Mac OS X Tiger
The Cat Is Unleashed
29 April 2005 Justin Williams Skip to comments
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It's here. Finally! On April 29, 2005 at 6pm EST Apple released Mac OS X Tiger. Tiger, the successor to the wildly popular 10.3 Panther, further solidifies Apple's place as an innovator in the OS market. Unlike previous releases of Mac OS X, Apple spent almost a year and a half working on the latest release. Previously Apple had followed a yearly upgrade cycle for OS X. This was done mainly to help the OS get its bearings. From its shaky start with 10.0, Apple gradually has improved OS X with subsequent yearly releases offering enhanced features and functionality, but most importantly SPEED. With 10.0 Cheetah, Apple released a very good "beta" of the OS. Being a complete departure from their previous OS, it was to be expected that Cheetah would not be polished. It was missing important features such as DVD playback and was slow on most systems. Later that year, Apple offered a free upgrade to 10.1 Puma. Puma included the DVD playback, increased speed substantially, and offered other interface tweaks that users had requested in the previous months. Mac OS X really began to shine with Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar. Jaguar included support for Windows networks, Quartz Extreme, Junk Mail filtering, iChat, Rendezvous, and Sherlock 3. Once Panther arrived, many Mac enthusiasts felt that the operating system was ready for the limelight. Joe Consumer agreed. Panther was the most successful operating system in terms of deployment and sales Apple has ever had. Panther brought about the Finder sidebar, Exposé, FileVault, the return of Finder labels, and iChat AV video conferencing. Panther arrived in late October 2003. Once it was out the door, Apple put its eyes towards Tiger, the next cat in its bag. ### On To Tiger With over two hundred new features, Tiger is Apple's biggest upgrade since the initial 10.0 release in March of 2001. Search is redefined with Spotlight. Widgets become something more than fictitious objects in Arithmetic problems thanks to Dashboard. Besides those two big features, what else is new in Tiger? Is it worth its hefty $129 price tag? We wanted to take a deeper look at what makes OS X Tiger such an important release. We will cover what's changed, what's new, and what's still missing. We will also touch on Tiger from the developer's perspective, and give some general thoughts on the release. If we had written this as a single article, it would have been well over 10,000 words. Because of this, we're going to partition it into several different articles. This series of articles should have information for anyone from the possible new Mac user to the hardcore user or developer. The first article outlines what features are new to the Mac OS X. This covers Spotlight, Dashboard, Automator, VoiceOver, and other features. This article will not only tell you what the feature is, but how it works and how to get started with it. The next article covers the many differences experienced OS X users will notice between Panther and Tiger. This includes the new unified toolbar interface, tweaks to the Finder interface, System Preferences, Safari RSS, and many other areas. While on the surface, it doesn't look like there are many changes, once you dig into the system, you will see what attention to detail Apple has in terms of improving the user experience of Mac users. The final piece to our Tiger puzzle is looking at it through the eyes of a developer. Developers were the first to see Mac OS X Tiger at last year's World Wide Developers Conference. Without developers, we wouldn't have the great software applications we have today. A lot of features have been added that make developing Macintosh software easier than ever. We will cover Core Data, Xcode 2, Xcode's data modeling, Core Image, Core Audio, Automator Workflows, and the Quartz Compositor. With Tiger, Apple is pushing itself allowing developers to release great software quicker and with less bugs. ### What Do We Think? So how does Tiger rank after extended use in the MacZealots laboratories? We love it and recommend it to all of our friends. Paul Thurrott calling Mac OS X Tiger a "minor upgrade" is not only ludicrous, but false. Tiger's Dashboard and Spotlight will once again change the way we use our computers just like Exposé did with the release of Panther. As with previous releases it seems that Apple is making our computers faster. This is a major difference from Windows where each version bogs the system down to a crawl. To notice the most difference in speed, you want to make sure you have a lot of memory. As developers, we love Core Data and are already implementing it in our daily work. In a few hours, I created a complex data driven application to keep track of the serial numbers, models, and lease end dates for the Windows PCs at my office. Without Core Data this could have taken days or weeks. We would love to hear your reviews of Tiger as you begin to work in the operating system. Leave a comment and tell us and the rest of the world what you love, what you hate, and what you hope to see in Mac OS X 10.5. Without further ado, let's get onto the articles. * Mac OS X Tiger: What's New * Mac OS X Tiger: What's Different * Mac OS X Tiger: For DevelopersThe MacZealots crew breaks down Mac OS X Tiger and covers what's new, what's different, and why you need to get the upgrade. Look no further for information on Automator, Dashboard, Spotlight, and the new developer technologies.
