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As many of you have heard, Apple has released their new version of the OS X operating system, codenamed Tiger. Tiger is ripe with improvements over the previous versions of OS X, as well as brand-new applications to round out the package. See what Fantomfreq has to say about this exciting new OS upgrade for Mac owners.
As many of you have heard, Apple has released their new version of the OS X operating system, codenamed Tiger. Tiger is ripe with improvements over the previous versions of OS X, as well as brand-new applications to round out the package. Installation
I began my installation as one would expect, by inserting the disk and then booting from it. Installation was very straightforward; the default options were fine by me (except that X11 was not installed by default, I had to turn that on.) The whole ‘upgrade’ installation process took only about 40 minutes or so and kept all of my data intact. After everything from printer drivers to language support was installed, my computer restarted itself. When I logged back into my account, the Setup Assistant started and asked me for some information including name and address for registration. That took about 3 minutes. After that, I noticed that Spotlight was running and currently indexing my hard drive. Spotlight is a handy new feature of OS X that allows advanced searching of files and their metadata. Spotlight will search through all files that it is compatible with; for example if you type in a couple words from one of your Word documents it will come up with the correct document. Spotlight is bound to hot keys, command + space by default. One can think of Spotlight as almost exactly what WinFS is striving to be. You can create Smart Folders, which work a lot like the smart playlists in iTunes. You specify one or several criteria that files have to meet, and all the files from your drive that meet those criteria are put into the folder. Their physical place on the drive does not change; it’s almost like a shortcut is placed in the new folder for you. These folders also update automatically and instantly. I’ve posted a picture of the basic Spotlight window below.  (Click the image for a bigger view) Dashboard
The next thing I tried out is the new Dashboard program. Dashboard is very similar to Konfabulator, which some of you may have heard of or used. The program is called up by pressing the F12 button. Your desktop then ‘grays out.’ Widgets, or small, specialized programs, can then be called up. For example, a widget might tell you the weather or let you use the yellow pages. Widgets are basically little self-contained web pages and thus use languages like java. They are supposedly easy to make by anybody with some graphic design and java or HTML experience. I really like this program as it can give you lots of information in a small space. I really like the weather widget; it tells me that it’s 36 degrees and snowing here (which is VERY abnormal for April) and tells me that it’ll be rainy and cool for the first half of the week. There is a picture of Dashboard attached below.  (Click the image for a bigger view) CoreImage Technology
Dashboard showed me an early demonstration of the new CoreImage technology that Apple has implemented. CoreImage displaces the processing of the fancy image effects in the OS to the graphics card instead of using up the CPU. This allows for more eye candy basically. When you place a widget on the Dashboard it creates a very cool looking real-time ripple effect, which I’ve got a picture of below.  (Click the image for a bigger view) Automator
Automator is another new program that Apple has created. Automator does just what its name implies; it automates repetitive tasks. You can create a workflow in Automator, which links several tasks together to perform a task. For example, a workflow might be something like “Get Selected Items > Scale to 60% > Convert to Jpeg > Desaturate.” It will then do that for all of your selected pictures instead of you having to do it one by one in Photoshop. A picture of Automator is posted below.  On Safari
Safari (web browser) and Mail have been around for a while in OS X, but they’ve been given new features for this release. Safari now has RSS functionality; if you go to a web page that has a RSS feed, a button appears next to the URL. When you click the button your RSS feed pops up to be read and customized. Folders of RSS feeds can be created, which open up all of the feeds in one click and one window. Safari is also noticeably faster than previous versions, even over version 1.3 that was released for Panther a week or two ago. Mail is also a bit faster in doing what it does. The main feature that Mail has had added to it is Smart Mailboxes. You can set parameters just like a smart playlist or smart folder and the relevant emails will be linked in the mailbox. It seems that the Junk Mail filter is also improved in this new version. I had a small problem with Mail when I first launched it, but that was quickly remedied by trashing a preference file. Pictures of Mail and Safari are below. 
 Benchmarks
The big thing that I was concerned with more than anything is the general performance of the OS, which I benchmarked directly before and after upgrading. I got the systems to be as similar as possible and then ran them through Xbench. I’ll let the graph speak for itself, but Tiger is faster in many aspects.  Final Word
All in all, I’d say that Tiger is a great OS. With the introduction of Spotlight we’re beginning to see a future where regimented storage systems aren’t necessarily needed because finding files is so easy. Dashboard and RSS aim to fit more information into a smaller space. Automator will take care of mundane tasks for you. I’ll let each of you judge these new features for yourselves, but it’s times like this that show why I really love Apple as a company. Discussion thread for the Tiger OS is here. |
