OS X Tiger Offically Announced!

[fantomfreq]

Just a few hours ago Apple officially announced that OS X 10.4 A.K.A. "Tiger" will be hitting stores on April 29. I'll save the details of the new OS as many of you know the major parts. For those of you not in the know www.apple.com has most of the info spelled out clearly.

As all of the regulars here know, I am an avid Apple computer user. I've already ordered Tiger, which should arrive at my door on or before the 29th. You guys will get my first impressions and review of the product. I'd like to point out one thing here that Apple does that I haven't heard of with MS before: the student discount is incredible. Half price baby.

Only 17 more days....

EDIT: Whoops! I spelled Officially wrong.

[Daniel ~]

Looking forward to your review...Ask them if it run on a pc....":O}

[Pitch]

Originally Posted by fantomfreq

Just a few hours ago Apple officially announced that OS X 10.4 A.K.A. "Tiger" will be hitting stores on April 29. I'll save the details of the new OS as many of you know the major parts. For those of you not in the know www.apple.com has most of the info spelled out clearly.

As all of the regulars here know, I am an avid Apple computer user. I've already ordered Tiger, which should arrive at my door on or before the 29th. You guys will get my first impressions and review of the product. I'd like to point out one thing here that Apple does that I haven't heard of with MS before: the student discount is incredible. Half price baby.

Only 17 more days....

EDIT: Whoops! I spelled Officially wrong.

I remember you having an anti mac avatar at one point

[Daniel ~]

Most mac users do! LOL

[keithwalton]

*Must find someone who owns a mac to go play with it * sadly the only person I know that has a mac is the ex girlfriend i have bent your ears over many times in the support bit. Shame pearpc hasnt come on much either. I may just have to find myself a g4 ibook

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by Pitch

I remember you having an anti mac avatar at one point

It wasn't me. You must be thinking of somebody else. I've had this Powerbook since before I first visited this site.

[danrok]

...and here's Fantomfreq's review of Tiger!
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/i...id=389&Itemid=

[Daniel ~]

Just ask Bill to steal it for you...he'll do it!! ":O}

[dsio]

Originally Posted by keithwalton

*Must find someone who owns a mac to go play with it * sadly the only person I know that has a mac is the ex girlfriend i have bent your ears over many times in the support bit. Shame pearpc hasnt come on much either. I may just have to find myself a g4 ibook

LOL, dont say that! Ive bought a G4 iBook a few days ago second hand and, contrary to everything I ever thought about macs... Im starting to like it. Its a really weird feeling :\

Its like seeing a naked man in a womens magazine, and suddenly thinking, "you know, hes pretty cute", and then realising the screwed up thoughts going through your head. Not that ive ever looked at a naked man and thought that :\

I must say, it isnt bad. For uni work, web browsing, and general use, its pretty damned good. Ive got firefox on it for browsing, MS Office mac edition for work, and winamp for mac 0.71 for music.

Battery life is pretty amazing, until you realise that apple has made a deal with the devil to give you that huge battery life. The battery will run for 6 hours without breaking a sweat, but will only last 18 months. And the new one isnt cheap. This iBook is about 6 months old, so has a lot left, but its still something to keep in mind.

Guess its not as bad as iPod batteries, which cannot be replaced.

Im installing OpenBSD on the thing ASAP none the less.

Only other problem is the size. Im not used to having a laptop this fat, heavy and chunky. Apple need to work on making these things smaller.

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by dsio

LOL, dont say that! Ive bought a G4 iBook a few days ago second hand and, contrary to everything I ever thought about macs... Im starting to like it. Its a really weird feeling :\

Battery life is pretty amazing, until you realise that apple has made a deal with the devil to give you that huge battery life. The battery will run for 6 hours without breaking a sweat, but will only last 18 months. And the new one isnt cheap. This iBook is about 6 months old, so has a lot left, but its still something to keep in mind.

Only other problem is the size. Im not used to having a laptop this fat, heavy and chunky. Apple need to work on making these things smaller.

I'm glad to hear that you're liking your Apple computer! What are the specs on the thing, out of curiosity? Your battery life is much higher than my machine (~4.5 hours); I think it must be the larger screen on mine for the most part. I haven't heard about batteries for Apple's notebook computers having a short life; my friend has a 3 year old Powerbook with the original battery still working fine in it. I guess it could be an iBook thing. As for your size complaints, you got the wrong computer if you're looking for a small one. The Powerbooks are much slimmer; mine is about the size of my father's newer Thinkpad. Sounds like you got a bit of a deal on your iBook though or I don't think you would have bought it.

I've also got some suggestions on what software to get for your computer before you wipe your drive. Unless you NEED straight Unix you should try OS X out for a little bit. You can get all this software at versiontracker.com too.

Quicksilver. This is THE most useful app I've ever come across. It's a launcher on the surface, but it can be integrated into any application to perform more functions. For example, it scans your bookmarks to open them as quickly as you can type a couple letters of the name. It will play/pause/forward/etc. in iTunes without opening an iTunes window. It increases productivity a whole heck of a lot, or in my case it helps me procrastinate faster.

Adium. This is a great cross-IM service program. If you don't like the way iChat displays information, this is for you. It's highly customizable.

MenuMeters. For a laptop this is an indespensible program, especially one with a smaller screen like yours. It will display things like memory and CPU usage in the menubar, taking up almost no space and giving you access to lots of information.

