Topic awaiting preservation: Any Tiger Users?

Has anyone upgraded to Tiger yet? I haven't but I've heard TERRIBLE things about it. I was curious if anyone here has upgraded. I doubt I'll bother picking it up because it seems like a mostly worthless update. The two big features Spotlight & Dashboard look like novelties at best to me.

Soon. Very soon. This month I hope.

o_O

I certainly hope you're joking, since everything I've read and heard has been quite glowing. There are a few flaws, of course, but such is the case with anything. The updates are many and quite useful.

http://daringfireball.net/misc/2005/04/tiger_details :: Some of the things that are different

http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10.4.ars :: Very in-depth review

http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/05/02/an_inevitabl/ :: Quick point-by-point overview

I've seen nothing overly negative, except for the common "Apple screwed this up" which is always followed by ", but it's an improvement and still better than anything else..."

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Joking? No, I've heard mostly negative things. Many people are upset that iLife wasn't included in the release. I've heard terrible things about the install & Safari 2.0. Several people have told me when I install to make sure I backup Safari 1.3 before installing. The biggest complaint that I've heard is all of the features are worthless. The Dashboard contains a bunch of widgets that do nearly the same thing as Sherlock. A search is a search in most peoples opinions. etc.

I'm still debating whether to spend the $60 or so (w/ student discount) on it.

Read the links I've posted -- they disagree with all of those... iLife is a separate product, no point in including it (especially from a marketting standpoint, so I'm not arguing this one). From what I've read, the install is trivial (unless you're upgrading from Panther, but you're better off backing up everything and installing from scratch anyway). Safari 2.0 seems to be excellent minus a few bugs that I'd expect a patch for soonish (you might wait to purchase until said patch is available).

From what I've heard, the various features are actually useful. But of course, it's all second-hand info from me; I don't get to play until the end of the month when I head home for a week. So, maybe head to a Mac store and check things out?

Or, maybe different reviewers have wildly different opinions. Most of the people I've read are Mac users, most of them in design, either print or web. Maybe that makes a bent as well.

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I've done the upgrade to Tiger on my G3 iBook, and I've been very happy so far. I never use iLife, so I'm glad it's not eating up valuable room. Dashboard is a novelty for now, and the only complaint I have about it, is I can't turn it off. Spotlight is a huge help. I had been using EasyFind before to dig through pages & pages of code, txt, pdf, etc. EasyFind was clunky and slow. Spotlight is spot-on, and very fast. Start-up is much quicker, on those odd days I do shut down. And the overall system seems speedier/zippier. When you do upgrade, choose the archive and install option. It takes longer, but it's better.
Personally I think it's an overall better upgrade than Panther, well worth $130 (or your $60).

YMMV

two of my good friends have installed tiger and have nothing but rave reviews for it, spotlight is FAST and pretty impressive (searching the content of pdf's, etc.) and there's some rather useful widgets in dashboard once you get into it. i'm planning to upgrade as soon as i have the spare cash.

i had the same thoughts about iLife not being included initially but it is a separate product and would be included if you got a new machine. if you're upgrading the OS there's not a real reason for it to be included.

chris


KAIROSinteractive | tangent oriented

Actually I tend to agree that Dashboard and Spotlight are not all that spectacular of features. Spotlight is definitely nice, but since I keep my files pretty well organized I only use it every once and a while.

You know what my favorite feature is though? The kernel hooks for the file system. File changes are immediately reflected in the Finder and the Spotlight database. So Spotlight is always up to date and never wastes time indexing. Similarly, instant file updates are very handy in the Finder, which used to really bug me when files would not appear or jump around as the window 'refreshed'.

Another invaluable behind the scenes feature is that the CLI utilities such as cp, tar and rsync now support Mac resource forks. These minor features really make a huge productivity difference and can save you from a lot of headaches.

The only thing I don't really like about it is Mail 2.0 which has turned out to be a train wreck for me as it has major problems with large IMAP boxes.

-jiblet