Tiger is 6 years old now, I just want to get your two cents on whether you think Tiger is still a viable and usable operating system in 2011. The support for current applications is bad now but the old versions of everything are good, right? 
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Using Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger In 2011?
- Thread starter Goftrey
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Absolutely it's still a good OS for today. As you said, many of the apps today won't work with it, but the older stuff is still likely just as productive.
All the basic functionality is still there.
Absolutely it's still a good OS for today. As you said, many of the apps today won't work with it, but the older stuff is still likely just as productive.
All the basic functionality is still there.
This is a tough one as almost any system that can run Tiger can also run Leopard. Unless its a G4 that's less than 1GHz I run Leopard on it (even my 500MHz Cube is running Leopard.) Tiger is still great but I would choose Leopard for its selection of web browsers and newer iTunes.
Yeah, I totally agree, I loved tiger and still do, but for me, Leopard was the biggest leap forward features and functionality wise in Mac OS X's history.
I love Tiger too. I recently just restored a PowerMac G5 Quad and put Tiger on it. It is now my prime computer and prime OS. I keep a secondary boot of Leopard around for access to the latest iTunes, but other than that, I don't really feel limited at all. I can do pretty much everything I could do before, and I just like the look of Tiger better.
It is still highly valuable - go for it.
A quad G5 running Tiger! It must be screaming by! I might restore my eMac back to Tiger, as I find it a bit sluggish under Leopard, although I'm upgrading the RAM to 1gb...
My vote from a stability issue is Panther. I work in a mixed network environment. Panther was rock solid when it came to network shares. Tiger on the other hand had Finder crashing right and left any time there was a hiccup over the network. Hard to get any work done when the Finder crashes. Mounted shares go missing, or when you try to work off the server you get permissions errors until you disconnect and reconnect. Then you have to reset your window views because Finder never remembers. Oh, and no copying more than two or three sets of files at a time because you'll bomb the Finder, particularly if copying to different destinations.
Leopard seems to be much better and about as stable as Panther. Remembers all my window settings and rarely crashes. I liked Tiger, but it was touchy as heck when used on a network.
Leopard seems to be much better and about as stable as Panther. Remembers all my window settings and rarely crashes. I liked Tiger, but it was touchy as heck when used on a network.
My iBook G4 and MDD still run Tiger - I don't find it very limiting when I'm on it, most of the applications I tend to run work on it. (its version of iChat is my favorite, X-Chat Aqua runs fine, we of course have MacTubes, TenFourFox, and Camino...)
Leopard feels a little more polished, yes, but on the same machines it does feel a bit more sluggish. (Far less so on the MDD, actually - it's an almost unnoticeable difference, unlike the iBook which does feel snappier on Tiger. Tiger, as far as I'm aware, ignores CI effects on a non-capable system, though, so I stick to that on the MDD.)
I wouldn't run anything below Leopard on a G5 or upgraded G4 system, though. Leopard on my G5 was an excellent experience, and I'd imagine similar on almost every other G5 system save the single 1.6.
Leopard feels a little more polished, yes, but on the same machines it does feel a bit more sluggish. (Far less so on the MDD, actually - it's an almost unnoticeable difference, unlike the iBook which does feel snappier on Tiger. Tiger, as far as I'm aware, ignores CI effects on a non-capable system, though, so I stick to that on the MDD.)
I wouldn't run anything below Leopard on a G5 or upgraded G4 system, though. Leopard on my G5 was an excellent experience, and I'd imagine similar on almost every other G5 system save the single 1.6.
Tiger on a G5 Quad with QFX? That would be a fast machine. Upgrade the memory of that little sucker to 16GB and boot on an SSD.
Don't remember Panther but I read this was the most stable version of OSX, followed by Tiger, Leopard was distant last. I have 2 bootable drives, 1 with Tiger and 1 with Leopard, can't compare speeds since Tiger is on small HD with limited space, I can though that Firefox DOES not support Leopard and crashes frequently, I also had lot of problems with Firefox on Tiger based PPC G4
When using older apps, major difference is that Leopard does not support OS9 apps
Tiger is primitive compared to Leopard in several ways. The main one being security. The second biggest reason being available apps. You can go much farther into the future on PowerPC with 10.5 for sure. You also have an iPhone in your sig and that will really hurt you there as you can't run iTunes 10 on 10.4.
Some claim a big gap in performance between the two but I honestly don't see it at all. They either have Macs way under the min. spec or they just have no idea how to compute efficiently. I don't have super powers or anything and I get equal and even improved performance in 10.5 on my 1.8GHz.
I personally would never run 10.4 unless I was on a sub 700MHz G4 . You simply have to give up too much in the end.
Some claim a big gap in performance between the two but I honestly don't see it at all. They either have Macs way under the min. spec or they just have no idea how to compute efficiently. I don't have super powers or anything and I get equal and even improved performance in 10.5 on my 1.8GHz.