Justin Williams is founder and chief author for MacZealots. He switched to the Mac almost five years ago hasn't looked back since. When not blogging or coding, you can find him watching copious amounts of TV. Justin can be reached at
Reader Comments (4)
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#1) On July 31, 2005 5:44 PM
Why does Apple preinstall Tiger on the Mac Minis (referring particularly to the 80GB option) and put everything in a single partition? How do I install/run Classic, which requires a partition of its own? What software should I choose to: a) partition while losing no data; and b) clone the OS9 drive on my beige G3? Why, there’s quality software out there which is not yet compatible with Tiger? Well, that narrows my choices!
I was willing to go $200 over my budget after learning I really couldn’t be happy with any less. Finding I now need to spend $100 more to create a 2nd partition, etc., leaves me rather unhappy. Had there been a 2nd partition to begin with, I wouldn’t be writing this. (Anyway, ViaVoice 3 works. And I’m pretty excited about its possibilities!)
#2) On November 24, 2005 1:10 PM
HI Streve.
well, I have read somewhere that OS X does not need to have a different partition because it is a very stable OS, though I agree with you when it comes to the need of partitioning, I don’t think OS9/Classic needs a single partition because I have been running OS x 10.4.3 and OS9 on the same partition for ages and never had a problem. You can use a software called “VolumeWorks” from SubRosaSoft.com. This program will allow you to partition without losing data. ***I Still recommend you to Backup all data***
#3) On November 24, 2005 1:11 PM
Hey Steve… sorry for mistyping your name…:-(
#4) On December 12, 2005 2:48 PM
I had two new fully operational G5 computers with Panther operating system already factory installed. I was contacted by Apple that a new Operating system was available, faster, yada yada yada.
I took the two computers into the store and purchased the new operating system Tiger.
The software proceeded to completely destroy both hard drives on both computers.
I returned them and told them I wanted my mony back. They refused since the software was oipened but agreed to replace the corrupted software and install it for free.
The computers never worked right since.
We were forced to continue working with these crippled computers as we have deadlines to meet. It was a nightmare
as it took four times the normal time to do the work because of crashes etc. We were already out a week with down time due to their negligence.
When the smoke cleared we took them back in and asked them to take the operating system Tiger out and replace the computers with the original operating system. Another four hours standing in line.
We got them back to the office and low and behold they still did not work. We took them back again and were told by a snotty tech that we had dust in the computer as if that’s what the cause has been all along. He told us never to come in with dust in the computer again even though the dust was in areas that we are not allowed into without breaking the warranty.
If this were the case why hasn’t it been a problem for the past 12 years? and what am I supposed to do? only use the computer in an operating room? The dust he displayed was extremely minimal the computer was only six months old and if it were such a problem why didn’t the other four techs working on the computers notice it and clean it the first four times they had it on their bench?
Bottom line.. I’m tired of buying new programs and computers that don’t work. Tired of standing in line for hours. Tired of companies not having a complaint line. How handy is that? No wonder they keep saying your the first one that’s had a problem with this. That’s literally impossible since I work in the entertainment indusrty that deals with editing and service bureaus that operate 100s of computers. They all are avoiding Tiger because of known problems as well. Apple is not addressing this and hundreds if not thousands of businesses are losing valuble production time due to their negligence. Instead of trying to develope a way for my daughter to dock her I-pod to a bowling ball, they should concentrate on making operating systems work in their computers.
Total time lost in our company is at least a week which is in dollars around 20,000.00. I can’t imagine how much is being lost nation wide. Something needs to be done about this. They need to be held accountable for the destruction they cause by distributing faulty product.To add salt to the wound they keep coming up with all these stupid ideas on why the computers are not running right after they destroyed them initially. There comes a time that if they can’t fix them, they need to replace them and stop wasting the consumers time and costing them money. We need a lemon law that applies to computers. Then the manufacturers will make sure they function before they are sold. I know I can’t get the money my business had lost back but I want them held accoutable for distribution of a faulty op and replace the computers they can’t fix instead of sending me back to the office with inoperable computers.