The Bottom Line: Whether you're a long-time Mac user looking some new features, or a Windows user looking for a change, you won't be disappointed with this big cat!

Why is it a Tiger?

I don't know why, but every MacOS X release is named after a big cat (10.0 was Cheetah, 10.1 Puma, 10.2 Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, and now 10.4 Tiger). The logic of Apple's catty ways may be slightly confusing until one references the Oxford dictionary:

"tiger |?t?g?r| noun a very large solitary cat with a yellow-brown coat striped with black, native to the forests of Asia but becoming increasingly rare.

tiger

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Panthera tigris, family Felidae.

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used to refer to someone fierce, determined, or ambitious : despite his wound, he still fought like a tiger | one of the sport's young tigers.

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(also tiger economy) a dynamic economy of one of the smaller eastern Asian countries, esp. that of Singapore, Taiwan, or South Korea."

Apple's operating system certainly is fierce, determined, or ambitious. In many, many ways. Since I just used one of it's new features I will talk about it first:

Dashboard

Dashboard is a screen filled with customizable widgets, or miniature programs, one of my favorites is the Oxford dictionary (which is also included in Tiger as a normal application). It also includes a calculator, language translator, AccuWeather forecast, unit converter, calendar, and many other useful tools. You access these just as you do Exposé (a feature added in Panther, for those who don't know you have three function keys - F9, F10, and F11 to instantly show you all windows in the current program, all windows, or your desktop). With Tiger, Dashboard is accessed through a press of F12 (though I changed it to F8 on my iBook since you have to hold FN to press F12 on an iBook since it's shared with the eject key).

This is built into and highly integrated with the OS. It's NOT Konfabulator. Konfabulator is interesting, but I personally found it an annoyance. Dashboard is sleeker and works with you, not against you

So, what other new features are there?

Lots, and I'll get to them in a moment. I'm sorry for the tangent there, but I used Dashboard to get that definition above. Apple's new OS is incredibly determined and ambitious, as a Tiger is defined. The next new feature I will talk about is based on the same concept of Metadata search that Microsoft has promised for Windows Longhorn to be released next Fall. Apple, with a much smaller user base and development budget is shipping right now. So what is this "metadata search"? Let's find out...

Spotlight

Simply put, metadata is "data about data" At the file system level, Tiger tracks all documents and their contents. It's not an add-on or attachment, it's tightly integrated. It knows what's in all your documents no matter what they are or where they're located - email messages too! This is all made searchable through a menu called "Spotlight" (it looks like a magnifying glass) on the right side of the menu bar. It'll search everything inside and out. A quick search on a topic will reveal all my Word notebook files that discuss it, a person's name reveals all my email communications with them and anything else that has their name in it. This might seem extremely slow, and an unnecessary system load. And if it was added on it would be, but since it's tightly integrated with the file system it's almost instant. Results are obtained in (quite literally) about a second, sometimes two. Compare that to a traditional source just through file names that might take 30 seconds or more. Absolutely amazing.

Many people I've told about this go "wow, but I know where I save everything". That may be so, but how many times have you ever wondered what document your wrote something in? Or wanted to pull up all your documents mentioning a specific person? Now you can in a flash. This will change business... and Apple has it today. Once again Apple is giving us a sneak peek of Microsoft's tomorrow.

There's tons of other new features as well!

Dashboard and spotlight are what Apple plans on selling the OS with, but there's actually over 200 new features in Tiger including these:

RSS news feeds in Safari - At first I thought this was nothing, until I realized that it was a great was to bring together news headlines from multiple sources and read them extremely quickly. It can even show the news headlines as a screen saver.

Mail.app 2.0 - A new version of Mail.app has to be Apple's ugliest software program in recent years (but it still looks better than anything Microsoft), but it's organization is far better. It's finally a serious mail client (though I was perfectly happy with the original Mail.app)

Power Management Profiles - A simple click of the battery icon now gives one a menu with the ability to choose a power management profile.

Parental Controls - User accounts can now have parental access restrictions placed on them.

iChat AV - New messaging application supports corporate Jabber networks, and 4-way video chat!

One More Thing - CoreImage, CoreAudio, and CoreVideo

I'm not going to get too much into these, as they only matter if you're a developer. But simply put, these new technologies allow for amazing video and audio effect acceleration and should prove capable of bringing amazing new video technologies to the desktop. I can't wait to see what they bring. Note that you need a great video card to take full advantage of these technologies.

That's All?

No, absolutely not. If you want a whole list, take a look at http://www.apple.com/macosx/newfeatures/over200.html . If you're reading this far, I'm sure you have a general idea that this OS release is big news. As it was, Panther blew away Windows XP. Tiger is a revolutionary step forward that, as far as I can tell, is easily competitive with Windows Longhorn (which won't be released until next fall, by which time Apple will be hard at work on the NEXT version of OS X!). But what I think you want to know is how it feels?

So how does it feel?

Great! Tiger could easily be slower, with all the new features it gives you. I was actually quite worried as I have an iBook, which is great, but not Apple's most powerful computer. And an older iBook at that... but it runs great. And I haven't even had a chance to erase my hard drive and reinstall yet, I'm running an upgrade install of 10.4 that was on top of 10.3. And it's still super fast and super stable.

Is there anything it doesn't have?

Yes, contrary to some people's impression it does NOT contain the latest version of iLife (iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, GarageBand) - you must buy this separately (though it is included with all new Apple computers). Nor does it or a new computer include the brand-new iWork word processing/design and presentation suite. But it's well worth it.

Conclusion

Whether you're an existing Mac user looking to upgrade, or a Windows user who has had it with viruses and spyware and wants to experience the future - such as metadata search and integrated widgets - today on a stable, powerful, exciting platform (if this is you, I would suggest you read my review of the iBook G4; I believe that you will be extremely satisfied with Tiger. It's beautiful, it's powerful, and it's stable. It's everything you need out of a computer OS. Today.

Mark