Tiger has finally come
Friday I got my copy of Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4).
In fact I am writing this using a great dashboard widget called DashBlog. Dashboard is realy cool, and comes with some good widgets already, but since they can be written just using HTML/CSS/JS anyone can write their own. My favorite additions to the standard set of widgets are Dash Monitors and DashBlog. Dash Monitors is similar to gkrellm for Linux but not quite as configurable/extensible.
Spotlight has many great uses. Previously I used Quicksilver as a super fast app launcher. Spotlight might not be as fast as Quicksilver, but that is only because it searches through more than just apps. Spotlight is a good applauncher, but it really shines as a unified search. Can’t remember where you stored that old password for a website? Is it in your email, a text file, etc.? Simple solution… Spotlight.
Automator looks cool, but it kind of large and a bit unreasonable for single app scripting.
Core Data pissed me off a bit though. In Panther all preference files for all apps were simple text/xml files. That is very handy for app interoperability. However…Tiger now allows apps to store prefs in binary files. Erg! I was using a great script RandomTint.pl to randomize my Terminal background color, but it breaks now. The ‘defaults’ command still does work on these files well, but I am a bit disappointed.
On the Tiger Unix page they describe some interesting new stuff. ACL’s is quite exciting. Many unix commands now work with HFS+ files better than before. Launchd sounds cool, but it is an enormous break with UNIX tradition. I’ll have to learn more before I make a final decision. More and more great programming language and library support like sqlite, perl, php, python, ruby, etc.
Safari RSS sounds good for people who use RSS lightly or general beginners. I however am a NetNewsWire Lite user, and Safari doesn’t come close to it.
That is it for now. There are so many new features that I seem to find a new one all the time, some are small, other big. And many I haven’t yet had time to play with yet.
Posted: May 1st, 2005.
Tags: Mac