I personally would never run 10.4 unless I was on a sub 700MHz G4 . You simply have to give up too much in the end.
I agree with that. I've found Leopard to be much better. I heard a lot about how it would slow things down and eat a lot of system resources. Some of that may be true. I have 1GB of Ram on my 1Ghz PB and with two apps up (TenFourFox and Entourage 2008) my memory always takes a hit. However, the system is still responsive even with that. And with only 1GB of ram and failed external cache I'm not expecting high speed.
Leopard performs much better on my other PB which has a higher processor and double the ram. Both systems give me far less hassle than Tiger did. But I'll say that Tiger on my PBs gave me much less hassle than Tiger on my work Mac. I have no specific figures to cite stability, but when I could go months on Panther without restarting my work G5 and have no issues, but Tiger was causing Finder to crash daily and a restart at least once every day and a half I have to say that Panther and Leopard have been far more stable on my work Mac. Maybe that's the integration with Win2003 server, but neither Panther or Leopard had issues so this is all I have to rate this by.
Goftrey:
What I recommend you do is put 10.4 on your eMac and try it out at doing everything you have done in 10.5 so far. The difference though is that you will have to use older versions of pretty much everything other than TFF if you even use it. The main reasons I say use the eMac is both because you have a good amount of 10.5 experience on that hardware (good for comparison sake) and also it seems like it's been relegated to your 2nd computer now. This keeps the PB you're very happy with as is and lets you experiment freely with Tiger on the eMac.
This way you can see first hand and actually experience the difference. Best way to make an informed choice IMO. Things like this really help start to get the geek juices flowing in you and help you understand things on a truly cerebral level. Maybe one day soon you will be the one giving us advice.
What I recommend you do is put 10.4 on your eMac and try it out at doing everything you have done in 10.5 so far. The difference though is that you will have to use older versions of pretty much everything other than TFF if you even use it. The main reasons I say use the eMac is both because you have a good amount of 10.5 experience on that hardware (good for comparison sake) and also it seems like it's been relegated to your 2nd computer now. This keeps the PB you're very happy with as is and lets you experiment freely with Tiger on the eMac.
This way you can see first hand and actually experience the difference. Best way to make an informed choice IMO. Things like this really help start to get the geek juices flowing in you and help you understand things on a truly cerebral level. Maybe one day soon you will be the one giving us advice.
You are right! I put in a 120 GB SSD as the boot and Applications disk, but I haven't upgraded the RAM - 8GB seems plenty.
It *is* a fast machine. Most applications launch with one bounce (or none), and everything feels wonderfully snappy. The notable exception is the ever sluggish Microsoft Office. I have Office 2008 on the machine (need it for work) and it is just fine, but it does take a few bounces to launch the first time each day. I also have Photoshop CS3 on the machine, and it too needs a few bounces to get going, but in general, everything is very fast.
AMAZING for a six year old machine.
In answer to the title question, I have an iBook G3 running 10.4.11. I'd say it runs about 80% as fast as a new macbook/ macbook pro. Graphics are good, and apps open pretty quickly. I've never had it crash, and it's doing just fine. I have over 80 apps on it, and some. However, I'd give anything to have a brand new macbook pro running 10.7!!!
Goftrey:
What I recommend you do is put 10.4 on your eMac and try it out at doing everything you have done in 10.5 so far. The difference though is that you will have to use older versions of pretty much everything other than TFF if you even use it. The main reasons I say use the eMac is both because you have a good amount of 10.5 experience on that hardware (good for comparison sake) and also it seems like it's been relegated to your 2nd computer now. This keeps the PB you're very happy with as is and lets you experiment freely with Tiger on the eMac.
This way you can see first hand and actually experience the difference. Best way to make an informed choice IMO. Things like this really help start to get the geek juices flowing in you and help you understand things on a truly cerebral level. Maybe one day soon you will be the one giving us advice.
I used to have an iBook G3 if you remember running Tiger also... I'll take on your suggestion and stick Tiger on my eMac for a while, I wasn't necessarily asking for what to run on my Macs, I just wanted people's opinions on it. But as you gave such a great answer, I'll give it bash
I used to have an iBook G3 if you remember running Tiger also... I'll take on your suggestion and stick Tiger on my eMac for a while, I wasn't necessarily asking for what to run on my Macs, I just wanted people's opinions on it. But as you gave such a great answer, I'll give it bash
My goal in that suggestion was for you to see first hand how 10.4 compares to 10.5 on the identical hardware. How it ran on an iBook G3 is irrelevant to how it will run on a 1GHz G4. Hopefully it will force you back onto 10.5 on both your Macs but it will be because you decided to on your own and not some person on a forum that really knows nothing about your computer habits.
I have been a computer tech on and off since 1994 and I really did like and enjoy Tiger.. before Leopard. These days Tiger is really outdated. The security in Windows 7 or any current Linux build far surpasses Tiger. Leopard on the other hand is very close to Snow Leopard and reasonably close to Lion when it comes to security and usability (incl. available apps). Tiger has not had a security update since 2007 so thats 4+ years of security vulnerabilities you're exposed to. Leopard had a security update just a couple months back.
