Tiger Teardown

My review copy of Tiger (Mac OS 10.4) is reportedly scheduled to arrive next Monday. Frankly, upgrading my two systems isn't a high priority, especially given that widespread rumour suggests beta builds of the 10.4.1 service pack are already being staged for circulation to developers. Yikes! Did Apple prematurely rush this thing out so that they could steal some of Microsoft's thunder, or what?

The two most touted features of the Tiger upgrade, the Dashboard widgets and Spotlight search technology, aren't particularly compelling to me, although my opinion may change after I use them. Dashboard closely mimics the functions of Pixoria's Konfabulator, which I already run on both my Macs (quick aside; why do folks whine so vehemently every time Microsoft rolls a function into its O/S that previously was serviced by third parties, but look the other way when Apple does it? Can you say double standard?). And I tend to be pretty organized about where I store my data files and how I organize them (I think due both to my DOS/Unix heritage and a more general analytical i.e. anal retentive inclination) so Spotlight's system search is something of a "so-what". I do, however, think that the popularity of desktop search for both Mac and Windows systems makes an interesting statement about our species' inclination to amass as much 'stuff' as we can, and in a frenzied (therefore cluttered) fashion.

Conversely, two of Tiger's features that I'm most excited about are among the least-discussed; the Core Image/Video and enhanced Core Audio APIs. Hardware (specifically graphics subsystem) acceleration for various still and video imaging tasks will be a welcome enhancement. And Core Audio now enables you to chain-gang-connect multiple audio devices into a single virtual peripheral. If I have two dual-channel audio interface boxes, for example, I can hook them both to the system and present audio applications with what appears to be a single four-channel device, versus actually buying a much more expensive four-channel peripheral. I'm also curious to see if QuickTime 7 fixes the 4 GByte file size limitation that I earlier stumbled across, and whether or not it's also fixed under OS 10.3 as well.

Until I get around to test-driving Tiger myself, you can content yourself with the incredibly comprehensive writeup at Ars Technica. You can also follow the always-entertaining chatter at Slashdot. Happy weekend, all!