angrynorth

Now officially announced. Ships 29th April

stevencotton

Hurrah!

Markus

Lovely, Still no updated seed though

At least I can now actually talk about it

So, what do I think about it?

Dashboard = Rather cool. Potentially a rip off of Konfabulator, depends on your viewpoint really. Very simple to make widgets. Let's put it this way, I've a Konfabulator widget and it's not too difficult to convert it to Dashboard, if I can do it, then anyone should be able to.

Spotlight = Very powerful. Find under OS X was pretty good, this is just fantastic. Very quick (once it's indexed your disks).

Mail = some nice changes to mail, the 'slideshow' feature for attached pictures is cute. Not really used it that much TBH.

QT7 = Not used it

Automater = Not used it, though co-workers have, mainly for project development work and they say it does work rather well. Looks to me like it's just an even more high level version of Applescript, which isn't a bad thing really.

.Mac = Never used it

All in all it's a nice upgrade. Those who shout that nothing much has changed, well, interface wise, maybe not, but under the hood, a *lot* of work has been done to the BSD subsystem, OpenDirectory has been more or less completely re-written, they have changed login and logout hooks (they're not used any more), OS checks that startup items are set correctly (root:wheel for ownership and rwx for only the owner), if not it prompts if you wish to fix it, then reboots.
<loginwindowtext> tag now works as it should have done in previous releases Plus lots of other little changes.

One thing I have noticed, and think I mentioned before, is that you really do want 256MB RAM or more to run Tiger. I could not get it to even install if the machine had less than 256MB, previous OS versions would install/run with 128MB. Plus even if you cheat to get it installed, then it will run rather slowly with less than 256MB. I know, I know, anything less than 512 isn't really recomended, but we like to push our test machines

All in all, a major step forward

Danny B

Hi Markus, how's it going?

Will Tiger be a free upgrade to all of us 10.3.8 users or will we have to pay?
As you know I am fairly new to Mac's (although getting much better now) and not sure how the upgrade system works.

Cheers
Dan

angrynorth

Unfortunately its paid, £89. Usually worth it though as its an entire new system. Tiger looks especially tempting, I was going to leave it a month or so but I don't think I will be able to hold back!

Markus

Hi Dan,

If you purchase a machine now (April 12th) then you will be able to get a free upgrade to 10.4. Each machine should come with some proof of purchase thingy for 10.3, this you send off to Apple for the new OS.

If you have an existing machine, you'll have to pay to upgrade. Apple's policy is for dot upgrades to be free, and major revisions are paid upgrades.

We've been running the later seeds here and it seems pretty stable, so getting it right off the bat should be ok, but I'm going to wait at least a week after release before updating, just to see what, if anything is out there. Certainly my iBook will be updated as soon as I get it though.

Danny B

Does this mean that when I click on the Software Update from the apple menu that it will no longer update Panther anymore, or will it still work?

Like yourselves, once the dust has settled I will be updating to Tiger, even if it is £89 .

Cheers

angrynorth

There is one more Panther update due and then that will be it (except for security updates of course).

Markus

Software update will still work, but the only OS updates you will see will be 10.3.9, which might appear before Tiger's release, more than likley it'll appear as Tiger ships, then, from an OS viewpoint, you'll only see security updates (Apple does still provide secuirty updates for Jaguar (10.2)). Of course updates for things such as iCal, iTunes, iPods will no doubt still appear, ie; updates not linked directly to Tiger.

Danny B

Thanks guys, I'm getting the hang of how the update process works now

AllanB

Be aware there is normally a P&P charge of around £15 for the free upgrade. It sounds like this will be reduced to £11.98

We are taking good numbers of orders already and getting quite alot of interest.

Allan

Echo

I can't wait - Quick Time 7.0 looks very good, just hope that the encoding algo is free to us Final Cut Express users.

Mossman

Already ordered! Can't wait!

Mossman

marklemac

mine's ordered too

Markus

Waiting for ADC to ship me a copy.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Nice

even though i have been testing the beta versions, i always get a kick when the real mccoy comes out
just been informed that my copy will be with me on the 28th


Only a day before you guys so dont expect any quick posts as i will be doing a fresh rebuild/install so that will take up a few hours

14 days to go

angrynorth

One thing that is shown on this page that intrigues me is this...

I know something similar is in OSX Server but does this mean that I can have one central home directory on my G5 and the same Powerbook without the need for OSX Server?

Markus

Andy,
Seriously doubt it! Think they are saying that Tiger client supports this functionality, but you will actually need OS X server to use it.

I've not seen anything in the seed releases that allow this to be used sans Tiger Server.

There's technically nothing stopping you from doing this kind of thing yourself though.

angrynorth

Bugger, I reallly would like to be able to do this. I've looked at things like rsync and chronosync and whilst they are good they are a bit of a pain to set up.

Oh well, can't have it all. Bloody moon on a stick as my Dad would say...