Mac OS X 10.4 Preview
- Article 27 of 53
- iCreate, April 2005
A major new version of the Mac OS will arrive any time now. Rob Buckley brings you the inside story on Apple's exciting new OS and finds out if Tiger will burn as brightly as its predecessor, Panther.
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Why is the Mac so appealing? Well, apart from its impressive design, there’s this thing called the Mac OS. Just as you might use Windows to operate a PC, so the Mac OS lets you use your Mac. It lets you organise your files, open programs, access the Internet, print, scan and just about everything else. It puts the dock at the bottom of the screen, the menubar at the top, an Apple in the corner and pictures and icons for your files, folders and disks on your desktop. It’s easy to use, fun to work with and beautiful to look at. It’s what makes a Mac a Mac.
But in the computer world, what was fashionable and cutting edge two years ago is slow, out of date and inadequate. A computer with built-in CD and DVD burning may seem an obvious necessity now, but less than a decade ago, no one even thought a CD drive in a computer was important. So Macs – and the Mac OS – have to move with the times.
The biggest change to the Mac OS, almost since 1984, was the move from OS 9 to OS X. With its “lickable” buttons and rock-solid stability, OS X revolutionised the Mac OS. But unbelievable as it may seem to many, that was nearly five years ago. Since then, there have been three big updates, the last of which was OS X 10.3 (codenamed Panther), released in October 2003. All of them added new features, refined existing ones, and made the Mac faster, more powerful and even more lickable. Now a new version is due: OS X 10.4, codenamed Tiger.
Tiger has a lot to top. Panther not only brought OS X up to the same level as OS 9, it was a huge leap forward technologically, too. After releasing a new version of OS X almost every 12 months, Apple will have had 18 months to work on Tiger since Panther’s release so the expectations for Tiger are even higher than for Panther. Can Tiger possibly trump Panther?
In preparation for Tiger’s imminent release, we’re going to shine a spotlight on Tiger and highlight the best of the new features, as well as let you know whether Tiger is worth the inevitable upgrade cost.
Tiger isn’t going to be for everyone, unfortunately. Just as Jaguar and Panther cut off support for some older Macs, so Tiger is going to cut off a few more old-timers. Tiger’s official minimum system requirements are a G3 or better, a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, 128MB of RAM and most importantly, at least 2GB of disk space.
Once you’ve installed Tiger, a quick restart and you’ll be using the setup assistant. One big change in the set-up assistant is the Migration assistant. Familiar already to G5 owners, the Migration Assistant will help transfer your files, applications and settings from another Mac or another disk drive or partition. It’s surprisingly easy to use and takes a relatively short time, but if you choose to transfer applications, you’ll probably find quite a few third-party applications don’t survive the transition and will require re-installing. Nevertheless, it’s a welcome addition.
Another new arrival is VoiceOver. This is perhaps the biggest selling point of Tiger for those with visual impairments, since it effectively means they can use OS X again. Imagine trying to point and click on icons and run your Mac without being able to see the screen and you’ll have some understanding of just how vital a tool narrating your Mac’s interface and your actions is for the blind. The last “screen reader” for Macs was discontinued last year so VoiceOver effectively jumps OS X over Windows, which while having a plethora of third-party screen readers, does not have one built in.
VoiceOver appears on the scene right from the set-up assistant. An option to activate it at this stage is available and from then on, every aspect of Mac set-up and control is amenable to VoiceOver. It really is outstanding compared to the competition.
Once installed, Tiger looks little different from Panther. The window and menubar colours seem slightly different, the Apple menu now has a blue background and there’s a magnifying glass for Spotlight (more on that later) in the top right-hand corner, but otherwise there’s not much new to look at initially.
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