A Few Notes On 3 Weeks Of Mac OS X Tiger.

If you haven’t read enough about Tiger on the Mac, then you’ve been traveling abroad for awhile. As in another galaxy. Apple even got sued for using the name “Tiger.”

Apple released Mac OS X Tiger barely three weeks ago. The hype was accurate. Tiger is excellent. Most media pundits agree (though I worry a bit when so many agree with my perspective; I must be doing something wrong).

Generally speaking, Tiger is faster, stable, offers plenty of eye candy, and a few built-in features that will alter the Mac landscape over the next couple of years.

Problems With Tiger
There’s a few here and there, though not much. The spinning beach ball shows up on some Spotlight searches. Clicking “New” to compose a new message in Tiger Mail results in a very long pause before the document opens.

Some Mac users have complained about a few applications that worked fine on Panther won’t work on Tiger. Most developers have updated their applications for Tiger.

The mainstream media has gone ga-ga over Tiger, though a few exceptions exist. One Windows apologist says everything that can be done in Tiger can also be done in Windows 2000. Click Here for an exercise in ridiculous writing.

Apple is not resting on laurels and Tiger 10.4.1 has already been released to fix a few bugs here and there.

What do I like about Tiger so far?
Surprisingly, Spotlight search has become a favorite. For pure eye candy, Dashboard widgets are a treat.

What’s your favorite widget? My favorites include Sloth Cam, Weather, iCal Events, and Countdown Calendar. There’s also PackageTracker, and the combo Google/Yahoo search bar.

There’s nearly two hundred “widgets” available from the Apple web site and other sites devoted to widgets. There’ll be more.

The biggest surprise in Tiger?
It’s the RSS implementation in Safari. If you’ve read me before, you know I love RSS. There’s no faster way on a Mac (or PC) to get news headlines and summaries.

I love NewsFire and NetNewsWire. Both are full featured and excellent at gathering news via RSS feeds. Safari’s RSS, though with many fewer features, gets used because it’s built in to Safari.

Once you set up 50 or 60 RSS feeds, it’s a breeze to see how many feeds are available, and what they are. I like that.

What’s Cool And Hot Under Tiger’s Hood?
Spotlight, QuickTime 7, Automator, and Dashboard are getting all the press. Just as cool are Core Image and Core Video.

These to features will begin showing up in Mac applications because they make it easy for developers to add image and video effects.

Case in point. ComicLife. There’s no better application available to take your photos and produce an attractive, professional comic book or comic strip.

Except all the images are photographs (straight from iPhoto, if you like). Now, with ComicLife 1.1 for Tiger, and the addition of image effects from Core Image, you can change those photos to look like comic book drawings. Click Here for the new version.

There’s lots more so for a future article on how typical, mainstream media distorts reality to favor the Microsoft propaganda machine. Plus, we have a view of Tiger Server, and Apple’s new version of Remote Desktop.

Oh, Apple got sued by computer seller Tiger Direct for using the name “Tiger.” An intelligent judge threw out the request for a preliminary injunction against Apple. The Mac maker is still involved in a number of other lawsuits, including a nasty, protracted suit brought by The Beatles music publishing company. Over the word “Apple.”