 iPhoto ran fan, iTunes ran fine, iMovie/iDVD ran fine...

a few of my 3rd party apps no longer work. Transparent Dock and OnyX to name a few. Toast 6 Titanuim works fine.

Overall yes Apple needs to start working on the fixes ASAP for the consumers but I say if you can afford Tiger get it. But if you can't then its no prob to hold off.

I think if you have a G5 you should really upgrade to Tiger but if you have a G4 maybe its not needed (right away at least).

My friends all have had some issues with Tiger but they are all running G4's. I'm not sure what's up.
Click to expand...

How did you get on installing the Canon drivers? Mine were a PITA...installer hung a few times and Tiger just wouldn't accept it as the default printer.

Cheers,
Adam
 
Applespider said:
The dictionary has lots of interesting information (and at least it identifies the UK spellings of things and gives some interesting etymology). Yes, I'd like a UK version but it's pretty useful at the moment. I also hadn't realised that it would pick up on WTF and RTFM (if you do the command/ctrl +d trick)
Click to expand...
The true mark of a good dictionary! :D
As for the UK version, it's the OED, isn't it? How much more English can you get?
 
I think I'll wait a couple of months. Looks like a significant chance of early adopter woes! Thanks everybody for sharing your experiences, very helpful!
 
monty77 said:
How did you get on installing the Canon drivers? Mine were a PITA...installer hung a few times and Tiger just wouldn't accept it as the default printer.

Cheers,
Adam
Click to expand...

I did nothing. After upgrading i went into word and tested a print. At first it said "No printer" or whatever... went into System Prefs. and it showed my ip3000 as an option and i just clicked it and all of a sudden my print started.
 
Wait a bit . . .

micropop said:
I think I'll wait a couple of months. Looks like a significant chance of early adopter woes! Thanks everybody for sharing your experiences, very helpful!
Click to expand...

I Archive and Installed on 3 computers over the week-end (2.0 G5, 12in PB and iMacG5) and initially had no problems.
>The Widgets are eye candy, esp. since you can't leave them visible on the desktop while you work.
>Spotlight seems to work as advertised, but
>Safari was very easy to upset - kept saying something about it couldn't open a page because it had been reset (never saw that message before). Hadn'd had any problems with online banking for months, now having problems again. And having the PDF's come up in the browser window is not as good as having them in a Preview window, imo. (and actually I was using Acrobat - where did that go??)
>Mail's new interface just isn't as good as the Panther version, period.
>iPhoto was no faster with Tiger, but did recognize my Canon correctly.
>StickyBrain not working correctly even with the latest version.
>.Mac syncing was strange - you have to do it from the Pref pane now, not from iSync (that is almost too MS-like to bear - you have a program called iSync that you don't use to Sync . . .)
>When I synced my other laptop running Panther through .Mac, I got double all my bookmarks - 120 of them! Have to delete the pList now.

All in all, I wish I had waited. My .Mac synch may be screwed, can't restore StickyBrain, and I really don' like the Mail interface.
 
Are you logged in as administrator?

skunk said:
Using Spotlight, I can type in my wife's name and find her "mbox", in her separate User Account: double click, and I can read her emails. Neat, huh? :eek:
M$-style privacy.
Click to expand...
I assume that a user account with admin authority would have access to all the files on the drive. If you create an account without admin authority, does spotlight still find those files? If so, that would seem to be a privacy problem.
 
lssmit02 said:
I assume that a user account with admin authority would have access to all the files on the drive. If you create an account without admin authority, does spotlight still find those files? If so, that would seem to be a privacy problem.
Click to expand...
Yes, I am Admin, and, having changed the permissions on her Mail folder, all is back to normal. Had me worried for a while, though...
:eek:
 
MacEyeDoc said:
...>Mail's new interface just isn't as good as the Panther version, period.
...
All in all, I wish I had waited. My .Mac synch may be screwed, can't restore StickyBrain, and I really don' like the Mail interface.
Click to expand...
The old Mail interface seems cluttered; I don't like its toolbar icons. The new Mail interface is certainly inconsistent with the polished-aluminum look of other O/S apps, but it is in fact consistent with the Spotlight look. The new look is much easier on my eyes and support for Microsoft Exchange finally makes it professionally usable for me.
 
amac4me said:
I think it would be wise to wait a bit until some of the bugs and issues are ironed out. Tiger 10.4.1 is expected to be released this month ... within a few weeks.