I personally would never use Tiger ever again unless someone goes back in time and takes away Leopard. If Tiger was the last OS to run on PowerPC I would 100% buy an Intel Mac.
With that said - how important do you think security updates are for an OS that is running on a minority architecture on a minority OS? How many attacks would target this particular system? I am not trying to be argumentative - I am just wondering. It looks to me like the malware vulnerabilities in that would be related to an Adobe Flash issue, or perhaps Java.
Architecture has little to do with security. The internet has it's own languages that work with every architecture and OS there is.
The differences are much more at the core of Leopard. Tiger completely lacks modern security implements like socket layer protection and hasn't even had it's already primitive security updated in over 4 years as I noted already. Leopard continues to get security updates because it uses modern security so it's easy for Apple to still make updates for it as they would only slightly vary from Snow Leopard.
These are security features that Leopard added and Tiger lacks:
Library Randomization
Leopard implements library randomization, which randomizes the locations of some libraries in memory. Vulnerabilities that corrupt program memory often rely on known addresses for these library routines, which allow injected code to launch processes or change files. Library randomization is presumably a stepping-stone to a more complete implementation of address space layout randomization at a later date.
Application Layer Firewall
Leopard ships with two firewall engines: the original BSD IPFW, which was present in earlier releases of Mac OS X, and the new Leopard Application Layer Firewall. Unlike IPFW, which intercepts and filters IP datagrams before the kernel performs significant processing, the Application Layer Firewall operates at the socket layer, bound to individual processes. The Application Layer Firewall can therefore make filtering decisions on a per-application basis. Of the two-firewall engines, only the Application Layer Firewall is fully exposed in the Leopard user interface. The new firewall offers less control over individual packet decisions (users can decide to allow or deny connections system wide or to individual applications, but must use IPFW to set fine-grained TCP/IP header level policies). It also makes several policy exceptions for system processes: neither mDNSResponder nor programs running with superuser privileges are filtered.
Sandboxes
Leopard includes kernel-level support for role-based access control (RBAC). RBAC is intended to prevent, for example, an application like Mail from editing the password database.
Application Signing
Leopard provides a framework to use public key signatures for code signing to verify, in some circumstances, that code has not been tampered with. Signatures can also be used to ensure that one program replacing another is truly an "update", and carry any special security privileges across to the new version. This reduces the number of user security prompts, and the likelihood of the user being trained to simply clicking "OK" to everything.
Secure Guest Account
Guests can be given access to a Leopard system with an account that the system erases and resets at logout.
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I notice that you also seem to suffer from at least a little of the shield of invincibility complex many Mac users do. That will hurt you one day even on an Intel machine running Lion. Any OS is vulnerable in some ways and I can't imagine anyone ever making a truly 100% secure OS. What you can do though is use the most current OS you can for the best security solutions.
I certainly don't prefer Leopard because it's worse in any possible way. I prefer it because it's leaps and bounds better than Tiger in many ways that don't even involve security. If people want to use a 6 year old OS to go online then please go ahead but I as a computer tech for 18 years want no part in running Tiger ever again. I would have to give up far to much in terms of security, features and available apps. Leopard may be 4 years old now but it has all the inner workings of a modern OS. Plus on my 1.8GHz Leopard actually runs a bit faster than Tiger.
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If you are that concerned about security, you probably should be running Lion or OpenBSD or such.... Leopard has some security problems, too. Running as a non-admin account is probably better security practice than all of the other security changes between Tiger and Leopard.
I run Tiger on my TiBook because it runs more PPC applications and supports classic mode. Some applications -- such as Photoshop Elements 2.0 -- are broken on Leopard. So it's a better platform for the apps I want to run.
My feelings would be different if I did not have an Intel machine.. that would probably convince me to run Leopard on my PPC machine. Everyone has different needs.
I am actually an OpenBSD developer and have been a BSD user since 1987. I run it on both my PowerPC and x86 hardware.
As does any OS. The point is that it has a lot less issues than all the versions of OS X before it.
To be honest the best security is a wise user. You can't just rely on the code. A very wise Tiger user could easily be more secure than an ignorant Leopard user.
That's great-- operating systems development is fun, even if my only experience with that is Minix. I appreciate your contributions.
I remember installing NetBSD on a IIci (many, many years ago) and installing MkLinux on a 7100.
I wish I had more time to devote to fun (non-work) development (mostly related to compiler/interpreter development for me)
I like PPC machines a lot and need to stop myself from picking up a G4 tower.
That's very true. Leopard is probably the way to go for most people with a fast enough machine. Any OS can be compromised with some effort, but some are better than others.
Even Windows can be reasonably secure when appropriate measures are taken (DISA hardening etc).
Totally agree, I even chose Leopard over Tiger for my 466MHz G4 with an ancient ATI Rage graphics card.