MacJanitor. The Unix part of OS X runs cron scripts late at night, when load will probably be less than other times. Unfortunately, on laptops this doesn't always get ran unless the laptop is on 24/7. This little program forces the scripts to run, which will keep your computer up to speed as long as they are run every once in a while.

I should also inform you of maitenance that needs to be performed every once in a while that is unique to the Mac (or at least doesn't pop its head up on the PC.) Open up Disk Utility and Repair Permissions. That single step is the best thing you can do to keep OS X running and happy. Do it once a week or so and you'll be fine. This could be called the equivalent of cleaning up the registry in Windows.

Other programs worth checking out are iStumbler (hotspot finder and so much more) and MPlayer (plays nearly all video media files.) Man, that's quite a long list of things to check out. Come to think of it, this is a pretty good list of things I'd recommend to anybody getting an Apple computer.

[dsio]

Its an iBook G4 12" screen, 1.2Ghz, 512k cache G4 chip, 768MB ram, 60GB disk, combo drive (broken), ATI 9200 (may as well not even have it), extra stupid carry bag, and wait for this... a FREE, 32MB usb flash drive. Talk about generous.

the iAirpower super extreme wireless adapter is borked as well. And it wont bluetooth to my tungsten.

I still have a $200 cashback voucher thing that the original owner never cashed as well, so I must get around to that.

The bloke i bought it off just replaced it with the powerbook G4, which I must say makes this thing look like a brick, but the powerbook is still way to big.

My favourite lappy of all time is my compaq M300 pentium 3, which fits in my gf's handbag with room to spare. This iBook is a fat beast.

Im still not going to be running OSX on it. I like the long battery life (and yea its more than 4.5, maybe 5.5 or so) and I originally bought it for doing wireless site surveys, security auditing, and palm managing. So, if the wireless card in it can be made work it would be great.

Given the use in mind, having an OS like OSX isnt extremely usefull. For one I have no idea how secure it is, and I need my machine to be bulletproof. not like, just pretty secure. I mean kevin mitnick with a bad attitude couldnt break in security. Hence OpenBSD. OSX is probably pretty good, but I just dont know enough about it to trust it. And on top of that ive had a nightmare trying to run some of the programs I need. I assumed that linux would emulate on OSX easily, but if it does, i have no idea how.

And yea, it came fairly cheap. It was one of those on the spot things where he was talking about all his fees comming up, and needing to sell the ibook. I offered $600 (australian) for it, just to see if he would bite. Then he accepted and said he would get it tomorrow, and I was like "crap, maybe they are only worth $600 or so brand new?" so I quickly said I was kidding and thought nothing of it. On the way home through the city I dropped into the apple store and saw that their cheapest iBook G4 was $1500, so I quickly got on the phone back to him and organised it.

[danrok]

Sounds like you got a bargain (in Apple terms!).

I was looking at some guys Mini Mac set-up. Very nice. He had it hooked up to a plasma screen in his lounge for media playback, sofa browsing, etc. Perfect for that type of thing.

Here it is:
http://www.rpwildlife.com/pictures/zzz/mini1.jpg

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by dsio

the iAirpower super extreme wireless adapter is borked as well. And it wont bluetooth to my tungsten.

It sems like the iBook is a little beat up already with so many of the parts not working correctly. You might want to try and reseat the Airport card and make sure the antennae is attached correctly. You may have noticed that there are two little latches on the keyboard of your iBook. If you push those latches up, they keyboard will pop out and give you access to the guts of the beast. More detailed instructions on how to do so are here:

http://www.info.apple.com/usen/cip/p...4-apc-cip1.pdf

Also, are you sure that the computer has a Bluetooth module installed in it? It wasn't a default option and I hear that Tungsten handhelds will readily synch with Apple computers. Forgive me if this is something you already know, but if you click the Apple menu and hit 'About this Mac' and then hit 'More Info,' a detailed system profile will appear. If yours does have bluetooth installed, it will give the firmware version here. My firmware is version 1.6.0f2, which is up to date. You may have to update your firmware through Bluetooth Firmware Updater.

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by danrok

I was looking at some guys Mini Mac set-up. Very nice. He had it hooked up to a plasma screen in his lounge for media playback, sofa browsing, etc. Perfect for that type of thing.

The mac mini is nice because it's small and cheap. Several people happened to notice that the mac mini was exactly the right size to fit into the standard CD player slot in an automobile. Those people have also then made complete mobile media centers in their car. Now THAT is really cool.

[dsio]

Damnit fantonfreq, apple are recalling the batteries on the 12" iBook G4 due to overheating problems. Guess what? My battery for my 12" iBook has that serial number. Ive tried apple, ive been ever so slightly impressed, but now they have gone and blown it. Once bitten twice shy man.

I said there was something fishy about those batteries!

[fantomfreq]

Originally Posted by dsio

Damnit fantonfreq, apple are recalling the batteries on the 12" iBook G4 due to overheating problems. Guess what? My battery for my 12" iBook has that serial number. Ive tried apple, ive been ever so slightly impressed, but now they have gone and blown it. Once bitten twice shy man.

I said there was something fishy about those batteries!

It's happened before. I'd blame the battery manufacturer. At the very least, Apple has a good exchange policy and the whole deal is free. Plus, they voluntarily recalled these batteries before many major issues appeared. But the choice is yours and yours alone.