I use the Pro apps (Final Cut Pro, DVD Studio Pro, Motion) and I'm waiting.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I also do imaging work and I just don't want the problems right now. Once I get some projects completed, I'll upgrade. There's a lot I like about Tiger, but I've never had a upgrade that didn't result in problems with using iMovie, FCE, etc. I downloaded Quicktime 7 last night and am hoping I don't have problems with my new iMovie HD project.
 
judge.gif
The verdict is in. Tiger has been exonerated, and is free to be released to the public.
 
I just ordered it yesterday so it should be arriving by wed or thursday. Just wondering if there's anyway to do a clean install but keep my music files. I'd hate to have to re-load over 20gb onto my computer. However, I'm guessing since it's a "clean" install install that there probably isn't anyway to keep them unless I archive.
 
Tiger Declawed

A sneak peek at my entry for tomorrow's blog. :)

---

Apple's OS X, version 10.4—codename "Tiger"—was released this past weekend. Review after review has highlighted the product and, for the most part, been giving it glowing praise.

Color me unimpressed.

It's not that I dislike Tiger—quite the opposite—but I feel as if everyone, including the media, has been sucked into the Apple hype machine™ once again. Tiger is pretty good, has some nice improvements, but is it worth $129?

Feature-wise, Apple boasts "over 200 new features." I've been using OS X for just over a year now and I'd be hard pressed to find ten new features in Tiger. Oh sure, Spotlight is obvious and Dashboard is cute, but aside from a tweaked iMail app and System Preferences pane, I suspect most users, like me, can't see the other 196 new features.

But, Tiger does add some new stuff to the table and, like most Apple OS revisions, runs better than the previous. In fact, this is completely opposite from Microsoft. Name a Windows release that didn't run worse than the previous version or didn't have greater hardware requirements than the last. Apple OS upgrades are like getting a new computer every 18 months. That's what's worth $129. Not Dashboard. Not Spotlight.

Get Tiger but skip the hype. The Apple fanbois are a flutter with joy, mostly because there's so little to get excited about if you own a Mac. Let them have their celebration and lament the delay that is Longhorn; every 18 months they deserve a chance at happiness. ;)
 
mixed.. i dunno tiger came out okay... but its still got its issues.. hopefully 10.4.1 will fix some of em' :eek:
 
I have an un-opend Tiger box which I just picked up from the Apple store in Buffalo (I played with the demo machines at the store, which are running Tiger). I am not going to install it on my 2 Al PBs as they are more mission critical and the OS X 10.3.9 is running my machines perfectly. I am thinking about using my Ti PB as guinea pig for an experimentation by installing the Tiger (this Ti PB is also running flawlessly under OS X 10.3.9). Even though I was aware of the problems the forums listed prior to buying the Tiger and bought it anyway, I am having a second thought about even using my Ti PB for this. I am thinking about returning this un-opend Tiger to Apple store for refund. I hope it is returnable (I think it should be because I have not even opened it). My rational self is telling me not to mess with what's running well and wait for more stable version of Tiger; but, my other self (which is anything but rational) says I should play with this new OS release. But, this time, rational thinking is winnng over.
 
Maybe I am the minority here that likes Tiger, but I find it to be an improvement over Panther. I like Spotlight, Dashboard, etc. and I also have not had all the problems other people have. I just installed it on both my machines and I have been happy. One of the BEST things that came out of the update is the iMac G5 is MUCH quieter even on highest performance setting. The fan is steady and quiet, all the fan racing that Panther use to give it is gone. I just did an upgrade, not a clean install and I have not had any problems. I just hate putting everything back on it and starting over with everything once I have the computer just the way I want it. Response and speed has improved slightly on both the iMac and Powerbook. Overall, I am very satisified with 10.4 and I am sure it will get better with the next update, but it is good enough to install now.
 
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